Solea

Letters From an Old Black Man #17

SOLEA ELIANA

Hello all.

I’m writing today because I’m feeling a certain way about the world’s children—all of them. I’m sure part of it is the fact that I just became a proud grandfather yesterday, and everytime I look at my nieta’s innocent face, I think about what the future holds for her and all the innocent children being born into the world. Then I become angry. I wonder how we allowed ourselves to become so stupid as a society that we think what awaits them, the mess we’ve made, is even close to what they deserve, what any human deserves. Of course it’s a rhetorical question because I know we’ve gone way past stupid in how we’ve handled of ourselves and the world. What we are doing to to our children and to the planet they will inherit has ascended to the level of cruelty—blind, self-centered, multi-dimensional cruelty!

I look at Solea and think about the statistical futures the cruel ones have already written for her: the rising parts-per-million of carbon in the air she will breathe, the algorithmic profiles that will categorize her before she can speak, the political quarrels that value power over the very soil and water that will sustain her. We are handing our children a world where truth is a commodity, relationship is a transaction, and the sacred is mocked as weakness. We have normalized a profound alienation—from the earth, from each other, from our own souls. And into this alienation, we bring forth pure beings like Solea, who arrive still cooing with the harmony of the spheres, only to have the noise of our discord drown out their song.

For women, the state of affair is even more grave. Solea will have to survive in the culture that produces Jeffrey Epsteins, Diddys, and Only Fans, the country that ranks the highest in the production and the consumption of pornography, a country where 1,500 women are murdered every year in so-called domestic violence, where homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women, where 24 women per minute are victims of sexual assault or some form of physical violence or stalking. That’s over 12 million women per year.

Over a third of the women in the US are clinically depressed. How could they not be? Over half of all adult men between the ages of 18 and 45 have Only Fan Subscriptions. And almost 2 million women are selling themselves on that platform. It’s dystopian. The average age of first exposure to pornography in the United States is 11? That means boys are trained on degrading, objectifying, and sexually abusing women before they reach puberty. Worst of all, it’s by design.

I’ll never tire of shouting it as long as people continue to blame Trump or congress or the judiciary or some kind of system failure—hoping a different administration will change things. The Western empire is collapsing not because the system failed, but because it succeeded too well. It is functioning exactly as it was designed to. It is collapsing because its own rootless logic, lacking a spiritual-cosmological foundation, was never going to bear the growing weight of its moral misdeeds.

Normally, I write Letters from an old Black Man to share some things I have learned over the years with visitors who happen by my Substack page (especially my children). I write to say what I wish someone had said to me before I became an old Black man. Of course, I’m not talking about the lessons we all must learn for ourselves, the trials and errors of life. No, I speak about truths that are deliberately buried and distorted to disadvantage the many and benefit the few.

But today, I’m writing this letter for a different reason. I’m writing because Solea arrived with a message from the universe, a message that expresses something unique and calls for an equally unique response from us.

Perhaps it’s because she and I share the same blood that I hear her message coursing through my own heart. Or perhaps I hear it because it’s the same message I myself arrived with, that we all arrive with. It is a list of things new arrivals need from us in order to have the best chance for survival. In case you have lost or forgotten the list you arrived with, Solea and I are going to recall a few things from that list because they might be of value to you. And as I record what Solea makes known to me, I will try my best to remember what I need to remember—including to channel my anger into this and other creative acts of love.

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“I won’t need much Pawpaw,” she begins. “But I am going to need a few things if it’s possible.

“To begin with, I will need as much love as can possibly be spared. Love is the moral force of the universe that holds body and soul together. As my body grows, it will also requires clean air, uncontaminated water, and a lot of milk. For awhile, I will still be able to hear the celestial music, so I will need silence to hear the heavenly voices that sing me to sleep. I will want my family to hold me and sing to me from time to time. It will be as important to them as it is to me. I will need all these things as I dream my way into your world.

“As time goes by, there should be no lack of laughter in my life. I hope sunlight, sky, wind and clouds will become as familiar to me as the feel of cool grass under my feet, or the music of birds. I want my education to begin there, with childsplay and nature in a way that allows my natural curiosity to explore nature’s wonders. I want to sing and dance and run and play until I’m breathless, and at night, after prayers, sleep the sweet sleep of midsummer dreams.

“Along the way, I understand I will also need to learn about the unplesant things of the world: pain, fear, anger, desire, and attachment. This is where I will need you most. When I meet those hard things, I can learn from what you have already faced. I can benefit from the lessons you have learned from experience. You can teach me things about the dangers of the world so I need not make the same mistakes you made.

“But most of all I want to know the truth. It calls to my soul even now. I know the sound of it, and I don’t ever want to wander far from that sound. I am like a sponge from heavens filled with universal truth. Each night I return just long enough to refill my soul. I have come from truth and to truth I will always return. He who loses the truth they arrived with loses a portion of themselves.

“The truth I speak of is the hum of the galaxies in my blood. It is the stardust that recalls its journey into life. It is the law that makes the seed break its shell for the sun, and the vine that reaches for the wall. It is the pattern that connects my heartbeat to the tide, and my breath to the wind in the trees. You have a word for it: Ma’at. The order of things. The balance where all things are in relationship, speaking their true names to one another.

“I am new to this world, and my family holds me close. But sometimes, when I am alone, I hear the mean whispers out there, the echoes of lies that make me shudder. I sometimes feel the quiet fear in my mothers voice. I have not yet learned to ignore these wicked whispers. Do not teach me to. Just protect me from believing them.

“Finally, Pawpaw, we come once again to Love—as we always must. This love is not a feeling; it is an act. It is the courage to protect, the discipline to sustain, the patience to listen, the humility to learn, the perseverance to build what is right. I need them all.

“Fill my world with that love. Be that love for me, and I will learn it from you. For I arrived loving you without condition, simply because you are. Help me keep that love. Protect me from a world so loud with falsehoods that it can drive me deaf to my own music. If I can hold onto truth, and act from universal love, then no matter what storms come, I will not just survive. I will shift the moral axis of the future.

“That is the message I bring to you. It is every child’s message. If only the world can find a quiet moment to listen.”

Solea’s message hangs—a feather holding against the weight of the world. It is the simplest and most impossible demand. To meet it requires a revolution of the soul. We, the bearers of this broken age, have our work carved out for us by the smallest of hands. We must find the quiet moment. The weighing of our own hearts is upon us.

I am because we are

OBM

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR KIND SUPPORT