What other King than Haile Selassie demonstrated the message of Christian forgiving?
When he asked that each Ethiopian family take an Italian prisoner feed and lodge him til he returns home.
There is no other example of such a demonstration of collective forgiveness ever recorded.
This was a turning point in world history.
The Italian troops returning home from that experience were the ones who took down Mussolini and made not only his life, but even his death, rime with butchery. They were the stone sent from the sling shot of David to take down the mighty Goliath.
Appearing frail and laughable like David in the eyes of Goliath, Africa had in its faith the surprise element that turned the tables around.
The spiritual collective feat of the Ethiopian believers put in a position of triumph over enemies, who just yesterday were brutalizing and decimating them, allowed for a polar shift in perception.
From the Ethiopian side it meant to look at oneself as a teacher, a guide in spiritual priorities, who sees events as opportunities to come closer to the true Christian ideal and, not hindered by any of life circumstances.
It was prophecised in the story of the encounter between Jacob and Esau, when they fell on each other and cried, that forgiveness would usher in a new world era, when vengeance would be overcome before the eyes of the whole world.
The historical example came from Africa.
Too many examples of cruelty exist to make us see the dark side of humanity.
But the example of bringing home feeding and lodging a former enemy exists only in Ethiopian history, at the time when a Panafrican ruler was the leader and inspiration of a whole generation.
On the other side of the continent, another monarch, King Mohammed the V, showed the power of spirituality to unite and protect Africans of all faiths from the divisive and genocidal colonial methods.
It took very high spiritual standards to guide a whole continent toward independence. Believers from different faiths came together, and their faith was what motivated them to show unity with people who were different from them.
Even if we are not capable of showing the same level of faith, we should nevertheless admit to the greatness of the example set by Ethiopians when people speak of Christianity.
We wonder if many in today’s Christian world who preaches being saved by grace, could compare with how grace touched all these families who having undergone the worst turned it around with the power of love.
For King Haile Selassie, this moment was the purpose of the whole war.
By taking charge of their spiritual power, Ethiopians had reached independence, as far as his mission was concerned.
Forgiveness broke the shackles of cycles of violence, and put the African back in the driver seat of his own destiny.
Unfortunately, the forces of political atheism clouded these glorious moments of African history, where the spiritual and the physical manifest in relation to one another.
People were fed a constant stream of Ethiopia being a place of starvation, to cover the reality of a people feeding, nurturing, and sharing their abundance, with their enemies.
The replacement and disfiguration of Haile Selassie’s image to the world went hand in hand with the impoverishing and fragmentation of the whole Horn Of Africa.
The proximity of Ethiopia to Kenya, South Africa, Mozambique, and even Madagascar, was a concern to those who understood Ethiopia’s viral message to all Africans.
The masks will start falling like dominoes.
So in a last desperate trial the colonial forces of stubbornness did everything they could to confuse the picture.
They thought that taking the physical person of Selassie out of the office would change the impact of King Selassie as one of the aspects of spiritual power of unity between Africans.
But with the inevitable growth of Africa and everything African, this awareness will only grow more and more.
As Bob Marley said, Rastafari is not about the past, Rastafari is the future.
Many more millions of Rastas will come in the future, from every family, city and country.
Many children you see today will be Rasta tomorrow.
This is the unavoidable reality.
The words of Selassie will be meditated and will continue to inspire people to be themselves and love other human beings as members of one family.
The power to light millions of hearts through the generations to be the best they can be can only come from the Divine Source from which all souls drink.
And that which transcends religious differences is the true message found in each individual religion, for it applies to all.
Our true selves our souls are manifested only in how we act and relate to others.
Haile Selassie said “Who am I, to decide what faith people have?”, meaning to him believing in God, means accepting others as they define themselves.
The fascist project was to impose all definitions of identity upon others.
Its idea of God includes the notion of imposing such definitions, by coming from the outside, as a conquering foreign hero.
They did not expect that to Ethiopians God includes Italians as full humans, unlike the Italian version of God which has borders and therefore cannot control everything.
The fascists fell by the absurdity of their own game.
Meeting true Christianity for the first time in their life, they experienced first hand being literally saved by grace, the grace over someone else.
G-d and Africa have a long love story.
