Journey to Empowerment Read Online Free

months, a month, a dream.
    Give thanks and praises for the synergy that is created when we come together throughout the Diaspora and Open to Spirit .

Healing Images
    B Y Q UEEN M UTIMA I MANI
    Heal our Relationships with Earth and Community…
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    Visualize your community as healthy, whole and vibrant.
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    Ask the spirits, the higher powers, to cooperate in healing the community.
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    Send loving energy (pink light) and healing energy (green light) to the community at a special time each day.
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    Create an altar that represents your love for the community.
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    Allow some time and find some space for communion with the earth. In communion, the earth speaks her language of quiet rhythms and you respond with quiet rhythms of appreciation.
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    Expand your love of self, family, friends and community to love of all the peoples of the earth who share the journey of life.

Big Shoes and Pink Halos
    B Y M ARIA D ENISE D OWD
    M y grandfather left this world on a breezy autumn day. My mother lost her father, my grandfather, my daughters’ great-grandfather. He was ninety-one. He was a great, honest, God-loving man. He was perfect in my eyes. During his funeral on Monday, I watched and listened to four generations of family and friends rejoice in his glory, as he—Uncle Willie, my grandfather—had tenderly touched so many. My ninety-year-old grandmother continues to carry the family torch. She lives with Alzheimer’s, but not woefully—not in the least bit. As we mourned, her humor amazed and calmed us.
    On Monday, as I watched her emerge from the white limo, aided by her two youngest daughters—my Aunt Carol and my Aunt Jewel—the very first thing I saw was the pink halo that surrounded her head. My aunts had dressed her in a fine black-and-white wool suit and this magnificent black-and-white hat with a magenta-hued brim, and all I could say behind my smile was, “You go, Girl.” I whispered in my Aunt Carol’s ear, “Very good choice of hats.” And she quietly responded, “Yes, it makes a statement.”
    And it did. Queen Mother—my mother’s mother, my grandmother, my daughters’ great-grandmother—had arrived to celebrate her husband’s near century-long life…and she brought along with her the splendor of this brilliant pink halo into the halls of New Creation Church. New Creation.
    Scores of family proceeded behind her and her pink halo. And she was led—in formation—by her white-gloved grandsons and great-grandson. I joined arms with my sisters—my expectant sister-in-law, Kim, and my cousin, April, and I marched in my grandmother’s footsteps. I held my head high in the cloud of my grandmother’s pink halo—for I am her firstborn granddaughter, my grandfather’s firstborn granddaughter—flanked by my unborn niece, Jordynn Sierra, and my grandparents’ last-born granddaughter, maybe on this day not-so-ironically named the month of my birth. Teary-eyed, I breathed in the synergy and geometry of death and life. New Creation.
    My grandfather’s Spirit lives earnestly in me—his firstborn granddaughter and a very early riser, as he was. I believe that I walk pensively along his near century-old cobbled road of high principles, resource-fulness and thoughtfulness. And, when my day comes, I trust that he’ll greet me with complete pride and joy, even though I never did get the secure civil service job he’d hoped for me.
    His kiss to my cheek will be damp and his plaid flannel shirt will be musky. I’ll meet him in his garden of mile-high collard greens and Swiss chard. And he’ll have a glass of sweet-as-can-be lemonade, made fresh by his strong, loving hands.
    This writing is my morning meditation to my family, friends and colleagues, as I step audaciously into my day—blessed to walk in my grandfather’s big shoes and in the radiance of my grandmother’s pink