About Kwanzaa

By Dr. Cindy Acker, Choir Director & DEI Educator

Day One: Umoja (Unity)

Black Candle

“Umoja calls on us to cultivate, hold onto and harvest the good of togetherness within our family, community, people and the world. This principle seeks a peaceful and principled togetherness rooted in mutual respect and justice for those like and unlike us.

“It encourages us to maintain a sense of kinship with other people and all living beings, to value the sacredness of life, to feel a sense of at-oneness with and in the world and to resist thought and practice which violate the fundamental African ethical principles of respect for the rights and dignity of the person, the well-being of family and community, the integrity and value of the environment, and the reciprocal solidarity and cooperation for mutual benefit of all.”

Examine: How can I become more connected to family (of biology or design), spiritual community, friends? How can we provide more respect which fosters community of all?

Possible Activities of Umoja: Assist with tasks at your spiritual home, ask within smaller community ways in which you can assist the burden of the community, work on a project with family, connect with family members you haven’t spoken with, bring closure to a disagreement, examine how your outside actions mirror your inside values or spoken values. Seek to meet and learn from someone who is outside of your comfort zone, ethnic group or regular contacts. Eat and learn about foods from a different culture that you have not tried before. Listen to someone to whom you have not given an ear; deeply listen to their story and recognize how they have impacted your life.

Day Two: Kujichagulia (Self-Determination)

Red Candle

These are foremost questions of a historical and cultural nature. They are questions of collective identity, based and borne out in historical and cultural practice. The essential quality of that practice must be the quality of self-determination.

To answer, “who am I?” – one must begin adding to the pieces of the historical and cultural puzzle to learn one’s authentic self. One must put away the created definitions that family or society have used to define oneself and re-examine and re-define or claim all parts of ourself. To answer, “am I really who I am?” – one must look deeply and question the authenticity of self (what is our real and honest or authentic self; what is our essence vs. our appearance; what is ideologically rooted or with a depth of integrity). To answer: “am I all I ought to be?” – one must put aside societal created norms and live from one’s conscious values and strengths.

Finally, Kujichagulia upholds the rightness of the truth of African ancestry and history, as an important part of identity, belonging, and justice. It asks us to hold cultural groundedness: to continue to take in accurate information about our collective African ancestry, to have ownership of one’s African history and to fully realize and honor Africans as people.

Examine: Have I emerged as my fullest self? Are there areas of “me” in which I need to come out to be my most authentic self? Do I have the strength to recreate myself in some way to more clearly represent me? Can I try to do something challenging for myself that others may have felt I could not? Do I recognize that knowing my history includes knowing African history, both for my own identity, and to honor the authenticity of my African community?

Possible Activities of Kujichagulia: Consider a new defining hairstyle, color or dress.  Consider your name – have you claimed it as your name of choice? If so, consider creating something that represents your name (do you know what it means, or how you can live into that name?) or does your name not define you? Consider what your name means, or what name does define who you are – try it on.

Step into something that has been denied to you, based on the assumptions or acts of others, or that has made you fearful. Is it swimming? Singing? Writing? Participating in a race? Reading in front of other? Don’t think about it. Do it!

Say no to things that do not serve your purpose, and say yes today to something that brings you joy. Reflect how your self-determination has paid off. Where can you take more control of your life?

Day Three: Ujima (Collective Work & Responsibility)

Green Candle

As part of the human family, we must work collectively to live out our life’s purpose as responsible citizens of this planet.  Our goal being to offer to our descendants a better world that is sustainable. We also must recognize that the imbalance in the world that affects disenfranchised people and examine how our empathy can move us to action on a familial, local, or global scale.

“I see you” has deeper meaning,

Examine: How do I notice others who are not in my immediate circle? Do I notice them and the challenges that could be facing them? Do I make it a point to come to know others who are not like me? Can I come to know them well enough to recognize how they are a gift in my life?

What do I bring to my community? For any part that is challenging, that I wish were different, how do I positively assist that change? Reflect on your commitment from the past year, and the fulfillment of such.

Examine: How does my presence in the world affect those around me? What can I do (or change) to impact my community and my world, making it more sustainable?  What one thing can I do today to impact those around me, or the community/world in which we live?

Consider: What’s my commitment in time, talent, resources for my community? Others?

