The Wild Reed: A True American Hero

Saturday, August 04, 2018

A True American Hero

LeBron James: a true American hero; an impeccable role model, a black man who is an authentic spiritual teacher and healer.

– Friar André Maria
via Facebook
July 30, 2018

Above: The July 30, 2018 opening of the LeBron James Family Foundation's “I Promise” School in Akron, Ohio. “I Promise” is a public elementary school created to help struggling elementary school students stay in school. LeBron considers it the most important professional accomplishment of his life.

In reflecting on his choice of words to describe LeBron James, Friar André Maria writes:

With my post earlier this morning where I labeled LeBron James an "authentic spiritual teacher and healer" (and I am completely serious about that) something was awakened in me that, in truth, has been awakened before. However, it now seems more solidified.

What has been awakened in me is to help create a movement, perhaps or perhaps a re-creating or a re-awakening/imagining of a template for understanding the definition of spiritual teaching and healing work; one that comes directly out of the experience of contemporary people of the African Diaspora and specifically not from a place of the colonized mind that almost every black person in America and Europe has been indoctrinated in. I know I am not the first person to do this. However, this iteration will have my specific touch and will reflect everything I specifically bring to this project.

Several weeks ago there was the "Beyoncé Mass" at the Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco. And today there is my calling LeBron James "an authentic spiritual teacher and healer." This is what I'm talking about. This is only the very, very beginning.

And have you ever been on a spiritually based nondual forum, for example? Trust me, Beyoncé makes far more sense as a potential source of authentic spiritual enlightenment and inquiry than what passes as such on many such forums.

I reject the narrow constructs and definitions the colonized, patriarchal, and white supremacist (overtly and/or covertly) mindset tells us and instructs us is the criteria for understanding what an authentic "spiritual teacher" and "healer" are. I embrace a defining and a living out of these terms that reflect the specific reality of modern day people of the African Diaspora.