The greatest of these is love
Thursday, December 23, 2010
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
This morning, I was strangely transfixed by this verse, even though I had read it many times, in the “hymn to love”:
1 Cor.13:13 --
But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
“The greatest of these is love.”
During the 1960’s, Muhammad Ali used to defiantly shout, “I am the greatest!” But, time has shown his bold claim to be mere pugilistic bombast. His inspiring and charming utterance has proven to be mere heterosexual hype from the ultimate symbol of militant, black manhood. Love is the greatest, was the greatest, and forever will be the greatest.
Let us try to understand why “love” is greater than faith or hope.
16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 3:16
From this blessed scripture, we have the assurance that God not only loves, but God also gives! And what a gift! He gave His “only begotten son” to the whole world. Think of this! He spared Joseph, Israel’s son, who was sold into slavery by his brothers. He spared Abraham’s son, Isaac, by providing a ram in the bush. He even spared me and you! Yet, Jesus the Christ, was not spared. He was sacrificed. God’s “only begotten son,” was given unto the world by God to lave us in love. So, a corollary of love, and ineluctable consequence of love, is “giving.” One cannot love without giving. It is literally impossible. To love is to give.
John 15:13 (King James Version) says it all:
13Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Giving, sacrificing one’s life is the greatest gift anyone can give to another. It is the ultimate expression of one’s love.
Jesus came here expressly to live, to “give” his life, i.e. to “lay down his life for his friends” and to be resurrected, for you and for me, that we might be redeemed, spiritually irradiated unto eternity, like him. God, the father, refused to take away Jesus’ bitter cup at the Garden at Gethsemane, as Jesus, the man, had so fervently prayed. In the end, he, too, capitulated. “Not my will, but thy will be done,” Luke 22:42-44:
42Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
43And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.
44And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
Love can be agonizing, especially when it directly touches our flesh. It can involve “great drops of blood falling to the ground.”
Mark 12:30-31 (King James Version)--
30And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
Note that we are commanded by Jesus to love God, as though we had a choice! Do we?How can we not love God? Every breath we take is a praise song to God! Every step we make is a holy dance to God. Commanding us to love God is like commanding water to flow downstream or like commanding the wind to blow or like commanding the sun, moon, or stars to shine!
We can’t help but love Him! We neurologically, physiologically, lymphangiologically “hardwired” to love him, to love ourselves, to love others, and to love all creation, by God himself! We were born to love, born in love, born by love, and born through love. We live for love. We are animated by love, sustained by love. Indeed, life is love.
31And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
Again, the operative verb is love. Perhaps, this is the soul/sole duty of man, “to love.” Regrettably many people do not love themselves, which is a precondition to loving your neighbor “as yourself”--especially people with a legacy of prolonged oppression and deprivation, like African Americans.
Taking away another’s desire or power to love is degradation at its worst. It is downright dehumanizing. Love is our crown. Man without love is bestial, other than human, arguably subhuman, neaderthal.
Revelations 3:11 says --
“I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown.”
Love is our crown. Just like Jesus’ holy crown was displaced for one of thorns, so will those not disposed to love seek to replace ours’.
Ephesians 5:29 teaches “After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church”—
Back in BIBLE days that may have been true, that no one ever “hated his own body.” But, no more! Many people not only hate their own bodies, but they hate others’ bodies for many specious, vacuous reasons. Thus, many people must first learn to love themselves and their own bodies, that they may love others, in turn.
John 13:34-35 (New International Version, ©2010) says-- 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
“You must love.” Indeed, you must be love! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtWENe3V7Ds What is more insubstantial than love? Yet, what is more fulfilling? What is commanded is “more love.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA5Sobdo8DE&NR=1&feature=fvwp
God is love.
1 John 4:8 : Whoever does not love does not know God , because God is love.
Martin Luther, the iconic priest and church reformer, who in 1517, launched the Protestant Reformation by nailing his 95 Theses against Christian “indulgences” on the door of All Saints Cathedral in Wittenberg, Germany, argues that “faith alone justifies us.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_fide Many subscribe to this view.
Justification by faith alone, “sole fide” (only faith) is the doctrinal basis of so-called Protestantism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#cite_note-0
However, with all due respect to Martin Luther, and to adherents to his arguments, I return to where we began, with love. 1 Cor.13:13 –
But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
“Faith” is definitely in the mix. It is one of the three components in the “hymn to love”, “faith” and “hope” being the other two components, along with “love,” of which “love” is the “greatest” of them all.
So, the doctrine of “Sole Fide” is refuted by the 1 Cor.13:13 on its face. That is because it is neither “sole,” nor the greatest. “Faith” is merely 1 among 3 components and even then, it is not the greatest of the three; that is love.
Ephesians 2:8-10 (King James Version)
8For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Love is the “gift of God.” God made us to love, and sent Jesus to renew, restore, and revive our love, by and through his life-giving blood.
The hymn to love is set forth below, in full, for edification:
1 Corinthians 13 (New King James Version)
1 Corinthians 13
The Greatest Gift
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, [a] but have not love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Amen.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
CHARGEABLE TO NO MAN/ANSWERABLE TO NO MAN
CHARGEABLE TO NO MAN/ANSWERABLE TO NO MAN
By Larry Delano Coleman
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
And when I was with you and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed. I have kept myself from being a burden to you in any way, and will continue to do so. 2 Cor. 11:9 (NIV)
In one respect, Bishop Richard Allen, a founding member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, went beyond the Apostle Paul, whose fiscal support was supplied by the "brothers who came from Macedonia.”
Bishop Allen supported himself fiscally by working outside the church and in time came to be an essential financial resource to the church, itself. His church never paid him anything of substance. His sacrifice, doubtless, helped to assure the church’s vitality and longevity since 1787, when it was the Free African Society, and since 1816 when it was incorporated.
Bishop Allen, being chargeable to no man, was answerable to no man.
FARM WORK
Born a slave, upon his conversion to Christianity, he along with his older brother, also a slave, worked harder than ever to show their master and to prove to their doubters that Christ did not spoil good workers. Christ made them better workers! They put their farm work before their church meetings; their crops before their confessions. Their diligent labors bore fruit. Not only did their example convert their master to Christianity, but he enabled them to purchase their freedom from him for $2000.
WOOD CUTTING
By cutting wood they purchased their freedom, and their lives. This useful skill was employed, whenever and wherever necessary to procure bread.
26 So Joshua saved them from the Israelites, and they did not kill them. 27 That day he made the Gibeonites woodcutters and water carriers for the assembly, to provide for the needs of the altar of the LORD at the place the LORD would choose. And that is what they are to this day.
Joshua 9:26-27.
BRICK-YARD WORK
He also worked in a brick-yard to purchase his freedom and feed himself. “I used often to pray sitting or standing or lying; and while my hands were employed to earn my bread, my heart was devoted to my dear Redeemer. Sometimes I would waken from my sleep preaching and praying.”
That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people: 7“You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. 8But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’ 9Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies.”Exodus 5:6-9
SALT-DELIVERIES
After the brick-yard, Bishop Allen began to supply salt from Delaware during the Continental War, making deliveries at regular stops and intervals, all the time preaching, praying and meditating. His salt delivery work pleased him greatly “in many happy seasons.”
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. Matthew 5:13
SELF-RELIANT PREACHER
After the Continental War, he traveled with numerous Methodist preachers of renown, preaching and teaching the gospel of Christ, and, as always, he relied on his own hands to feed and to clothe himself. He was also present at the first Methodist Episcopal general conference ever held in the United States in December 1784. Rev. Bishop Francis Asbury thereafter sent for Bishop Allen to travel with him down into the Carolinas slave states and other places, plainly telling Allen that he would have to sleep “in his carriage, but he would allow him his victuals and clothes.”
While Bishop Allen was a man of God, fully committed to John Wesley’s Methodism, his own background as a slave rebelled against the notion of sleeping in a carriage while being furnished only food and clothing as hire, something he could do for himself, had done for himself, and preferred doing for himself. His position was somewhat analogous to Isaiah 4:1--
And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, "We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes, only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach."
Allen would be a Methodist upon his own terms, as a free man, under his own vine and fig tree, not as a slave, destitute and dependent on another.
JUST SAY “NO” TO THE BISHOP
Bishop Allen told Bishop Francis Asbury “no” to his travel request in the South. Allen told Asbury “I told him if I was taken sick who was to support me? And that I thought my people ought to lay up something while they were able, to support themselves in times of sickness and old age.”
Who was Bishop Francis Asbury? The most powerful Methodist in America:
In 1784 John Wesley named Asbury and Thomas Coke as co-superintendents of the work in America. This marks the beginning of the "Methodist Episcopal Church of the USA". For the next 32 years, Asbury led all the Methodists in America. . . Like Wesley, Asbury preached in all sorts of places: courthouses, public houses, tobacco houses, fields, public squares, wherever a crowd assembled to hear him. For the remainder of his life he rode an average of 6,000 miles each year, preaching virtually every day and conducting meetings and conferences. Under his direction, the church grew from 1,200 to 214,000 members and 700 ordained preachers. Among the men he ordained was Richard Allen in Philadelphia, the first black minister in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Asbury
FAITHFUL DILIGENCE IN PHILADELPHIA
Eventually, after traveling with others, Allen made his way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He states, “My labor was much blessed. I soon saw a large field open in seeking and instructing my African brethren, who had been a long forgotten people, and few of them attended public worship.”
He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich. He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame.Proverbs 10:4-5
Allen preached as early as 5:00 a.m., and as often as 4 or 5 times per day. He established prayer meetings and raised a society of 42 members in 1786, which included Rev. Absalom Jones, William White and Darius Jinnings. Absalom Jones and William White were pulled from their knees during prayer at St. Georges Episcopal Church by trustees, due to race discrimination. This led to a walk-out by the blacks, who in due course purchased land for construction of a church of their own, which became St. Thomas Episcopal Church, pursuant to majority vote by society members, which Rev. Absalom Jones ultimately headed, as priest.
6TH AND LOMBARD STREET BLACKSMITH SHOP
Meanwhile, Bishop Allen, an inveterate Methodist , had purchased land at 6th and Lombard Street for a church, which the society rejected in favor of the 5th street site occupied by St. Thomas. So, Bishop Allen purchased the property for his own account. He also purchased the frame of an old blacksmith shop, had it ferried to the 6th and Lombard St. site, and paid a team of carpenters to render it habitable and secure as a place of worship.
This converted blacksmith shop became Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which opened July 1794, with a sermon by Bishop Frances Asbury. This taproot of “African Methodism” was established despite the zealous, organized opposition from St. Georges Episcopal Church, including litigation. Bishop Allen served as pastor of Bethel as well as the first consecrated bishop of the AM.E. Church.
CHIEF AFRICAN METHODIST FINANCIER
More than pastor and bishop, though, Bishop Allen was also chief financier. He specifically refused to accept his $500 per year salary, accepting only $80 total for all his years of service, bequeathing any balance due him to the church. He bequeathed another $1400, when the Bethel was sold and bought back by the members. The bishop also loaned Bethel $4,000. His claims against Bethel once aggregated $11,700, and if that is not enough, “At the time that Robert Green sold it, Mr. Allen bought it in for the congregation at the sum of $10,500.”
SHOE AND BOOT SHOP
In addition to his others intereinterests Bishop Allen owned a boot and shoe store, from which he retired a couple years before he died leaving an estate of $30,000-$40,000 in 1831 dollars.
7Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning the redemption and the exchange of land to confirm any matter: a man removed his sandal and gave it to another; and this was the manner of attestation in Israel. 8So the closest relative said to Boaz, “Buy it for yourself.” And he removed his sandal.
Ruth 4:7-8Yesterday’s sandals are today’s shoes. Bishop Allen was a man acquainted with redemption and exchange, so the scriptural reference applies. The shoe and boot shop joins farming, wood cutting, brick labor, and salt delivery as means by which he acquired his freedom and gained immortality as a religious founder, crusader and reformer among Africans and Methodists, world-wide.
THE GREAT ALLEN COMMISSION
Bishop Allen was chargeable to no man, and answerable to no man.
Would that certain born-again members of our great church, whether laity or episcopacy, or any in between, would not only celebrate Allen, but imitate Allen; would not just adulate Allen on Founder’s Day, but emulate Allen every day, in Jesus’ holy name! Amen.
Returning now to the Apostle Paul, for summation, we conclude:
7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk? 8 Do I say this merely on human authority? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? 9 For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.”[b] Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10 Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us, because whoever plows and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. 11 If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? 12 If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more?
But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.
13 Don’t you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the temple, and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? 14 In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.
15 But I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me, for I would rather die than allow anyone to deprive me of this boast. 16 For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. 18 What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.
1 Corinthians 9:7-18
#30
By Larry Delano Coleman
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
And when I was with you and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed. I have kept myself from being a burden to you in any way, and will continue to do so. 2 Cor. 11:9 (NIV)
In one respect, Bishop Richard Allen, a founding member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, went beyond the Apostle Paul, whose fiscal support was supplied by the "brothers who came from Macedonia.”
Bishop Allen supported himself fiscally by working outside the church and in time came to be an essential financial resource to the church, itself. His church never paid him anything of substance. His sacrifice, doubtless, helped to assure the church’s vitality and longevity since 1787, when it was the Free African Society, and since 1816 when it was incorporated.
Bishop Allen, being chargeable to no man, was answerable to no man.
FARM WORK
Born a slave, upon his conversion to Christianity, he along with his older brother, also a slave, worked harder than ever to show their master and to prove to their doubters that Christ did not spoil good workers. Christ made them better workers! They put their farm work before their church meetings; their crops before their confessions. Their diligent labors bore fruit. Not only did their example convert their master to Christianity, but he enabled them to purchase their freedom from him for $2000.
WOOD CUTTING
By cutting wood they purchased their freedom, and their lives. This useful skill was employed, whenever and wherever necessary to procure bread.
26 So Joshua saved them from the Israelites, and they did not kill them. 27 That day he made the Gibeonites woodcutters and water carriers for the assembly, to provide for the needs of the altar of the LORD at the place the LORD would choose. And that is what they are to this day.
Joshua 9:26-27.
BRICK-YARD WORK
He also worked in a brick-yard to purchase his freedom and feed himself. “I used often to pray sitting or standing or lying; and while my hands were employed to earn my bread, my heart was devoted to my dear Redeemer. Sometimes I would waken from my sleep preaching and praying.”
That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people: 7“You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. 8But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’ 9Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies.”Exodus 5:6-9
SALT-DELIVERIES
After the brick-yard, Bishop Allen began to supply salt from Delaware during the Continental War, making deliveries at regular stops and intervals, all the time preaching, praying and meditating. His salt delivery work pleased him greatly “in many happy seasons.”
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. Matthew 5:13
SELF-RELIANT PREACHER
After the Continental War, he traveled with numerous Methodist preachers of renown, preaching and teaching the gospel of Christ, and, as always, he relied on his own hands to feed and to clothe himself. He was also present at the first Methodist Episcopal general conference ever held in the United States in December 1784. Rev. Bishop Francis Asbury thereafter sent for Bishop Allen to travel with him down into the Carolinas slave states and other places, plainly telling Allen that he would have to sleep “in his carriage, but he would allow him his victuals and clothes.”
While Bishop Allen was a man of God, fully committed to John Wesley’s Methodism, his own background as a slave rebelled against the notion of sleeping in a carriage while being furnished only food and clothing as hire, something he could do for himself, had done for himself, and preferred doing for himself. His position was somewhat analogous to Isaiah 4:1--
And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, "We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes, only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach."
Allen would be a Methodist upon his own terms, as a free man, under his own vine and fig tree, not as a slave, destitute and dependent on another.
JUST SAY “NO” TO THE BISHOP
Bishop Allen told Bishop Francis Asbury “no” to his travel request in the South. Allen told Asbury “I told him if I was taken sick who was to support me? And that I thought my people ought to lay up something while they were able, to support themselves in times of sickness and old age.”
Who was Bishop Francis Asbury? The most powerful Methodist in America:
In 1784 John Wesley named Asbury and Thomas Coke as co-superintendents of the work in America. This marks the beginning of the "Methodist Episcopal Church of the USA". For the next 32 years, Asbury led all the Methodists in America. . . Like Wesley, Asbury preached in all sorts of places: courthouses, public houses, tobacco houses, fields, public squares, wherever a crowd assembled to hear him. For the remainder of his life he rode an average of 6,000 miles each year, preaching virtually every day and conducting meetings and conferences. Under his direction, the church grew from 1,200 to 214,000 members and 700 ordained preachers. Among the men he ordained was Richard Allen in Philadelphia, the first black minister in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Asbury
FAITHFUL DILIGENCE IN PHILADELPHIA
Eventually, after traveling with others, Allen made his way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He states, “My labor was much blessed. I soon saw a large field open in seeking and instructing my African brethren, who had been a long forgotten people, and few of them attended public worship.”
He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich. He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame.Proverbs 10:4-5
Allen preached as early as 5:00 a.m., and as often as 4 or 5 times per day. He established prayer meetings and raised a society of 42 members in 1786, which included Rev. Absalom Jones, William White and Darius Jinnings. Absalom Jones and William White were pulled from their knees during prayer at St. Georges Episcopal Church by trustees, due to race discrimination. This led to a walk-out by the blacks, who in due course purchased land for construction of a church of their own, which became St. Thomas Episcopal Church, pursuant to majority vote by society members, which Rev. Absalom Jones ultimately headed, as priest.
6TH AND LOMBARD STREET BLACKSMITH SHOP
Meanwhile, Bishop Allen, an inveterate Methodist , had purchased land at 6th and Lombard Street for a church, which the society rejected in favor of the 5th street site occupied by St. Thomas. So, Bishop Allen purchased the property for his own account. He also purchased the frame of an old blacksmith shop, had it ferried to the 6th and Lombard St. site, and paid a team of carpenters to render it habitable and secure as a place of worship.
