LITTLE CHILDREN

Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 1 John 4:4

PRAYER

Neither God nor the Holy Spirit is especially concerned about the names assigned to them, nor the languages used, or the loudness or frequency of human supplication. They work for all, in all alike.

TALLY-HO! 'FISCAL CLIFF'

The so-called "fiscal cliff" automatic budget cuts represent the only realistic opportunity to make military/defense budget cuts since the Eisenhower administration, who warned about the coming military-industrial complex in the 1950's. Since then, Congress has declared zero wars, but we have been continuously fighting "undeclared" wars world-wide of the hot and cold variety, without constitutional sanction!

Dr. King equated wars overseas with domestic neglect at home, fiscally and humanistically. He saw an inverse relationship between the two, with unauthorized wars winning hands-down, over domestic relief for the downtrodden and oppressed in America.

Both men, King and Eisenhower are/were right! Almost 600 billion dollars is allocated for national "defense" annually. This sum is wasteful and unnecessary in the absence of a Congressionally authorized war anywhere ! Our government has been hijacked by these military-industrial interests, who fund their political minions and who seed popular culture to assure continued "hegemony," or dominance at home and abroad.

Therefore, let us leap into the abyss! Over the cliff, a New Congress can fashion a new set of constitutional priorities free of the old constraints, under the guidance of a benevolent President. Tally-ho, mates!

IS THAT 'BLACK ENOUGH' FOR YOU?

THIS MUCH-CRITICIZED PASSAGE OF SCRIPTURE, ITALICIZED BELOW, WAS FOLLOWED AND EMBODIED BY BISHOP RICHARD ALLEN, FOUNDER OF THE AFICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH; BY TOUSSAINT BREDA, KNOWN TO HISTORY AS "L'OUVERTURE" AND BY HIS MILITARY SUCCESSOR, JEAN-JACQUE DESSALINES, THE FIRST RULER OF LIBERATED 'HAITI' AS HE RE-NAMED IT!

THIS EXECRABLE SCRIPTURE--AS SOME HAVE DEEMED IT TO BE--WAS ALSO FOLLOWED, AND EMDODIED, BY MILLIONS OF SLAVES DURING THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, THEIR "FREEDOM WAR," REMAINING 'OBEDIENT' TO, AND CARING FOR, OLE MISSUS AND MASSAH, EVEN AS MANY LEFT TO FIGHT FOR FREEDOM!

SUCH OBEDIENT LOYALTY IS SUPERNATURAL AND DIVINE IN ITS OWN RIGHT!

NOW, IF THAT AIN'T 'BLACK ENOUGH FOR YOU,' LOOK UP ITS MEANING ELSEWHERE!

5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.

9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

EPHESIANS 6

YOU ARE THE LIGHT

⁸ For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light ⁹ (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) ¹⁰ and find out what pleases the Lord. ¹¹ Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. ¹² It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. ¹³ But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. ¹⁴ This is why it is said:

“Wake up, sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

¹⁵ Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, ¹⁶ making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. ¹⁷ Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. ¹⁸ Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, ¹⁹ speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, ²⁰ always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Amen!

The Pathology of Race Prejudice

http://www.unz.org/Pub/Forum-1927jun-00856

This is the classic 1927 article by the nation's preeminent sociologist.

A MESSAGE TO ETHIOPIA

A Message to Ethiopia

ISAIAH 18:1-7


1Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: 2That sends ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes on the waters, saying, Go, you swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning till now; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled! 3All you inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see you, when he lifts up an ensign on the mountains; and when he blows a trumpet, hear you. 4For so the LORD said to me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat on herbs, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest. 5For before the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches. 6They shall be left together to the fowls of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth: and the fowls shall summer on them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter on them. 7In that time shall the present be brought to the LORD of hosts of a people scattered and peeled, and from a people terrible from their beginning till now; a nation meted out and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of the LORD of hosts, the mount Zion.

future vision

Vision for the future requires understanding of the past.

The "bread" of life

But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Matt. 4:4

Translation--

Life is both spiritual and material, like man. Man's spirit must be fed and watered as well as his mind, body and soul. Each appetite is provided for by God's "word"--logos--which brought everything into existence, including man, and that amply provides for each and for all. "Bread," then, is a metaphor for sustenance. Amen!

