"2016 into 2017: Water Reflects Fire" - Ukumbwa, WAC Team Blogger

2016 into 2017: Water Reflects Fire

(reposted from "Indigeny & Energetics", Dec.29, 2016)

In the Dagara tradition from West Africa, 2016 is/was a Water year. The 6 is a feminine, receptive, internal marker numerologically.

2016 is not your problem as all to many people have suggested it was. 2016 has been your blessing. 2016 has been a time where we had opportunity to gain insight from deep-seated, deeply submerged, deep water issues that plague us. We got a chance to see, to resolve, to feel...deeply.

We were deeply blessed by the resistance of Africans and others to state violence against African people,the presence and emergence of African women creatively, courageously within that and related struggles, the resistance of women and indigenous people to patriarchal and colonial violence. We witnessed a sharp rising to the surface of xenophobia, racism, heterosexism, misogyny, great lack of political clarity and vision, retrograde narratives of discompassionate exploitation and disregard for humanity and Mother Earth Herself. It's as if our shit just rose from the bottom of our socio-political sewer and we could deny the stench no more.

We were...and ARE...blessed by the sacred work at and of Standing Rock. If you don't realize the fundamental history-resolving nature of that dynamic, then 2016 actually alluded you.  You missed 2016. We have been blessed by 2016.  

And we should not miss the fact that, celebrities aside, many many many people (and species) have crossed over to the Other Side, from Brazil to Nepal to Aleppo to Chicago and beyond.  Just take a moment to go inside, feel the ocean-heavy weight of what that means. Sit in the depth of that aquatic emotional tsunami waiting to happen. 2016 reveals itself to be sacred womb pregnant with gifts of spiritual Ancestral insight. 

And if we have the utter bravery to do it, we will actually weep for 2016. We will weep its passing.  We will grieve what we found out about the diamond bright treasure of humanity at the same time we had deep water reflection into the distortions of inhumanity to peoples, water and sacred earth, to the feminine divinity that birthed and constantly rebirths us all. We will grieve the pain and the often latent joy of 2016, still flowing through us as we live....and breathe....alive to see the end, the death of it, the transformative cocoon-break of it, the dissolution of it, the absorption of it, the larger spiritual river flow of it.

And the Dead do not leave us...though they do change their address.  They are available to us. Corporeally. Communicatively. Actually.  Vibrantly. And we are called...if we say we love and miss Those that have passed over, this or any year....to consider how we will carry the blessing, the gift of Their transformed, transmuted lives in our minds, our bodies, our words, our works. If Those lives meant anything, how do we integrate the best of Them into the fabric of our social becoming so They then know beyond a shadow of a doubt that They have not been forgotten? 

And 2017 is a fire year. And the Dagara have observed fire as the portal to the Ancestors. They reveal Themselves, Their wisdom through this powerful element that brings light, vision and incites our passions, illuminates our dreams. 2017 is an opportunity to explore the blessings that we have been given...on purpose...by our Ancestral legacies. And while fire allows us to reduce and burn away all that we do not need, it also lights the way toward seeing our path, sparking the impulse of life into a world turned upside down by exploitation, injustice and oppression, fear and self-loathing.

The 7 marks a feminine energetic.  And we know we must support and acknowledge the divinity and primacy of that creative force, that creation story. What lies in the pregnancy of human, spiritual existence waiting to be born? Who are we yet to grow into, gifted powerfully now by the newly Ancestored energies of our icons, loved ones and faithful and flawed relations?  Our Dead are in US. Their gifts waiting to be reborn...in and from us.  We are the composite treasure of their transmuted recent and ancient lives. We are Their sacred immortality. WE are.  We. Never broken, but reconstituted by the mortar of their now timeless existence, the constantly rebuilding dynamic foundation of Their every aspiration for our transcendent greatness. 

And here we stand at a precious nexus like every nexus, every crossroad presents us with space and motivation for enlightened contemplation and powerful healing choice, pondering the meaning of a myriad deaths, of painful loss and continuing mortal struggle to keep the rest of us here in love, safety, validation and compassion to finish our sacred duties upon this blessed earth, this embattled earth buttressed by the bones of our Ancients, their blood now fused with the dust of time.  

Breathe that in.

The Dead have left precisely to carry us through to our next shining moment, here at the sparkling mountain spring of this new baktun, clean cold river rushing down to bring life to All, flowing like fluid gems of sacred healing clarity...incessant...unrelenting.... 

Find your feet.  Keep them on the ground. Ask Them how to continue your good walk on your path of life.  Ask those who have done it before you.  And as we stand here at the juncture of 2016 into 2017, here at the anniversary of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee at the hands and Hotchkiss guns of the USAmerican colonial cavalry, remembering still that a woman gave birth to a child at Standing Rock, the greatest unification of indigenous nations in modern memory, as Africans born of brutally displaced indigenous African Mothers and Fathers struggle for meaning and liberation and peace and ujamaa in Kwanzaa, at the present moment of the continuing destruction of lives in Aleppo, in Palestine, in Congo, we are reminded that we have much to do...and much that we have been given....and that there is a wealth of wisdom in the Ancestral genius of those that have come and fought and lived and loved long before us.  

2016 was not in and of itself a problem. It was our greatest gift as we stand here in the midst of our problematic challenges, pathologies, crippling privileges and passions. Even on the largest and largely unseen level...we all got here...together...troubled...fighting...bent and broken....healing...resisting...triumphant and transcendent.  Together. Our Ancestors birthed us all into this moment.  Now.  Here.  Present...holding the blessings of the sacred water of 2016 as we see in it the growing sparkling inner reflections of the fire of 2017.

Asante, Wakale. 

We walk forward.