Honoring Inspiration and Legacy

Poetry is humanizing and transformative.  Inspired by our friend and mentor, Dedan Gills, and poets and scientists across the centuries, the Pseads programs are founded on the notion that even more than something that can be written or spoken, a poem is a way of being. With his wife, educator and social justice advocate Belvie Rooks, Dedan imagined championing the poetry in every person, advancing human dignity, and supporting social and environmental healing through tree planting ceremonies, with trees as emblems of community and transformation.  

Belvie Rooks and Dedan Gills are the cofounders of Growing a Global Heart, a vision that inspires the ceremonial planting of memorial trees to honor the forgotten souls of the past—victims of urban violence, the Underground Railroad, and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Route in West Africa—as part of a process of collective healing and to aid in the struggle against climate change. The Growing a Global Heart motto is: “Healing the wounds of the past—in the present—while creating a sustainable future.” This project brings communities together to ceremonially plant trees in honor of the millions of lives lost to acts of violence, and to seed new hope for humanity and the earth. Their vision is to inspire the planting of millions of trees. “To plant a tree is to plant hope.” They both have essays included in a book that features Nelson Mandela, Maya Angelou, Jane Goodall and others, entitled Global Chorus: 365 Voices on the Future of the Planet.

Hope on the Rize was also deeply informed by the life and legacy of Susan Lambert, whose photography, writing and visual art is a celebration of a commitment she lived every day to “find the extraordinary in the ordinary.”  Her vision inspired Pseads to take the journey of self-expression even further, transforming poems and writing into impactful visual and multimedia narratives that reveal new possibilities and leave a bigger mark on the world.

A Communion of Spirit

The first time the two of us had dinner with Belvie and Dedan we got up from the table at least six hours after we all sat down. Dedan wasn’t supposed to cook that night, but he did, putting all sorts of ingredients into a pot and letting them steam and turn until somehow they all seemed to understand each other and become something unexpected. It was a strange magic—this confidence in the coherence of elements and seeming opposites—and one that Dedan seemed able to bring to, and to bring out in, any place he entered. 

Dedan began the dinner conversation unusually, without inquiry about where we had come from, or where either of us thought we were headed. Instead, with both an unbreaking gaze and a gleam in his eye, and with just a hint of a grin, he asked: “What’s your thought about synchronicity?” Wrapped within this question was a commitment to experiencing life beneath its surface layers—a commitment that Dedan and Belvie model in a way that opens your heart. 

In the years that followed that first dinner, there were countless conversations about poetry, science, spirituality, consciousness, ecology... but it always came back to a single subject: learning. Dedan modeled a singular commitment to learning; he was an insatiable student of life. Where some people seek expertise in one subject or another, Dedan sought to understand the experience of living from every angle. He brought a signature sincerity, warmth and good humor to learning that allowed him to look with clear eyes at his own self, and to see the dignity and potential in every human being. And he believed in the power of music, poetry and the heart to create change. 

With Dedan, we began a poetry and music collective called Echoes of the Unseen. Together with an international group of spoken-word poets, mixed-media artists and musicians, we created a series of events intended to cultivate an experience of shared humanity, and to invite people of all ages to join together in exploration and celebration of the way the universe moves through every human being. Everywhere we went, Dedan’s presence and words opened the space like an unseen wave, until there was nothing but togetherness in being. This way of bringing people together took new shape in the form of an edu- cational nonprofit.

A Legacy

Dedan Gills (1945–2015) considered himself to be a “soulutionary.” He was a poet, writer, and active member for eight years in one of the first urban intentional environmental communities in the country—the L.A. Eco- Village. Certified in permaculture, he was a founding member of the Los Angeles Permaculture Guild. Born in Watts, California, He became an unrelenting advocate for human rights and the Earth. Dedan worked to integrate principles of permaculture design, sustainability, environmental awareness, and the greening of the inner spirit. Based on his own healing journey, it was a process that he often referred to as “Green Recovery.” 

