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Showing posts with the label work

Embracing Ujima and Umoja: Building a Symphony of Unity

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  Embracing Ujima and Umoja: Building a Symphony of Unity Greetings, beloved Gye-Nyame Tribe and extended family! Today, we embark on a profound journey exploring the principle of Ujima and its deep connection to the principle of Umoja. These guiding principles illuminate the path towards unity, growth, and collective empowerment. In this blog post, we invite you to dive into the power of Ujima and Umoja, understand their significance to our tribe, and discover the transformative potential of unity in action. Ujima: Collective Work and Responsibility: Ujima, derived from the Swahili language, embodies the essence of collective work and responsibility. It reminds us that we are part of a larger community, where our individual successes and struggles are intertwined with the well-being of our tribe. By actively engaging in collective work and taking responsibility for the growth and progress of our community, we foster unity, resilience, and shared prosperity. Umoja: The Foundation of Un
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  Don’t Lose What You Have For Imaginary Gains Here is another folktale about losing ourselves in pursuit of something that is not ours, and truly can never be. We to birds that were gifted with the ability to sing, that became enamored with the neigh of a horse. When I first heard this one I could do nothing but laugh because I had been caught in situations like this.  The swan and kite in the story fell in love not necessarily the sound of the neigh, but they may have fell in love with the sense of pride in which the horse did it. I believe that they confused the two. They really wanted the pride that the horse put behind the neigh, and not the neigh. Many of us get caught in this trap. We confuse the exterior with the internal and think that we want what the other person has. We begin to imitate, but we don’t get the same response that the original received. It is hard for us to understand that “it is not the close that makes the man, it is the man that makes the close”.  “The kites

#NguzoSabaChallenge 3

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  #NguzoSabaChallenge 3 Great Ujima: We are in the week of Imani, the base of the Nguzo Saba, and we have an opportunity to grow like you would not believe. I am also on my third day of my #21DayNguzoSabaChallenge and once again I have decided to fast my way through it. I am fasting for a deeper understanding about our system, myself, and the next steps for our tribe. I will be speaking about what's going on with me as I move through the 21 day process. Right now I am good as I hit these keys and lay down this blog, but on day 8 of the fast I will move directly into water only. Day 11 is the high point of the fast where I begin to ramp down and come back toward eating. That is usually the day where a breakthrough is made. So I will be talking with you all the way through this event. “We are in the week of Imani, the base of the Nguzo Saba, and we have an opportunity to grow like you would not believe.” Now the act of fasting can be looked at as a solitary thing, but it can be used

Create Your Work

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  Create Your Work Great Ujima: We are here to talk about using our Kuumba to create the thing that we do to make a living. We have to begin to use our Kuumba to create our work. We have all these marvelous principles waiting to serve us, but we are too busy serving others to realize the power that we have at our disposal. Combining the principle of Kuumba with the principle of Ujima as we get to do on this day gives us a look at the true power of this combination. The angle we will hit today is creating a system in which we are able to work for ourselves and serve the community at the same time.  “Join me today on Ujima in creating the new, meaningful and fulfilling careers for yourself and your family” We have talked about the importance of living a systematic life (verse from AOTL), but now let’s look at constructing a system that can work for us, rather than selling all of our time to someone else’s system. Right now most of us are involved in building up other peoples lifestyle at

Building Your Tribe

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We are on Ujima  today which we know to mean collective work and responsibility. Collective is one of the keys to this principle tying the idea of resource; we can say that the collective is the focus for today. Tribe building is a skill in putting people & the resources they bring together. Of course before we get into bringing different people together, we first have to take the inward journey of putting the parts of ourselves together. We have to recognize the resources we put on the table. Let’s once again take a look at the 5 parts of ourselves that make up the whole that we are, and be able to maximize their power so that we can pull the best out of our external tribe. Yep, we have an internal tribe that we will have to work with composed of our: Intuition - This is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. This part of ourselves plugs us into a larger reality, and gives us access to information without having to go through the

Respect Your imani

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  Great Imani: It has been a very busy few days. I am working at the Ohio Alliance Of Black School Educators (OABSE) conference here in Columbus, Ohio. It took more time that I expected but it was worth it. It is great to hear about all the work that is going on with schools, especially when it comes to Black children. "Imani - a collective force rooted in community" I was trying to record my show but my daughter wanted to take a long walk in the woods in the dark. So I accepted her challenge and we ended up going four miles. Needless to say after the long day, and the evening into night walk, I was exhausted and would have not been able to give yall my all. I am bringing this up because it was a lesson in it about Imani. My daughter was excited to go for our walk but as it started to get dark, the excitement started to turn into fear. Before the sun totally disappeared she was running around picking flowers, running ahead of me, and lagging behind. As the darkness solidified

Collective Nia

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  Great Nia: Today we will be talking about the combination of Ujima and Nia. We are going to come at this from the angle of "Collective Nia '' and Our responsibility toward it. Once again I want to take the time to thank those that are supporting our efforts. We are here trying to build up "Collective Nia'' within our tribe and it is not an easy thing. We all have our lives that require many of us to deal with a myriad of things that constantly steal our focus. Sometimes it can seem as if we are in a land of the walking dead, because some people just don't get it. Believe me I understand so we try to bring you information on a daily basis so that you know that you are not alone. Be on the lookout for announcements about our events, and trips. If you ever want to come out you are welcomed. By the way I know that I have a few writers out there that have some things to say, feel free to email me and I will gladly publish it in our eMag. I also don't want

Quit work to Start your WORK

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  Great Ujima during this third Ujima in 2022: I am excited to be able to reach out to all of you and build in the way that we do. Waking up this early and hitting this keyboard has been a mixed blessing. I guess all blessings are. Strange how the world seems to work like that. Hey... That thought moved us into what I want to talk with yall about this morning. Work, that dirty word that we have learned to associate with early mornings or late nights. Work, the place we go to be abused and missed used. Work, that hamster wheel that we have sold our most valuable asset to run on powering someone else's dream. I know y'all may be waiting for me to unleash some secret that is ingrained in the Nguzo Saba that can free you from the drudgery, but.... Naw I can't. There is no cure for it. We have to work, as a matter of fact I am writing this to encourage you to continue doing so, but what I am going to point out for you is that you may be working too much for the other team, and n

Collective Kujichagulia

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  Great Kujichagulia to all my Kuji born out their: "Umoja in motion (collective work and responsibility)" We are looking at Kujichagulia today through the marvelous principle of Ujima. For those new to the journey, and to remind the old heads Ujima means collective work and responsibility. We teach within Gye-Nyame that Ujima is Umoja in motion. Today let's look at the power of a collective, which is a group that pulls together to accomplish a goal. Now let's imagine that they collectively focus on defining their world, or bringing it close to home,redefining their world. What type of changes could this collective bring about? "Gye-Nyame Journey has already put this into motion , by redefining the day" Kujichagulia as we saw last week is strong on defining the world, and since we are in the week of Ujima I believe that it is appropriate for me to call on our collective to start to redefine the world that we are in. Using our collective thought power to resh