Possible Activities of Ujima:

• Pause every time you ask someone, “How are you?” and actually listen, and ask questions so as to understand their challenges and/or their celebrations.
• Check on an elder or challenged individual in your community.
• Decide on a project that you can do with your family, friend(s), neighborhood, spiritual center, and begin it.
• Divide up completable tasks in the house that have gone unattended. Close your eyes, choose one and complete it together or at the same time. Celebrate it!
• Examine your bank and other companies with which you do business. Do they show a commitment to others, especially disenfranchised individuals? Who does?
• Look around your community, spiritual center – what does not get done, that you could have some part in assisting.  How can you show up as being a part of a whole? Take action on this day to complete a commitment that you have made to support.
• Complete your day with gratitude. Put your thankfulness to someone in written form and send it to them.
• Think globally – what can you do as a part of the collective work ahead of us to support the climate? Have you checked your carbon footprint?

Day Four: Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics)

Red Candle

Ujamaa is concerned foremost with the well-being, happiness, and development of the person. Ujamaa is based on the premise of commitment and the practice of enlarging community wealth and doing the work necessary to achieve it. The assumption is that the conditions for such well-being, happiness and development are best achieved in a context of shared social wealth. Commitment to Ujamaa is to morally bind oneself to creative, positive thinking directed toward eliminating limitations imposed by poverty on other humans.

Generosity follows the African ethic of care and responsibility for others, especially the poor and vulnerable, which informs the concept of social wealth with a view toward ending poverty.

Ujamaa also stresses self-reliance in the building and strengthening of community, especially and including that of people of color who must continue to rebuild their resources and strengthen their communities. 

Examine: How can we offer ways to end poverty through combining our resources?  What do we have that we can share or give?  How can we act out of the principle of Kujichagulia to help our communities find and name themselves economically?

Possible Activities of Ujamaa:

• Shop only at local stores; begin the first day of frequenting a local business (including businesses that have classes: fitness, dojo, bowling) where your own resources can support those who live in your community.
• Establish a fund or account for your family. Have each family member contribute something no matter how small. At the end of the month, year or a designated time, decided as a family what you want to do with the money saved.
• Barter!  Rather than buy something for cash or credit, discuss the possibility of trading (with those who can do so).
• Participate with or support community gardeners in existing gardens. Research Black-owned businesses in the area; research Black Banks.
• Read about Black Wall Street.

Day Five: Nia (Purpose)

Green Candle

Recognizing that role also means that we must understand that taking care of this sacred space is also a part of our purpose.  So, on the day of Nia, we reflect that to be a custodian of a great legacy – Earth – is to safeguard and preserve it.  It is to honor it by leaving it as an enriched legacy for future generations.

Nia then invites us to look at self.  For the day of Nia, we are asked to answer how our life aligns with our purpose.

Examine: In the ways that our life needs to shift, it is on this day that we set goals to make those shifts so that we see an exact reflection in our bodies and what we do with our bodies, of who we are, and how we should be in the world.

Possible Activities:

• Examine your accomplishments. Ask yourself how they raised the ‘good’. Who or what benefited from each accomplishment — self, family, neighborhood, community? How?

• Set three personal goals (educational, vocational, etc.) for the coming year. How will achieving each goal allow one to further self, family and community? Brainstorm a strategy for achieving goals.  Live the day with purpose, as though tomorrow might not exist, and see what comes from that, which changes your purpose in the future.

• What are you passionate about? Is giving back important to you? What gets you fired up? How can you help? One simple act is to spend your money with purpose – today.

• Cecil Beaton said: “Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

Day Six: Kuumba (Creativity)

Red Candle

In ancient Egypt, creativity was both an original act or imitation of the Creator and a restorative act also reflective of the Creator constantly pushing back the currents of chaos and decay, and revitalizing and restoring the natural, spiritual, and cosmic energy of the world. This was a spiritual and ethical obligation to constantly renew and restore the great works, the legacy of the ancestors and the creative energy of the leader and nation.

The day of Kuumba usually ends with the Karamu (CARE-ra-moo), or a feast, with everyone contributing as they can. Typically, the menu will feature foods and ingredients native to the African continent such as sesame seeds, peanuts, collard greens and yams.

