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An old etching of a group of slaves being branded.I would say this and similar situations of bondage
are the essence of “purgatory.”
From most of the accounts of what life was like coming from the Black Canal Zone to live in the urban cities of the regions around the Panama Canal, some of the people who experienced it would probably have described it as “living in Puckatery” which is purgatory in our Westindian language. Yet, even today, a great many Westindian people shy away from even participating in the surviving African derived religious practices that many frown on as one of the regrettable deceptions in their existence.
Throughout my journeys and in every aspect of the black cultural expression in both the United States and Panama there is a language that outsiders are spoken to and there is the ancient language or Westindian-ese that we speak “to one of ours.” Along those lines I have attempted to express how special our ancient religious roots have influenced my cultural disposition and how those expressions still remain deeply rooted within me which I still feel have become expressions of the “Silver” community of Panama.
On the almost surrealistic topic of the divination sessions during worship, and even the private sessions in our home in Panama, I will always remember those “ancestor visitations” for having set me out on a straight and narrow course in my life’s travels. The advice imparted to me in these sessions have been a guide and protection to me building a shield around me to avert more catastrophic reactions, especially on my part, thus promoting a more rapid recovery in my emotional state of being particularly in times of debilitating stress, which were many.
As level headed as I might have appeared at any given time, it would have been those assemblies with my ancestors that immediately reminded me, in many instances, to heed their loving counsel and desist from doing anything rash or negative that would have endangered me in any way. “Ancestor worship”, or not, the fact that I can experience the blessing of having partaken of those deep sentiments of the spirit of the Silver People and our ancestors, who went from purgatory to the Beji-Nite God of justice and mercy, is very significant and a “very present help in trouble.”
Indeed, it behooves me to strongly recommend to you my readers to seek out as many descendants of our Silver race of Panamanian Westindian people and invite them to visit our web sites that I have declared to be part of our ancient “Ceremonial Compound.” You are all welcome to come home and worship and, at times, rejoice within these pages and speak to each other as “real family.” For there is no need for having shrines or ritual compounds if we remain constant to our belief that spiritually we can unite with our ancestors and that, together, we can make all things materialize for our good, here or hereafter, “Until we meet at Jesus’ feet.”
Allow me to recall those old hymns that we heard and joined in singing in the Beji-Nite churches and Sunday schools. From “Yes Jesus Loves Me,” to “Turn the Roll and Shout Alleluia” let us remember to honor and bless each other and our ancestors in the many memorials. Yes, Brothers and Sisters we will be blessing you and all the saintly Queen Mothers of the Beji-Nite churches of Panama that I can remember and the ones that any of you would remind me of. Let us begin that mental pilgrimage designed to open the heavens to let us in to be again be with our God and with all our people that did not get the due respect that they all deserved.
We will consciously remember all those dear ones that evil men and women put in purgatory, that unjust place that a white man by the name of “Dante” invented. However, this time we will be pointing the way as guides, if you will, of the African derived religion of our ancestors that so many people during our youth and most of our forefathers, although they may have practiced it or not, knew absolutely nothing about- things that all of us believed in and did not allow the so-called organized religions to steal away from us. All we are asking is that you keep an open mind to calmly examine what we will be outlining in the posts that follow. This is the beauty of freedom of thought and what I so loved in the Beji-Nite ceremonies, that we could be free to think and to reverence.
At times we will be studying together, constructing and solving the equation as it relates to the Panamanian Westindian experience on the study of the nature of God and man, because we can’t always go to our personal senses to solve the relationship between something as deep as the “why we are the way we are” with the shallow experiences we have to compare to the deeper issues of the Divine. Neither can we flounder in our scholasticism to solve these issues that have made us what we have come to be. So lets dialog!
This story will continue.
