So…. I’m walking on the trail near my home on Sunday and a man whom I do not know stops and kneels before me. He says greetings in the name of “papa legba”…. I’m caught off guard… so he asks if I know who “papa legba” is… I say, “No”, then he says “you will”, and continues jogging off.
Confused, I look up ‘papa legba’… guess what I find:
… an evil deity, a demon, that thrives on certain Haitian roots. He is the contact between the world of spirit and flesh. Sunday, the attempt was my flesh. (I can’t make this up…)
Im not gonna lie, it felt almost enchanting to have someone kneel before me… I almost felt like a queen… almost.
If I was not aware of what was happening, I could have totally leaned into this or justified this in some way… the fleshly thing to do.
I say this to say beware… as we, a nation, either resist or push for social justice and change, know that there is a ‘papa legba’ for everyone. There is someone or something that embodies this deity, whether it is Hollywood with its skewed roles for milky colored flesh, Bollywood roles for wheatish flesh, the government seats for peach colored flesh, the art and music industry for honey and caramel flesh, the sports industry for chocolate colored flesh, or the model world for the stark contrasts between them all…. there is a ‘papa legba’ represented for and within every tone of flesh.
There is a common thread of circumstances that have allowed each of us to experience some kind of ‘papa legba’ enchantment based on our pigment. Some are more tangible than others, some more damaging, some just extreme, but nevertheless… the enchantment is always there.
Beware of this enchantment, and the feeling of superiority that comes with it. Superiority that expresses itself in disaffection for those that do not possess the same pigment of flesh. We find it in our tiredness of hearing about the struggles of those with different pigments, in our resentment of someone’s fruitful life that’s different from us externally, in our disdain for human life in general, in our ‘what about me’ attitudes, in our laziness and lack of concern for our fellow man, and in our rage and disbelief at the things happening in the world around us.
This man, kneeling before me, appearing humble. It was a moment. A moment where I had to decide whether I was gonna let the enchantment make me feel more powerful than I was. Whether I was going to allow my pigment to be exalted in that moment as a spiritual gateway. Whether I was going to allow all of the evil in that comes along with this type of exaltation.
Today we are living in that moment. The moment that flesh meets spirit. What’s your ‘papa legba?’ Is there some part of society kneeling before you…. just waiting for you to exercise all the evil tendencies that the flesh longs for? Or are you the one who’s kneeling?
Don’t be a victim. Philippians 2:10-11
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