A Modern Day Fable of Humanity’s Demise and Redemption

“I, Juno, Ruler and Counselor of the State, do hereby call forward

Nana Buluku, Supreme Creator and Mother to the Sun and Moon,

Isis, Healer of the Kingdom and Governor of the Natural World, and

Athena, Advisor to the Gods and Protector of the People

to speak to the Council of Races on behalf of humankind.

NANA BULUKU, Divine and Honored Deity, you shall speak for the Americans that hail from African countries.

ISIS, Divine Deity to the Egyptians and the Nubians, you shall speak for the Americans of many colors that hail from various countries.

ATHENA, Divine Deity of Wisdom, you shall speak for the Americans of white ancestry that hail from the northern countries.

Do you agree to these duties, Goddesses, to represent these peoples in the Council of Races?”

Nana, Isis, and Athena: “We do.”

Juno: “The primary purpose of this council is to investigate the present turmoil in the United Sates of America. Nana, you may begin.”

Nana: “The people I represent today, the African Americans, want to be treated equally to our white brethren. We were stolen from our homeland and brought, against our will, to this foreign land and used as white man’s personal slaves for centuries. Over 150 years ago we were granted freedom, in writing, but we were never granted equality. We ask now that amends be made to allow us an equal opportunity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Athena: “Speaking for the white Americans, I state that we gave you your freedom. It is yours to do with it what you will. It cannot be placed at our door if you do not prosper.”

Nana: “After the 13th amendment abolished slavery, Jim Crow laws were enacted that kept my people subjugated and segregated for another 100 years. These state and local laws specified when, where, and how my people could work, creating nearly insurmountable conditions of indentured servitude and separation, enforced with arrests, fines, incarcerations, and lynchings.”

Athena: “All that ended over 50 years ago. It is time to stop living in the past and realize that everybody has equal opportunity now. The rewards go to whomever works hardest, regardless of skin color.”

Nana: “Sadly, this not the reality that my people know. Certainly, there are some among us who have been able to overcome societal obstacles and achieve success. The Civil-Rights movement of the 1960’s was a huge step in the right direction, but it also offered something akin to the Trojan Horse of your day — a way to hide racism in society. Discriminatory practices continue today, in education, jobs, loans, housing, policing, incarceration, and more.

Additionally, the wounds of the past are not so easily overcome. You, of all people, Athena, should know this to be true. A child who is raped will carry that pain, and potentially suffer the after-effect, for the rest of her life. It is the same with a people who have been molested. The wounds of my people run deep and long.”

Athena: “I acknowledge this to be true. Goddesses have suffered rape too . . . and I know that the after-effects of such tragedies live on long after the event, and that healing requires a full recognition of the pain and harm done. However, my people — those who are alive today — were not the ones to perpetrate the harm, so why should they be the ones to apologize and pay the price for their fathers’ sins?”

Nana: “Because each of us is a part of, and representative of, the constellation of our ancestors. And because when we help heal others, we heal ourselves. And because we all want to live in peace.”

Isis: “Nana speaks truth.”

Athena: “My people cannot do what you ask.”

Isis: “Why is that, sister Athena?”

Athena: “Because we are afraid.”

Isis: “What is it your people fear?”

Athena: “We fear the cost of this action. We fear that if we fully admit our wrongs, it will open the floodgates to demands for money and preferential treatment, not just from your people, Nana, but from yours as well, Isis.”

Isis: “Your fears would be valid, Sister. For in cases of such long-standing harm, the damage must be repaired, not just in words, but in healing actions.”

Athena: “It is too high a price for my people to pay. In addition to the financial cost, what we really fear is the risk of losing our ideals, our long-standing claim that all men are created equal. We risk losing the pride in our country that we feel when we see our flag waving, or hear our national anthem sung. We risk losing all of the statues in our town squares.”

(long pause)

Nana: “So, let me understand you. You prefer to shrug off the reality of centuries of enslavement, servitude, and racism in order to protect your high ideals, your pride, and your statues?”

Athena (grimaces): “Well, there is more . . . . Your people are destroying our cities. The looting and destruction of property are reprehensible. You are acting like spoiled children. We cannot just give in to such riotous behavior.”

Isis (laughs): “Athena, all good mothers know that when a child is pestering us for our attention, the best way to stop her is to give her the attention she craves. Have you sat down with Nana’s people and given them the response they ask for? Have you acknowledged that you have wronged them and asked what you can do to make things right?”

Athena: “No.”

Isis: “Why is that, sister Athena?”

Athena: “Because we are afraid.”

Isis: “What is it your people really fear?”

Athena: “We fear becoming strangers in our own land. We fear going into cities, where so many of your people live, where the streets are lined with homeless tents, drug users, and panhandlers. Even in the small towns now, we hear languages we do not know and see people practicing religions and customs we do not understand. That is why we must hold on to power and wealth and righteousness, to protect ourselves.”

Isis: “Ah, dear sister, no wonder you are afraid, surrounded by strangers! Have you ever thought to ask them their names? You could start a reciprocal relationship with our people by offering your name and asking them theirs. When you know each other’s names, you are no longer among strangers.”

Athena: “This is not comfortable to my people.”

Isis: “What is uncomfortable, Sister, is the feeling of alienation around people that you don’t know and don’t understand. In some of my people’s traditions, the original man, Nanabozho, was given instructions to name all creatures, knowing that by naming them he was creating a relationship with them.”