Black Business

20th century integrationists' zeal was only part of the problem for black businesses and professionals. Other parts included: invidious discrimination by the state regarding licensure and inspections; mob violence; lack of legal protection and lack of capital; unfair business practices by suppliers, distributors, competitors; abandonment by black consumers; absence of white patronage; failure of next generation to pick up mom and pop's legacy; pilferage; and failure to combine resources with similar businesses for common good--to name just a few coming readily to mind!

SCIENCE LIBERATES

Science liberates humanity from centuries of skulduggery, if it is as unbiased, as replicable, and as rigorous as it is supposed to be!

Revolutions transcend science

“The invention of other new theories regularly, and appropriately, evokes the same response from some of the specialists on whose areas of special competence they impinge. For these men the new theory implies a change in the rules governing the prior practice of normal science. Inevitably, therefore, it reflects on much scientific work they have already completed. That is why a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom or never just an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed by a single man and never overnight. No wonder historians have difficulty in dating precisely this extended process that their vocabulary impels them to view as an isolated event.”

THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, by Thomas S. Kuhn, p.7, introduction by Ian Hacking (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London: 2012)

Both Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King, Jr. are revolutionaries within the putative scientific class described above.

Sermon: Stewardship in tough times

“STEWARDSHIP IN TOUGH TIMES”

Delivered on 12/14/08 by

Rev. Dr. Larry D. Coleman

New Bethel A.M.E. Church

Kansas City, Kansas

Rev. Edward Walzer, Pastor

This is December 14, 2008. And, these are tough times.

This is December 14, 2008. And, these are also redemptive times.

This is December 14, 2008. And these are turbulent economic times.

This is December 14, 2008. And these are transformative spiritual times.

Isn’t that incredible? How something tough can also be redemptive?

How something turbulent can also be transformative?

Isn’t it amazing? How that which is economic can also affect the spirit? And vice versa. How that which is spiritual can affect one’s economy.

The British novelist, Charles Dickens, began his book, “A Tale of Two Cities,” with these words:

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief. It was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of hope. It was the season of despair.”In today’s message we examine the subject “STEWARDSHIP IN TOUGH TIMES”

“STEWARDSHIP IN TOUGH TIMES”

Stewardship is the conducting, supervising, or managing of something, especially the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care. But, what is a “steward?”

A steward is someone who takes care of something, or somebody, entrusted to him or her.

So, for example, the Pastor is the Chief Steward of this church. The President is the Chief Steward of the Nation—Obama! Obama! Obama! Parents are the Chief Stewards of their Households.

Each of you is a steward. Each of us is a steward. We’ve all been entrusted with something from God.

We are in charge of that with which God has blessed you. Be it great or be it small, we all have a charge to keep, and God to glorify.

Let us pray.

This is the season of Stewardship. When the times are plentiful, saving is easy. Stewardship is easy. Living is easy:

“Summertime and the living is easy. Fish are jumping and cotton is high. Your daddy’s rich and your momma’s good looking. So hush, little baby, don’t you cry.”

But, when the times are tough, Stewardship is also tough. Folks become fearful and frugal to a fault.

But, brothers and sisters, it is in the tough times, when the true stewards of God distinguish themselves.

“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” John 4:24. God is a spirit. And he would have us to worship him in spirit and in truth.

Stewardship is a form of worship. Yeah, Good stewardship is the epitome and consummation of worship.

Show me thy worship without stewardship, and I will show thee my worship by stewardship. Of course, I’ve just paraphrased James who states, “Show me thy faith without that works, and I show thee my faith by my works. James 2:18. Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. James 2:17.

Faith without works is dead.” Similarly, worship without stewardship is dead. You observe that a person is justified through actions and not through faith alone. James 2:24. For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without actions is also dead. James 2:26.

The good steward is someone who is doing the best he can with the things that God has given him. This shows up in how a person reacts in tough situations and how they redeem their God-given duty. You don’t necessarily need a lot. Sometimes, all you need is a handful of meal and a cruse of oil.

(Turn with me, if you will, to 1 Kings 17:9-16: Tell the Story; declaim and proclaim the word)

And, if you liked that go with me to 2 Kings 4:1-9)

Jesus Christ was a good steward.

Jesus was born into tough times. King Herod sought to kill him, as soon as he was born. That’s why the family fled to Egypt, as soon as Joseph was warned to do so in a dream. And because Jesus Christ was the anointed of God, his was a tough and fearless itinerant ministry. He was constantly at war with his own people, the Jews, many of whom rejected him: Pharisees, Sadducees, the scribes, the Levites, and the High Priest. In the end, he knocked over the money-changers in the temple, and scourged them with a whip. He messed with their money. So, they plotted to kill him. Eventually, they convinced the Romans to crucify this only begotten son of God. The human side of him, naturally, wanted to live.

