On February 12, Dr. Charles H. Long, a distinguished historian of religions passed in North Carolina. Dr. Long was an extraordinary scholar whose unparalleled writings, lectures and conversations helped form several generations of academics in the areas of religion, theology, philosophy and studies of modernity. Long served on the faculties at the University of Chicago, UNC Chapel Hill, Syracuse University and the University of California Santa Barbara, from where he retired. A colleague and student of Mircea Eliade, Prof. Long was among the central intellectual and cultural voices in our nation, reflecting on the deep impact of colonialism and race on the nature of multiracial societies in the modern era. He is author of several books including Significations and, most recently, Ellipses: The Collected Writings of Charles H. Long, published in 2018.
Dr. Long was a dear teacher and mentor to many of us. His brilliance and erudition were a joy to behold; they were a constant and creative interplay between the vaunted philosophical traditions of the west and the profound wisdoms of African American folk experience and other indigenous modernities. He was so well grounded, and his mind was so supple and strong. He was our trickster-sage; our mestre; our sensei; orienting us toward the most fertile and exquisite engagements with thestuffof the world, the multiple meanings of the experience of the human; and most able and useful critiques of our inescapable complicity in the colonial encounter; and the mud that is the mothering at the center of the universe.
Charles H. Long was also a Veteran of Hope, interviewed for the project by Davíd Carrasco and Rachel Harding in the summer of 2000. The interview was later edited and distributed as a DVD and transcript titled, “Charles Long: Conversations on Race, Religion and History,” (Veterans of Hope Project Educational Video Archive, Denver, Colorado, 2004).
The directors and supporters of the Veterans of Hope Project extend our most sincere condolences to the family of our beloved professor.
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On the day he passed, most likely in beautiful coincidence, the Afro-Brazilians online artists collective, Barravento, posted a poem by Ifadeyin Fakolade (Leandro Araujo) and a painting by Andre Hora. Both the verse and the visual art were in honor of Nanâ – the swamp mother orixá who gathers each of us in death and returns us, eternally, to life.
Below is the untitled poem – in the original Portuguese and translated into English. And above is the painting. We offer these arts in honor of our Teacher.
Senhora das águas profundas da consolação.
Boa morte dos pretos;
Candelária dos desvalidos…
És o antigo espelho das águas que cantam paradas,
A garganta das grutas que murmuram silêncios.
A medicina da lama que cura o enfermo!
A fina chuva que renova o meu corpo cansado…
Os búzios que guardam eternos segredos,
O tempo que protege as tradições;
A memória do ventre da terra;
O colo da mãe anciã, no qual a vida e a morte se aninham em paz.
(English Translation)
Lady of the deep waters of consolation.
Good death of the Blacks;
Candelária of the comfortless…
You are the old mirror of the waters that sing still
The throat of caves that whisper silences.
Mud medicine that heals the sick!
The thin rain that renews my tired body…
The cowries that keep eternal secrets,
Time protecting the traditions;
The memory of the womb of the earth
The lap of the ancient mother, in which life and death nest in peace.
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