If you have read my prior work, you know that all of this is just a Love letter from the Great Mystery to our earthly yearning souls. As such, with these two new volumes of poems, stories, essays, prayers, and devotions, I desire that you feel the intimacy and urgency of where you and I now find ourselves. Since late 2023, as horrific massacre, new and old, slow and swift, in many forms and lands, has at last captured our collective human attention, our pain and grief and resurgent Love have gushed through my heart and being night and day. Like many of you, my every cell and molecule has been both decimated and revived. I have given myself to this, our profound upheaval. I have crumbled our heartbreak into the sea of this unbearable season, this ongoing sermon of sorrow and solace. In these soul waters, I have soaked up our manna and nectar to bring home to you.
These two volumes are the entire balm I have been able to gather for you. We Birth Freedom at Dawn is a book and birth water. The title came to me as I ran up a steep hill on a recent summer morning, sun blessing my skin, sweat baptizing my ascendant birthing time to push and deliver. Our ancestors have been with me in a hushed and cradling way during these months of mourning and morning. As this title came to me, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman in particular settled in my bones and blood and breath. These two sturdy grandmothers have wet eyes as they hold us now. It is their insistence that we be free of our oppressive ways that has ushered forth these tribal words.
Sojourner and Harriet... Have you ever seen two monarch butterfly mates dancing in sunlight? They may to our eyes seem incredibly light of wing. Their flight, though, is a consequence of unimaginable struggle and endurance. And yet, here they are, still dancing, still joyful, filled with the orange of sun, bringing forth their generations.
This title, We Birth Freedom at Dawn, is what its offering is: A radical call. An invocation. A summons. To stir and galvanize and mobilize us. The word We is for our collective humanity. Birth speaks to our unconquerable Divine Feminine and its reclaimed role as we go forward, for the conception, gestation, and birth labor. For we already have this freedom. We do not have to chase it down. We have only to bring forth what is already in us and of us. The word Freedom: An acknowledgement of my life's work and ministry, including my earlier and kindred book Freedom: Medicine Words for Your Brave Revolution. And Dawn, a hopeful word, for our freedom soon come. It is not long now, dear soul. Not long. Our dark night of the soul too has its end.
This title is a declaration and decree. A promise and prophecy. An awakening and activation. A chant, hum, ceremony, remembrance song. To speak and feel this title is to call forth this freedom alive within each of us. Our freedom is stirring, nascent, divine, and truth. Soon, the fawning sprout begets the forest, and the raindrop begets the river. I pray these words bring back from the brink the many who are on the edge of despair, fear, hopelessness, terror, and fatigue. To allow us to see and feel and be what is coming and indeed what has always been here in the fertile earth of our sacred architecture. My God, these words are prayer.
Dr. Jaiya John was orphan-born on Ancient Puebloan lands in the high desert of New Mexico, and is an internationally recognized freedom worker, poet, author, teacher, and speaker. Jaiya is the founder of Soul Water Rising, a global rehumanizing mission to eradicate oppression. The mission has donated thousands of Jaiya's books in support of social healing, and offers grants to displaced and vulnerable youth. He is the author of numerous books, including Daughter Drink This Water, We Birth Freedom at Dawn, Fragrance After Rain, and Freedom: Medicine Words for your Brave Revolution. Jaiya writes, narrates, and produces the podcast, I Will Read for You: The Voice and Writings of Jaiya John, and is the founder of The Gathering, a global initiative and tour reviving traditional gathering and storytelling practices to fertilize social healing and liberation. He is a former professor of social psychology at Howard University, and has spoken to over a million people worldwide and audiences as large as several thousand. Jaiya holds doctorate and master's degrees in social psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a focus on intergroup and race relations. As an undergraduate, he attended Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and lived in Kathmandu, Nepal, where he studied Tibetan Holistic Medicine through independent research with Tibetan doctors and trekked to the base camp of Mt. Everest. His Indigenous soul dreams of frybread, sweetgrass, bamboo in the breeze, and turtle lakes whose poetry is peace.