He did not want to drink from the bitter cup. Although, he pleaded with his Father and “Our Father which art in Heaven” to take this cup away from him, in the end he surrendered to the duty of stewardship, placed upon him by the Father, when he said, “Not my will but Thy will be done.”

Jesus Christ died for us. He thereby redeemed us, all of us, from our sins, which go all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, long before we were born.

Jesus is the principal example of stewardship:

From His prophetic prediction in the Scriptures; His Annunciation by the angel; His birth in Bethlehem; His life in Egypt, Israel, Canaan and Judah; His death on Calvary, also called Golgotha, to His stunning Resurrection and walk among us. All of these were done for us, to redeem us, and to assure salvation for us, in the life that now is, and in that which is to come. All of these deeds comprised faithful stewardship.

Stewardship and Redemption are closely aligned. Redemption is---

1. The act of redeeming or the condition of having been redeemed.

2. Recovery of something pawned or mortgaged.

3. The payment of an obligation, as a government's payment of the value of its bonds.

4. Deliverance upon payment of ransom; rescue.

5. Christianity Salvation from sin through Jesus's sacrifice.

Examples:

When you get your clothes from the cleaners, you are redeeming them.

When you get back something from the pawnshop, it is redeemed. Or when you pay off your mortgage, your house is redeemed! Praise the Lord!

When you pay your obligation to this church’s building fund, you are redeeming your promise to God and man.

Redemption is payment of something promised for something promised.

So, if you want to be redeemed, my brothers and sister, be faithful stewards. Be true to your stewardship. Let faith and works get together, like stewardship and worship. Like peanut butter and jelly, like sardines and cracks, like collard greens and cornbread. As the song says, “Let the works I’ve done speak for me.”

May The Works I've Done (Speak For Me)
(arranged by Keith Johnson)
(recorded by Keith 'Wonderboy' Johnson & The Spiritual Voices)


Verse 1
May the works I've done speak for me.
May the works (I've done) speak for me.
When I'm resting in my grave,
there's nothing more to be said;
may the works (the works I've done)
let it speak for me, (for me).

Verse 2
May the life I live speak for me.
May the life (I live) speak for me.
When I'm resting in my grave,
there's nothing more to be said;
may the life (the life I live)
let it speak for me, (for me).

Bridge
The works I've done,
sometimes it seems so small,
it seems like I've done nothing at all.
Lord I'm (leaning) and depending on You,
if I do right You're gonna see me through;
may the works (the works I've done),
let it speak for me (for me).

Vamp
Speak for me,
speak for me.

Godlessness is mindlessness.

Godlessness is mindlessness.

British and American homicides compared; 2nd Amendment implications

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kingdom

The British have .07 homicides per 100,000 persons compared to the USA's 3 homicides per 100,000 persons. British police are unarmed! Since the 2nd Amendment is largely based upon the British "right to bear arms," it is well to look to them on this issue!

"boogie-man-gonna-git-ya" hysteria and guns

Those who promote the "boogie-man-gonna-git-ya" hysteria to promote gun proliferation have proven historically that they're the boogie man! Ask the victims of lynch mobs and Jim Crow politics!

JESUS CHRIST AND AFRICAN AMERICAN SLAVE IDENTITY

In the gospel of Jesus Christ and in his persecution, betrayal, denial, crucifixion, and resurrection, the early enslaved Africans in America found a spiritual paradigm that mirrored their own experience and that validated its archetypal efficacy in their own lives, jointly and severally, as being of God as well. In Jesus Christ they found themselves, their identity, and their manifest destiny!

"On Christ the rugged rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand."

Courage Confidence Conviction

Courage is the child of Confidence, which is the offspring of Conviction.

justice

Justice is a virtue; equality its manifestation.

Spiritualism naturalism

This 'spiritual naturalism' has an easy resonance and beguiling charm that is salubrious to other "ever-becoming" belief systems, including science. The unadulterated teachings of the planet's greatest master- teachers all overlap and affirm nature and each other, reciprocally.

Proof of any faith, science or belief system, however denominated, is always in its pudding--in its works! "Prove me now herewith said the Lord of Host..." Malachi 3:10. Such verifiable "proof" is all around us, inside of us, and it is, indeed, that which produced us, and that which sustains us! Amen!