This converted blacksmith shop became Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which opened July 1794, with a sermon by Bishop Frances Asbury. This taproot of “African Methodism” was established despite the zealous, organized opposition from St. Georges Episcopal Church, including litigation. Bishop Allen served as pastor of Bethel as well as the first consecrated bishop of the AM.E. Church.
CHIEF AFRICAN METHODIST FINANCIER
More than pastor and bishop, though, Bishop Allen was also chief financier. He specifically refused to accept his $500 per year salary, accepting only $80 total for all his years of service, bequeathing any balance due him to the church. He bequeathed another $1400, when the Bethel was sold and bought back by the members. The bishop also loaned Bethel $4,000. His claims against Bethel once aggregated $11,700, and if that is not enough, “At the time that Robert Green sold it, Mr. Allen bought it in for the congregation at the sum of $10,500.”
SHOE AND BOOT SHOP
In addition to his others intereinterests Bishop Allen owned a boot and shoe store, from which he retired a couple years before he died leaving an estate of $30,000-$40,000 in 1831 dollars.
7Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning the redemption and the exchange of land to confirm any matter: a man removed his sandal and gave it to another; and this was the manner of attestation in Israel. 8So the closest relative said to Boaz, “Buy it for yourself.” And he removed his sandal.
Ruth 4:7-8Yesterday’s sandals are today’s shoes. Bishop Allen was a man acquainted with redemption and exchange, so the scriptural reference applies. The shoe and boot shop joins farming, wood cutting, brick labor, and salt delivery as means by which he acquired his freedom and gained immortality as a religious founder, crusader and reformer among Africans and Methodists, world-wide.
THE GREAT ALLEN COMMISSION
Bishop Allen was chargeable to no man, and answerable to no man.
Would that certain born-again members of our great church, whether laity or episcopacy, or any in between, would not only celebrate Allen, but imitate Allen; would not just adulate Allen on Founder’s Day, but emulate Allen every day, in Jesus’ holy name! Amen.
Returning now to the Apostle Paul, for summation, we conclude:
7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk? 8 Do I say this merely on human authority? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? 9 For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.”[b] Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10 Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us, because whoever plows and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. 11 If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? 12 If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more?
But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.
13 Don’t you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the temple, and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? 14 In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.
15 But I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me, for I would rather die than allow anyone to deprive me of this boast. 16 For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. 18 What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.
1 Corinthians 9:7-18
#30
Of Chitlins and Church Folk
Of Chitlins and Church Folk
Friday, December 17, 2010
By LARRY DELANO COLEMAN
I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:16, Mark 8:38).
Neither am I ashamed of being an Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Nor am I ashamed of “chitlins”—or, more formally, chitterlings, a/k/a, “wrinkles”—hog intestines, which have been thoroughly cleaned, thoroughly seasoned, and thoroughly cooked.
This soul food delicacy has its roots in our southern slave heritage, when our inventive women found a way to feed us from what white folks threw away. If it wasn’t “high on the hog,” they’d give it to us. And we’d take full advantage of it! http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/ChitlinsHistory.htm
Now, admittedly, there probably are some so-called Christians who shrink from boldly confessing Christ as Lord and Savior. There may be a few AME preachers who’d prefer keeping their affiliation quiet, i.e. “on the down low.” There certainly are a profusion of both so-called Christians and AME preachers who dislike and/or are downright disdainful of “chitlins.” Be that as it may.
This article is not for them. It is only for those who can receive it, the few, the faithful, the unfettered, i.e.—those who love Jesus, the AME church and chitlins.
Every Wednesday night, weather permitting, I engaged in Bible study at Gilbert Memorial A.M.E. Church, in Kansas City Missouri, Rev. Brenda Smith, pastor. Then, I had a stroke in July2010, which hospitalized me for nearly 3 months. Nevertheless, during my hospitalization and rehabilitation, Rev. Smith and her prayer warriors would call me on my cellphone and pray and read from the scriptures to me throughout the period of my convalescence.
Well, I was discharged home in October, still too weak to work, but able to matriculate, slowly, on a cane. Rev. Smith and her prayer band continued to call.
Finally, the holidays were upon us: first, Thanksgiving; now, Christmas.
The next time Wednesday rolled around, and Rev. Smith, et al. called to pray, I let them have it with both barrels. “Prayer is good, Reverend, “ I said. “It changes things. And I really do appreciate you all calling me so faithfully for Bible study. But, that’s all talk. And that’s all too many Christians want to do is talk! In 1 John 3, the Bible condemns folks who have the world’s goods, who see their brother has needs, and who don’t do nothing about it, but talk. That lady at your church that sells them dinners on Fridays, have her to call me. I want some chitlins. “
“Is that what you want, Reverend?” Rev. Smith asked me. “We can take care of that. We’ve been intending to come by and see you, anyway, since you came home. This gives us that opportunity!”
My heart jumped for joy! My loving wife, though almost perfect in other respects, doesn’t like chitlins at all. So, I had no chitlins coming from her. But, the Lord had made a way! I told everybody I knew about this: my siblings, my uncle, my friends. And, now, Dear Reader, I’m telling you! God is able to put chitlins on the table!
When the next Wednesday came back around, Rev. Brenda Smith and her Chief Steward, Donna Randolph, came over to our home for Bible study, and brought dinner with them. They brought chitlins, collard greens, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, corn bread, and meat loaf, all exquisitely prepared and presented. We feasted. We studied. We praised the Lord!
Nothing like chitlins and church folk, in Jesus’ holy name!
#30
Friday, December 17, 2010
By LARRY DELANO COLEMAN
I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:16, Mark 8:38).
Neither am I ashamed of being an Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Nor am I ashamed of “chitlins”—or, more formally, chitterlings, a/k/a, “wrinkles”—hog intestines, which have been thoroughly cleaned, thoroughly seasoned, and thoroughly cooked.
This soul food delicacy has its roots in our southern slave heritage, when our inventive women found a way to feed us from what white folks threw away. If it wasn’t “high on the hog,” they’d give it to us. And we’d take full advantage of it! http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/ChitlinsHistory.htm
Now, admittedly, there probably are some so-called Christians who shrink from boldly confessing Christ as Lord and Savior. There may be a few AME preachers who’d prefer keeping their affiliation quiet, i.e. “on the down low.” There certainly are a profusion of both so-called Christians and AME preachers who dislike and/or are downright disdainful of “chitlins.” Be that as it may.
This article is not for them. It is only for those who can receive it, the few, the faithful, the unfettered, i.e.—those who love Jesus, the AME church and chitlins.
Every Wednesday night, weather permitting, I engaged in Bible study at Gilbert Memorial A.M.E. Church, in Kansas City Missouri, Rev. Brenda Smith, pastor. Then, I had a stroke in July2010, which hospitalized me for nearly 3 months. Nevertheless, during my hospitalization and rehabilitation, Rev. Smith and her prayer warriors would call me on my cellphone and pray and read from the scriptures to me throughout the period of my convalescence.
Well, I was discharged home in October, still too weak to work, but able to matriculate, slowly, on a cane. Rev. Smith and her prayer band continued to call.
Finally, the holidays were upon us: first, Thanksgiving; now, Christmas.
The next time Wednesday rolled around, and Rev. Smith, et al. called to pray, I let them have it with both barrels. “Prayer is good, Reverend, “ I said. “It changes things. And I really do appreciate you all calling me so faithfully for Bible study. But, that’s all talk. And that’s all too many Christians want to do is talk! In 1 John 3, the Bible condemns folks who have the world’s goods, who see their brother has needs, and who don’t do nothing about it, but talk. That lady at your church that sells them dinners on Fridays, have her to call me. I want some chitlins. “
“Is that what you want, Reverend?” Rev. Smith asked me. “We can take care of that. We’ve been intending to come by and see you, anyway, since you came home. This gives us that opportunity!”
My heart jumped for joy! My loving wife, though almost perfect in other respects, doesn’t like chitlins at all. So, I had no chitlins coming from her. But, the Lord had made a way! I told everybody I knew about this: my siblings, my uncle, my friends. And, now, Dear Reader, I’m telling you! God is able to put chitlins on the table!
When the next Wednesday came back around, Rev. Brenda Smith and her Chief Steward, Donna Randolph, came over to our home for Bible study, and brought dinner with them. They brought chitlins, collard greens, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, corn bread, and meat loaf, all exquisitely prepared and presented. We feasted. We studied. We praised the Lord!
Nothing like chitlins and church folk, in Jesus’ holy name!
#30
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Divided House Becoming One
Divided House Becoming One
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, presciently paraphrased it, when, as an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, in 1858—Stephen A. Douglas being the pyrrhic victor-- he said, in reliance upon Matt. 12 :25, and Mark 3:25 http://bible.cc/mark/3-25.htm :
"A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other. "
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/house.htm
Similarly, the epic battle between “sinners” and “saints” in the black community, since slavery, which has so long, and needlessly divided it against itself, and sapped its united vigor, is dissolving: empowering the whole world through its dynamic fusion.
No single event or person is responsible for this cessation. Essentially it is a recognition that black people love, and are beholden to, all kinds of black music—the principal plane on which the battle was fought. They will not only listen to it, but will dance to it, and will buy it, regardless. This incremental recognition has accrued gradually, inexorably, even grudgingly. Its triumph is accented by the prevalence of eclectic musical genres and instrumentation in contemporary worship, as well as praise dancers in worship. Such was rare, if not unthinkable, prior to the 1990s, even though certain “holy dances” have always been an extemporaneous part of black worship, in many, though not all, churches going back to slavery days.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/614115/the_evolution_of_black_history_dance_pg2.html?cat=2
It was in the black church, and by extension, the black family, that this epic battle, between “right” and “wrong” and godliness and ungodliness, has held sway, since the days of Thomas A. Dorsey in the early 1900’s. Dorsey, a popular blues musician popularized blending the blues with spirituals to create “gospel music”. Stevie Wonder, for example, performed a concert at the National Baptist Convention in 1998 in Kansas City, which I attended and thoroughly enjoyed.
This spiritual and cultural reunion is about more than music and dance, however. It is also about the veritable epigenetic “soul of black folk,” as expressed through religion, and, more broadly, through life itself. Taken to its ultimate expression, it is about the “soul of all folk,” since all humans on earth descended from Africans genetically and culturally. Acts 17:26 .
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/jm-ledgard/exodus
Much of the thrust toward black self-assertion, expressed in some manner by every “leader” from Booker T. Washington and Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, through Rev. Al Sharpton and Minister Louis Farrakhan, has been against the outer constraints imposed upon the liberty of the freed slaves, since Emancipation in 1865, which cruelly circumscribed the full ambit of their constitutional and statutory rights, privileges, and immunities.
The internal thrust toward black self-assertion now underway is against the inner constraints, which have similarly circumscribed the spirit, creativity and initiative of the freed slaves since the failure of Reconstruction in 1877. Leaders of the freed slaves obligingly imposed equivalent inner constraints upon themselves in conformity with norms decreed by others, as they struggled “up from slavery” wrongly believing assimilation and dissimulation would save them from discrimination and stigmatization.
Thus, a middle wall of partition was erected among black Americans. On the left were the hopeful assimilationists and on the right were the traditional “indigenes,” i.e. those who were content with their own indigenous essence in all its dimensions. Ephesians 2:14 says: “For he is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us…” Everybody “wore the mask”, i.e. dissimulated, to quote poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, who carefully observed black folks’ behavior,
and who then wrote in inimitable verse, “We Wear The Mask”:
WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw8.html
Dissolving the middle wall of partition, which divides these two groups is the looming goal of “a divided house becoming one.” Cries arose from all our tortured souls—secular and non-secular—and the clay was vile beneath all our feet for many a mile. Flip sides of one coin we were and are.
Both the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Prince Hall Masons, the oldest institutions in black America are scions of European institutions, including their discipline and ritual and dogma. While these venerable institutions, along with their august founders—Richard Allen and Prince Hall, respectively—have stabilized and nourished black people over their two hundred years’ of existence, it is now time to push out into the deep. Luke 5:4 “And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”
A new age has come. And certainly we, each of us, is blessed to see it. We join with late poet,Margaret Walker Alexander, of Jackson State University, who prophetically sung in the concluding stanza of her 1942 poem, “For My People:”
“Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs by written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control”
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/354.html http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/walker-margaret.html
I had long sensed that something new and wonderful was evolving, as I watched and heard Ray Charles, Bobby “Blue” Bland, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Bland Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Rev. Al Green, and others, make music “naked and unashamed” Gen.2:25 of its church or blues overtones in the 1960’s and '70's. Other musicians rushed in feeling and sensing the same, like the Commodores, with “Jesus is Love.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQPKBkW6a1s&feature=related
Little did I know that I was born to play a part in this rapprochement between the sacred and the secular, the churched and the “un-churched,” and gospel and “the blues,” the historical and the theological.
Just like Joseph, in the latter day, rescued and revived Israel nee Jacob and his sons from starvation and want, though they had sold him into slavery in Egypt; so, also shall this rapprochement be salvific for the children of Ethiopia, who have suffered, mightily, themselves since selling us into slavery. God has worked it out. What they intended for evil, he intended for good. “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people[a] should be kept alive, as they are today.” Gen. 50:20 (ESV)
Having personally fought for that “freedom” wrought by the civil rights movement, in education, public accommodations, housing, employment and voting, I have also studied deeply and read voraciously. I knew there was something fundamental going on in black culture, which had long been a bulwark of protestant conservatism. And, I came to know that something fundamental was going on in me. In 1992, I fell critically ill, being hospitalized for 12 days. Then and there, I promised the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that if he restored my life, I would give it to him. Well, he did and I did. I confessed Jesus Christ as head of my life at Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Kansas City, Missouri, on Palm Sunday 1993. I was licensed to preach in 1994. Following four years of study, under our Board of Examiners, I was ordained as an Itinerant Elder in 1998, by the late Bishop Vernon Randolph Byrd, the 105th elected and consecrated Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
This digression into my personal transformation makes the parallel point that change is endemic. I, too, became, as each of us must “become, all one thing." Until, and unless, one is reconciled to one’s self, all is lost. One is left two separate souls in one dogged body, to paraphrase DuBois.
Blues and spirituals and their adherents seek congress, a renewal of their connubial bond with each other, unfettered by others’ self-righteous opprobrium. It is the season and each is in season. When they get together, so will their respective constituencies—which heavily overlap, so much so, one cannot tell the “wheat from the tares!” Matt. 13:24-30
http://homepage.mac.com/shanerosenthal/reformationink/mltares.htm
This disunion, this estrangement has severely weakened the black community, just like faulty timing disables an engine. Ministers who have recognized this injurious alienation and who have worked to overcome it, have included Rev. C.L. Franklin, the father of Aretha Franklin, and his good friend, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At critical times during the Montgomery bus boycott, Dr. King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, would troll for, and obtain the support of, denizens of the diverse dives frequented by blacks, places which the traditional black church excoriates as “juke joints”. Jesus also patronized the “juke joints” of his day. And he, too, was criticized by the so-called righteous. Mark 2:15 “While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.”
The scriptures, once again, are instructive:
If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. Mark 3:24 (NIV)
If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. Mark 3:25 (NIV)
And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. Mark 3:26(NIV)
We—Africans in America—are descendants of the two tribes of Ethiopians of whom Homer sung in The Odyssey. We were also the tallest, fairest, most just of men of whom he sung in The Iliad, from whom the Greeks acquired their gods. Our unity will bring about Satan’s downfall.
http://books.google.com/books?id=jcpQqkHr328C&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=iliad+ethiopians+land+of+the+gods&source=bl&ots=PVbONmQHtx&sig=7gi4qQGeKTVThH67ZvqifVdgASI&hl=en&ei=p57yTKfmIcWqlAeP4aX0DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=iliad%20ethiopians%20land%20of%20the%20gods&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=2wtYvc2ZLT0C&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=ethiopia+land+of+the+gods+iliad&source=bl&ots=eU2IduiRN3&sig=eSsoFZGpWInoEvzbTLA7S4YGKKo&hl=en&ei=EqHyTJ9rxZuWB47SrIIN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false http://tseday.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/ethiopia-birth-of-the-gods-by-diodorus/ http://endingstereotypesforamerica.org/black_and_white_morality.html
Everything has a shadow. Neither can the two, the shadow and its object, be separated from each other, where there is light. As Smokey Robinson has said “It would be easier to take the wet from water, or the dry from sand.”
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/What-Love-Has-Joined-Together-lyrics-The-Temptations/5505A3B5B4C3948248256D2F002C6A9B http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzfqStzknhA&feature=related
The blues and spirituals are “what love has joined together” in our people. Those who resist this union have long “kicked against the pricks.” Acts 9:5. The music of black people, along with their elan, their “cool,” their mojo,has saturated the globe, as evidenced, in part, by the Michael Jackson phenomenon. This divine love, perfect union, this consummation has been hitherto thwarted by well-meant, though unnatural and often hypocritical, resistance from church folk. Somehow, they saw something ungodly in the celebration of physical love, passion between a man and a woman in song and especially in dance, notwithstanding the Old Testament book’s “Song of Solomon,” and the profligacy of David, “a man after God’s own heart.” Acts 13:22.
