How American Can Heal Itself

By Gregory E. Woods

The American flag is pulled into the center of serious discussion about the integrity of the United States as if it can bail out a morally bankrupt set of values that made America Great! The scope of what is wrong in American politics is the same espionage that steered the country into profound evils under the banner of progress. What has been assigned to gloss over misdeeds is the adage: “Wasn’t me.”

Donald Trump is the president-elect, and he is moving in the scripted manner of white businessmen. He is the conqueror over people’s objections, and decency with the same abandonment of basic kindness, and rules that hold communities together. Shocked are millions of American citizens from various sectors of our conscious devotion to what is the ‘right, and white’ understanding of the U.S., who became citizens believing in the rightness of white conservatism that blends business practices with the Christian faith and an ideology that fits perfect with the notion that freedom ain’t free, and allegiance to the flag as the sign of patriotism.

What I am looking at is the awakening from the sleep induced belief system foreign nationals developed to get their papers coinciding with the realization that the horrible boogeyman their grandparents told horrible stories about is from what runs the spirit of this country. Their awakening into what the average Black American already knows, and has mastered to a large degree is the American Dream! What is worse is on the horizon. The white poor and white middle class, the uneducated white people attracted to rednecks like Donald Trump will feel the burn of the contradictions their world depends upon for validity as it is revealed to them exactly what all of it means when upon their existence will be the chaos of disbelief when Trump allows their walls of comforting belief to tumble down.

Black Americans are central to this game. Without a typical diatribe let me venture into unfamiliar territory and visit upon Black folks a new role. The country needs Black Americans to make the shifts in the direction of right thinking, and right action. White Americans? No, it is an impossible task for them. Their inability is well known. Their expertise is too violent to bring resolution to any table with the math they traditionally subscribe to: division.

According to a Medicine Wheel teaching an Elder from Greenland shared with me a long time ago, there is a deep revelation. Angaagaq pointed to the Northern direction where, he said, the white man was positioned with the spiritual responsibility of bringing people together. South of this ‘Wheel’ the Black man’s spiritual responsibility was to protect the People, particularly in the dark! Now, these are but two of the responsibilities and on purpose I am not mentioning the Red and the Yellow man’s spiritual responsibilities. How this works is dependent upon the spiritual skill set and maturity of the Elders who will do this work.

The white man did bring the people of the world together, and to the best of his ability, the African before the advent of the white man protected the People. But, in the failures of living out these responsibilities, the guilt of the white man and the deep fears engineered within the Black man through his relationship with white people both stand on polar opposites unable to resolve the conflicts of their historical pasts.

The complex work of a healing process between these two requires ritual and ceremony ancient to these days, but relevant to these times. The two emotions central to this drama is guilt on the white man’s shoulders and fear within the Black man. Removal of fear and guilt opens the door to the chambers of what is so terrifying about balancing the dark and light elements. These discoveries will only happen in the context of who the womb is to man. What that means in layman’s terms is the basis of this healing process is a revisit to the feminine energy of birth because without it, the rebirth of soul, mind, spirit and emotion will not happen without the principle of birth.

Returning to my central point. If the above-mentioned responsibilities are taken on, the ripple will instigate profound terror in the profound changes the right direction is sure to follow from the simple act of doing a right thing: being activated by the truth. The only way to find out is to take the next right step. The central question is: do we love war more than anything else?