PHARAOH MERNEPTAH AND ISRAEL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merneptah_Stele

'CANAAN' IS AFRICAN, BEING AN EGYPTIAN POSSESSION FROM WHICH 'ISRAEL' WAS EXPELLED, BEING DEFEATED BY PHARAOH MERNEPTAH. THIS MENTION OF 'ISRAEL' ON MERNEPTAH'S STELE, IS ITS FIRST WRITTEN REFERENCE IN RECORDED HISTORY, PREDATING THE BIBLE'S MENTION BY OVER 1,000 YEARS. HISTORY AND SCIENCE EMPOWER, INFORM, ENABLE!

Mark Twain: America's Paradoxical Prophet

MARK TWAIN, nee Samuel L. Clemons, of Missouri, California, New York, Connecticut and the world, is a great American paradox. Some abhor him. Others adore him. Among these two camps, there are sub-camps: Some who have read him. Some who have not. Among those who have read some parts of his vast corpus of novels, short stories, articles, sketches, essays, letters and speeches from the 1860's until his death in 1910, there are still more camps: those who prefer the early writings--the majority--and those who prefer the later writings--the minority.

I have put on "the whole armour" of Mark Twain, loving both his sunrise and his sunset and his noon day in between. Read him for yourself, then decide; rather, than to rely upon the asserverations of those who have read, at best, a tiny piece of his labor and who yet declaim learnedly upon the whole!

Racism is paralogical and probably pathological

Antenor Firmin, The Equality of the Human Races, pp.296, “Egypt and Civilization” (University of Illinois Press, Champlain: 1885, 2002).

“We have heard it all. I shall not respond to the inept argument according to which Blacks who have shown superior abilities did so only under the influence of Whites whose frequentation is presumably indispensable to their mental development. This is no more than a paralogical argument, whereby a common fact is turned into a special rule. The truth is that backwards people need to come into contact with more advanced people in order to progress. But there is no reason to imagine this has anything to do with ethnicity. Even if the terms were reversed, that is, even if the backward people were Caucasian and the advanced were Ethiopian, the general truth would not change. The ancient Greeks learned science from Egyptian sources, but no one has ever considered them innately inferior to the Theban priests who taught them. So when Europeans deduce such strange rules from a number of facts, they look at things only from today's perspective. But does not elementary logic dictate that, before we make any sort of generalization, we must review every aspect of a phenomenon which occurred at various times and in various places?”

Since this excerpt was posted here, I have had occasion to encounter "THE PATHOLOGY OF RACIAL PREJUDICE" by preeminent sociologist, Dr. E. Franklin Frazier that establishes that entrenched racism is indeed "pathological," as I had earlier adumbrated. Here's the link: http://www.unz.org/Pub/Forum-1927jun-00856

RESPIRATION

Exhaling after inhaling is not regression. It is the essential converse of respiration, of life. Neither is stepping back before leaping forward retrogression. It is preparation for advancement.

'SEEING' OURSELVES IN OTHERS

ORIGINS: FOURTEEN BILLION YEARS OF COSMIC EVOLUTION, by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith,pp.116-117 (W.W. Norton & Co., NY, London:2004)

“The most deeply resonant of all the galaxy images that we may ever see, a view of the entire Milky Way taken from outside it, will stir our hearts and minds, just as soon as we manage to send a camera several hundred thousand light-years above or below the central plane of our galaxy. Today, when our most far-flung space probes have traveled a billionth of that distance, this goal may seem unattainable, and indeed even a probe that could reach nearly the speed of light would require a long wait—far longer than the current span of recorded history—to yield the desired result. For the time being, astronomers must continue to map the Milky Way from inside, sketching the galactic forest by delineating its stellar and nebular trees. These efforts reveal that our galaxy closely resembles our closest large neighbor, the great spiral galaxy in Andromeda. Conveniently located about 2.4 million light-years away, the Andromeda galaxy has provided a wealth of information about the basic structural patterns of spiral galaxies, as well as about different types of stars and their evolution...On a clear night far from city lights, a keen-eyed observer who knows where to look can spot the fuzzy outline of the Andromeda galaxy—the most distant object visible to the unaided eye, shining with light that left on its journey while our ancestors roamed the gorges of Africa in search of roots and berries.”

DIRT BETWEEN THEIR TOES

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

 

DIRT BETWEEN THEIR TOES

By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.

 

Back in Howard Law School in the 1970’s, I remember opining that the best way to reform the younger generation of black youth was to make it possible for them to get some “dirt between their toes.”