Both in his personal and professional life, he gave tirelessly to the groups of people he considered most abandoned by mainstream culture – the homeless and those suffering from addiction and incarceration. He touched the souls and lives of many while actively addressing his own physical and emotional wounds and healing. His poems have been shared publicly in presentations and gatherings with people of all ages, and published in the international journal. 

An unexpectedly proud moment for Dedan was the public recognition accorded him by Black Panther Party leader, Geronimo Pratt at a gathering organized by the Black Women’s Forum in Los Angeles in 2005. Like Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Geronimo Pratt had been falsely accused and spent nearly twenty-seven years in prison in the U.S. before being exonerated and released. At the conclusion of the community gathering, “Geronimo,” as he was affectionately called, said: “Brothers and Sisters, there is a person in the room with us today who I would like to recognize. Many of you will never know the enormous contribution this person has made to our movement. Brother Dedan Gills, will you please stand?” As someone who typically preferred to remain in the background it was a historic moment of recognition and acknowledgment.

Belvie Rooks is an essayist, educator and human rights and social justice activist whose work weaves the worlds of spirituality, feminism, and ecology. Meeting Dr. Martin Luther King as a teenager at a weekend high school retreat organized by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) had a profoundly lasting and transformative impact on Belvie’s understanding of and commitment to human and civil rights and social justice. As chairperson of the youth branch of the San Francisco NAACP, she helped organize a sustained weekly picket of the local Woolworth’s in solidarity with SNCC students’ sit-ins in the South. 

During the anti-apartheid era and movement, Belvie was one of the first two women on the National Steering Committee of the African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC). She was also one of the organizers of the 6th Pan-African Congress held in Tanzania. Later as Associate Director of the Third World Fund, which began at Glide Church, she traveled frequently to UN and OAU sponsored anti-apartheid meetings in Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan and Nigeria. In that connection, she was the principal organizer of the Zimbabwe Medical Campaign, which successfully raised over $250,000 in medical supplies, clothing, and equipment for Zimbabwean Refugees. Her anti-apartheid organizing efforts and those of Third World Fund director Ida Strickland are referenced in the book No Easy Victories, about the US anti-apartheid movement. She was honored to serve as an election monitor during the transition to majority rule in South Africa and to later attend Nelson Mandela’s historic inauguration as South 17 Africa’s president. Along with then Assemblywomen Maxine Waters, who served as the Southern California chairperson of TransAfrica, Belvie was invited by TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson to serve as the northern California chairperson of TransAfrica. She was also honored to be part of one of the first US solidarity delegations invited to Mozambique by Samora Machel and the newly independent government to celebrate the end of 500 years of Portuguese colonial rule. 

As an educator, Belvie was a member of the founding faculty of the College of Social Justice at the State University of New York (SUNY) Old Westbury and is the creator of Hey Listen Up: A Sense of Self-A Sense of Place, a groundbreaking multimedia urban eco-literacy project featured as part of the Educational Series for Journey of the Universe. She served as creator and host of ConverZations That Matter, a series featuring thought leaders and innovative thinkers from around the globe. Belvie has served on the boards of Bioneers, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and the Institute for Noetic Sciences. She has also served as Core Faculty at Holy Names University’s Sophia Center Program in Culture and Spirituality and Visiting Faculty at Naropa University’s Graduate Program in Environmental Studies. She was a founding staff member of Wild Trees Press, cofounded by Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker. 

As an essayist, her published works have appeared in many publications and anthologies including: Sacred Poems and Prayers in Praise of Life; The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult; My Soul is a Witness: African American Women’s Spirituality; Life Notes: Personal Writings by Black Women; Birthing God: Women’s Experiences of the Divine; Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart; and Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women’s Voices. She is an American Book Award winner as senior editor of Paris Connections: African American Artists in Paris, and co-producer (with Damani Baker and Danny Glover) of the award-winning film The House on Coco Road (now on Netflix).

NWF plant trees