Examine: What are ways that I have never attempted to be creative? What creative thing can I do that will be a gift to the community in some way – leaving the world better than when I entered? Think about it for a moment. What creative skills do you have that can help build your community? Maybe it’s something you do with your hands, maybe it’s writing a proposal, managing the books as an accountant or leading. The core of creativity is inspiration.

Possible Activities for Kuumba: Participating in a musical Kwanzaa celebration, painting a mural or starting a garden in your neighborhood. You can create something new, whether it be a piece of art or even a new idea. Add to someone’s blog or add a poem to someone’s social media page. Just dance!

Day Seven: Imani (Faith)

Green Candle

It is an ancient African teaching which says that through our culture and its spirituality and ethics, we are given that which endures in the midst of that which is overthrown, that which is permanent in the midst of that which passes away.

In addition, Imani teaches us to believe in the good in the world and in our capacity to cultivate, harvest and share it. This day teaches us to believe with all our hearts in the righteousness and victory of our struggle, and to believe that through hard work, love and understanding, we can actually build the world we want and deserve to live in.”

In the context of African spirituality, faith leads to a belief in the essential goodness and possibility of the living being. Faith in ourselves is key here, faith in our capacity as people to live righteously, to self-correct, to support, to care for and be responsible for each other and eventually create good and just societies.

We must have faith in those around us. “The measure of our progress as a race is in precise relation to the depth of faith in our people held by our leaders,” said M. Bethune.  “As a community-in-struggle there is no substitute for belief in our people, in their capacity to take control of their destiny and daily lives and shape them in their own image and interests.”

Trusting ourselves and holding our possibilities and gifts as attainable and before us is critical to do the internal and external work we have before us. We must be convinced that our dreams are within reach. Imani reaffirms our self-worth and confidence during struggle.  It has been said that “we should not try to imitate others but rather invent, innovate, reach inside ourselves and dare ‘set afoot a new [person].” On the day of Nia, which is also the first day of the new year, we dare to envision ourselves as who we need to be, let go of what is in the way of that vision, and step into our new creation with faith.

Examine: Reflect on an event or problem that created difficulty or hardship during the last year. Consider how you dealt with the problem and the role that faith played. Examine when you have had to have faith in yourself, and hold the vision of how that sustained you. Now do the same exercise for someone whom it would be difficult to have faith in, and recall if you practiced faith or envision yourself doing so. Write it down.

Possible Activities:

• Set a goal for the week, month and year.  Write them where you can see them.  Put them into an affirmation, and visualize them coming into being.
• Connect with someone in whom you need to build trust, and discover something good about them that you had not considered.
• Make a commitment toward something needed in your community; reflect on it, and consider your part in making that faith driven activity a reality.
• Examine your faith in self and others.  See yourself doing something that you do not have faith that you could carry out.  Do something today that shows a step in a direction in which you still doubt your faith.  Determine a small step in that direction.  Come to grips with someone in which you have not had faith, and determine whether it is your baggage, and begin to deal with it.  If not, determine how you can change your desires / expectations of the individual, or how you can work within a framework that allows you to see their limitations / humanity.
• Determine an amount that you can set aside for saving or donation. Attend a service, apply for a new job, allowing yourself to let go of worry for a day (feel what that is like).  

Final Words on the Last Day

To be generally read by the eldest person present

Strive for discipline, dedication, and achievement in all you do.

Dare to struggle and sacrifice and gain the strength that comes from this.

Build where you are and dare to leave a legacy that will last as long as the sun shines and water flows.

Practice daily: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba, and Imani.

And may the wisdom of the ancestors always walk with us.

May the year’s end meet us laughing, and stronger.

May ouru children honor us by following our example in love and struggle.

And at the end of next year, may we sit together again, in larger numbers, with greater achievement and closer to liberation and a higher level of life.

About Kwanzaa

By Dr. Cindy Acker, Choir Director & DEI Educator

Day One: Umoja (Unity)

Black Candle

The Nguzo Saba, the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa, begin with the principle of Umoja (Unity).  Umoja calls us “to strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation.

Umoja (oo-MO-jah) encourages a profound sense of relatedness, togetherness, and oneness in the small and larger circles of our lives.  It fosters a spirit of togetherness and moral sensitivity which encourages us to avoid injuring each other and the world and to eagerly work and struggle for the common good. Indeed, the principle of unity reminds us of the ancient ethical teaching of the Odu Ifa that the greatest good comes from our gathering together in harmony whether in family, friendship, community, society or the world. And this  – the principle of unity teaches us: we live in a web and world of interdependence and freedom, dignity, well-being and other goods should and must be shared goods for everyone, if there is to be any peace, justice and security for anyone.

“Umoja calls on us to cultivate, hold onto and harvest the good of togetherness within our family, community, people and the world. This principle seeks a peaceful and principled togetherness rooted in mutual respect and justice for those like and unlike us.

“It encourages us to maintain a sense of kinship with other people and all living beings, to value the sacredness of life, to feel a sense of at-oneness with and in the world and to resist thought and practice which violate the fundamental African ethical principles of respect for the rights and dignity of the person, the well-being of family and community, the integrity and value of the environment, and the reciprocal solidarity and cooperation for mutual benefit of all.”

Examine: How can I become more connected to family (of biology or design), spiritual community, friends? How can we provide more respect which fosters community of all?

Possible Activities of Umoja: Assist with tasks at your spiritual home, ask within smaller community ways in which you can assist the burden of the community, work on a project with family, connect with family members you haven’t spoken with, bring closure to a disagreement, examine how your outside actions mirror your inside values or spoken values. Seek to meet and learn from someone who is outside of your comfort zone, ethnic group or regular contacts. Eat and learn about foods from a different culture that you have not tried before. Listen to someone to whom you have not given an ear; deeply listen to their story and recognize how they have impacted your life.

Day Two: Kujichagulia (Self-Determination)

Red Candle

Kujichagulia (koo-jee-CHA-goo-LEE-ah) recognizes that we can stand into the all that we are. We are reminded on this day of the need to “define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.” Foremost for African people, and all people of African descent, that we recognize that history has defined us all incorrectly, and this day demands that we own who we are and recover lost memories and histories that we have missed to shape our identities. It is a “call to recover and speak our …cultural truth,” says Maulana Karenga. Kujichagulia represents our need to continue speaking out against injustice and adversity, and to take control of our lives. We visit deeply who we are individually and collectively – according to the depths of our being, not what has been told, molded according to old patterns or hidden. We come out – fully on this day of identity and own the piece of ourselves that has been hidden, shattered, or quietly percolating.

It is also a day of facing the stories that have shaped us and made us fearful – and creating a new story that creates us anew.  The African Kawaida philosophy asks three questions, which are pertinent to Kujichagulia:

“Who am I?”

“Am I really who I am?”

“Am I all I ought to be?”

These are foremost questions of a historical and cultural nature. They are questions of collective identity, based and borne out in historical and cultural practice. The essential quality of that practice must be the quality of self-determination.

To answer, “who am I?” – one must begin adding to the pieces of the historical and cultural puzzle to learn one’s authentic self. One must put away the created definitions that family or society have used to define oneself and re-examine and re-define or claim all parts of ourself. To answer, “am I really who I am?” – one must look deeply and question the authenticity of self (what is our real and honest or authentic self; what is our essence vs. our appearance; what is ideologically rooted or with a depth of integrity). To answer: “am I all I ought to be?” – one must put aside societal created norms and live from one’s conscious values and strengths.

Finally, Kujichagulia upholds the rightness of the truth of African ancestry and history, as an important part of identity, belonging, and justice. It asks us to hold cultural groundedness: to continue to take in accurate information about our collective African ancestry, to have ownership of one’s African history and to fully realize and honor Africans as people.

Examine: Have I emerged as my fullest self? Are there areas of “me” in which I need to come out to be my most authentic self? Do I have the strength to recreate myself in some way to more clearly represent me? Can I try to do something challenging for myself that others may have felt I could not? Do I recognize that knowing my history includes knowing African history, both for my own identity, and to honor the authenticity of my African community?

Possible Activities of Kujichagulia: Consider a new defining hairstyle, color or dress.  Consider your name – have you claimed it as your name of choice? If so, consider creating something that represents your name (do you know what it means, or how you can live into that name?) or does your name not define you? Consider what your name means, or what name does define who you are – try it on.

Step into something that has been denied to you, based on the assumptions or acts of others, or that has made you fearful. Is it swimming? Singing? Writing? Participating in a race? Reading in front of other? Don’t think about it. Do it!

