How have I arrived at who I have
become, what I value, what I know, what I believe to be true?
Like many folks I know in America,
what the culture handed down to me felt insufficient. There were a few good
stories of freedom and human rights and love thy neighbor, but so many turned
out to be empty talk soaked in hypocrisy. The real stories behind Colombus’
curiosity and bold exploratory spirit, Thomas Jefferson’s intellect and defense
of democratic freedom, the churches carrying through the theology of Jesus
Christ were riddled with disappointment and hidden —and not so
hidden—brutalities, lies, injustices and deceit. Colombus cut off the hands of
native Taino people who didn’t collect enough gold for him, Jefferson had
children by a slave woman he legally owned
who apparently didn’t have the “inalienable right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness” and the church justified killing millions of people who
didn’t believe what it wanted them to, condoned four centuries of enslaving
human beings, burned women at the stake and was recently used to explain how it
is perfectly fine to “legally” kidnap children away from their parents at the
U.S./ Mexico border because God says so.
What I was gifted is a cultural
that values (or valued) literacy and gave me the freedom to read multiple
points of view and decide for myself what felt right and just and true. And so
a lifetime of reading the wisdom and beauty of poets far and wide, enlarging my
world through novels, cultivating my thinking mind with ideas presented in
non-fiction, is what began to shape both my knowledge and values. Alongside
films and documentary films and even occasional TV, music both listened to in
recordings and played on various instruments and sung, art in museums, dance
recitals and plays, all the voices of culture. By picking and choosing—Yeats
over Rod McKuen, Dickens over Danielle Steele, Thoreau over Machievelli,
Coltrane over Kenny G., Black Orpheus over Road Warrior, Suzuki Roshi over John
Calvin, Martin Luther King over Bull Conner and so on, I created my own
cultural identity and grew a philosophy, outlook and life practice born from
the confluence of various traditions.
That’s fine as far as it goes. But
what if those (what I consider) more enlightened thoughts and morals and
practices were actually given to me by my culture? Kofi Gbolonyo remains one of
the wisest, most intelligent and most interesting people I’ve ever met and
without taking an ounce of credit away from him personally, most of what he
speaks of so eloquently is the wisdom and practices of his indigenous Ewe
culture. I could listen to him for hours speak of the three colors and their
meanings, the three stages of human existence, the ritual of making a drum, the
steps to making palm wine, the meaning of the designs in the kente cloth, the
meaning of the dance steps and drum patterns and songs. Meaning is infused in
just about every aspect of Ewe life and it is a collective, ancient, yet
forever contemporary meaning rather than a personal one. Not a dogma to be
blindly accepted, but a genuine wisdom and spiritual point of view crafted over
centuries. For a Westerner like me, it is truly astonishing to receive for free
this gift of a connected, meaningful culture.
Of course, there were inevitable
shadows and blind spots as there must be in any situation
where a group of people choose
“this” over “that.” And the encounter with the Christian missionaries who
refused Ewe beliefs and practices and insisting that their converts deny them
creates many layers of complexity to the situation. Let’s not go there now.
This is just to report that 99.99% of us Americans have no idea how exquisite
and wise and life-affirming and complex the accumulated wisdom of this Ewe culture
is. I’m not talking about being a good liberal and acknowledging the humanity
of people who were historically denied it by the West, not talking about being
tolerant or compassionate or kind from our arrogant stance of brainwashed
superiority. I’m talking about understanding how intricate and exquisite and
wise a collective group of people can be even if their wi-fi is spotty.
If Kofi wasn’t so busy, I would
strongly encourage him to write a book gathering together the many remarkable
lectures he has given on this wisdom. Or at least sit down at his feet for
hours with a tape recorder and then transcribe his talks. To speak on behalf of
the Ewes to add their wisdom to the store of accumulated knowledge so that
someone feeling isolated in their American town can have this world opened and
begin to shape their new life.
Akpe, Kofi!!
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