Parable of Man, Beasts, Ancestors and Nature
The Tsunami in South Asia (and the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti and Chile) is only the most recent tragedy in that part of the world.... The Tsunami proved that Nature is the master of all things, for it spared no one and nothing in its path of destruction. The people on one island were spared only because they recalled the ancestors had warned them to head for the hills whenever there was an earthquake because a Tsunami was sure to follow.
On another island the gravediggers said they could hear the ancestors crying for help from the graves. They said the voices were unrelenting in their plea for help. In our quest for freedom in America, we wonder how many voices of our ancestors can be heard throughout this land, pleading for us to do the right thing to adjudicate their pain and suffering. A lady who visited the slave huts on a plantation in Louisiana said she could hear the ancestors speaking when she stepped inside a hut. She said in one hut there was much love, in another much pain.
And so it is: man, beasts, ancestors, nature, all entwined in the inescapable drama of life that so puzzled Solomon he concluded all was vanity and vexation of spirit.
--Marvin X
from Wish I Could Tell You the Truth, essays, Marvin X, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2005.
Edited 3/23/10
The Tsunami in South Asia (and the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti and Chile) is only the most recent tragedy in that part of the world.... The Tsunami proved that Nature is the master of all things, for it spared no one and nothing in its path of destruction. The people on one island were spared only because they recalled the ancestors had warned them to head for the hills whenever there was an earthquake because a Tsunami was sure to follow.
On another island the gravediggers said they could hear the ancestors crying for help from the graves. They said the voices were unrelenting in their plea for help. In our quest for freedom in America, we wonder how many voices of our ancestors can be heard throughout this land, pleading for us to do the right thing to adjudicate their pain and suffering. A lady who visited the slave huts on a plantation in Louisiana said she could hear the ancestors speaking when she stepped inside a hut. She said in one hut there was much love, in another much pain.
And so it is: man, beasts, ancestors, nature, all entwined in the inescapable drama of life that so puzzled Solomon he concluded all was vanity and vexation of spirit.
--Marvin X
from Wish I Could Tell You the Truth, essays, Marvin X, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2005.
Edited 3/23/10
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