Say no to things that do not serve your purpose, and say yes today to something that brings you joy. Reflect how your self-determination has paid off. Where can you take more control of your life?

Day Three: Ujima (Collective Work & Responsibility)

Green Candle

Ujima (oo-JEE-mah) recognizes that we must maintain our community, our world, together.  In other words, it takes all of who we are to create all of who we all are. And by doing so, take personal ownership of our brother’s and sister’s problems, and the problems of the world.  This does not mean that we enable our brothers and sisters – it means that we do not throw others aside, focusing only on ourselves, but we recognize our part in understanding the issues that others and the world face, thus giving opportunity to solve them together. We recognize that living beings at all times, directly or indirectly need the help of others.

Ujima, therefore, is a commitment to active and informed togetherness on matters of common interest.  The imperative is to act, not to merely take in information, and ignore the essential spirit of Ujima as a principle and practice, which is to work.  People of African descent learn that the principle of Ujima means that “one’s collective identity in the long run is a collective future.”  Working toward creating a community that shapes positive identities, works toward a solid community which sees hardships and supports joys.

As part of the human family, we must work collectively to live out our life’s purpose as responsible citizens of this planet.  Our goal being to offer to our descendants a better world that is sustainable. We also must recognize that the imbalance in the world that affects disenfranchised people and examine how our empathy can move us to action on a familial, local, or global scale.

“I see you” has deeper meaning,

Examine: How do I notice others who are not in my immediate circle? Do I notice them and the challenges that could be facing them? Do I make it a point to come to know others who are not like me? Can I come to know them well enough to recognize how they are a gift in my life?

What do I bring to my community? For any part that is challenging, that I wish were different, how do I positively assist that change? Reflect on your commitment from the past year, and the fulfillment of such.

Examine: How does my presence in the world affect those around me? What can I do (or change) to impact my community and my world, making it more sustainable?  What one thing can I do today to impact those around me, or the community/world in which we live?

Consider: What’s my commitment in time, talent, resources for my community? Others?

Possible Activities of Ujima:

• Pause every time you ask someone, “How are you?” and actually listen, and ask questions so as to understand their challenges and/or their celebrations.
• Check on an elder or challenged individual in your community.
• Decide on a project that you can do with your family, friend(s), neighborhood, spiritual center, and begin it.
• Divide up completable tasks in the house that have gone unattended. Close your eyes, choose one and complete it together or at the same time. Celebrate it!
• Examine your bank and other companies with which you do business. Do they show a commitment to others, especially disenfranchised individuals? Who does?
• Look around your community, spiritual center – what does not get done, that you could have some part in assisting.  How can you show up as being a part of a whole? Take action on this day to complete a commitment that you have made to support.
• Complete your day with gratitude. Put your thankfulness to someone in written form and send it to them.
• Think globally – what can you do as a part of the collective work ahead of us to support the climate? Have you checked your carbon footprint?

Day Four: Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics)

Red Candle

Ujamaa (OO-jah-MAH-ah) is the practical understanding of shared wealth and work, generosity (giving), and economic self-reliance. The origins of the word teach us to regard wealth and work as communal obligations, as would tend to occur in family. The deeper understanding of the concept of Ujamaa, is that when we view wealth and work as connected to all, we begin to eliminate the uneven distribution of wealth and the oppressive actions connected therein. It denies unequal distribution of wealth and the exploitation or oppression of others.  We begin to understand the need to support others, and to take care of both our positive view and actions connected to our own prosperity.

Ujamaa is concerned foremost with the well-being, happiness, and development of the person. Ujamaa is based on the premise of commitment and the practice of enlarging community wealth and doing the work necessary to achieve it. The assumption is that the conditions for such well-being, happiness and development are best achieved in a context of shared social wealth. Commitment to Ujamaa is to morally bind oneself to creative, positive thinking directed toward eliminating limitations imposed by poverty on other humans.

Generosity follows the African ethic of care and responsibility for others, especially the poor and vulnerable, which informs the concept of social wealth with a view toward ending poverty.

Ujamaa also stresses self-reliance in the building and strengthening of community, especially and including that of people of color who must continue to rebuild their resources and strengthen their communities. 

Examine: How can we offer ways to end poverty through combining our resources?  What do we have that we can share or give?  How can we act out of the principle of Kujichagulia to help our communities find and name themselves economically?

