Aeesha and Kokomon Clottey contributed to our YELLAWE program for internal metropolis youngsters who had been on the verge of dropping out of faculty. Kokomon would drive up in his small SUV piled with drums and unload them in entrance of Historic Sweets Ballroom, the place we held the YELLAWE class (in addition to Cosmic Lots).
He would lead college students (myself included) in a really wealthy drumming circle, and I keep in mind his difficult some younger college students who weren’t engaged as absolutely as they should be.
I used to be amongst about six folks invited to talk on the Celebration of Life Ceremony. This included a few of her surviving siblings in addition to Dr. Dianne Cirincione Jampolsky, director of the Worldwide Attitudinal Therapeutic Middle, who knew Aeesha very effectively. Dianne spoke of the worldwide influence of Aeesha and Kokomon’s work and story by means of the Attitudinal Therapeutic Connection’s worldwide outreach.
She named no less than 15 nations the place they function and the place Aeesha’s work is now recognized, together with China, Vietnam, Mexico, Japan, Italy, and past. I used to be very moved to listen to of the nice outreach of Attitudinal Therapeutic Connection and of Aeesha’s work being remembered there.
On the ceremony, my transient discuss adopted Diane’s, so I led off with one other worldwide story from Aeesha which had made a deep impression on me. A number of years in the past, when George Bush, Jr. was president, Aeesha approached me and really quietly stated, “Matt, Germans are coming usually to our Friday drumming circles.” I stated, “I didn’t know there was a German neighborhood in Oakland.” “Oh, no,” she replied. “They’re getting on a airplane and flying to Oakland from Germany.” “Why?” I requested. “What’s that every one about?”
She replied, “They really feel America is changing into like Germany within the Nineteen Thirties, they usually don’t know what to say or what to do about it. So that they select to return and drum with us folks in West Oakland. They assume it’s the very best factor they’ll do.”
And that was beneath George Bush as president. The time of Donald Trump appears to be a complete new period and style.
Aeesha’s real SMILE was so splendidly captured in her pictures. Her smile uplifted all and got here from a really deep place of Pleasure and Function that energized her life—a lifetime of beneficiant care and dedication to neighborhood at all times.
Along with Pleasure, Aeesha carried along with her a deep Internal Power. She had a lion (or lioness) power to her. She didn’t again down and didn’t surrender. Shortly earlier than he died, MLK Jr outlined hope as “the refusal to surrender.” Aeesha was a girl of hope.
Within the Artwork Esteem Challenge that started in her house and unfold to many colleges and locations far past, artwork was central to the empowerment of highschool college students. This very a lot paralleled our pedagogy at each UCS and the YELLAWE program for internal metropolis youngsters referred to as Youth and Elder Studying Laboratory for Ancestral Knowledge Schooling.
Many occasions, I joined Aeesha at displays by ArtEsteem college students in varied venues in Oakland, the place they offered and talked about their work, at all times with the arrogance and pleasure they realized of their artwork courses.
Aeesha and Kokomon created a “energy couple” for good and therapeutic in Oakland. She by no means ran from issues however went towards them and introduced creativeness to the problems at hand. At any time when Aeesha returned to Africa, as she and Kokomon did on numerous events, she got here again with a form of glow about her that was extra highly effective than phrases.
Primary to the Attitudinal Therapeutic Philosophy is the precept that Love displaces Concern. That was Aeesha’s philosophy in her books and her every day life and work serving the neighborhood.
Thank You, Aeesha. Thanks on your Smile and deep Pleasure that birthed it. On your Power. On your Hope. On your Braveness. On your dedication to the neighborhood and solidarity. On your lifetime of studying and love of creativity and artwork, and everybody you met and interacted with.
For a Life absolutely and generously and fantastically lived. A life like Christ’s, very very similar to Christ’s. Amen.
Banner Picture: Photograph of Aeesha Clottey from her memorial program. From the papers of Matthew Fox.
Queries for Contemplation
What do you be taught from studying extra about this excellent lady and 21st century saint amongst us?
Associated Readings by Matthew Fox
Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest, pp. 332f., 353-359, 405-416.
The A.W.E. Challenge: Reinventing Schooling, Reinventing the Human
Unique Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Presents for the Peoples of the Earth
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Consciousness with Social Justice
Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Imaginative and prescient For a New Technology by Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox
