‘I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and although it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge – Even wisdom’.
You spoke to us so many times in hundreds of ways
Words that warmed our souls and sometimes chilled our bones
Your voice was always clear and true
Even when many doubted its depth and misunderstood its meaning
Year after year your piercing gaze missed nothing
And you slowly but surely peeled away the arrogance of dominance
Replacing it with a simple truth – the right to be.
The right to be present
The right to be heard
The right to remember
The right to fail
The right to succeed
Now at a time when our world is bruised and bleeding
And the pain is almost unbearable
You leave us to grope our way through
You spoke about malevolence
Yes, there is so much of that around, we can barely breathe.
We are not safe anywhere anymore
We struggle for meaning with all the desperation and meanness around us
A ten-year old girl is a mother
A mother locks up her son with dogs
Dogs eat the bodies of those left to the dogs
Crazed demons hunt and gun us down
Boundaries and borders make no difference
Satan has a penchant for global real estate
You told us that if we want to fly, we should give up the s..t that weighs us down
There is so much s..t, so flying is not an option right now
Perhaps we can settle for crawling while we clean up the s..t bit by bit
We are failing sister Toni
Failing at being human
Failing at being heard
Failing at loving
Failing at living
Yet you told us that there is knowledge to be found in failure
You stayed long enough to share your wisdom
Yet we need more lifetimes of knowing
The chaos you spoke of might be our redemption
Yet not in the ways the brash and the excitable might think
Chaos on the streets means rivers of red
The blood of the innocent and bodies of the blameless
You taught us to be fearless as we stood in our truths
You admonished us to be fearful of those who would gag and bind us
Your life’s work has been a revolution that spoke to our minds, souls and spirits
As you leave us, perhaps we will think more about the revolution we truly need
A permanent, bloodless, timeless revolution
One that carries through the air from generation to generation
A life of meaning
A life of service
A life of truth
A life of teaching
A life of giving
A life of freedom
The kind of life that you lived
The life of a true revolutionary
And when we are free in however we define freedom
You told us,
‘If you are free, you need to free someone else.
If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else’.
As you surrender to the air and fly with it
Thank you for leaving us with these clues to wisdom.
Rest in peace dear Sister Toni
Please give our love to Maya Angelou.
•Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi is a gender specialist, social entrepreneur and writer. She is the founder of Abovewhispers.com, an online community for women. She can be reached at [email protected]