Aeesha and Kokomon Clottey contributed to our YELLAWE program for inner city teenagers who were on the verge of dropping out of school. Kokomon would drive up in his small SUV piled with drums and unload them in front of Historic Sweets Ballroom, where we held the YELLAWE class (as well as Cosmic Masses).
He would lead students (myself included) in a very rich drumming circle, and I remember his challenging some young students who were not engaged as fully as they ought to be.
I was among about six people invited to speak at the Celebration of Life Ceremony. This included some of her surviving siblings as well as Dr. Dianne Cirincione Jampolsky, director of the International Attitudinal Healing Center, who knew Aeesha very well. Dianne spoke of the global impact of Aeesha and Kokomon’s work and story by way of the Attitudinal Healing Connection’s international outreach.
She named at least 15 countries where they operate and where Aeesha’s work is now known, including China, Vietnam, Mexico, Japan, Italy, and beyond. I was very moved to hear of the great outreach of Attitudinal Healing Connection and of Aeesha’s work being remembered there.
At the ceremony, my brief talk followed Diane’s, so I led off with another international story from Aeesha which had made a deep impression on me. Several years ago, when George Bush, Jr. was president, Aeesha approached me and very quietly said, “Matt, Germans are coming regularly to our Friday drumming circles.” I said, “I didn’t know there was a German community in Oakland.” “Oh, no,” she replied. “They are getting on a plane and flying to Oakland from Germany.” “Why?” I asked. “What’s that all about?”
She replied, “They feel America is becoming like Germany in the 1930s, and they don’t know what to say or what to do about it. So they choose to come and drum with us people in West Oakland. They think it’s the best thing they can do.”
And that was under George Bush as president. The time of Donald Trump seems to be a whole new era and genre.
Aeesha’s genuine SMILE was so wonderfully captured in her photos. Her smile uplifted all and came from a very deep place of Joy and Purpose that energized her life—a life of generous care and commitment to community always.
In addition to Joy, Aeesha carried with her a deep Inner Strength. She had a lion (or lioness) energy to her. She did not back down and did not give up. Shortly before he died, MLK Jr defined hope as “the refusal to give up.” Aeesha was a woman of hope.
In the Art Esteem Project that began in her home and spread to many schools and places far beyond, art was central to the empowerment of high school students. This very much paralleled our pedagogy at both UCS and the YELLAWE program for inner city teenagers called Youth and Elder Learning Laboratory for Ancestral Wisdom Education.
Many times, I joined Aeesha at exhibits by ArtEsteem students in various venues in Oakland, where they sold and talked about their work, always with the confidence and joy they learned in their art classes.
Aeesha and Kokomon created a “power couple” for good and healing in Oakland. She never ran from problems but went toward them and brought imagination to the issues at hand. Whenever Aeesha returned to Africa, as she and Kokomon did on a number of occasions, she came back with a kind of glow about her that was more powerful than words.
Basic to the Attitudinal Healing Philosophy is the principle that Love displaces Fear. That was Aeesha’s philosophy in her books and her daily life and work serving the community.
Thank You, Aeesha. Thank you for your Smile and deep Joy that birthed it. For your Strength. For your Hope. For your Courage. For your commitment to the community and solidarity. For your life of learning and love of creativity and art, and everyone you met and interacted with.
For a Life fully and generously and beautifully lived. A life like Christ’s, very much like Christ’s. Amen.
Banner Image: Photo of Aeesha Clottey from her memorial program. From the papers of Matthew Fox.
Queries for Contemplation
What do you learn from learning more about this wonderful woman and 21st century saint among us?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest, pp. 332f., 353-359, 405-416.
The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation by Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox
3 thoughts on “More on The Holy Life Journey of Aeesha Clottey”
Beautiful tribute to a modern 21st century mystic and saint who inspires All of Us with the same Spirit of Love, Wisdom, Peace, Justice, Healing, Transformation, Creativity, Joy, Compassion… Present within and among our unique personal~communal spiritual journeys…
❤️
Thank you so much for sharing this holy woman’s life and achievements. Focusing on her and so many others who are living out the faith and being Christ’s hands and feet in the world helps put these temporary evils of our times in perspective. Regarding the concerns of the Germans who could see what we could not or would not, the fact that Daddy Bush came straight from heading the CIA should have given us pause even then.