Kwanzaa, us and the well being of the world: A courageous questioning

Dr. Maulana Karenga, the celebration and season of Kwanzaa is a deeply meaningful and special time of remembrance, reflection, and recommitment for us as a people throughout the world African community.

- Dr. Maulana Karenga

It is a time of appreciative remembrance of our ancestors, great and ordinary, of the models of human excellence, achievement, and possibility they offer, and of the enduring legacy of the good they left in the world. It is too, a time of sustained reflection on the moral and expansive meaning of being African in the world, especially on how we understand and live our lives and engage the critical issues confronting our community, society, and the world.

Kwanzaa is also a time of self-conscious recommitment to honor the awesome ancestral legacy left us by preserving and expanding it; to uphold the time-resistant moral and cultural values that ground and guide us in our daily lives; and to follow and hold fast to the ancient African ethical mandate found in the Odu Ifa to constantly bring good in the world and not let any good be lost.

At the heart of this ethical imperative to bring and sustain good in the world is our ancestors’ and our profound concern with the well-being of the world in both the natural and social sense. This comes not only out of Kwanzaa’s ancient roots in agricultural harvest celebrations and the accompanying respect for the earth and its lifesustaining role--but also from a cosmic conception of human beings and the resultant moral obligation to care for the world and all in it as part of what it means to be a responsible and worthy human being.