Pastoral Care Week 2005:
"Healing Wisdom"
Pastoral Care Week gives opportunities for organizations and institutions of all kinds and types to recognize the spiritual caregivers in their midst and the ministry which the caregivers provide.
About the Artwork: The logo chosen for “Healing Wisdom”comes from the rich cultural heritage of the Akan people of Ghana. The SANKOFA is a wisdom symbol that literally means “to go back and get it”. The symbol is based on a “mythical bird with its feet firmly planted forward and its head turned backwards”. To the Akan people, it represents wisdom as learning from the past and from our experiences thus ensuring a strong future. To us, in terms of spirituality, it also represents a movement of reaching back to our inner depths where God resides, and of discerning the many marvelous ways God works with us. “The egg in the bird’s mouth represents the ‘gems’ or knowledge of the past upon which wisdom isbased; it also signifies the generation to come that would benefit from that wisdom.”
“A continuation of the philosophical expressions of African spirituality can still be found in many of today’s African-American communities, where the concept of the Sankofa exists in the form of the oft-repeated proverb, ‘You can’t know where you are going unless you know where you come from’.”
(Quotations taken from Sweet Chariot: the story of the spirituals, “African Tradition, Proverbs and Sankofa” at http://ctl.du.edu/spirituals/Literature/sankofa.cfm)