It was “sin”-- blues, jazz, etc. --they ominously intoned. “When, in truth, under their cosmogony, practically everything is excoriated as sin, outside church. Yet the holy scriptures condemn all, even the so-called saints! “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” http://bible.cc/romans/3-23.htm Rom. 3:23. This holier-than-thou dogma and creed have given rise to wide-spread hypocrisy, and scandalous apostacy of historic proportions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy
Some of the principal proponents of this version of piety have been caught in homosexual and/or extramarital relations, over the centuries; including that abomination of degradation involving sexual abuse of little church children.
http://www.enotes.com/catholic-child-abuse-article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases
Another Lincoln quote concludes the matter---
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/congress.htm
#30
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, presciently paraphrased it, when, as an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, in 1858—Stephen A. Douglas being the pyrrhic victor-- he said, in reliance upon Matt. 12 :25, and Mark 3:25 http://bible.cc/mark/3-25.htm :
"A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other. "
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/house.htm
Similarly, the epic battle between “sinners” and “saints” in the black community, since slavery, which has so long, and needlessly divided it against itself, and sapped its united vigor, is dissolving: empowering the whole world through its dynamic fusion.
No single event or person is responsible for this cessation. Essentially it is a recognition that black people love, and are beholden to, all kinds of black music—the principal plane on which the battle was fought. They will not only listen to it, but will dance to it, and will buy it, regardless. This incremental recognition has accrued gradually, inexorably, even grudgingly. Its triumph is accented by the prevalence of eclectic musical genres and instrumentation in contemporary worship, as well as praise dancers in worship. Such was rare, if not unthinkable, prior to the 1990s, even though certain “holy dances” have always been an extemporaneous part of black worship, in many, though not all, churches going back to slavery days.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/614115/the_evolution_of_black_history_dance_pg2.html?cat=2
It was in the black church, and by extension, the black family, that this epic battle, between “right” and “wrong” and godliness and ungodliness, has held sway, since the days of Thomas A. Dorsey in the early 1900’s. Dorsey, a popular blues musician popularized blending the blues with spirituals to create “gospel music”. Stevie Wonder, for example, performed a concert at the National Baptist Convention in 1998 in Kansas City, which I attended and thoroughly enjoyed.
This spiritual and cultural reunion is about more than music and dance, however. It is also about the veritable epigenetic “soul of black folk,” as expressed through religion, and, more broadly, through life itself. Taken to its ultimate expression, it is about the “soul of all folk,” since all humans on earth descended from Africans genetically and culturally. Acts 17:26 .
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/jm-ledgard/exodus
Much of the thrust toward black self-assertion, expressed in some manner by every “leader” from Booker T. Washington and Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, through Rev. Al Sharpton and Minister Louis Farrakhan, has been against the outer constraints imposed upon the liberty of the freed slaves, since Emancipation in 1865, which cruelly circumscribed the full ambit of their constitutional and statutory rights, privileges, and immunities.
The internal thrust toward black self-assertion now underway is against the inner constraints, which have similarly circumscribed the spirit, creativity and initiative of the freed slaves since the failure of Reconstruction in 1877. Leaders of the freed slaves obligingly imposed equivalent inner constraints upon themselves in conformity with norms decreed by others, as they struggled “up from slavery” wrongly believing assimilation and dissimulation would save them from discrimination and stigmatization.
Thus, a middle wall of partition was erected among black Americans. On the left were the hopeful assimilationists and on the right were the traditional “indigenes,” i.e. those who were content with their own indigenous essence in all its dimensions. Ephesians 2:14 says: “For he is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us…” Everybody “wore the mask”, i.e. dissimulated, to quote poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, who carefully observed black folks’ behavior,
and who then wrote in inimitable verse, “We Wear The Mask”:
WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw8.html
Dissolving the middle wall of partition, which divides these two groups is the looming goal of “a divided house becoming one.” Cries arose from all our tortured souls—secular and non-secular—and the clay was vile beneath all our feet for many a mile. Flip sides of one coin we were and are.
Both the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Prince Hall Masons, the oldest institutions in black America are scions of European institutions, including their discipline and ritual and dogma. While these venerable institutions, along with their august founders—Richard Allen and Prince Hall, respectively—have stabilized and nourished black people over their two hundred years’ of existence, it is now time to push out into the deep. Luke 5:4 “And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”
A new age has come. And certainly we, each of us, is blessed to see it. We join with late poet,Margaret Walker Alexander, of Jackson State University, who prophetically sung in the concluding stanza of her 1942 poem, “For My People:”
“Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs by written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control”
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/354.html http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/walker-margaret.html
I had long sensed that something new and wonderful was evolving, as I watched and heard Ray Charles, Bobby “Blue” Bland, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Bland Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Rev. Al Green, and others, make music “naked and unashamed” Gen.2:25 of its church or blues overtones in the 1960’s and '70's. Other musicians rushed in feeling and sensing the same, like the Commodores, with “Jesus is Love.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQPKBkW6a1s&feature=related
Little did I know that I was born to play a part in this rapprochement between the sacred and the secular, the churched and the “un-churched,” and gospel and “the blues,” the historical and the theological.
Just like Joseph, in the latter day, rescued and revived Israel nee Jacob and his sons from starvation and want, though they had sold him into slavery in Egypt; so, also shall this rapprochement be salvific for the children of Ethiopia, who have suffered, mightily, themselves since selling us into slavery. God has worked it out. What they intended for evil, he intended for good. “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people[a] should be kept alive, as they are today.” Gen. 50:20 (ESV)
Having personally fought for that “freedom” wrought by the civil rights movement, in education, public accommodations, housing, employment and voting, I have also studied deeply and read voraciously. I knew there was something fundamental going on in black culture, which had long been a bulwark of protestant conservatism. And, I came to know that something fundamental was going on in me. In 1992, I fell critically ill, being hospitalized for 12 days. Then and there, I promised the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that if he restored my life, I would give it to him. Well, he did and I did. I confessed Jesus Christ as head of my life at Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Kansas City, Missouri, on Palm Sunday 1993. I was licensed to preach in 1994. Following four years of study, under our Board of Examiners, I was ordained as an Itinerant Elder in 1998, by the late Bishop Vernon Randolph Byrd, the 105th elected and consecrated Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
This digression into my personal transformation makes the parallel point that change is endemic. I, too, became, as each of us must “become, all one thing." Until, and unless, one is reconciled to one’s self, all is lost. One is left two separate souls in one dogged body, to paraphrase DuBois.
Blues and spirituals and their adherents seek congress, a renewal of their connubial bond with each other, unfettered by others’ self-righteous opprobrium. It is the season and each is in season. When they get together, so will their respective constituencies—which heavily overlap, so much so, one cannot tell the “wheat from the tares!” Matt. 13:24-30
http://homepage.mac.com/shanerosenthal/reformationink/mltares.htm
This disunion, this estrangement has severely weakened the black community, just like faulty timing disables an engine. Ministers who have recognized this injurious alienation and who have worked to overcome it, have included Rev. C.L. Franklin, the father of Aretha Franklin, and his good friend, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At critical times during the Montgomery bus boycott, Dr. King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, would troll for, and obtain the support of, denizens of the diverse dives frequented by blacks, places which the traditional black church excoriates as “juke joints”. Jesus also patronized the “juke joints” of his day. And he, too, was criticized by the so-called righteous. Mark 2:15 “While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.”
The scriptures, once again, are instructive:
If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. Mark 3:24 (NIV)
If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. Mark 3:25 (NIV)
And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. Mark 3:26(NIV)
We—Africans in America—are descendants of the two tribes of Ethiopians of whom Homer sung in The Odyssey. We were also the tallest, fairest, most just of men of whom he sung in The Iliad, from whom the Greeks acquired their gods. Our unity will bring about Satan’s downfall.
http://books.google.com/books?id=jcpQqkHr328C&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=iliad+ethiopians+land+of+the+gods&source=bl&ots=PVbONmQHtx&sig=7gi4qQGeKTVThH67ZvqifVdgASI&hl=en&ei=p57yTKfmIcWqlAeP4aX0DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=iliad%20ethiopians%20land%20of%20the%20gods&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=2wtYvc2ZLT0C&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=ethiopia+land+of+the+gods+iliad&source=bl&ots=eU2IduiRN3&sig=eSsoFZGpWInoEvzbTLA7S4YGKKo&hl=en&ei=EqHyTJ9rxZuWB47SrIIN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false http://tseday.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/ethiopia-birth-of-the-gods-by-diodorus/ http://endingstereotypesforamerica.org/black_and_white_morality.html
Everything has a shadow. Neither can the two, the shadow and its object, be separated from each other, where there is light. As Smokey Robinson has said “It would be easier to take the wet from water, or the dry from sand.”
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/What-Love-Has-Joined-Together-lyrics-The-Temptations/5505A3B5B4C3948248256D2F002C6A9B http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzfqStzknhA&feature=related
The blues and spirituals are “what love has joined together” in our people. Those who resist this union have long “kicked against the pricks.” Acts 9:5. The music of black people, along with their elan, their “cool,” their mojo,has saturated the globe, as evidenced, in part, by the Michael Jackson phenomenon. This divine love, perfect union, this consummation has been hitherto thwarted by well-meant, though unnatural and often hypocritical, resistance from church folk. Somehow, they saw something ungodly in the celebration of physical love, passion between a man and a woman in song and especially in dance, notwithstanding the Old Testament book’s “Song of Solomon,” and the profligacy of David, “a man after God’s own heart.” Acts 13:22.
It was “sin”-- blues, jazz, etc. --they ominously intoned. “When, in truth, under their cosmogony, practically everything is excoriated as sin, outside church. Yet the holy scriptures condemn all, even the so-called saints! “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” http://bible.cc/romans/3-23.htm Rom. 3:23. This holier-than-thou dogma and creed have given rise to wide-spread hypocrisy, and scandalous apostacy of historic proportions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy
Some of the principal proponents of this version of piety have been caught in homosexual and/or extramarital relations, over the centuries; including that abomination of degradation involving sexual abuse of little church children.
http://www.enotes.com/catholic-child-abuse-article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases
Another Lincoln quote concludes the matter---
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/congress.htm
#30
Monday, November 22, 2010
THE COLLARD GREEN TREE
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
THE COLLARD GREEN TREE
We’ve all heard of Jack and the Bean Stalk. That child hood fable sent chills down our spine as the giant furiously pursued Jack down the beanstalk, in pursuit of his stolen harp. http://pbjclibrary.state.ar.us/mural.htm
The precise nature of the beanstalk is not revealed. Whether kidney bean, lima bean, pinto bean, or some other, we know not. We simply know that it mysteriously grew over night from five magic beans, given to Jack by a stranger in exchange for his old cow. We also know Jack chopped it down in time before the child-eating giant could climb down to earth on it from above.
While reflecting on this fable, my mind drifted back to a time, long ago when I encountered a colossal collard green tree in southern California of all places!
Could there be a more unlikely “tree?”
I’d heard of the “fritter tree.” This alluring, imaginary tree was reputedly laden with gifts and goodies for unwary African children snookered into devious slave catchers’ nets, according to at least one account, by Charlie Smith, a 134 year old former slave, who had been so beguiled http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0394970/ ; http://www.ovguide.com/movies_tv/charlie_smith_and_the_fritter_tree.htm# The earth has many strange trees, but few as strange as that which I now recount. http://www.thatsweird.net/picture37.shtml
As everybody knows, greens are vegetables. Vegetables do not grow on trees.
But, collard greens sometimes grow on trees, I was surprised to learn. http://www.bountifulgardens.org/products.asp?dept=141
I first saw a collard green tree in Los Angeles in my Aunt Suzie McDonald’s back yard. In fact, she plucked some collard greens from the tree and cooked me up a mess of them during my visit, during the summer of 1973. They were quite good. Their tree was approximately fifteen feet tall, and approximately thirty years old, according to Uncle Walter McDonald.
I know collard greens reasonably well. My father, Elvis Mitchell Coleman, Aunt Suzie’s brother, had grown them in our back yard, practically year round, sowing as soon as the earth thawed sufficiently in late winter. Native Mississippians, we ate greens almost every day, either: collards, mustard, turnip, occasionally spinach.
Although we migrated to Missouri in the early 1950’s, our babies’ first solid food still consisted of pot liquor from greens mashed up in cornbread mush, which daddy would mash up and feed our babies with his hands. They’d love it! And they would usually cry for more at the end of feeding.
Collard greens are also known as tree cabbage or non-heading cabbage. http://urbanext.illinois.edu/veggies/collards.cfm Scientific Name: Brassica oleracea var. viridis http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cgi-bin/measure.pl , http://urbanext.illinois.edu/veggies/collards.cfm The good: This food is low in Saturated Fat, and very low in Cholesterol. It is also a good source of Protein, Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol), Thiamin , Niacin, Magnesium , Phosphorus and Potassium, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Calcium, Iron and Manganese. http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2411/2#ixzz15py7MqQp
A vegetable commonly associated with southern African American diets, even former kale snobs are discovering and celebrating its nutritional and aesthetic value. http://www.veggiegardeningtips.com/paying-homage-to-collard-greens/ http://oregontreehugger.com/collard-greens/comment-page-1/#comment-4186 Frankly, I cannot say that I’ve ever knowingly consumed kale, which doubtless is a cousin of the collard green. http://www.botany.com/brassica.html http://www.veggiegardeningtips.com/growing-fall-vegetables/
I wonder about, and am dubious of, alleged black people who are ashamed of collard greens. I speak now of Tiger Woods, whom professional golfer Fuzzie Zoeller “outed” by means of a reference to fried chicken, another southern favorite, and collard greens after Tiger won his first Masters tournament. According to Wikipedia:
But at the 1997 Masters tournament, Zoeller made an off-hand remark regarding Tiger Woods. After finishing tied for 34th place with a score of 78, Zoeller, referring to the following year's Masters Champions Dinner, for which the defending champion selects the menu, said, "He's doing quite well, pretty impressive. That little boy is driving well and he's putting well. He's doing everything it takes to win. So, you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not to serve fried chicken next year. Got it." Zoeller then smiled, snapped his fingers, and walked away before turning and adding, "or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_Zoeller
Of course, Tiger Woods, despite his father’s unmistakable Negroid ethnicity, may not be “black,” according to Tiger, because his mother is from Thailand. Whatever, it certainly appeared that “little” Tiger was offended by Zoeller’s presumptive insinuation of his “Negroness” by his culinary references.
Tiger is not alone. A brouhaha erupted at NBC during black history month, no less, in 2010, when the posted cafeteria menu supposedly “offended” some alleged black people, because it included references to fried chicken and—gasp—collard greens! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/04/nbc-serves-fried-chicken_n_449821.html NBC apologized, even the soul food dinner was nevertheless served as advertised, and apparently enjoyed!
What is it about collard greens? A cashier at a local grocery store was bold enough to ask me what collard greens were, while stating she did not eat them. “Ask your manager,” I snapped, thoroughly miffed she did not know the identity of the very produce, which she was paid to price and to sell.
In this age of “natural” food or “organic” food, it would seem that the collard green would be celebrated as a wonder green! After all, in substantial part, it is responsible for the nourishment of some of the world’s greatest athletes, musicians, ministers, entertainers, soldiers, laborers, politicians, patriots, educators, administrators, writers, lawyers, physicians, artists, etc.
Instead of celebrating collard greens’ historic and enduring vitality, certain grocery stores do not sell them at all, for whatever reason. And many persons treat them like a second-class, taboo food, condemned by history and sociology. Jews and Muslims have religious proscriptions against pork. Hindus have like proscriptions against the consumption of cattle or beef.
But, I am not aware of any religious proscriptions against collard greens, unless the vanity of collard green snobs constitutes a creed!
#30
THE COLLARD GREEN TREE
We’ve all heard of Jack and the Bean Stalk. That child hood fable sent chills down our spine as the giant furiously pursued Jack down the beanstalk, in pursuit of his stolen harp. http://pbjclibrary.state.ar.us/mural.htm
The precise nature of the beanstalk is not revealed. Whether kidney bean, lima bean, pinto bean, or some other, we know not. We simply know that it mysteriously grew over night from five magic beans, given to Jack by a stranger in exchange for his old cow. We also know Jack chopped it down in time before the child-eating giant could climb down to earth on it from above.
While reflecting on this fable, my mind drifted back to a time, long ago when I encountered a colossal collard green tree in southern California of all places!
Could there be a more unlikely “tree?”
I’d heard of the “fritter tree.” This alluring, imaginary tree was reputedly laden with gifts and goodies for unwary African children snookered into devious slave catchers’ nets, according to at least one account, by Charlie Smith, a 134 year old former slave, who had been so beguiled http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0394970/ ; http://www.ovguide.com/movies_tv/charlie_smith_and_the_fritter_tree.htm# The earth has many strange trees, but few as strange as that which I now recount. http://www.thatsweird.net/picture37.shtml
As everybody knows, greens are vegetables. Vegetables do not grow on trees.
But, collard greens sometimes grow on trees, I was surprised to learn. http://www.bountifulgardens.org/products.asp?dept=141
I first saw a collard green tree in Los Angeles in my Aunt Suzie McDonald’s back yard. In fact, she plucked some collard greens from the tree and cooked me up a mess of them during my visit, during the summer of 1973. They were quite good. Their tree was approximately fifteen feet tall, and approximately thirty years old, according to Uncle Walter McDonald.
I know collard greens reasonably well. My father, Elvis Mitchell Coleman, Aunt Suzie’s brother, had grown them in our back yard, practically year round, sowing as soon as the earth thawed sufficiently in late winter. Native Mississippians, we ate greens almost every day, either: collards, mustard, turnip, occasionally spinach.
Although we migrated to Missouri in the early 1950’s, our babies’ first solid food still consisted of pot liquor from greens mashed up in cornbread mush, which daddy would mash up and feed our babies with his hands. They’d love it! And they would usually cry for more at the end of feeding.
