Shooting Star
“Our history includes the services of Simon of Cyrene,
the search of the Ethiopian eunuch, the contributions of black
Egypt, a Art and mathematics. Monasticism and politics, the art
and architecture of Zimbabwe, the scholarship of Timbuktu, the
dignity and serenity of textile and gold and religion in Ghana,
the pervasive spirituality and vitality of Nigeria, the political
and social systems of Zaire.
Our history includes enslavements, oppression and exploitation.
As Malcolm X said, “My folks, most of them didn’t come
over here on the Mayflower, they came over here on slave
ships in chains.”
Proud, strong men and women, artists, teachers, healers, warriors
and dream makers, inventors and builders, administrators
like ourselves, politicians, priests. They came to these shores
in the slave trade. Those who survived the indignity of the
middle passage came to the American continents bringing
treasures of African heritage, African spiritual and cultural gifts
wisdom, faith and faithfulness, art and drama. Here in an alien
land, African people clung to African ways of thinking, of perceiving,
of understanding values, of celebrating life, of walking
and talking and healing and learning and singing and praying.
…African way of laughing and being together and loving:
That’s Culture
Quote from Sr. Thea Bowman