This is a collaboration that I did with an amazing photographer on Instagram, the little girl you see in the photo is his daughter. I love working with his photography because it opens your mind to translating what you see and building a perspective & story of your own as an observer.
Start from the inside today. What I mean by that is, we're in a place in time where we are saying that people should pray, some people don't know how to. What should be grasped in these times is, when you are told to, or asked or commissioned or moved to pray and you don't know how to - don't feel helpless. Just start by talking out loud or quietly with hands clasped together, sit still and let your thoughts out. Pour out your heart on how helpless you feel, how much pain such events are causing you or have caused you in the past. Open up on how these events feel like wounds that you only just started healing, that have not only been opened up again but picked at again by vultures who refuse to give you your peace.. Pour Your Heart Out. The same searching should be done so that we can go deeper than ourselves to stand together in U.N.I.T.Y, there is power in unity and sometimes in order for us to move forward with that unity it is best to first of all look into our community to fix and to heal what may be broken.
I've been reading a lot of articles by people who feel they are qualified to break us down as people, when I say that and I state what is being said, you may make it out as me trying to run from the truth but in fact I know the truth within it and I won't try to dismiss it. I don't try to take myself to some kind of fairy cloud and not acknowledge it but rather to say that we understand that and we are starting from the inside. We are ensuring that those within our community that don't understand yet, how important it is a time now to start trying to do right by themselves and not rebel in a way that harms them is a current task that we are helping each other out with. Through informing each other, teaching each other, consoling each other and comforting each other in a way that we can educate each other on what it is we are being faced with right now and what we need to change. Many would say that, "Oh but you as a community you kill each other anyway, you frame each other and oh when you go back to the times of Africa it was the Africans selling their people into slavery." We understand that, we are not living in oblivion trying to dismiss it BUT we are living in the TODAY of the situation and if you don't mind we're actually trying to sort out how we can move each other from that point and mentality to ensure that we don't indirectly keep on selling each other out but rather helping each other. The aim is, that when we are already beat down we are helping each other to stand up and not to knock our brother or our sister down further into the mud, further into the bloody soil that surrounds them, that tries to consume their lives. We are trying to revive our community, we are day by day learning from each other and that is our baby steps and our stands at the same time as, first of all crawling in our helplessness and then using each other to stand up. In standing up we are learning to both take the trauma that the news and reality faces us with AT THE SAME TIME as trying to ensure that our mental states are stable and taken care of.
I have said this before and I'll say it again, we're not trying to make this a black/brown/yellow/green versus white issue (Willie lynch and them did that already) we are making this what it is - which is a us who are supposed to be protected versus them who are corrupt that are being given the position to protect us and do not have our interest at heart; and when I say "them" I don't mean everybody in the police force but I point out everybody that is wearing that badge and using that badge to authorize and give authority to the insecurities they have. Take for example, I couldn't go into the medical profession in the future knowing fully well that I may have some insecurities about people of certain ethnic groups I shouldn't bother being a doctor ! If I'm only going to make sure to give only the best care to everybody that isn't caucasian or doesn't have skin like mine, that wouldn't be right.
I started this post inspired by this little girl's face and I tried to interpret what this girl's look means, what it signifies, what it may symbolize and this piece was birthed but now I see the power of a poet and not because it's my work but because I've seen my work and the work of others being set in one point in time and still speaking volumes later. I now realize that our mothers birthed us black/brown/yellow/white and whatever else - our mothers birthed us into this life hoping that is exactly what we would enjoy, Life! Living! Living with a freedom and carefree attitude where we believe we can achieve anything that we want in this life. We are sometimes forced to grow up before our time to deal with adult issues and problems that our young minds shouldn't have to take (e.g. Philando's 4 year old daughter). Our minds should be educated gradually on those things but they shouldn't have to swallow that whole in one go and we've come into this world already with the notion that "Damn this place is big, how am I going to navigate around through all of this before I die?". Then gradually as you open up your heart to know that there are others birthed on the same day as you, days after you, days before you who are there to be your partners - people you see on the journey to know that this path is not walked alone. You start to realize how much smaller the world is, how much more together we can be than we seem to be or we seem not to be, and you know now that the rock that was meant to trip you up in life is being used as the mountain top to show that you have excelled and you have achieved something in life. Where you thought you might fall into a pit of helplessness and non-achievement you realize that the pebble that your enemies have ridiculed you over, was the very one you used to target and SLAY the Goliaths in your life.
For those who now have the world's issues like this, causing them to really want to take their spirituality seriously or up their game on it. My advice - don't try jumping into everything that is available to you, because if you are not given an understanding to comprehend your reading you will just be reading and interpreting what you want. First search within yourself look at the foundations that you do have like the Gospel, the Word of God. Use what you do know to first of all comfort and feed your soul THEN you have the foundation you need to start using the journeys and knowledge of all of those who are readily available to you in this life through literature, through blogs, through books to strengthen yourselves. Work from the inside out, you can only beat your face for so long before you realize that, that acne, those spots, those zits require you to make some internal changes.
From today find somebody to make you accountable to your emotions and expression, find someone you can talk to, build some foundations to strengthen your inner G. You are never alone in this journey, please realize that people have been placed on this earth to help you out, just talk - talk about your worries, your problems. Unite with one another look to build and not to destroy, encourage yourselves and each other. If supporting the liberation of those you love and care for is being classified as terrorism then let them continue in their ignorance calling good, "evil". You just do you and what you need to do before you leave this earth.
" Don't let the disease become incurable before you decide to take preventative and healing measures."
Much Love, Peace, Light & Strength,
Pebble$ .
I want to publish a book, it will be a collective of my work from the start of my journey at 8 years old til Summer 2015. Hold me to it !
Copyright © 2016 PebblesWroteIt