Possible Activities of Ujamaa:

• Shop only at local stores; begin the first day of frequenting a local business (including businesses that have classes: fitness, dojo, bowling) where your own resources can support those who live in your community.
• Establish a fund or account for your family. Have each family member contribute something no matter how small. At the end of the month, year or a designated time, decided as a family what you want to do with the money saved.
• Barter!  Rather than buy something for cash or credit, discuss the possibility of trading (with those who can do so).
• Participate with or support community gardeners in existing gardens. Research Black-owned businesses in the area; research Black Banks.
• Read about Black Wall Street.

Day Five: Nia (Purpose)

Green Candle

Nia (NEE-yah) connects with the most basic understanding of identity: the culture and history of a people, and the individual understanding of one’s reason for continued being and representation in the world.  As with Juamaa, Nia involves first a global depth and understanding, and then a personal intensity and connection.

To understand our global purpose as a people, it is critical to begin to peel the layers of missed and mis-information regarding the history of the world.  Grounded in the truth of the history of the origin of peoples, and the accomplishments of these founders who originated in Africa, the day of Nia again invites us to read about the history of peopole before the construct of race began its work of dividing living beings.  We can then begin to ask our role in de-othering and belonging.  The day of Nia encourages people of African descent to stand up and into the pride of who they are – descendents of the makers of people, not the stepchildren of civilization.  Nia invites us to learn and honor our true history and to reflect on our role in protecting the honest history of our beginnings.

Recognizing that role also means that we must understand that taking care of this sacred space is also a part of our purpose.  So, on the day of Nia, we reflect that to be a custodian of a great legacy – Earth – is to safeguard and preserve it.  It is to honor it by leaving it as an enriched legacy for future generations.

Nia then invites us to look at self.  For the day of Nia, we are asked to answer how our life aligns with our purpose.

Examine: In the ways that our life needs to shift, it is on this day that we set goals to make those shifts so that we see an exact reflection in our bodies and what we do with our bodies, of who we are, and how we should be in the world.

Possible Activities:

• Examine your accomplishments. Ask yourself how they raised the ‘good’. Who or what benefited from each accomplishment — self, family, neighborhood, community? How?

• Set three personal goals (educational, vocational, etc.) for the coming year. How will achieving each goal allow one to further self, family and community? Brainstorm a strategy for achieving goals.  Live the day with purpose, as though tomorrow might not exist, and see what comes from that, which changes your purpose in the future.

• What are you passionate about? Is giving back important to you? What gets you fired up? How can you help? One simple act is to spend your money with purpose – today.

• Cecil Beaton said: “Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

Day Six: Kuumba (Creativity)

Red Candle

Kuumba (koo-OOM-bah) tells us to “do as much as we can in the way that we can in order to lave our community more beautiful and beneficial than when we inherited it.” Nia has a social and spiritual dimension, but was created to use creativity to encourage the community to build up those of African dissent. During the late 1600’s onward, enslaved Africans used song without instruments, dance, and for some, writing – to keep their spirits up, and to give hope.

The need for creativity as a life-sustaining measure has not stopped. Artists have used creative energy to dance, paint, compose, and write to provide a vision of the world through a different lens. This day is a day of pure joy, imagination, and creativity at its highest. It is the day to express yourself in many ways, to try and observe all areas of creativity, including cooking, sports, the arts, games, etc. It is generally not a day for television.

In ancient Egypt, creativity was both an original act or imitation of the Creator and a restorative act also reflective of the Creator constantly pushing back the currents of chaos and decay, and revitalizing and restoring the natural, spiritual, and cosmic energy of the world. This was a spiritual and ethical obligation to constantly renew and restore the great works, the legacy of the ancestors and the creative energy of the leader and nation.

The day of Kuumba usually ends with the Karamu (CARE-ra-moo), or a feast, with everyone contributing as they can. Typically, the menu will feature foods and ingredients native to the African continent such as sesame seeds, peanuts, collard greens and yams.

Examine: What are ways that I have never attempted to be creative? What creative thing can I do that will be a gift to the community in some way – leaving the world better than when I entered? Think about it for a moment. What creative skills do you have that can help build your community? Maybe it’s something you do with your hands, maybe it’s writing a proposal, managing the books as an accountant or leading. The core of creativity is inspiration.