Collard greens are also known as tree cabbage or non-heading cabbage. http://urbanext.illinois.edu/veggies/collards.cfm Scientific Name: Brassica oleracea var. viridis http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cgi-bin/measure.pl , http://urbanext.illinois.edu/veggies/collards.cfm The good: This food is low in Saturated Fat, and very low in Cholesterol. It is also a good source of Protein, Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol), Thiamin , Niacin, Magnesium , Phosphorus and Potassium, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Calcium, Iron and Manganese. http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2411/2#ixzz15py7MqQp
A vegetable commonly associated with southern African American diets, even former kale snobs are discovering and celebrating its nutritional and aesthetic value. http://www.veggiegardeningtips.com/paying-homage-to-collard-greens/ http://oregontreehugger.com/collard-greens/comment-page-1/#comment-4186 Frankly, I cannot say that I’ve ever knowingly consumed kale, which doubtless is a cousin of the collard green. http://www.botany.com/brassica.html http://www.veggiegardeningtips.com/growing-fall-vegetables/
I wonder about, and am dubious of, alleged black people who are ashamed of collard greens. I speak now of Tiger Woods, whom professional golfer Fuzzie Zoeller “outed” by means of a reference to fried chicken, another southern favorite, and collard greens after Tiger won his first Masters tournament. According to Wikipedia:
But at the 1997 Masters tournament, Zoeller made an off-hand remark regarding Tiger Woods. After finishing tied for 34th place with a score of 78, Zoeller, referring to the following year's Masters Champions Dinner, for which the defending champion selects the menu, said, "He's doing quite well, pretty impressive. That little boy is driving well and he's putting well. He's doing everything it takes to win. So, you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not to serve fried chicken next year. Got it." Zoeller then smiled, snapped his fingers, and walked away before turning and adding, "or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_Zoeller
Of course, Tiger Woods, despite his father’s unmistakable Negroid ethnicity, may not be “black,” according to Tiger, because his mother is from Thailand. Whatever, it certainly appeared that “little” Tiger was offended by Zoeller’s presumptive insinuation of his “Negroness” by his culinary references.
Tiger is not alone. A brouhaha erupted at NBC during black history month, no less, in 2010, when the posted cafeteria menu supposedly “offended” some alleged black people, because it included references to fried chicken and—gasp—collard greens! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/04/nbc-serves-fried-chicken_n_449821.html NBC apologized, even the soul food dinner was nevertheless served as advertised, and apparently enjoyed!
What is it about collard greens? A cashier at a local grocery store was bold enough to ask me what collard greens were, while stating she did not eat them. “Ask your manager,” I snapped, thoroughly miffed she did not know the identity of the very produce, which she was paid to price and to sell.
In this age of “natural” food or “organic” food, it would seem that the collard green would be celebrated as a wonder green! After all, in substantial part, it is responsible for the nourishment of some of the world’s greatest athletes, musicians, ministers, entertainers, soldiers, laborers, politicians, patriots, educators, administrators, writers, lawyers, physicians, artists, etc.
Instead of celebrating collard greens’ historic and enduring vitality, certain grocery stores do not sell them at all, for whatever reason. And many persons treat them like a second-class, taboo food, condemned by history and sociology. Jews and Muslims have religious proscriptions against pork. Hindus have like proscriptions against the consumption of cattle or beef.
But, I am not aware of any religious proscriptions against collard greens, unless the vanity of collard green snobs constitutes a creed!
#30
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Manifest Musicality and Much, Much More
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Manifest Musicality and Much, Much More
“Killer Joe”-- by Benny Golson
http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/193.html
Somehow we’ve come to
This sublime moment.
“We” being denizens of this
Earthen Globe.
“We” being those with
Ears to hear, if not eyes to
See. To hear, to hear, to hear, to hear:
“Killer Joe,” “Killer Joe,” Killer Joe.”
Langston Hughes once painted a
“Montage of a Dream Deferred,”
A love-song to our legacy of life, love
And laughter, in iconic “Harlem,” via the
Myriad ancient, dusky rivers we’ve known;
A testament to our spiritual transfiguration
And cultural transformation
Transmuted, now into universal motifs
With which the whole world rocks and riffs.
From deference to deliverance in:
the musicality of Benny Golson’s saxophone; or of
Errol Garner‘s piano. http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/160.html
Or Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington’s
Transportation “uptown” on the “A Train”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhK-zYfFsIY&NR=1
From deference to deliverance:
In the politics of Barack Obama.
In the virtuosity of Michael Jackson.
In the social gospel/prophesy of
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Montage,” being muted, yet manifest melodies and
Rooted, yet reified, rhythms marking time and inspiring
Subliminally. Beckoning and becoming
In accordance with allegorical algorithms,
Amid dimensions both cosmic and cosmological.
“For where two or three are gathered together
In my name, I am there in the
Midst of them.” (Matt.18:20)
Black, white, mulatto: two or three.
Jesus in the midst who also had a
Flock, “which are not of this fold; them
Also I must bring, and they will
Hear my voice; and there will be
One flock and one shepherd.” John 10:16.
But, why the United States of America?
Why here? How here? How jazz?
How blues? How Gospel?
How Spirituals? Why here?
Boogie-Woogie? Rhythm and Blues?
Ragtime? How here? Why here?
Africa met Europe also in Brazil.
In Cuba. In Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and
Curacao; Europe met Africa in Venezuela,
In Panama, in Colombia, in Costa Rica,
In Haiti, in the Dominican Republic.
How here? Why here?
Symbolized by Missouri’s Compromise. 36’30.”
Slave yet “free.” on the Kansas cusp.
DuSable, York. Early explorers.
Seeking sanctuary. Outrunning out-liers.
And outright liars.
How hear? Langston of Joplin, Missouri?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyqwvC5s4n8
Or Scott Joplin of Sedalia, Missouri?
Or Coleman Hawkins of St, Joseph, Missouri?
Or Charlie Parker of Kansas City, Mo/Kan?
Or Miles Davis of East St. Louis, Ill/Mo?
Or Blind Lemon Jefferson of Warrensburg, Mo?
Reconciliation. Me, We, and Thee.
Our music leads, but our theology lags.
Truth held hostage, in catholic rags.
Here and there the light breaks through
Overwhelming oppression’s residue.
Slowly awakening we see: (Zech 4:1-14)
a candlestick of gold
With a bowl-- upon the top;
seven lamps with seven pipes,
And two olive trees full and ripe.
It’s no game of “Show and Tell.”
This word of the Lord to Zerubbabel.
“Not by might, nor by power,
But by my spirit,” said the lord of hosts.
Manifest Musicality to the Uttermost:
Killer Joe.
Manifest Musicality and Much, Much More
“Killer Joe”-- by Benny Golson
http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/193.html
Somehow we’ve come to
This sublime moment.
“We” being denizens of this
Earthen Globe.
“We” being those with
Ears to hear, if not eyes to
See. To hear, to hear, to hear, to hear:
“Killer Joe,” “Killer Joe,” Killer Joe.”
Langston Hughes once painted a
“Montage of a Dream Deferred,”
A love-song to our legacy of life, love
And laughter, in iconic “Harlem,” via the
Myriad ancient, dusky rivers we’ve known;
A testament to our spiritual transfiguration
And cultural transformation
Transmuted, now into universal motifs
With which the whole world rocks and riffs.
From deference to deliverance in:
the musicality of Benny Golson’s saxophone; or of
Errol Garner‘s piano. http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/160.html
Or Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington’s
Transportation “uptown” on the “A Train”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhK-zYfFsIY&NR=1
From deference to deliverance:
In the politics of Barack Obama.
In the virtuosity of Michael Jackson.
In the social gospel/prophesy of
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Montage,” being muted, yet manifest melodies and
Rooted, yet reified, rhythms marking time and inspiring
Subliminally. Beckoning and becoming
In accordance with allegorical algorithms,
Amid dimensions both cosmic and cosmological.
“For where two or three are gathered together
In my name, I am there in the
Midst of them.” (Matt.18:20)
Black, white, mulatto: two or three.
Jesus in the midst who also had a
Flock, “which are not of this fold; them
Also I must bring, and they will
Hear my voice; and there will be
One flock and one shepherd.” John 10:16.
But, why the United States of America?
Why here? How here? How jazz?
How blues? How Gospel?
How Spirituals? Why here?
Boogie-Woogie? Rhythm and Blues?
Ragtime? How here? Why here?
Africa met Europe also in Brazil.
In Cuba. In Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and
Curacao; Europe met Africa in Venezuela,
In Panama, in Colombia, in Costa Rica,
In Haiti, in the Dominican Republic.
How here? Why here?
Symbolized by Missouri’s Compromise. 36’30.”
Slave yet “free.” on the Kansas cusp.
DuSable, York. Early explorers.
Seeking sanctuary. Outrunning out-liers.
And outright liars.
How hear? Langston of Joplin, Missouri?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyqwvC5s4n8
Or Scott Joplin of Sedalia, Missouri?
Or Coleman Hawkins of St, Joseph, Missouri?
Or Charlie Parker of Kansas City, Mo/Kan?
Or Miles Davis of East St. Louis, Ill/Mo?
Or Blind Lemon Jefferson of Warrensburg, Mo?
Reconciliation. Me, We, and Thee.
Our music leads, but our theology lags.
Truth held hostage, in catholic rags.
Here and there the light breaks through
Overwhelming oppression’s residue.
Slowly awakening we see: (Zech 4:1-14)
a candlestick of gold
With a bowl-- upon the top;
seven lamps with seven pipes,
And two olive trees full and ripe.
It’s no game of “Show and Tell.”
This word of the Lord to Zerubbabel.
“Not by might, nor by power,
But by my spirit,” said the lord of hosts.
Manifest Musicality to the Uttermost:
Killer Joe.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
My Favorite Teacher
MY FAVORITE TEACHER
By Larry Delano Coleman
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Her name was Mrs. Bernadine Smith Davis. She was my fourth grade teacher at James Milton Turner Elementary School in Meachem Park, Missouri. Rumor had it that she had been specially brought in to tame our precocious class of third graders. This rumor has never been substantiated. One thing that I can personally substantiate, however, is that on the first day of school in the 1960-1961 academic year, in the Kirkwood School District, she called me, by name, to the front of the class and proceeded to whip my ass with a highly polished mahogany paddle, which she held in her white-gloved right hand.
As whippings went, at that time, it was fairly standard. I had had enough of them to know, by then, to how to grade them. What was not standard, by any means, was Mrs. Davis. She was quite the lady. White gloves? The timing of this whipping, its manner of execution, and the selection of its object were all strategic, it now seems ,in retrospect. But, at the time, being only 9 years old, I was decidedly flummoxed by its suddenness.
Truth is, I was not a bad child. I was, however, mischievous, probing, and inquisitive: a fairly typical boy. And, it was, after all, the first day of school, when one reunited with old friends, caught up on summer gossip, and measured arms with your colleagues to secure your niche in the pecking order. I was considered to be “smart”. In fact, I may have been the smartest student—boy or girl—in class. Now, I may not have been the “brightest”. The difference between smart and bright is quite substantial . Not all smart people are bright, and not all bright people are smart. “Bright” people are like Martha, while “smart” people are like her sister, Mary, both sisters of Lazarus, in the Bible. (Luke 10:38-42) Bright people follow directions, and do what , they believe, is required or expected of them. Smart people do pretty much what they want, when they want, beholden only to themselves. I was and continue to be smart.
Evidently, Mrs. Davis thought I was being a smart-aleck, when I continued talking discreetly, despite her repeated admonitions to the class to be quiet. “Larry,” she said, “Come to the front of the room.” This can’t be good, I thought to myself. “Ugh oh,” somebody warned anonymously. An expectant hush fell over the class. As I arrived at her desk, she reached into her desk drawer and retrieved the aforementioned paddle, which glistened in the morning light. “Did you not hear me tell the class to be quiet while I was talking?” she asked. I was trapped. If I said “yes,” my talking despite her, constituted insubordination. If I said “no” I did not hear, I would be lying, which was even worse. “Ma’am?” I innocently intoned, stalling for time while begging for mercy. What she said next concluded the matter.
“Bend over!” The class got the message, lick after lick. And so did I. This lady didn’t play! After this dramatic introduction, our class abided Mrs. Davis’ every command, without question. In so doing, we all materially benefitted from this great master teacher.
One day we were learning about Japan. None of us seemed to know much about it. So, Mrs. Davis sent me to the encyclopedia to learn something about it, and report to the class. Now, I knew our set of encyclopedia were on a bookcase in back of the room. I knew where they were. But, I did not know what they were, nor did I know how to use them. But, I didn’t tell Mrs. Davis this out of shame.
So, dutifully, I went to the set of encyclopedia and pulled down the first book of the set, which, of course, began with “A”. I then turned the first page, second, third, etc. But, still no “Japan.” I was back there so long without reporting about Japan, Mrs. Davis, inquired as to my progress, several times.
Finally, she came back to me and the encyclopedia to see what was going on. Quickly assessing the situation, she looked into my frightened, pleading eyes, and said: “You poor baby. You don’t know how to use the encyclopedia!”
To my surprise and relief, she gave me a hug, and said “Thank you at least for trying to find Japan, Larry.” Then, she called the whole class around us and proceeded to teach all of us how to use the encyclopedia, alphabetically. In so doing, we found “Japan” and learned that it was an island nation near China, against whom we had fought World War II. That day we all learned about the encyclopedia, Japan, and the value of “at least trying.”
Mrs. Davis’ greatest triumph, however, is one she could neither witness nor measure. As the 1960-1961 academic year drew to a close, she told us that it would be important for us to continue learning over the summer. But, she could not be with us. She would, instead, draw up lesson plans from such core subjects as mathematics, science, reading, etc. which we could carry out over the summer, going from house-to-house, on a volunteer basis. Then, when the new school year opened, we would be ready to resume work.
So disciplined were we by then, Mrs. Davis’ influence served as a guiding spirit for us over the summer, while we carried out her summer curriculum in absentia , moving according to schedule from house-to-house. Learning for us was as much fun as “kick ball.” All participants benefitted greatly, and yet do. Mrs. Bernadine Smith Davis was definitely my favorite teacher.
#30
By Larry Delano Coleman
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Her name was Mrs. Bernadine Smith Davis. She was my fourth grade teacher at James Milton Turner Elementary School in Meachem Park, Missouri. Rumor had it that she had been specially brought in to tame our precocious class of third graders. This rumor has never been substantiated. One thing that I can personally substantiate, however, is that on the first day of school in the 1960-1961 academic year, in the Kirkwood School District, she called me, by name, to the front of the class and proceeded to whip my ass with a highly polished mahogany paddle, which she held in her white-gloved right hand.
As whippings went, at that time, it was fairly standard. I had had enough of them to know, by then, to how to grade them. What was not standard, by any means, was Mrs. Davis. She was quite the lady. White gloves? The timing of this whipping, its manner of execution, and the selection of its object were all strategic, it now seems ,in retrospect. But, at the time, being only 9 years old, I was decidedly flummoxed by its suddenness.
Truth is, I was not a bad child. I was, however, mischievous, probing, and inquisitive: a fairly typical boy. And, it was, after all, the first day of school, when one reunited with old friends, caught up on summer gossip, and measured arms with your colleagues to secure your niche in the pecking order. I was considered to be “smart”. In fact, I may have been the smartest student—boy or girl—in class. Now, I may not have been the “brightest”. The difference between smart and bright is quite substantial . Not all smart people are bright, and not all bright people are smart. “Bright” people are like Martha, while “smart” people are like her sister, Mary, both sisters of Lazarus, in the Bible. (Luke 10:38-42) Bright people follow directions, and do what , they believe, is required or expected of them. Smart people do pretty much what they want, when they want, beholden only to themselves. I was and continue to be smart.
Evidently, Mrs. Davis thought I was being a smart-aleck, when I continued talking discreetly, despite her repeated admonitions to the class to be quiet. “Larry,” she said, “Come to the front of the room.” This can’t be good, I thought to myself. “Ugh oh,” somebody warned anonymously. An expectant hush fell over the class. As I arrived at her desk, she reached into her desk drawer and retrieved the aforementioned paddle, which glistened in the morning light. “Did you not hear me tell the class to be quiet while I was talking?” she asked. I was trapped. If I said “yes,” my talking despite her, constituted insubordination. If I said “no” I did not hear, I would be lying, which was even worse. “Ma’am?” I innocently intoned, stalling for time while begging for mercy. What she said next concluded the matter.
“Bend over!” The class got the message, lick after lick. And so did I. This lady didn’t play! After this dramatic introduction, our class abided Mrs. Davis’ every command, without question. In so doing, we all materially benefitted from this great master teacher.
One day we were learning about Japan. None of us seemed to know much about it. So, Mrs. Davis sent me to the encyclopedia to learn something about it, and report to the class. Now, I knew our set of encyclopedia were on a bookcase in back of the room. I knew where they were. But, I did not know what they were, nor did I know how to use them. But, I didn’t tell Mrs. Davis this out of shame.
So, dutifully, I went to the set of encyclopedia and pulled down the first book of the set, which, of course, began with “A”. I then turned the first page, second, third, etc. But, still no “Japan.” I was back there so long without reporting about Japan, Mrs. Davis, inquired as to my progress, several times.
Finally, she came back to me and the encyclopedia to see what was going on. Quickly assessing the situation, she looked into my frightened, pleading eyes, and said: “You poor baby. You don’t know how to use the encyclopedia!”
To my surprise and relief, she gave me a hug, and said “Thank you at least for trying to find Japan, Larry.” Then, she called the whole class around us and proceeded to teach all of us how to use the encyclopedia, alphabetically. In so doing, we found “Japan” and learned that it was an island nation near China, against whom we had fought World War II. That day we all learned about the encyclopedia, Japan, and the value of “at least trying.”
