Young Love in a Bowl, or Two
New love (and young love) is awkward. It has incredible highs and lows as bottomless as the ocean. Young love is vulnerable love, especially in this oppressive environment which uses individualism, self-blame, induced identity confusion, the superior/inferior line, and more to thwart its journey to maturity. With all that and more, young love is our only hope. We embrace it and surround it with support and protection. To that end, it's with great pleasure that we announce
AYA's 2017 Black Love Young Love Honorees:
Ruby and Tenisio Seanima
They have been building together for 8 years and married for 4. They have been fruitful - Fasola, Kwame, Malik are a testament to that.
They have been fruitful in the community as well. They both attend to our community's health in different and complimentary ways. Tenisio is an agrarian. He cultivates the land and advocates for Black farmers – urban and rural. He’s a disc jockey and audiophile attending to our people’s music, our musical story, and legacy. He’s also a Basu (yogi) working to provide stability for AfRaKan people via our holistic health.
Ruby is a physician and educator. She educates the next generation of health professionals and is the first teacher of her children. She is also a health coach, consultant, and speaker. She is creating a community of women dedicated to their own and their family’s well-being. Her goal is to stimulate generational transmission and a self-determination particularly in the areas of health, wellness and abundance for our families and community.
Tenisio and Ruby are being honored because their young love is grounded in respect for their respective families, our community, and our culture. They do not take Afrikan culture, our sustenance, nor our thriving for granted. They examine everything critically. They seek counsel from elders they respect and are respected among their peers.They nurture our people, our community, their families, their children. They also know the wisdom of the Kongo:
“Love is like a baby, it has to treated tenderly.”
To that end, they’ve embraced AYA's Warrior-Healer-Builder (WHB) model and other models to help nurture their love. One particular novel application of the River of Touches is what Tenesio calls the two bowls – The Thought Bowl and The God Bowl.He says: “The Thought Bowl is a receptacle where we place loving notes about each other in good times and The God Bowl is the receptacle where we place notes regarding our relationship challenges in hard times. When either of us places a note in The God Bowl, we notify the spouse of its presence. Before the two of us address the note's content, we pull out all of the notes from the Thought Bowl and read them to each other to remind us of the love we have despite the current issue addressed in the God Bowl note.
Ruby expresses this nurturing with the terms: “Patience and Space.” She says, “we need the patience to weather the ups and downs that come into our relationship - knowing that the end goal is more powerful than the energy of the moment. We also need space to let each of us be ourselves and grow individually, so that we may be stronger together."
"The "end goal," the "Thought and God Bowls, " The River of Touches" - they are working to build a love foundation to serve our people for a long time to come.
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| Thought Bowl / God Bowl |
Get your tickets now: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2017-black-love-day-dinner-celebration-february-11-2017-tickets-30467265411
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