My maternal Grandfather, Don John Person and a Uncle are both buried there, at what once was a very neglected and over run Black cemetery, now cleaned up by BHS volunteers.In erecting this beautiful stone monument, the Berkley community is jointly paying homage to its ancestral roots, which is always fitting to do. For unlike in western culture in which "once dead you're done" ,in traditional Afrikan culture, one's ancestors are still very much a part of the family and the village at large. And we should memorialize our ancestors, not just at times such as this occasion, but individually as well. Not just at the euros "Memorial Day" when so many of us flock to the cemeteries, flowers in hand to remember our loved ones. In a way, that is disingenuous to remember our departed ones as combatants in some pale face's wars. It's like a contradiction in terms, aka Civil War considering that Dr Clarke said the definition of Civil basically means Peaceful; so why do we participate in honoring those involved in an impossibility: Civil (Peaceful) War or other wars for the euros freedom; no war is Civil (Peaceful)?Dr Jake Carruthers taught us that in the spiritual system of KMT, there is an aspect of our divine personality that survives after physical death and continues as long as there are those who remember us. Given that, we need to also understand that our ancestors are very powerful. Here's some illustrations of that power; you may know personally of others.You may recall me mentioning that my daughter and nephew, as children in two different states, both individually and separately, saw the exact same image of my departed mother who had transitioned to the ancestral realm many years before either of them were born. They had never seen a picture of their grandmother until years after their experiences, at which time, with my guidance, they began to understand the enormity of their experiences. So the questions are how did my departed mother know where they each lived in different states; how did she get to each of their homes; how did she know my daughter's name and speak to her, etc? What kind of power is that my mother, physically dead at age 39 and DOA at the hospital can now know and do these unheard of things?Y'all know Tony Browder, sure you do. Tony told of an occasion in which his deceased grandmother appeared to him and told him not to take his study group tour to KMT one year. As it turned out, the flight his group would have taken crashed, killing all aboard! What kind of power does she have to be able to know these unknown things?Another sister told me she was saved from imminent death when she was unknowingly urged to immediately leave a building that soon collapsed. These examples are illustrative of the immense powers that our ancestors possess. Powers that can be used to help us in our daily lives as the ancestors send blessings our way.On the other hand, my protege Onaje told me that a certain TV program dealing with this issue in a euro way, typically has euros telling of very dangerous, evil-laden contacts with their ancestors, while Black people featured on the program seem to always have very spiritual, benevolent, peaceful contacts with their ancestors. There is a cultural mechanism at work here that typically enables us to think dearly of our departed loved ones, while euros, being basicallyde-spirited have just the opposite experience. Dr Marimba Ani said it is our deep, innate spirituality inherited from the Motherland which is at work in us. The same deep spirituality, she says, that causes us to worship in religions that demean us and our culture-the slave masters religions of Christianity, euro-Judaism and Islam!So, learn to perform ancestral libations for our ancestors, or set out their favorite foods for them every 10 days on ancestral holy days, or commune with them. In these ways, we show dramatically that we believe and honor them as still very much a living part of our being. Kwasi
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