Mrs. Davis’ greatest triumph, however, is one she could neither witness nor measure. As the 1960-1961 academic year drew to a close, she told us that it would be important for us to continue learning over the summer. But, she could not be with us. She would, instead, draw up lesson plans from such core subjects as mathematics, science, reading, etc. which we could carry out over the summer, going from house-to-house, on a volunteer basis. Then, when the new school year opened, we would be ready to resume work.
So disciplined were we by then, Mrs. Davis’ influence served as a guiding spirit for us over the summer, while we carried out her summer curriculum in absentia , moving according to schedule from house-to-house. Learning for us was as much fun as “kick ball.” All participants benefitted greatly, and yet do. Mrs. Bernadine Smith Davis was definitely my favorite teacher.
#30
Friday, November 12, 2010
Enough to kill you: confessions of a solo practitioner
Enough to kill you: confessions of a solo practitioner
October 15, 2010
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
Dread tinctured by angst discomfits me, as I write this epitaph on 33 years of professional life as a lawyer. This was not how it was supposed to end, this concluding phase of my private law practice.
I suppose I shall be deemed a failure by some. I was, after all, felled, finally, by an evolving stroke, which started out mildly and which culminated in complete paralysis—hemiplegia- left-sided. The doctors, despite multiple inquiries, have never told me what precisely caused my cardiovascular accident (CVA).
There were, of course, the usual suspects; diabetes, high blood pressure, morbid obesity, a crushing work load, unappreciative and/or non-paying clients, persecution by IRS and the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel of the Missouri Supreme Court, swarms of creditors, and no employees to help bear the load. Enough!
It was enough to kill you. It almost did.
But God, in his infinite mercy, spared me. I express my gratitude to him by heeding his word and warning, by returning to my first love: WRITING. This first love has impelled me to read impulsively, compulsively since childhood, and to write impulsively, compulsively from childhood. I have read deeply and yet read: Shakespeare, Dumas, Mark Twain, Richard Wright, Saint Augustine, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, The Bible, The Koran, Machiavelli, Herodotus, Homer and many, many others. A writer is perforce a reader, and a reader is perforce a writer.
At the end of ninth grade Civics, I initially listed “writer” as my future vocation, only to change it to “lawyer,” later. I feared the proverbial, if apocryphal, Greenwich Village table-waiting vocation looming as a less-than-desirable occupation, pre-publication. “Lawyer” was more emotionally satisfying, more financially promising, and also conformed to my skill sets. One could always do both, right? I rationalized. Along the way, I took a Bachelor of Arts degree in Print Journalism (cum laude) at Howard University in 1973, while serving as Editor in Chief of THE HILLTOP, which was founded by the great writer, and folklorist, Zora Neal Hurston, whom I’ve also read, during her student years at Howard in the 1920’s. http://www.zoranealehurston.com/
While a student in Howard’s School of Communications, my senior year, I took a course in Communications Law, which was taught by then-attorney, now Judge Paul Webber. What amazed me about the class was the fact that although the cases in our textbook were written in pristine English, and although I deemed myself to be a master of the English language, even then, I could not understand what they were saying. The language was too arcane, obtuse. How can something be written in English, and I not understand it? I enrolled in Howard Law School to find out that specific answer.
I obtained my Juris Doctor from the fountainhead of American civil rights law, Howard Law School in Washington, D.C. in 1976, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_University_School_of_Law#cite_note-howard-6 being admitted to the Missouri Bar in 1977. So armed, I set out to conquer the world. Or, at least to mollify it. Along the way, I learned that “legalese” is a language unto itself, with its own devices, idioms, conventions, and vocabulary; and that what plainly appears may not be as plain as it appears.
Cervantes’ Don Quixote at least had the loyal, if wistful, Sancho Panza, as a sidekick. http://www.online-literature.com/cervantes/don_quixote/ I, however, was utterly alone, having left the District of Columbia where I knew many, and moving to Kansas City, Missouri, where I knew few. Yet, therein, was the vortex of my spirit perfected: in the wilderness of western Missouri, in the land where the Civil War began.
My first job was with the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of the Regional Solicitor in 1976. There, I enforced Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules and regulations in a four state region. I also enforced minimum wage and overtime laws. After a 2 ½ year stint, I left to become an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri in February 1979, the only black AUSA in that office at that time, and until I left in August 1986 to launch my own practice. At the U.S. Justice Department I did exclusively civil litigation, by choice, trial and appellate. I left, because my soul cried out for “freedom.”
No law firm, black or white, to which I applied, would hire me, so I struck out on my own, emulating thereby the Horatio Alger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Alger%2C_Jr. legend, which I had not read – although I did read Gerald Singer’s classic, How to go into Private Practice Without Missing A Meal. http://www.amazon.com/Directly-Into-Your-Practice-Succeed/dp/B0006E7XNC/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1. I’m happy to say I never missed a meal either! Au contraire, I easily gained 100 pounds during my 23 years of private practice!
I could not have chosen a more inauspicious time to launch a solo, largely civil rights, practice in the western district of Missouri. The Western District of Missouri is historically “conservative,”a popular and palatable euphemism for racist. Jackson County, which houses Kansas City and Independence, was one of four western Missouri counties which were subject to General Thomas Ewing’s infamous and efficacious General Order # 11, issued four days following Confederate guerilla leader William Quantrill’s fiery raid and massacre at Lawrence, Kansas in August 21,1863. http://www.theamericanmuseum.org/december.09.cover.html
That order resulted in the forced evacuation of all rural Confederate sympathizers from the counties of Jackson, Cass, Bates, and Vernon from which Quantrill and others drew comfort and support in the execution of their depredations. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, along with its two-mile-distant counterpart, the District of Kansas, across the wide Missouri River in Kansas, were instrumental in aborting post-Civil War civil rights “Reconstruction”efforts, while ushering in “Jim Crow,”separate-but-equal segregation practices, through decisions invalidating the Rights Act of 1875. http://www.answers.com/topic/civil-rights-cases
The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently affirmed these decisions. Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883);;; http://www.learner.org/courses/democracyinamerica/dia_5/dia_5_readings.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Cases.
This decision, also featured an admonitory dissent by Mr. Justice Harlan, which preceded his more famous dissent in the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson by 13 years.PLESSY v. FERGUSON, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) ; http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=163&invol=53;
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_uncivil.html
I had long been aware of this rancid legacy, and this region’s role in it. From Lloyd Gaines, the honor student from Lincoln University who was purposefully denied admission to the University of Missouri School of Law because of race, Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938)[1], which sable hue, doubtless, contributed to his March 19, 1938, sudden and mysterious “disappearance” in Chicago, Illinois http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_L._Gaines to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which needs no introduction.
An astute student of African American legal history, the historical precedents were well known to me. What I did not know, and could not have known, without honest mentoring and actual experience—both of which I lacked—was the day-to-day situation on the ground, as it related to black solos in light of the legacy. I had heard, for example, that black lawyers, at one time, were prohibited from sitting inside the “bar” of the court room. It had also been widely reported that certain judges at court en banc meetings would openly, and with impunity, use the epithet, “nigger.” Black lawyers, in short, were viewed as grasshoppers and saw themselves as grasshoppers. Black clients overwhelmingly patronized white lawyers, perversely believing that would cancel their racial disadvantage, from which there was no escape.
But, hope sprang eternal, until Ronald Reagan was re-elected President of the United States, in 1984. By 1986, when I opened my office, his so-called “revolution” had imperiously polluted the private practice of law. Unsupported and ubiquitous claims of “frivolous” lawsuits presaged numerous changes to the form and substance of the law practice. Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, particularly Rule 11’s ‘sanctions’ provision , would destroy the traditional fiber of collegiality among plaintiff and defense lawyers. Monetary sanctions in the thousands of dollars were routinely sought and awarded against plaintiffs’ lawyers by federal judges who were appointed during the Reagan era, and Bush eras.
Secondly, insurance companies, the “third rail” in American litigation tightened their purse strings, so claims adjusters who were formerly content to “move along and get along, ”were now obliged to reject and discard old formulas for dispute resolution. This resulted in more lawsuits being filed, which appreciably increased the costs of civil litigation for plaintiffs’ lawyers, especially solo practitioners. As these “costs” are often borne, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, by plaintiffs’ lawyers, their income decreased as their expenses increased.
In a similar vein the insurance lobby had blanketed the airwaves with lies about “run-away” juries, which would award millions of dollars for minimal slights or for manufactured injuries. Their favorite involved the elderly passenger who put the McDonald’s hot coffee cup between her knees, which spilled, scalding her. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants
This case became the poster child for frivolous lawsuits to a gullible and non-empathetic public, conditioned by media ads.
A corollary consequence to this was one-sided media hype was that the plaintiffs themselves came to have an exaggerated and distorted views of the value of their own case, based upon media reports about other cases. If that guy got $5 million from a jury, why can’t I ? These expectations belied the reality that well over 90% of civil rights cases are lost in U.S. District Court before they ever get to a jury. This truth is not reported in the media, and is not generally known. Plaintiffs labor under an illusion of judicial liberality in civil rights litigation, where none exists on the federal level at all.
So, the plaintiff either resents, distrusts, or files a bar complaint against the lawyer, believing the lawyer is breaching his duty of representation. I have had such a complaint filed against me. As a consequence, my license was “probated.” That means it was suspended and placed on probation for one year, while I completed certain conditions. During this period of probation I was able to practice law, while making quarterly reports to the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel. http://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=34347
Another corollary consequence of federal judicial hubris is that civil rights defense counsel, aware of their hostile reception in federal courts, routinely “remove” civil rights cases from state court, where they may have been originally filed, to federal court where they are routinely dismissed, or subjected to “summary judgment.” Plaintiffs’ lawyers rightfully fear federal court.
Summary Judgment is a procedural mechanism whereby a court can dispose of a case summarily, without hearing any evidence in open court, basing its ruling solely on documents filed and legal inferences. When the court determines there to be no genuine issues of material fact, warranting trial, it can grant judgment for the defendant, without more.
It’s enough to kill you, if you are a black, plaintiff’s civil rights attorney, and enough to sicken you if you’re white.
All of these factors, and others, have an adverse economic impact from which there is no apparent relief. Tax woes and debt collectors vamp. It’s enough to kill you! It almost did!
#30
October 15, 2010
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
Dread tinctured by angst discomfits me, as I write this epitaph on 33 years of professional life as a lawyer. This was not how it was supposed to end, this concluding phase of my private law practice.
I suppose I shall be deemed a failure by some. I was, after all, felled, finally, by an evolving stroke, which started out mildly and which culminated in complete paralysis—hemiplegia- left-sided. The doctors, despite multiple inquiries, have never told me what precisely caused my cardiovascular accident (CVA).
There were, of course, the usual suspects; diabetes, high blood pressure, morbid obesity, a crushing work load, unappreciative and/or non-paying clients, persecution by IRS and the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel of the Missouri Supreme Court, swarms of creditors, and no employees to help bear the load. Enough!
It was enough to kill you. It almost did.
But God, in his infinite mercy, spared me. I express my gratitude to him by heeding his word and warning, by returning to my first love: WRITING. This first love has impelled me to read impulsively, compulsively since childhood, and to write impulsively, compulsively from childhood. I have read deeply and yet read: Shakespeare, Dumas, Mark Twain, Richard Wright, Saint Augustine, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, The Bible, The Koran, Machiavelli, Herodotus, Homer and many, many others. A writer is perforce a reader, and a reader is perforce a writer.
At the end of ninth grade Civics, I initially listed “writer” as my future vocation, only to change it to “lawyer,” later. I feared the proverbial, if apocryphal, Greenwich Village table-waiting vocation looming as a less-than-desirable occupation, pre-publication. “Lawyer” was more emotionally satisfying, more financially promising, and also conformed to my skill sets. One could always do both, right? I rationalized. Along the way, I took a Bachelor of Arts degree in Print Journalism (cum laude) at Howard University in 1973, while serving as Editor in Chief of THE HILLTOP, which was founded by the great writer, and folklorist, Zora Neal Hurston, whom I’ve also read, during her student years at Howard in the 1920’s. http://www.zoranealehurston.com/
While a student in Howard’s School of Communications, my senior year, I took a course in Communications Law, which was taught by then-attorney, now Judge Paul Webber. What amazed me about the class was the fact that although the cases in our textbook were written in pristine English, and although I deemed myself to be a master of the English language, even then, I could not understand what they were saying. The language was too arcane, obtuse. How can something be written in English, and I not understand it? I enrolled in Howard Law School to find out that specific answer.
I obtained my Juris Doctor from the fountainhead of American civil rights law, Howard Law School in Washington, D.C. in 1976, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_University_School_of_Law#cite_note-howard-6 being admitted to the Missouri Bar in 1977. So armed, I set out to conquer the world. Or, at least to mollify it. Along the way, I learned that “legalese” is a language unto itself, with its own devices, idioms, conventions, and vocabulary; and that what plainly appears may not be as plain as it appears.
Cervantes’ Don Quixote at least had the loyal, if wistful, Sancho Panza, as a sidekick. http://www.online-literature.com/cervantes/don_quixote/ I, however, was utterly alone, having left the District of Columbia where I knew many, and moving to Kansas City, Missouri, where I knew few. Yet, therein, was the vortex of my spirit perfected: in the wilderness of western Missouri, in the land where the Civil War began.
My first job was with the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of the Regional Solicitor in 1976. There, I enforced Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules and regulations in a four state region. I also enforced minimum wage and overtime laws. After a 2 ½ year stint, I left to become an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri in February 1979, the only black AUSA in that office at that time, and until I left in August 1986 to launch my own practice. At the U.S. Justice Department I did exclusively civil litigation, by choice, trial and appellate. I left, because my soul cried out for “freedom.”
No law firm, black or white, to which I applied, would hire me, so I struck out on my own, emulating thereby the Horatio Alger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Alger%2C_Jr. legend, which I had not read – although I did read Gerald Singer’s classic, How to go into Private Practice Without Missing A Meal. http://www.amazon.com/Directly-Into-Your-Practice-Succeed/dp/B0006E7XNC/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1. I’m happy to say I never missed a meal either! Au contraire, I easily gained 100 pounds during my 23 years of private practice!
I could not have chosen a more inauspicious time to launch a solo, largely civil rights, practice in the western district of Missouri. The Western District of Missouri is historically “conservative,”a popular and palatable euphemism for racist. Jackson County, which houses Kansas City and Independence, was one of four western Missouri counties which were subject to General Thomas Ewing’s infamous and efficacious General Order # 11, issued four days following Confederate guerilla leader William Quantrill’s fiery raid and massacre at Lawrence, Kansas in August 21,1863. http://www.theamericanmuseum.org/december.09.cover.html
That order resulted in the forced evacuation of all rural Confederate sympathizers from the counties of Jackson, Cass, Bates, and Vernon from which Quantrill and others drew comfort and support in the execution of their depredations. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, along with its two-mile-distant counterpart, the District of Kansas, across the wide Missouri River in Kansas, were instrumental in aborting post-Civil War civil rights “Reconstruction”efforts, while ushering in “Jim Crow,”separate-but-equal segregation practices, through decisions invalidating the Rights Act of 1875. http://www.answers.com/topic/civil-rights-cases
The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently affirmed these decisions. Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883);;; http://www.learner.org/courses/democracyinamerica/dia_5/dia_5_readings.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Cases.
This decision, also featured an admonitory dissent by Mr. Justice Harlan, which preceded his more famous dissent in the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson by 13 years.PLESSY v. FERGUSON, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) ; http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=163&invol=53;
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_uncivil.html
I had long been aware of this rancid legacy, and this region’s role in it. From Lloyd Gaines, the honor student from Lincoln University who was purposefully denied admission to the University of Missouri School of Law because of race, Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938)[1], which sable hue, doubtless, contributed to his March 19, 1938, sudden and mysterious “disappearance” in Chicago, Illinois http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_L._Gaines to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which needs no introduction.
An astute student of African American legal history, the historical precedents were well known to me. What I did not know, and could not have known, without honest mentoring and actual experience—both of which I lacked—was the day-to-day situation on the ground, as it related to black solos in light of the legacy. I had heard, for example, that black lawyers, at one time, were prohibited from sitting inside the “bar” of the court room. It had also been widely reported that certain judges at court en banc meetings would openly, and with impunity, use the epithet, “nigger.” Black lawyers, in short, were viewed as grasshoppers and saw themselves as grasshoppers. Black clients overwhelmingly patronized white lawyers, perversely believing that would cancel their racial disadvantage, from which there was no escape.
But, hope sprang eternal, until Ronald Reagan was re-elected President of the United States, in 1984. By 1986, when I opened my office, his so-called “revolution” had imperiously polluted the private practice of law. Unsupported and ubiquitous claims of “frivolous” lawsuits presaged numerous changes to the form and substance of the law practice. Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, particularly Rule 11’s ‘sanctions’ provision , would destroy the traditional fiber of collegiality among plaintiff and defense lawyers. Monetary sanctions in the thousands of dollars were routinely sought and awarded against plaintiffs’ lawyers by federal judges who were appointed during the Reagan era, and Bush eras.
Secondly, insurance companies, the “third rail” in American litigation tightened their purse strings, so claims adjusters who were formerly content to “move along and get along, ”were now obliged to reject and discard old formulas for dispute resolution. This resulted in more lawsuits being filed, which appreciably increased the costs of civil litigation for plaintiffs’ lawyers, especially solo practitioners. As these “costs” are often borne, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, by plaintiffs’ lawyers, their income decreased as their expenses increased.
