Grat article Laura! Thanks for writing, and thanks for the invite for input.
Back in '81 (around the time Bob Marley passed away) I had partaken amply of the Sacrament at a reggae dance party and was resting in a quiet corner of the yard. Then I saw Jah!
He was a beautiful Black man. His rich majestic Locs stretched across the Universe, containing and sustaining all. Our eyes met and embraced. He offered me His Love and asked for my love. (Disclosure: I am female, my screen name is wordplay on "just an old hippie.") He showed me many Truths in that eternal moment. Many of these same Truths are in your article here.
Jah showed me the Divine Spark that resides in all humans and in all living things, indeed, in all that is. I knew, then, that True Spirituality consists of loving and honoring that Spark -- no more, no less. I recognized that, although Jah is infinite and formless, He showed HImself in the form of a Black man beause the African people in general have been most faithful to this True Spirituality -- the rest of humanity lost touch with it to some degree or another as we left Africa. In particular, the Europeans lost touch with this Spark when we decided to worship money -- the essence of Babylon.
My rod-straight hair never knotted up properly although I tried for a while. (I understood that I should let it grow long and natural, shunning artificial products, because the hair on one's head serves as a sort of spiritual antenna. Now I just finger-comb it.) The other Rastafarians in the area did a double take when they saw me with my messy attempt at locs -- this was back in the '80's -- so they asked me what I was doing. I'd always reply that I'd seen Jah in a dream and He asked me for my love and they seemed to be ok with that.
There were a few things that didn't set right with me when I had that sorry attempt at locs. One is the worship of one human being above all others -- as compared with honoring the Divine Spark in all humans. (H.I.M. may well be the Second Coming of Christ but I don't worship Jesus either -- I simply hold a special honor for these and all Great Jah-Realized human beings.) The other is the strong patriarchical strain, inherited from the Abrahamic tradition. Now, I feel that these are relatively minor points in the overall scheme of things, things I can quietly agree to disagree on. The most important thing is to love and honor Jah -- in His people, in all human beings, and in all Creation. Ever since that Vision, of God as a Black man, I've been forever loving Jah!