Possible Activities for Kuumba: Participating in a musical Kwanzaa celebration, painting a mural or starting a garden in your neighborhood. You can create something new, whether it be a piece of art or even a new idea. Add to someone’s blog or add a poem to someone’s social media page. Just dance!

Day Seven: Imani (Faith)

Green Candle

Imani (ee-MAHN-ee) is the final principle of Kwanzaa, and represents faith – faith in our people, community and self. This seventh principle is essentially a profound and enduring belief in and commitment to all that is of value to us as a family, community, people and culture. Faith is put forth as the last principle as unity is put forth as the first principle for a definite reason. It is to indicate that without unity, we cannot begin our most important work, but without faith we cannot sustain it. Unity brings us together and harnesses our strength, but faith in each other and the good, right, and beautiful inspires and sustains the coming together and the commitment to take the work to its end.

We are a people who celebrate several different expressions of our spirituality.  Imani focuses on honoring the best of our traditions, draws upon the best in ourselves, and helps us strive for a higher level of life for humankind, by affirming our self-worth and confidence in our ability to succeed and triumph in righteous struggle.  Imani is about learning to maintain that faith even when challenged by seemingly insurmountable odds. 

It is an ancient African teaching which says that through our culture and its spirituality and ethics, we are given that which endures in the midst of that which is overthrown, that which is permanent in the midst of that which passes away.

In addition, Imani teaches us to believe in the good in the world and in our capacity to cultivate, harvest and share it. This day teaches us to believe with all our hearts in the righteousness and victory of our struggle, and to believe that through hard work, love and understanding, we can actually build the world we want and deserve to live in.”

In the context of African spirituality, faith leads to a belief in the essential goodness and possibility of the living being. Faith in ourselves is key here, faith in our capacity as people to live righteously, to self-correct, to support, to care for and be responsible for each other and eventually create good and just societies.

We must have faith in those around us. “The measure of our progress as a race is in precise relation to the depth of faith in our people held by our leaders,” said M. Bethune.  “As a community-in-struggle there is no substitute for belief in our people, in their capacity to take control of their destiny and daily lives and shape them in their own image and interests.”

Trusting ourselves and holding our possibilities and gifts as attainable and before us is critical to do the internal and external work we have before us. We must be convinced that our dreams are within reach. Imani reaffirms our self-worth and confidence during struggle.  It has been said that “we should not try to imitate others but rather invent, innovate, reach inside ourselves and dare ‘set afoot a new [person].” On the day of Nia, which is also the first day of the new year, we dare to envision ourselves as who we need to be, let go of what is in the way of that vision, and step into our new creation with faith.

Examine: Reflect on an event or problem that created difficulty or hardship during the last year. Consider how you dealt with the problem and the role that faith played. Examine when you have had to have faith in yourself, and hold the vision of how that sustained you. Now do the same exercise for someone whom it would be difficult to have faith in, and recall if you practiced faith or envision yourself doing so. Write it down.

Possible Activities:

• Set a goal for the week, month and year.  Write them where you can see them.  Put them into an affirmation, and visualize them coming into being.
• Connect with someone in whom you need to build trust, and discover something good about them that you had not considered.
• Make a commitment toward something needed in your community; reflect on it, and consider your part in making that faith driven activity a reality.
• Examine your faith in self and others.  See yourself doing something that you do not have faith that you could carry out.  Do something today that shows a step in a direction in which you still doubt your faith.  Determine a small step in that direction.  Come to grips with someone in which you have not had faith, and determine whether it is your baggage, and begin to deal with it.  If not, determine how you can change your desires / expectations of the individual, or how you can work within a framework that allows you to see their limitations / humanity.
• Determine an amount that you can set aside for saving or donation. Attend a service, apply for a new job, allowing yourself to let go of worry for a day (feel what that is like).  

Final Words on the Last Day

To be generally read by the eldest person present

Strive for discipline, dedication, and achievement in all you do.

Dare to struggle and sacrifice and gain the strength that comes from this.

Build where you are and dare to leave a legacy that will last as long as the sun shines and water flows.

Practice daily: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba, and Imani.

And may the wisdom of the ancestors always walk with us.

May the year’s end meet us laughing, and stronger.

May ouru children honor us by following our example in love and struggle.

And at the end of next year, may we sit together again, in larger numbers, with greater achievement and closer to liberation and a higher level of life.