In a similar vein the insurance lobby had blanketed the airwaves with lies about “run-away” juries, which would award millions of dollars for minimal slights or for manufactured injuries. Their favorite involved the elderly passenger who put the McDonald’s hot coffee cup between her knees, which spilled, scalding her. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants
This case became the poster child for frivolous lawsuits to a gullible and non-empathetic public, conditioned by media ads.
A corollary consequence to this was one-sided media hype was that the plaintiffs themselves came to have an exaggerated and distorted views of the value of their own case, based upon media reports about other cases. If that guy got $5 million from a jury, why can’t I ? These expectations belied the reality that well over 90% of civil rights cases are lost in U.S. District Court before they ever get to a jury. This truth is not reported in the media, and is not generally known. Plaintiffs labor under an illusion of judicial liberality in civil rights litigation, where none exists on the federal level at all.
So, the plaintiff either resents, distrusts, or files a bar complaint against the lawyer, believing the lawyer is breaching his duty of representation. I have had such a complaint filed against me. As a consequence, my license was “probated.” That means it was suspended and placed on probation for one year, while I completed certain conditions. During this period of probation I was able to practice law, while making quarterly reports to the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel. http://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=34347
Another corollary consequence of federal judicial hubris is that civil rights defense counsel, aware of their hostile reception in federal courts, routinely “remove” civil rights cases from state court, where they may have been originally filed, to federal court where they are routinely dismissed, or subjected to “summary judgment.” Plaintiffs’ lawyers rightfully fear federal court.
Summary Judgment is a procedural mechanism whereby a court can dispose of a case summarily, without hearing any evidence in open court, basing its ruling solely on documents filed and legal inferences. When the court determines there to be no genuine issues of material fact, warranting trial, it can grant judgment for the defendant, without more.
It’s enough to kill you, if you are a black, plaintiff’s civil rights attorney, and enough to sicken you if you’re white.
All of these factors, and others, have an adverse economic impact from which there is no apparent relief. Tax woes and debt collectors vamp. It’s enough to kill you! It almost did!
#30
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
IS “BLACK LAWYER” A MISNOMER
September 23, 2009
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
Given the undeniable white supremacist history of these United States of America, as embodied in its constitution, supreme court decisions, legislation, customs, and practices, the term “black lawyer,” came to symbolize, that oxymoronic paradox wherein and whereby certain of these oppressed and repressed subjects and objects of American law came to morph into those who utilize said law’s interstices and blandishments in liberating themselves, and their nation, from its nadir of jurisprudential hypocrisy, and state-sponsored or state-sanctioned domestic terrorism.
Black lawyers, historically, were central to this process of transformation. Are they yet such? Is the term “black lawyer” now a misnomer? Are black lawyers still the “social engineers” envisioned by the late, great Charles Hamilton Houston, former Dean of the Howard University School of Law? Do they in fact conform to the definition above written? Need they?
Or, has that era of the so-called “black lawyer” passed quietly into history with the implosion of the mythical doctrine of “separate but equal,” whose utter destruction was Houston’s crowning achievement, albeit posthumously, in the Brown v. Board of Education, et. al. decisions?
Is the war for equality over? Has “victory” been won? In short, is the term “black lawyer” a misnomer, rendered moot/mute by its own success?
Few and far between are the lawyers of African descent who represent individual civil rights plaintiffs on any level, federal or state, presently, in any kind of case. This is tough work, where the lawyer is unappreciated, if respected by the client, and frequently viewed with enmity by the courts. There are other forms of work, which are far more lucrative and far less stressful.
With the judicial and legislative victories arising from the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960’s, as a tumultuous tailwind, the nation sailed into the 1970’s and 1980’s on the force of yesteryear’s momentum. The goal now became full-fledged and unabashed assimilation into that American mainstream into which blacks had long sought admission.
Black lawyers have successfully pursued professional options in so many realms of endeavor, as individuals, there is hardly a field where they are not to be found. Some black lawyers even mutated to the point they were able to thrive during, and from, the Ronald Reagan years, well into the Bush years, when racial “quotas” were eliminated (assuming they ever really “existed”) and “Affirmative Action” was vilified and proscribed.
This brings us to the present day, in which the President of the United States, Barack Obama, as well as the Attorney General, Eric Holder, and First Lady, Michele Obama, are black lawyers, all inconceivable “firsts” just a few short years ago.
Latent in this analysis and in this transition has been the capacity of certain black lawyers to eliminate the adjective “black” and to simply be lawyers. For a few, however, “Black Lawyer” remains a proper name and noun.
What is true for black lawyers has also been true for black people. Robert Johnson, Oprah Winfrey and many other wealthy persons in business and entertainment, even in the realm of religion, exemplify this capacity daily.
All civil rights are necessarily individual and personal. One cannot speak for another, neither should one suffer for the conduct of another, nor be rewarded for the work of another. Group-think, group-speak, group-act alternate between beneficial and detrimental, dependent upon prevailing circumstances. Right now, what appears to be most conducive to “the advancement of colored people” is self-assertion as individuals poised and prepared for productivity.
Adjectives are by definition modifiers of nouns. “Expressio unius est exclusio alterius,” goes the Latin maxim, which means to state one thing is to exclude another. Why limit one’s self, by an adjective such as “black”, when the goal is, and has always been, to free one’s self?
“Black” like “White” are states of mind, yes. But, more so, these social constructs were political devices meant to predetermine and to manipulate decision making over and in one’s life. They are forms of mental programming, reinforced by the reward and retribution dichotomy imposed and enforced by law, custom, and heritable values. Both blacks and whites are and/or have been afflicted by these constructs’ its pervasive power. But, their noon day has passed, and the gloaming now appears. Objective conditions have changed, so the myth cannot be maintained.
Stated directly, “black lawyer” is a misnomer, an inappropriate term which does not fit. Any lawyer of any color can and does practice human rights law. Similarly, lawyers of all colors sit in judgment of their endeavors.
So, yes, “black lawyer” (and “white lawyer”) are misnomers. There are only lawyers, just like there is only law.
#30
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
Given the undeniable white supremacist history of these United States of America, as embodied in its constitution, supreme court decisions, legislation, customs, and practices, the term “black lawyer,” came to symbolize, that oxymoronic paradox wherein and whereby certain of these oppressed and repressed subjects and objects of American law came to morph into those who utilize said law’s interstices and blandishments in liberating themselves, and their nation, from its nadir of jurisprudential hypocrisy, and state-sponsored or state-sanctioned domestic terrorism.
Black lawyers, historically, were central to this process of transformation. Are they yet such? Is the term “black lawyer” now a misnomer? Are black lawyers still the “social engineers” envisioned by the late, great Charles Hamilton Houston, former Dean of the Howard University School of Law? Do they in fact conform to the definition above written? Need they?
Or, has that era of the so-called “black lawyer” passed quietly into history with the implosion of the mythical doctrine of “separate but equal,” whose utter destruction was Houston’s crowning achievement, albeit posthumously, in the Brown v. Board of Education, et. al. decisions?
Is the war for equality over? Has “victory” been won? In short, is the term “black lawyer” a misnomer, rendered moot/mute by its own success?
Few and far between are the lawyers of African descent who represent individual civil rights plaintiffs on any level, federal or state, presently, in any kind of case. This is tough work, where the lawyer is unappreciated, if respected by the client, and frequently viewed with enmity by the courts. There are other forms of work, which are far more lucrative and far less stressful.
With the judicial and legislative victories arising from the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960’s, as a tumultuous tailwind, the nation sailed into the 1970’s and 1980’s on the force of yesteryear’s momentum. The goal now became full-fledged and unabashed assimilation into that American mainstream into which blacks had long sought admission.
Black lawyers have successfully pursued professional options in so many realms of endeavor, as individuals, there is hardly a field where they are not to be found. Some black lawyers even mutated to the point they were able to thrive during, and from, the Ronald Reagan years, well into the Bush years, when racial “quotas” were eliminated (assuming they ever really “existed”) and “Affirmative Action” was vilified and proscribed.
This brings us to the present day, in which the President of the United States, Barack Obama, as well as the Attorney General, Eric Holder, and First Lady, Michele Obama, are black lawyers, all inconceivable “firsts” just a few short years ago.
Latent in this analysis and in this transition has been the capacity of certain black lawyers to eliminate the adjective “black” and to simply be lawyers. For a few, however, “Black Lawyer” remains a proper name and noun.
What is true for black lawyers has also been true for black people. Robert Johnson, Oprah Winfrey and many other wealthy persons in business and entertainment, even in the realm of religion, exemplify this capacity daily.
All civil rights are necessarily individual and personal. One cannot speak for another, neither should one suffer for the conduct of another, nor be rewarded for the work of another. Group-think, group-speak, group-act alternate between beneficial and detrimental, dependent upon prevailing circumstances. Right now, what appears to be most conducive to “the advancement of colored people” is self-assertion as individuals poised and prepared for productivity.
Adjectives are by definition modifiers of nouns. “Expressio unius est exclusio alterius,” goes the Latin maxim, which means to state one thing is to exclude another. Why limit one’s self, by an adjective such as “black”, when the goal is, and has always been, to free one’s self?
“Black” like “White” are states of mind, yes. But, more so, these social constructs were political devices meant to predetermine and to manipulate decision making over and in one’s life. They are forms of mental programming, reinforced by the reward and retribution dichotomy imposed and enforced by law, custom, and heritable values. Both blacks and whites are and/or have been afflicted by these constructs’ its pervasive power. But, their noon day has passed, and the gloaming now appears. Objective conditions have changed, so the myth cannot be maintained.
Stated directly, “black lawyer” is a misnomer, an inappropriate term which does not fit. Any lawyer of any color can and does practice human rights law. Similarly, lawyers of all colors sit in judgment of their endeavors.
So, yes, “black lawyer” (and “white lawyer”) are misnomers. There are only lawyers, just like there is only law.
#30
Sunday, November 7, 2010
JOURNEY TO THE “GENTILES” : OVERCOMING MY “BIAS”
Sunday, April 26, 2009
JOURNEY TO THE “GENTILES” : OVERCOMING MY “BIAS”
AGAINST “WHITE” PEOPLE
I am “biased” against “white” people. I, fundamentally, endemically distrust them, and, when given an option, I will avoid them. This “bias” is not unique to me, whether openly expressed or not. Many African Americans have this “bias”. It is, doubtless, epigenetic. Just as many whites’ bias against blacks is epigenetic.
Epigenetics is defined thusly:
In biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of inherited changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence, hence the name epi- (Greek: επί- over, above) -genetics. These changes may remain through cell divisions for the remainder of the cell's life and may also last for multiple generations. However, there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism;[1] instead, non-genetic factors cause the organism's genes to behave (or "express themselves") differently.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
The epigenetic effect/causation “bias” factor is explained below:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/05/27/racial-bias-weakens-our-ability-to-feel-someone-else%e2%80%99s-pain/#more-1730
http://groups.anthropology.northwestern.edu/lhbr/kuzawa_web_files/pdfs/Kuzawa%20and%20Sweet%20AJHB%20early%20view.pdf
My bias, curiously, does not extend to individual “whites,” whom I know, personally or professionally. It only applies to “whites” generically, corporately, whom I know only historically or anecdotally or not at all.
This bias is the residue, the detritus, of a survival mechanism inculcated in me, from birth, by my family and my society, to protect me from harm by “whites,” and yet embolden me to compete against “whites” and others, effectively. This immunity system, early warning system, was both negative and positive.
Many things have now changed. I, too, must change, if I am to remain viable, relevant and valuable in this current age. This is not to suggest that I must change who I am or what I am. Rather, it requires a reconfiguration of my predilections, from skin color or ethnic type, to a meritocracy based on individual worth.
In a word, I must learn to dispense with “color-coding.” Yesterday’s crutch has become today’s encumbrance.
Mine is a work in progress. Hence, mine is a “journey to the ‘Gentiles.’” It is a journey to overcome biases engrained in me, since birth. These preemptive, defensive mechanisms are part of the African American sociological immunity system which aided my development, at one time, amid the miasma of “white” racism.
My biases are not offensive; they do not intentionally hurt anyone. Instead, they reflexively, autonomically protect me. They are preventative and preemptive. “A prudent man forseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.” Proverbs 22:3. They are also transformative and creative, when inverted, rooted in self-reliance and self-love. “Deliver thyself, O Zion, that dwellest with the daughter of Babylon.” Zech. 2:7.
“Gentile,” of course, is a biblical term, which means “non-Jew” or heathen. Its first use appears in Genesis 10:5: “By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; everyone after his own tongue, and after their families, in their nations.”
“Gentiles” devolve ancestrally from Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah, Genesis 10:1-2, Noah’s other two sons being, Ham and Shem.
Japheth, in turn, is popularly known as the progenitor of “white” people. “Gentiles,” being descendents of Japheth, are also “white” people. Thus, my “Journey to the ‘Gentiles’” is my wary, life-long and individual journey toward reconciliation with American “white” people, the kidnappers, transformers and oppressors of my people:
“For thus saith the Lord of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye. For, behold, I will shake mine hand upon them, and they shall be a spoil to their servants: and ye shall know the Lord of Hosts hath sent me.” Zech.2:8-9.
I put the word “white” in parentheses to denote its peculiarity. It is, after all, a racial construct, a geopolitical phenotype, created by those “whites” who profited by dividing one person, from another one nation from another, to facilitate the exploitation of all, in all things.
In America, it goes back to the English colony of Virginia, whose burgesses at Jamestown used this tool to divide and to separate European indentured servants from African indentured servants, politically, economically and sexually, so as to fortify and to fructify the ruling class’ control over all.
In the wake of “Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion,” 1675-1676, in Virginia, an unsuccessful, multi-racial uprising of indentured servants, against the colonial ruling class, racial distinction privileges, became especially pronounced. Put directly, “whiteness” an amorphous intellectual construct was legally and culturally adopted, as a “divide and conquer” strategy to preclude the social, political and economic amalgamation of black indentured servants with white indentured servants from again occurring.
Naturally, “blackness” is “whiteness’” antithesis. As such “blackness”--and by extension, black people-- ineluctably defaulted to the negation of that which was either “legal” or “cultural” or “privileged,” inhering in “whiteness.” See, http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-We-Need-Black-White-Un-by-Perry-Stein-090219-171.html.
Thus, “racism,” as we know it, became the pervasive and ubiquitous upshot, culminating in chattel slavery, which denied all Africans--free or slave-- not only “citizenship,” but personhood itself, as declared by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case:
Dred Scott v. Sandford,[1] 60 U.S. (How. 19) 393 (1857), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court that ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants[2]—whether or not they were slaves—were not legal persons and could never be citizens of the United States. It also held that the United States Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories. The Court also ruled that because slaves were not citizens, they could not sue in court. Lastly, the Court ruled that slaves—as chattel or private property—could not be taken away from their owners without due process. The Supreme Court's decision was written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
When the United States of America won its independence from Great Britain, its ensuing Constitution codified what the southern colonies had already reified. Thus, blacks became 3/5’s of a person for political apportionment purposes. They were taxed as imports at $10.00 per head, and no legal sanctuary could lawfully be accorded to them by any so-called “free state,” should they escape bondage in a slave state. Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prigg_v._Pennsylvania
Chief Justice Taney, who dissented, over a minor implication, in the Prigg case--but not its critical holding--, was the principal author of the Dred Scott case, 15 years later. The Prigg decision involved an escaped slave from Maryland, Margret Morgan, who resided for 5 years in Pennsylvania, before being captured by a slave catcher, named Prigg. Prigg was indicted and convicted under a Pennsylvania statute, which forbade the seizure or arrest of any “negro or mulatto,” except in compliance with that state’s elaborate statututory provisions. A jury found that Prigg and his confederates had violated the statute. Yet, Prigg and company, were ultimately acquitted when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed their convictions by declaring the Pennsylvania statute to be unconstitutional.
What is ironic and significant about Roger Taney’s dissent is that it foreshadowed the facts of Dred Scott. See Prigg, Page 41 U. S. 628
The right of the master, therefore, to seize his fugitive slave is the law of each State, and no State has the power to abrogate or alter it. And why may not a State protect a right of property acknowledged by its own paramount law? Besides, the laws of the different States in all other cases constantly protect the citizens of other States in their rights of property when it is found within their respective territories, and no one doubts their power to do so. And, in the absence of any express prohibition, I perceive no reason for establishing by implication a different rule in this instance where, by the national compact, this right of property is recognized as an existing right in every State of the Union.
I do not speak of slaves whom their masters voluntarily take into a non-slaveholding State. That case is not before us. I speak of the case provided for in the Constitution -- that is to say, the case of a fugitive who has escaped from the service of his owner and who has taken refuge and is found in another State. (emphasis added)
Dred Scott’s suit, of course, was based upon the fact his master had “voluntarily take[n]” him “into a non-slaveholding State.” Thus, Prigg’s premonition presented itself in Dred Scott, before Taney.
The prophesy of Job 3:25 was fulfilled in Taney’s presentiment about the Missouri slave: “For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.”
Earlier, former President Thomas Jefferson, that iconic Virginian who wrote the “Declaration of Independence,” http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html, and who consummated the Louisiana Purchase http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761564763/Louisiana_Purchase.html, from which Missouri was created, stated http://www.monticello.org/reports/quotes/memorial.html:
"For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever . . . ."
-- Notes on the State of Virginia
"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. . . ."
-- Notes on the State of Virginia
"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them."
-- The Autobiography
Arguably, Jefferson, was the “King of the Gentiles,” so great has been his impact on the face of America: from The Declaration of Independence to the Louisiana Purchase. But, even he, like Abraham Lincoln, who became President 50 years after him, could not apprehend that there were no “indelible lines of distinction” between “the two races,” when both are “equally free;” that they “can live in the same government,” because “Nature, habit and opinion” are all extremely adaptive.
