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DEFINING THE KaIRas INITIATIVE

The KaIRas Initiative is a call to discerning Black Men of conscience who are looking to claim their life’s purpose, embody their ancestral traditions of unparalleled leadership, and contribute to the rich legacy of Black manhood.

The word "KaIRas" came about after learning the history of the South African Kairos Document. Written by indigenous theologians in 1985, the “Kairos Document” was prophetic theology for political justification to end apartheid. The term “Kairos” was deemed most appropriate by Black theologians because it denoted an opportune time for decisive action. The Kairos Document stated, "The time has come. The moment of truth has arrived.... this is the KAIROS, the moment of grace and opportunity, the favorable time in which God issues a challenge to decisive action." Since Christian theology uses Greco-Roman history as its institutional genesis, Dr. Massey recognized that the Greek term “Kairos” - like so very much of European history - owed etymology to Egyptian cosmology that preceded it by thousands of years.

KaIRas (kah-EAR'-ras), was defined to mean the eternal soul: Ka, discerning, performing and speaking with conscientious duty, IR, to establish for itself Ras, an elevated new beginning in space, time and thought toward divinity. The soulful, contemporary man seeks a conscious stewardship of himself as the primary agent of his own life's journey and its legacy. He must embody KaIRas.

By facilitating knowledge of self, the KaIRas Initiative aims to expose the unconscious motivators that fuel your ingrained behaviors, limit your awareness, and prevent you from fulfilling healthy roles as a son, brother, father, committed partner, and beloved friend. As you cleanse your heart and mind of toxic stresses from any subconscious stimulus, you cleanse your awareness. By cleansing your awareness, in turn, you begin the path toward healing the traumatic experiences that likely prevent you from living your best life. You attract and repel forces of contradiction. Stewarding these for conscientious, soulful becoming is KaIRas!

Black men in the United States have strayed from living our best lives, placing us at multiple risks. A different nature of risk is required to answer the call of the KaIRas Initiative. This new risk entails redefining the fundamental values upon which our most cherished ideas are based. The concepts of self--from which we engage the world around us as Black men--demand our urgent attention. Our goal in such risk-taking is to enrich our possibilities for gaining deeper meaning and greater understanding of ourselves and transforming our roles in this life beyond socialized constraints for being Black and male. Taking different chances to transform and create opportunities for happiness and fulfillment as Black men far outweigh whatever realities appear to prevent our quests for deeper meaning and rewarding purpose in life. Otherwise, we collude in the social condemnation defining Black men by horrid stereotypes we confront daily.

"The time has come. The moment of truth has arrived.... this is the KAIROS, the moment of grace and opportunity, the favorable time in which God issues a challenge to decisive action."
- Kairos Document