What would THE HEALER do?
By: Starry Godmother
“Alhamdulillah, Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, Dios, Ma’at, Jah, Rastafari fyah, dance, sex, music, hip-
hop..” - The Healer, Erykah Badu
As I’ve been trying to put into words for the sake of conversation, and thereby for the sake of connection, I have stepped through the looking glass. And yes, even in an upside down world, there is room for gratitude. Most of us live the entirety of our lives steeped in the indoctrination and the conditioning of our upbringing. What it says, we say. What it does, we do, what it thinks, we think.
Many people have been blessed with God’s favor in this. The particular traditions they are reared in are vast enough, kind enough, to include them in all of their complexity, in all of their (w)holiness. That, and the fact that some people are fortunate to have been taught by people who are good stewards of those traditions. A good steward being someone who creates room for that vastness even if it hasn’t been created yet.
There are other paths still. Some time in the 1960s or so, my parents - my class president, class valedictorian mother, and my “bad boy”, finally graduated by the age of 20 with my mother’s tutoring father, decided on two important things. 1. That they wouldn’t interfere in their children’s religious beliefs, and 2. That they wouldn’t interfere with who their children want to be with. This was very progressive for their time. But some might say inevitable. The Catholic nuns who ran the schools my father attended were notorious for being mean. Any kind of questioning or stepping outside of the lines was strictly prohibited and severely dealt with. My father didn’t stand a chance in this environment.
Doing what he wants to do despite the rules is his default. In addition to this, the church rhetoric of the Black community left much to be desired for free-thinking women like my mother, who dreamed of being an electrical engineer at a time when that role was practically unheard of for a woman, let alone a Black woman. So it makes since to me that it meant something to them to allow their children to find their own path and decide for themselves what it is they believe about God and everything else that isn’t God.
I’m less clear on what it is exactly that made them so adamant about not interfering in who their children chose to partner with, but I certainly have my suspicions. They are the quintessential “unlikely pair” so I can imagine they heard more than enough of whispers over the years. It would be a long time before I understood that this type of pairing is an archetype created in the human design. Archetype: a pattern or image that exists beyond the realm of cultural significance/that is true regardless of culture [definition mine]. I discovered this understanding of relationship archetypes by unpacking and decoding my own story and how it intersects with theirs. Who we choose to partner with, whether it’s a romantic partner, a spouse, a business partner, or just who we see as “the other” says a lot about us. Of course this revelation would come right in time for the beginning of Libra season. Libra is the sign that is associated with the 7th house of your birth chart. Your rising sign (and first house) represents you, and directly across from that is “the other”, those who are not you, but who reflect you.
Because of this pact by my parents, both of whom were “othered” in their own way -she for being a smart and ambitious woman, him for being a rebellious man, I inherited a unique path. The poet Khalil Gibran wrote in his book “The Prophet” that “children are life longing for itself”. If this is true, and I believe it is, I can see how my life as a curious woman – a nonbinary queer fat femme-fluid writer, poet, spiritualist, astrologist, creative, was called forward from the agreement of these two opposites.
We don’t think art and science ever quite meet in the middle. But my life and almost everything I do says otherwise. So how, with so many seemingly contradicting views and paths do I move through the world? I’m still learning I suppose. But what I have pieced together is that the answer is more infinite that what most people imagine. In conversation with a friend who studies African religions, we talk about the synchronicities of Jesus, Buddha, and Obatala, a Yoruba deity (whom many consider androgynous, and both masculine and feminine), the asteroid Chiron. While studying I see the stories in African traditions, in Egyptian cosmology, Greek mythology, and astrology all align. I find the works of others who see the same. All the same stories being told over and over again. Each time from a different culture, but the pattern, the archetypes are still there. Stories of magical gods and goddesses become stories of kings and queens, become parables in the bible, becomes the characteristics given to the zodiacs, becomes the characters in movies and plays, becomes the autobiographies of the famous people, becomes our family history, becomes our own stories. Maybe there is only one story after all and we ARE the story. Does this make us God?
A prayer warrior, and I’ve known a few, and I am fortunate to call some friends, is the source of all spiritual request. The names they call on may differ, but I’m convinced that they are all one in the same. What matters is the person praying, and the person/thing being prayed for. The cleansing energy released from a bundle of burning cedar is the same from the incense in a mosque...the holy water in a temple, the same as Florida water in a backyard ritual. The Earth is our altar….the saints, the orishas, the ancestors who loved, the holy ones sent here to heal humanity. They are the ones who we call on for healing. As you live out your own parable and you come to a question or need, ask, “What would the healer do?” I think the answer will help you, and ultimately will help us all.
Starry Godmother (Robhyne K. Jewelle, she/they) is a writer, poet, spiritualist, and community builder.
Find her on IG: @starry_godmother