Lincoln, long revered as “The Great Emancipator,” echoes Thomas Jefferson’s view that blacks and whites cannot live as “equals.”
While debating Stephen Douglas in 1858, Lincoln doubted that states had the power to declare negroes voting citizens, and "if the state of Illinois had that power, I should be opposed to the exercise of it." He added:
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. [Emphasis added.]
Lincoln frankly expressed his solidarity with what he perceived as the racism of society at large. Speaking of the slaves at Peoria in 1854, he said:
Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this ; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded. We can not, then, make them equals. [Emphasis added.] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22750
So, both iconic Presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, agreed with each other’s white supremacist views. Both also erred in their condign roles as American prophets, of black “equality.” Ensuing historical events and occurrences, continue to demonstrate, since Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, to Ulysees S. Grant on April 9, 1865, that blacks will be free and equal.
Thus, in our lifetimes, in our very lives, the Biblical prophesy of African descendents’ “equality” is being fulfilled:
2 Corinthians 8:13-15 (New King James Version):
13 For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened; 14 but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may supply their lack, that their abundance also may supply your lack—that there may be equality. 15 As it is written, “He who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack.”
African Americans, and, by extension, and necessary inclusion, Americans generally, are a “brand plucked out of the fire.” Zech.3:2. Formerly “clothed with filthy garments,” Zech.3:3, our filthy garments have been taken away, and our “iniquity has passed” Zech. 3:4 from us. Even moreso, a “mitre,” Zech.3:5, has been set upon our head, and we have been clothed with a change of raiment.
The redemptive suffering and righteous forbearance of my formerly enslaved people have, now, blessed not only me and my nation, but, indeed, the whole world as they become, in innumerable fields, avatars, exemplars and paragons of the spirit of Jesus Christ, who now harvest, in love, the mysterious power of his promise. Mark 4.
The Apostle Paul undertook a similar journey:
Romans 11:13For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office:
Galatians 2:8(For he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles:)
My journey to the Gentiles, then, is not unprecedented. Neither shall it be unrequited.
Isaiah 42:1-9 states: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect in whom my soul delighted; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law. .. I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house… Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth, I tell you of them.”
#30
JOURNEY TO THE “GENTILES” : OVERCOMING MY “BIAS”
AGAINST “WHITE” PEOPLE
I am “biased” against “white” people. I, fundamentally, endemically distrust them, and, when given an option, I will avoid them. This “bias” is not unique to me, whether openly expressed or not. Many African Americans have this “bias”. It is, doubtless, epigenetic. Just as many whites’ bias against blacks is epigenetic.
Epigenetics is defined thusly:
In biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of inherited changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence, hence the name epi- (Greek: επί- over, above) -genetics. These changes may remain through cell divisions for the remainder of the cell's life and may also last for multiple generations. However, there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism;[1] instead, non-genetic factors cause the organism's genes to behave (or "express themselves") differently.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
The epigenetic effect/causation “bias” factor is explained below:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/05/27/racial-bias-weakens-our-ability-to-feel-someone-else%e2%80%99s-pain/#more-1730
http://groups.anthropology.northwestern.edu/lhbr/kuzawa_web_files/pdfs/Kuzawa%20and%20Sweet%20AJHB%20early%20view.pdf
My bias, curiously, does not extend to individual “whites,” whom I know, personally or professionally. It only applies to “whites” generically, corporately, whom I know only historically or anecdotally or not at all.
This bias is the residue, the detritus, of a survival mechanism inculcated in me, from birth, by my family and my society, to protect me from harm by “whites,” and yet embolden me to compete against “whites” and others, effectively. This immunity system, early warning system, was both negative and positive.
Many things have now changed. I, too, must change, if I am to remain viable, relevant and valuable in this current age. This is not to suggest that I must change who I am or what I am. Rather, it requires a reconfiguration of my predilections, from skin color or ethnic type, to a meritocracy based on individual worth.
In a word, I must learn to dispense with “color-coding.” Yesterday’s crutch has become today’s encumbrance.
Mine is a work in progress. Hence, mine is a “journey to the ‘Gentiles.’” It is a journey to overcome biases engrained in me, since birth. These preemptive, defensive mechanisms are part of the African American sociological immunity system which aided my development, at one time, amid the miasma of “white” racism.
My biases are not offensive; they do not intentionally hurt anyone. Instead, they reflexively, autonomically protect me. They are preventative and preemptive. “A prudent man forseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.” Proverbs 22:3. They are also transformative and creative, when inverted, rooted in self-reliance and self-love. “Deliver thyself, O Zion, that dwellest with the daughter of Babylon.” Zech. 2:7.
“Gentile,” of course, is a biblical term, which means “non-Jew” or heathen. Its first use appears in Genesis 10:5: “By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; everyone after his own tongue, and after their families, in their nations.”
“Gentiles” devolve ancestrally from Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah, Genesis 10:1-2, Noah’s other two sons being, Ham and Shem.
Japheth, in turn, is popularly known as the progenitor of “white” people. “Gentiles,” being descendents of Japheth, are also “white” people. Thus, my “Journey to the ‘Gentiles’” is my wary, life-long and individual journey toward reconciliation with American “white” people, the kidnappers, transformers and oppressors of my people:
“For thus saith the Lord of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye. For, behold, I will shake mine hand upon them, and they shall be a spoil to their servants: and ye shall know the Lord of Hosts hath sent me.” Zech.2:8-9.
I put the word “white” in parentheses to denote its peculiarity. It is, after all, a racial construct, a geopolitical phenotype, created by those “whites” who profited by dividing one person, from another one nation from another, to facilitate the exploitation of all, in all things.
In America, it goes back to the English colony of Virginia, whose burgesses at Jamestown used this tool to divide and to separate European indentured servants from African indentured servants, politically, economically and sexually, so as to fortify and to fructify the ruling class’ control over all.
In the wake of “Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion,” 1675-1676, in Virginia, an unsuccessful, multi-racial uprising of indentured servants, against the colonial ruling class, racial distinction privileges, became especially pronounced. Put directly, “whiteness” an amorphous intellectual construct was legally and culturally adopted, as a “divide and conquer” strategy to preclude the social, political and economic amalgamation of black indentured servants with white indentured servants from again occurring.
Naturally, “blackness” is “whiteness’” antithesis. As such “blackness”--and by extension, black people-- ineluctably defaulted to the negation of that which was either “legal” or “cultural” or “privileged,” inhering in “whiteness.” See, http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-We-Need-Black-White-Un-by-Perry-Stein-090219-171.html.
Thus, “racism,” as we know it, became the pervasive and ubiquitous upshot, culminating in chattel slavery, which denied all Africans--free or slave-- not only “citizenship,” but personhood itself, as declared by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case:
Dred Scott v. Sandford,[1] 60 U.S. (How. 19) 393 (1857), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court that ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants[2]—whether or not they were slaves—were not legal persons and could never be citizens of the United States. It also held that the United States Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories. The Court also ruled that because slaves were not citizens, they could not sue in court. Lastly, the Court ruled that slaves—as chattel or private property—could not be taken away from their owners without due process. The Supreme Court's decision was written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
When the United States of America won its independence from Great Britain, its ensuing Constitution codified what the southern colonies had already reified. Thus, blacks became 3/5’s of a person for political apportionment purposes. They were taxed as imports at $10.00 per head, and no legal sanctuary could lawfully be accorded to them by any so-called “free state,” should they escape bondage in a slave state. Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prigg_v._Pennsylvania
Chief Justice Taney, who dissented, over a minor implication, in the Prigg case--but not its critical holding--, was the principal author of the Dred Scott case, 15 years later. The Prigg decision involved an escaped slave from Maryland, Margret Morgan, who resided for 5 years in Pennsylvania, before being captured by a slave catcher, named Prigg. Prigg was indicted and convicted under a Pennsylvania statute, which forbade the seizure or arrest of any “negro or mulatto,” except in compliance with that state’s elaborate statututory provisions. A jury found that Prigg and his confederates had violated the statute. Yet, Prigg and company, were ultimately acquitted when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed their convictions by declaring the Pennsylvania statute to be unconstitutional.
What is ironic and significant about Roger Taney’s dissent is that it foreshadowed the facts of Dred Scott. See Prigg, Page 41 U. S. 628
The right of the master, therefore, to seize his fugitive slave is the law of each State, and no State has the power to abrogate or alter it. And why may not a State protect a right of property acknowledged by its own paramount law? Besides, the laws of the different States in all other cases constantly protect the citizens of other States in their rights of property when it is found within their respective territories, and no one doubts their power to do so. And, in the absence of any express prohibition, I perceive no reason for establishing by implication a different rule in this instance where, by the national compact, this right of property is recognized as an existing right in every State of the Union.
I do not speak of slaves whom their masters voluntarily take into a non-slaveholding State. That case is not before us. I speak of the case provided for in the Constitution -- that is to say, the case of a fugitive who has escaped from the service of his owner and who has taken refuge and is found in another State. (emphasis added)
Dred Scott’s suit, of course, was based upon the fact his master had “voluntarily take[n]” him “into a non-slaveholding State.” Thus, Prigg’s premonition presented itself in Dred Scott, before Taney.
The prophesy of Job 3:25 was fulfilled in Taney’s presentiment about the Missouri slave: “For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.”
Earlier, former President Thomas Jefferson, that iconic Virginian who wrote the “Declaration of Independence,” http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html, and who consummated the Louisiana Purchase http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761564763/Louisiana_Purchase.html, from which Missouri was created, stated http://www.monticello.org/reports/quotes/memorial.html:
"For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever . . . ."
-- Notes on the State of Virginia
"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. . . ."
-- Notes on the State of Virginia
"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them."
-- The Autobiography
Arguably, Jefferson, was the “King of the Gentiles,” so great has been his impact on the face of America: from The Declaration of Independence to the Louisiana Purchase. But, even he, like Abraham Lincoln, who became President 50 years after him, could not apprehend that there were no “indelible lines of distinction” between “the two races,” when both are “equally free;” that they “can live in the same government,” because “Nature, habit and opinion” are all extremely adaptive.
Lincoln, long revered as “The Great Emancipator,” echoes Thomas Jefferson’s view that blacks and whites cannot live as “equals.”
While debating Stephen Douglas in 1858, Lincoln doubted that states had the power to declare negroes voting citizens, and "if the state of Illinois had that power, I should be opposed to the exercise of it." He added:
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. [Emphasis added.]
Lincoln frankly expressed his solidarity with what he perceived as the racism of society at large. Speaking of the slaves at Peoria in 1854, he said:
Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this ; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded. We can not, then, make them equals. [Emphasis added.] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22750
So, both iconic Presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, agreed with each other’s white supremacist views. Both also erred in their condign roles as American prophets, of black “equality.” Ensuing historical events and occurrences, continue to demonstrate, since Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, to Ulysees S. Grant on April 9, 1865, that blacks will be free and equal.
Thus, in our lifetimes, in our very lives, the Biblical prophesy of African descendents’ “equality” is being fulfilled:
2 Corinthians 8:13-15 (New King James Version):
13 For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened; 14 but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may supply their lack, that their abundance also may supply your lack—that there may be equality. 15 As it is written, “He who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack.”
African Americans, and, by extension, and necessary inclusion, Americans generally, are a “brand plucked out of the fire.” Zech.3:2. Formerly “clothed with filthy garments,” Zech.3:3, our filthy garments have been taken away, and our “iniquity has passed” Zech. 3:4 from us. Even moreso, a “mitre,” Zech.3:5, has been set upon our head, and we have been clothed with a change of raiment.
The redemptive suffering and righteous forbearance of my formerly enslaved people have, now, blessed not only me and my nation, but, indeed, the whole world as they become, in innumerable fields, avatars, exemplars and paragons of the spirit of Jesus Christ, who now harvest, in love, the mysterious power of his promise. Mark 4.
The Apostle Paul undertook a similar journey:
Romans 11:13For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office:
Galatians 2:8(For he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles:)
My journey to the Gentiles, then, is not unprecedented. Neither shall it be unrequited.
Isaiah 42:1-9 states: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect in whom my soul delighted; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law. .. I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house… Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth, I tell you of them.”
#30
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Fulfilling My Reason for Being
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Fulfilling My Reason for Being
When I was in high school, in St. Louis County, Missouri, in the 1960‘s, certain female friends called me, what sounded like, “Diddy.” Confused by the sobriquet, and uncertain as to its meaning, I asked what they were saying, and, why? They were mum. Years later, one of them told me they were saying “Deity,” viz., “Deity Coleman.”
Naturally, I was confused. How could they infer anything like that about me--one who was quite skeptical about all things religious at that time? And one who sensed no divinity in himself, whatsoever. Sure, I was a founder of the black students’ organization, well read, reasonably smart, and readily acknowledged to be a student leader. But, “deity”? That was way over-the-top even viewed retrospectively.
Later, much later, I learned there is, necessarily, divinity in us all. And divinity in all-- continuously and uninterruptedly. Eternally.
This conception germinated slowly within my consciousness, over time, gaining sustenance from many sources, in many ways. The teachings of Jesus Christ became the crystalline epicenter of them all, after having thrice been delivered from death by his grace and mercy.
He taught me far more than I could ever “know” about myself, my God and my context. He still teaches all who earnestly seek to know. Jesus heals and fulfills. Christ healed and fulfilled me. Providing living water that slaked and quenched my thirst for understanding.
His declaration in John 14:12 assured and encouraged me. “Verily, verily I say unto you, he that believeth on me , the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” Belief and work. Belief in his work. Believe.
This apprehension, this realization came to permeate my entire consciousness. It empowered me. It edified me. It emboldened me. It also wounded and convicted me, impelling study and activity, while emasculating all excuses. To know and believe is to do and achieve, necessarily, world without end. Amen. Matt.28:20.
But, no one goes joyfully to Golgotha, not even the Savior, the exemplar of us all. Mark 14:36: “And He was saying, Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will."
Thus, I fled away from my mandate. In doing so, I emulated Jonah, Elijah, and Paul, nee Saul, and many of you. Now, spent, cornered and cowering, I surrender to his will. “Touch me, Lord Jesus!”
In Jonah 1:2, we find where God orders Jonah to: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.” Instead, Jonah attempts to flee the command of God by sailing to Tarshish, by way of Joppa. This precipitated near-disastrous consequences for Jonah and the sailors. In a fierce storm, the crew threw him into the sea, reluctantly, as an act of expiation.
God’s whale swallowed Jonah whole. And, after 3 days, the whale vomited him, safely, in Nineveh. Here, Jonah would, now, gladly cry against Ninevah, as God had originally ordered.
Similarly, Elijah, the mighty prophet of God, after defeating, then slaughtering, the 450 priests of Baal in 1 Kings 18:20-40, flees in terror for his life when their sovereign, Queen Jezebel, threatens retaliatory vengeance upon Elijah, himself, in 1 Kings 19:2-4:
2Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to morrow about this time.
3And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to Beersheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there.
4But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.
The Lord saved Elijah. But, rebuked this prophet’s claim of presumptive uniqueness, noting there remained 7,000 other prophets whose knees had not bowed to Baal and whose lips had not kissed him. 1 Kings 19:18
Elijah, who met God in the mouth of a cave at Mount Horeb, obeyed God’s command to return on his way to the wilderness of Damascus, and to anoint Hazael, Jehu, and Elisha, enroute. 1 Kings 19:15-17
The Apostle Paul, as is well known, was not always an “apostle.” Acts 8:1-3; 9:2. Neither, was he always “Paul.” Only after meeting Jesus on the Damascus Road and being converted, did Saul become Paul, only then did the former persercutor, Gal. 1:23, become the Lord’s preacher and apostle. Acts 9:1-31.
Jonah was already a good man. Adversity made him a better man. Elijah had already out-dueled, then slew, the priests of Baal. Yet, he feared and fled from Jezebel unto Mount Horeb. Saul was a destroyer of the followers of Christ. But the Damascus road flipped his script. Paul surrendered. Elijah surrendered. Jonah surrendered. In the end, we all surrender. Because, in the end we surrender all to its source!
I, too, am a good man. But, whom the Lord loves, he prunes that they may bear more fruit. John 15:2. And so it was on July 20, 2010, he “flipped my script:” purged me, by striking me with a stroke on the left side of my body. In that instant, my purpose in life became clear. He has enabled me by disabling me, so I may perfectly pursue his ministry. He has emboldened me by withholding from me my lucrative legal legacy. I chose. But God disposed.
Over the years, I have attempted and studied many things. Yet, my efforts have, somehow, all fallen short of my expectations. I’ve been constrained to look inward, to retrace my steps to more sapient and satisfying moments. All of these have involved organizing, teaching, writing, and/or implementing some spiritually-derived stratagem for change, in society enabling greater good and inducing greater love.
The Bible says in Romans 4:17--
As it is written, "I have made you the father of many nations." Abraham acted in faith when he stood in the presence of God, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that don't yet exist.
I have been called by God from the womb, from the moment I breached the matrix. My high school friends saw the call of God upon me. They saw an unfolding anointing, which I could not see.
Romans 8:28 says
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
In the black church, being “called” is good stuff. The scripture, Romans 8:29-30, equates the “call” with both predestination and justification.
29For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
Predestination is more than inevitability and justification is more than forgiveness, in this context. That is because God’s grace is the context. God’s foreknowledge is itself grace, and forgiveness.
But all cannot hear, or will not heed, that “still small voice.” 1 Kings 19:12. To be conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ is the final consummation of glory.
And if one does not “hear” God’s call upon one’s own life, one may still be blessed by simply calling on God. Romans 10:13-17 explains:
13For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
14How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
15And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!
