The Music Never Stops!

My life is pretty lucky and charming.

I heard music before I was born. I know that sounds like a story, but it is the truth — it is the same music I heard in my head when I was in utero. And the music never stopped. It just elevated, and grew bigger and bigger and bigger. Fifty years of performing later, it is still the same music. It never left me. It only got larger, the way a river gets wider the further it travels from its source.

It is amazing that I chose the Bahá’í Faith at this time in my journey, because there are so many words in the Bahá’í writings meant for people who are aware, alive, conscious, conscientious, honest, respectful, kind, and healing. And we are reminded that there are a lot of people who are not there yet — and maybe we can help them. Not by teaching them, and not by making them do something. Nobody was ever argued into the light. We help them just by living our lives — living with the laws and rules of Bahá’u’lláh and the Báb, and the writings of Shoghi Effendi, held so close at hand that anyone can reach them. As long as you are intelligent enough to read and understand, hold a book, memorize a couple of words — you have got the Faith coming to you. And the rest will open up so easily. Because when God sees you trying to understand something, the gates can fly right open with blessing.

And that is what my whole life has been — even before I knew the name of the Bahá’í Faith. The Faith was already existing on the planet. I was just being taught about Jesus Christ at the AME Zion Church, and I loved that teaching. But when I got frustrated with the AME Zion Church, I kept finding other AME Zion churches in different parts of the community, thinking the next one would be different. And then one day I looked around and I realized: wow. There are no more Black people living in this community — and it used to be all Black people. Where do we go? How are we disappearing?

I am here in Portland now, and I have gone to the First AME Zion Church here, and there is another AME Zion church here in Portland too. I have been to both. They both have huge buildings — beautiful buildings, beautiful churches. But very few people.

We made a Basquiat poster for me that says “African Queen.” I looked at it and I thought, I am no queen. And then I sat with it a little longer, and I thought: no — maybe I am. Maybe I am leading people in some kind of way. Maybe it is not children anymore. Maybe I should stop trying to figure it out and just be who I am.

So no matter how many years I have spent knowing who I am — or getting to know myself — I am always changing. Just like the world is always changing. Just like trees and plants are always changing. A tree, we cannot see how it changes. It is so subtle, how a tree grows and moves. But we can see children grow. We can see people grow — how they start, how they are in the middle, and how they end.

And that brings me to my challenge now: to learn more stories. To hear more stories. To meet more people, know more people — so I can understand the stories of all of us people, and how much we have in common with each other. Because that is what I have been doing my whole life without naming it: gathering the stories, carrying them, and telling them back as the truth.

What a story. Good thing I am a storyteller. Because I love to tell stories of the truth.