20/02/2016 Saturday
The Sankofa Institute for African American Pastoral Leadership was described by Dr Alton Pollard as embracing all faiths, ethnicity, gender and age. To summarise: it is dedicated to the margins and bringing down the walls of division. The talk was divided into two parts: firstly life in the valley of the shadow of death. He described a number of examples of how black people had been treated. For African Americans the spectre of death is everywhere. Much and little changes. Martin Luther King described the US (world?) as a sick nation. In the second part he examined our ethical and moral calling in the light gospels. He told how people coming through this suffering can bring healing through forgiveness whiltest referring to Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela to name a few. He urged us to have courage to change things that we cannot accept. “We are the ones we have been waiting for”. He commended the Sankofa Institute as a safe place to have difficult conversations. There were a lot of connections with Corrymeela in this talk.
Sankofa – “it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot.” It teaches us that we must go back to our roots in order to move forward. That is, we should reach back and gather the best of what our past has to teach us, so that we can achieve our full potential as we move forward.