Athena: “They have made it clear that they do not like white people.”

Nana (sharply): “White people’s actions have made it difficult to like them!”

Isis (raising her hands to calm): “Now sisters, both sides must make an effort to invite the relationships that allow people to live together in peace.”

Athena: “If the truth be told, we don’t want to invite them into our lives. We want them to go away. We are afraid that we are losing the land we love.”

Isis: “Ah, now we are speaking freely. Why do you want them to go away?”

Athena: “Because we fear we will be outnumbered by people of color . . .”

Nana: “and . . . ?”

Athena: “ . . . and they will take away everything we hold dear . . .”

Isis: “and . . . ?”

Athena: “. . . and one day they will try to exterminate us.”

Isis: “Ahh . . . that is a deep fear indeed . . . .

They say people fear in others that which they know themselves to be capable of.

In this interconnected web of life, what we inflict on others turns around to wound us too:

-When you moved into this land, you used Power to perpetrate war upon my people, already living here, forcibly removing them from their homes, wrenching their children and language from them, and reducing their population from well over 5 million to less than a quarter million.

-In order to profit off the land you had raided, you used Power to steal and enslave another ethnic group, Nana’s people, to do your labor for you.

-And still, to this day, you use Power to control and segregate people you fear, people who are different, whose skin is different, whose language is foreign, whose world views and spiritual beliefs are beyond your comprehension.

The repercussions of your own actions, though self-inflicted, create deep scars indeed upon the soul of your own people.

Because you are unable to see all people of all colors and creeds as your brethren, because you insist as seeing them as strangers, you are destined to travel through this world as a stranger yourself, living in fear, watching your back, using Power to try and protect you.

The Arrogance of Power is a cancer that destroys not only yourself and other humans, but the tree people and the fish people, too, and all the other peoples of nature, whom you have also used relentlessly for your own gain. Indeed, the Arrogance of Power threatens our very existence on this planet. Like a malignant cancer, it will eventually destroy you. And it will destroy all of us.

I pity you.”

Nana: “I pity all of us.”

Athena (crying): “What can we do?”

Nana: “You can join in the world community of humans. You can learn the names of people who look and sound and believe differently than you. You can listen to their stories and share yours with them. You can build relationships individually amongst your brethren of color. And you can build bridges, collectively, between all people, with humility and vulnerability and forgiveness.

You must, willingly and generously, give aid and assistance, compassion and kindness, to those whom your people have harmed, knowing that what one gives to others comes back to us, magnified.”

Isis: “Know that all of life is intricately connected with all other life. When we harm another, we harm ourselves. When we help another, we help ourselves. And this includes the gentle others whose language you must learn — the plants and the animals, and the very planet we live on. Much damage has been done there as well, and much repair is needed. We must listen and learn how we can live in harmony with all people, and with all life.

If we do not learn these lessons, then white man’s fears will indeed come true, for all of us.”

-Silence-

Juno: “The council has spoken.

Now the Fates, the three sisters who control the mother thread of life,

to whom both gods and men must submit, will make their decree.”

Clotho the Spinner,

Kachesis the Allotter,

and Atropis the Unturnable

address the council:

“In a court of your own making, white people, you would be tried and convicted of crimes against humanity, crimes against nature, and crimes against your home planet, which you wantonly destroy at the peril of all peoples.

You have good reason to fear and you have good reason to want to hold on to power in a sad and futile attempt to protect yourself from your fears.

Under your own construct, your crimes would warrant a sentence of enslavement, internment, and eternal incarceration in restitution for damages done.

However, this is not a court of your making. This is not your flawed construct of punishment and retribution. This is a tribunal of Wise Goddesses, overseen by Juno, the Queen of Goddesses, and deliberated on by the Moirai, the Goddesses of Fate.

And we sisters know that which you, white people, must learn:

~That the only way for any of you to survive is for all of you to survive.

~That the only way for any of you to thrive, is for all of you to thrive.

~That what you dish out to others eventually finds its way back to your own plate.

And so, this is what we serve to you:

· We call upon you to lay down your archaic shields of power and money and privilege. These will not protect you from the ravages that your actions have brought upon yourselves, upon all people, and upon your world.

· We call upon you to stop making war and start making peace.

· We call upon you to stop making enemies and start making friends, among people of all colors and beliefs and backgrounds.

· We call upon you to voluntarily, both individually and collectively, give assistance to the peoples you have harmed, in time, in money, in solidarity and support.

· We call upon you to begin to heal yourself of this Arrogance of Power, this cancer that ravages all of humanity. Recognize the harm that has been done by your family of people, forgive yourself, and make amends by moving forward with kindness, generosity, and compassion toward all of humankind.

· We call upon you to extend this same kindness, generosity, and compassion to all of nature and to Earth itself, discontinuing the practices that ravage and destroy life, and developing, instead, practices that support and nurture life-giving nature, and the planet you all call home.

Athena, you have well-represented the people of white skin, and have spoken truthfully of that which holds them back.

This tribunal does not issue these statements in judgment or in a wish to punish.

In our wisdom, we recognize that change must occur now, or all will perish from the cancer that has eaten away at humanity for too long.

People of white ancestry, we call upon you to make every effort to heal yourself now and, in the process, help heal the world and all creatures upon it.

People of color, we call upon you to assist your white-skinned brethren to achieve these mighty goals.”

And so it is

The Goddesses have spoken

The fates have listened

We will be watching, in hope, for you humans

So be it