16But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?
17So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Hearing is one thing. Heeding what has been heard is quite another, as Jonah’s example teaches. Faith is fundamental. Hebrews 11:6:
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
“Heeding” is obedience. Allowing God’s will to be done through you is complete obedience, a difficult task. Even Christ decried the bitter cup, which he was called to consume: crucifixion and resurrection.
Even so, there is a reward for obedience that is at once temporal and eternal. Mark 10: 29-31 is reassuring.
29And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's,
30But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.
31But many that are first shall be last; and the last first.
Another reward is one’s ability to “call” things into being as though they were, through God’s grace. Mark 11:23-24 instructs:
For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
The mantra “Perceive, Believe, Receive” commends itself to this precept. “Whosoever,” means anyone, “sinner” or “saved” or someone in between. All have this same power to call things into being as though they were, if they do not doubt in their hearts.
“Doubt” disables, disarms, destroys and devastates man, internally. Doubt, in short, dissipates belief, which undermines faith, which separates and isolates the created from the creator, man from God, which deprives man of access to divine knowledge, wisdom, power.
In 1916, Rev. Charles A. Tindley wrote the hymn “Leave it There.” Apropos to the issue of doubt is this line: “If you trust and never doubt, he will surely bring you. Take your burden to the Lord and leave them there.” http://nethymnal.org/htm/l/e/leaveitt.htm
Daniel, a “dissolver of doubts,” Daniel 5:12, 16, was commended to King Belshazzar of Babylon, by his queen, to interpret the mysterious handwriting on the wall which so greatly troubled the king that “the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote against one another.” (Dan.5:6) None of the king’s astrologers, soothsayers, or wise men could read the writing, nor interpret it to the king. But, Daniel could and did, (Dan. 5:25-29), by and through God‘s grace. (Dan.2:19-23) The queen’s confidence in Daniel was based upon his singularly successful interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.
Lorraine Hansberry, the great African American playwright, author of “Raisin in the Sun” and “The Drinking Gourd,” among other works, resolved “I am a writer, and I am going to write.” Such synchronicity between one’s self awareness and one’s self-actualization; between one’s true reason for being and one’s life’s work; and between one’s predestined purpose and one’s passionate pursuit, is divinity, itself.
Writing, for “Sweet Lorraine” Hansberry, as for me, is “thy first love,” referenced in Revelations 2:4. It is “the first works,” which one must “do,” after repentance and remembrance of past failings. Rev. 2:6. “Write the vision and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.” Habakkuk 2:2-3
“Failings,” of course, is relative. One may appear to succeed and yet fail. One may appear to fail and yet succeed. Jesus Christ is a prime example of one who appeared to fail--the crucifixion--and who yet succeeded, the resurrection. Judas, on the other hand, appeared to succeed, receiving earthly reward, the symbolic pieces of silver, and also universal opprobrium and eternal damnation.
One, indeed, may display good works, patience, faithfulness, multiple virtues and multiple attributes, and still come up short in God’s sight. A good example is “the rich young man” who inquired, “Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” Jesus admonished him “to keep the commandments.” The young man rejoined, “All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?“ Matthew 19:20. Jesus told him to “Go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.” He sorrowfully declined this earthly sacrifice requisite to “perfection.” His possessions precluded his perfection.
Even so, perfection is the standard enjoined upon us all. “Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5:45. The disciples were astonished by this formidably high standard, and asked “Who then can be saved?” Matthew 19:25. “But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”
Foremost among the gifts of God is mercy. We need it. For even if we do all that God would have us do, we remain unprofitable servants, Luke 17:10--
So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.
God’s grace and mercy is a vital part of the perfection enjoined upon us. “But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever.” Psalm 52:8.
The most compelling question in the Bible is: "Whom do you say that I am?" Matthew 16:15. Jesus' question is far more important than Peter's response to the question. Each of us must answer Christ directly, for ourselves.
"Salvation," unfortunately, cannot be "earned," any more than life, itself, can be earned. It is "the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast." Ephesians 2:8-10.
While men may revile us and do all manner of evil against us, this question remains:
"Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation or distress or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 8:33-39.
Just like everyone who claims to be a "jew" (Romans 2:17-29) is not, but is a liar, Revelations 3:9, many who claim to be saved, sanctified, and glorified are not either, but are also lying.
Therefore, "Behold, I come quickly, hold that fast that thou hast that no man take thy crown." Rev.3:11.
What is at issue is "the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he has purposed in himself." Ephesians 1:9.
The truth is, while there are many, many formulations, there are only two destinations: "everlasting punishment or life eternal." Matthew 25: 46.
"Whom do you say that I am?" Matt.16:15. Each must answer for himself or herself, "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love..." Ephesians 1:4.
There are three stages of spiritual nutrition. "Milk" (I Peter 2:2) and "strong meat", (Heb. 5:14) are commonly addressed.
Herein, I focus upon the too-often-missed first stage: colostrum.
The "colostrum" stage, which is the pre-milk stage, http://www.answers.com/topic/colostrum consisting of water, vitamins, antibodies, and proteins, essential to a child's early, foundational development: "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6. A new-born child, like a born-again Christian, must be fortified, with colostrum, its mother's pre-milk before being fed her actual milk.
Therefore "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom, he may devour." (1 Pet. 5:8)
This primary, pragmatic stage can be easily overlooked, by unsuspecting parents, weakening the immunity system of the spiritual and physical babe, increasing its vulnerability to evil germs, and to evil incarnate. Vigilance must begin, in fact, before the child's birth as Rev.12:1-5, attests:
1And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:
2And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
3And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
4And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
5And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.
I was a breast-fed baby, at least, initially, according to my mother. But, eventually my feedings became too painful for her, so she switched me to a glass bottle. In due course, she told me, I threw the bottle across the room and broke it. But, before I switched to the bottle, however, my body was fortified through Momma’s colostrum.
As with breast feeding, so, it was with the church and the word of God. I was fortified and sanctified from the womb in the redeeming gospel of Jesus Christ. “For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Gal. 1:12 Therefore, whenever the devil arises, in whatever guise, I see him and am able to withstand and resist him, through the grace of God. Praise God!
Seeing, withstanding and resisting evil are my reasons for being.
Fulfilling My Reason for Being
When I was in high school, in St. Louis County, Missouri, in the 1960‘s, certain female friends called me, what sounded like, “Diddy.” Confused by the sobriquet, and uncertain as to its meaning, I asked what they were saying, and, why? They were mum. Years later, one of them told me they were saying “Deity,” viz., “Deity Coleman.”
Naturally, I was confused. How could they infer anything like that about me--one who was quite skeptical about all things religious at that time? And one who sensed no divinity in himself, whatsoever. Sure, I was a founder of the black students’ organization, well read, reasonably smart, and readily acknowledged to be a student leader. But, “deity”? That was way over-the-top even viewed retrospectively.
Later, much later, I learned there is, necessarily, divinity in us all. And divinity in all-- continuously and uninterruptedly. Eternally.
This conception germinated slowly within my consciousness, over time, gaining sustenance from many sources, in many ways. The teachings of Jesus Christ became the crystalline epicenter of them all, after having thrice been delivered from death by his grace and mercy.
He taught me far more than I could ever “know” about myself, my God and my context. He still teaches all who earnestly seek to know. Jesus heals and fulfills. Christ healed and fulfilled me. Providing living water that slaked and quenched my thirst for understanding.
His declaration in John 14:12 assured and encouraged me. “Verily, verily I say unto you, he that believeth on me , the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” Belief and work. Belief in his work. Believe.
This apprehension, this realization came to permeate my entire consciousness. It empowered me. It edified me. It emboldened me. It also wounded and convicted me, impelling study and activity, while emasculating all excuses. To know and believe is to do and achieve, necessarily, world without end. Amen. Matt.28:20.
But, no one goes joyfully to Golgotha, not even the Savior, the exemplar of us all. Mark 14:36: “And He was saying, Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will."
Thus, I fled away from my mandate. In doing so, I emulated Jonah, Elijah, and Paul, nee Saul, and many of you. Now, spent, cornered and cowering, I surrender to his will. “Touch me, Lord Jesus!”
In Jonah 1:2, we find where God orders Jonah to: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.” Instead, Jonah attempts to flee the command of God by sailing to Tarshish, by way of Joppa. This precipitated near-disastrous consequences for Jonah and the sailors. In a fierce storm, the crew threw him into the sea, reluctantly, as an act of expiation.
God’s whale swallowed Jonah whole. And, after 3 days, the whale vomited him, safely, in Nineveh. Here, Jonah would, now, gladly cry against Ninevah, as God had originally ordered.
Similarly, Elijah, the mighty prophet of God, after defeating, then slaughtering, the 450 priests of Baal in 1 Kings 18:20-40, flees in terror for his life when their sovereign, Queen Jezebel, threatens retaliatory vengeance upon Elijah, himself, in 1 Kings 19:2-4:
2Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to morrow about this time.
3And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to Beersheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there.
4But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.
The Lord saved Elijah. But, rebuked this prophet’s claim of presumptive uniqueness, noting there remained 7,000 other prophets whose knees had not bowed to Baal and whose lips had not kissed him. 1 Kings 19:18
Elijah, who met God in the mouth of a cave at Mount Horeb, obeyed God’s command to return on his way to the wilderness of Damascus, and to anoint Hazael, Jehu, and Elisha, enroute. 1 Kings 19:15-17
The Apostle Paul, as is well known, was not always an “apostle.” Acts 8:1-3; 9:2. Neither, was he always “Paul.” Only after meeting Jesus on the Damascus Road and being converted, did Saul become Paul, only then did the former persercutor, Gal. 1:23, become the Lord’s preacher and apostle. Acts 9:1-31.
Jonah was already a good man. Adversity made him a better man. Elijah had already out-dueled, then slew, the priests of Baal. Yet, he feared and fled from Jezebel unto Mount Horeb. Saul was a destroyer of the followers of Christ. But the Damascus road flipped his script. Paul surrendered. Elijah surrendered. Jonah surrendered. In the end, we all surrender. Because, in the end we surrender all to its source!
I, too, am a good man. But, whom the Lord loves, he prunes that they may bear more fruit. John 15:2. And so it was on July 20, 2010, he “flipped my script:” purged me, by striking me with a stroke on the left side of my body. In that instant, my purpose in life became clear. He has enabled me by disabling me, so I may perfectly pursue his ministry. He has emboldened me by withholding from me my lucrative legal legacy. I chose. But God disposed.
Over the years, I have attempted and studied many things. Yet, my efforts have, somehow, all fallen short of my expectations. I’ve been constrained to look inward, to retrace my steps to more sapient and satisfying moments. All of these have involved organizing, teaching, writing, and/or implementing some spiritually-derived stratagem for change, in society enabling greater good and inducing greater love.
The Bible says in Romans 4:17--
As it is written, "I have made you the father of many nations." Abraham acted in faith when he stood in the presence of God, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that don't yet exist.
I have been called by God from the womb, from the moment I breached the matrix. My high school friends saw the call of God upon me. They saw an unfolding anointing, which I could not see.
Romans 8:28 says
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
In the black church, being “called” is good stuff. The scripture, Romans 8:29-30, equates the “call” with both predestination and justification.
29For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
Predestination is more than inevitability and justification is more than forgiveness, in this context. That is because God’s grace is the context. God’s foreknowledge is itself grace, and forgiveness.
But all cannot hear, or will not heed, that “still small voice.” 1 Kings 19:12. To be conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ is the final consummation of glory.
And if one does not “hear” God’s call upon one’s own life, one may still be blessed by simply calling on God. Romans 10:13-17 explains:
13For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
14How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
15And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!
16But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?
17So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Hearing is one thing. Heeding what has been heard is quite another, as Jonah’s example teaches. Faith is fundamental. Hebrews 11:6:
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
“Heeding” is obedience. Allowing God’s will to be done through you is complete obedience, a difficult task. Even Christ decried the bitter cup, which he was called to consume: crucifixion and resurrection.
Even so, there is a reward for obedience that is at once temporal and eternal. Mark 10: 29-31 is reassuring.
29And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's,
30But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.
31But many that are first shall be last; and the last first.
Another reward is one’s ability to “call” things into being as though they were, through God’s grace. Mark 11:23-24 instructs:
For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
The mantra “Perceive, Believe, Receive” commends itself to this precept. “Whosoever,” means anyone, “sinner” or “saved” or someone in between. All have this same power to call things into being as though they were, if they do not doubt in their hearts.
“Doubt” disables, disarms, destroys and devastates man, internally. Doubt, in short, dissipates belief, which undermines faith, which separates and isolates the created from the creator, man from God, which deprives man of access to divine knowledge, wisdom, power.
In 1916, Rev. Charles A. Tindley wrote the hymn “Leave it There.” Apropos to the issue of doubt is this line: “If you trust and never doubt, he will surely bring you. Take your burden to the Lord and leave them there.” http://nethymnal.org/htm/l/e/leaveitt.htm
Daniel, a “dissolver of doubts,” Daniel 5:12, 16, was commended to King Belshazzar of Babylon, by his queen, to interpret the mysterious handwriting on the wall which so greatly troubled the king that “the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote against one another.” (Dan.5:6) None of the king’s astrologers, soothsayers, or wise men could read the writing, nor interpret it to the king. But, Daniel could and did, (Dan. 5:25-29), by and through God‘s grace. (Dan.2:19-23) The queen’s confidence in Daniel was based upon his singularly successful interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.
Lorraine Hansberry, the great African American playwright, author of “Raisin in the Sun” and “The Drinking Gourd,” among other works, resolved “I am a writer, and I am going to write.” Such synchronicity between one’s self awareness and one’s self-actualization; between one’s true reason for being and one’s life’s work; and between one’s predestined purpose and one’s passionate pursuit, is divinity, itself.
Writing, for “Sweet Lorraine” Hansberry, as for me, is “thy first love,” referenced in Revelations 2:4. It is “the first works,” which one must “do,” after repentance and remembrance of past failings. Rev. 2:6. “Write the vision and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.” Habakkuk 2:2-3
“Failings,” of course, is relative. One may appear to succeed and yet fail. One may appear to fail and yet succeed. Jesus Christ is a prime example of one who appeared to fail--the crucifixion--and who yet succeeded, the resurrection. Judas, on the other hand, appeared to succeed, receiving earthly reward, the symbolic pieces of silver, and also universal opprobrium and eternal damnation.
One, indeed, may display good works, patience, faithfulness, multiple virtues and multiple attributes, and still come up short in God’s sight. A good example is “the rich young man” who inquired, “Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” Jesus admonished him “to keep the commandments.” The young man rejoined, “All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?“ Matthew 19:20. Jesus told him to “Go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.” He sorrowfully declined this earthly sacrifice requisite to “perfection.” His possessions precluded his perfection.
Even so, perfection is the standard enjoined upon us all. “Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5:45. The disciples were astonished by this formidably high standard, and asked “Who then can be saved?” Matthew 19:25. “But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”
Foremost among the gifts of God is mercy. We need it. For even if we do all that God would have us do, we remain unprofitable servants, Luke 17:10--
So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.
God’s grace and mercy is a vital part of the perfection enjoined upon us. “But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever.” Psalm 52:8.
The most compelling question in the Bible is: "Whom do you say that I am?" Matthew 16:15. Jesus' question is far more important than Peter's response to the question. Each of us must answer Christ directly, for ourselves.
"Salvation," unfortunately, cannot be "earned," any more than life, itself, can be earned. It is "the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast." Ephesians 2:8-10.
While men may revile us and do all manner of evil against us, this question remains:
"Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation or distress or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 8:33-39.
Just like everyone who claims to be a "jew" (Romans 2:17-29) is not, but is a liar, Revelations 3:9, many who claim to be saved, sanctified, and glorified are not either, but are also lying.
Therefore, "Behold, I come quickly, hold that fast that thou hast that no man take thy crown." Rev.3:11.
What is at issue is "the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he has purposed in himself." Ephesians 1:9.
The truth is, while there are many, many formulations, there are only two destinations: "everlasting punishment or life eternal." Matthew 25: 46.
"Whom do you say that I am?" Matt.16:15. Each must answer for himself or herself, "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love..." Ephesians 1:4.
There are three stages of spiritual nutrition. "Milk" (I Peter 2:2) and "strong meat", (Heb. 5:14) are commonly addressed.
Herein, I focus upon the too-often-missed first stage: colostrum.
The "colostrum" stage, which is the pre-milk stage, http://www.answers.com/topic/colostrum consisting of water, vitamins, antibodies, and proteins, essential to a child's early, foundational development: "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6. A new-born child, like a born-again Christian, must be fortified, with colostrum, its mother's pre-milk before being fed her actual milk.
Therefore "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom, he may devour." (1 Pet. 5:8)
This primary, pragmatic stage can be easily overlooked, by unsuspecting parents, weakening the immunity system of the spiritual and physical babe, increasing its vulnerability to evil germs, and to evil incarnate. Vigilance must begin, in fact, before the child's birth as Rev.12:1-5, attests:
1And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:
2And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
3And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
4And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
5And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.
I was a breast-fed baby, at least, initially, according to my mother. But, eventually my feedings became too painful for her, so she switched me to a glass bottle. In due course, she told me, I threw the bottle across the room and broke it. But, before I switched to the bottle, however, my body was fortified through Momma’s colostrum.
As with breast feeding, so, it was with the church and the word of God. I was fortified and sanctified from the womb in the redeeming gospel of Jesus Christ. “For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Gal. 1:12 Therefore, whenever the devil arises, in whatever guise, I see him and am able to withstand and resist him, through the grace of God. Praise God!
Seeing, withstanding and resisting evil are my reasons for being.
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