 

By that I meant to expose them to rural life, and to get them out of the cities, away from viral influences which distort their development, which undermine their values, and which alienate them from nature, from God and from themselves.

 

At that time, I did not have any scientific evidence, only personal experience, and anecdotal testimony, to support this assertion. 

 

Now, in a study published in the journal, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 35, No. 10, 1315-1329 (2009), http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/35/10/1315, my latent intuitions have been confirmed.  In four studies involving 370 people, those immersed in nature were more “prosocial.”

 

“Antisocial,” as opposed to “prosocial” is what threatens to overwhelm them, now.  Crass materialism promoted through media and society combine with low self-esteem, poverty, and hooliganism to mold them.  “Hooliganism,”  by the way, comes from a family of Irish people who lived in South London’s slums in the 19^th century, named “Hooligan,” who were notorious thieves, thugs, and street fighters, who ran in gangs.  One writer states of them:

 

The home of the Hooligan is, as I have implied, within a stone's throw of Lambeth Walk. Law breakers exist in other quarters of London: Drury Lane will furnish forth a small army of pick-pockets, Soho breeds parasites, and the basher of toffs flourishes in the Kingsland Road. But in and about Lambeth Walk we have a colony, compact and easily handled, of sturdy young villains, who start with a grievance against society, and are determined to get their own back. That is their own phrase, their own view. Life has little to give them but what they take. Honest work, if it can be obtained, will bring in but a few shillings a week; and what is that compared to the glorious possibility of nicking a red 'un?  http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications7/hooligan-02.htm

The September 27, 2009, beating death of Derrion Albert, a sophomore honor roll student at Christian Fenger Academy High School, in Chicago, Illinois, by rival gangs of young, black hooligans underscores and illustrates the point.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/27/beating-death-of-derrien_n_301319.html

Such a loss!  Such a waste!  Such a tragedy!

 

While rustication, country-living, rural life is not necessarily a panacea for current ills, Henry David Thoreau, the author of Walden’s Pond was right.  People exposed to nature are enriched by the experience.  http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden00.html. 

 

Dr. George Washington Carver’s whole life was lent to the proof of the axiom that nature is a reflection of the divine. He often stated “"I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting system, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.” http://www.facebook.com/pages/George-Washington-Carver/60725680708.  The inventor of the science of chemurgy also stated, "I never have to grope for methods. The method is revealed at the moment I am inspired to create something new…without God to draw aside the curtain, I would be helpless."

 

Job 12:7-10 is also instructive: “But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.”

 

John Calhoun’s famous National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) experiments with rats in the 1950’s suggest, and have been broadly interpreted to mean, that density is a variable in human pathology.  http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/pdf/FACTSPDF/2308Ramadams.pdf.  But, density alone is not the answer.  Poverty, inequality, identity crises, and a breakdown in community value transmission stratagems all play a part in an individual’s decisions.

 

Sometimes, an individual’s decisions are made for him by others or by circumstances beyond an individual’s control.  The child soldiers in Africa are very much akin to the “Sistah soldiers” (and brothers) of certain youthful Africans in America. A similar format for remediation may likewise be in order.  http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/pdf/FACTSPDF/2308Ramadams.pdf.

 

“Dirt between their toes,” then advocates and encourages a return to nature and an appreciation of nature as a spiritual healing modality http://journeyofhearts.org/healing/nature2.html, for every one, especially for urban African American youth.

 

More broadly, however, this essay, “Dirt between their toes,” encourages the communion with not only nature, but with the God behind, and the creator of, nature and us, from whom estrangement and isolation is the fomenter of all calamities and the greatest of all tragedies, individually and collectively.

 

#30

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mutually mindful of your mate

Women be ever mindful that your utterances often determine or undermine any endeavor of your man. Encourage him! Don't discourage him! The male psyche is a weak, tender thing!

Men! The same thing applies to you relative to your woman! The female psyche is also a weak and tender thing, though it is naturally much stronger than yours because she must bear, often alone, the draining psychological ordeal of childbirth and rearing.

Above all, respect yourselves and each other by word, thought, and deed as you go! You need and reinforce each other, continually, whether you realize it or not! Each strengthens and inspires the other at home and in public.

Deconstructing a triple tragedy: KC'S Javon Belcher Mystery

DECONSTRUCTING A TRIPLE TRAGEDY: KC’s Javon Belcher Mystery

Tuesday, December 04, 2012

By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

 

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/12/04/3946159/belcher-shot-himself-as-kc-police.html#storylink=cpy

 

The murder-suicide of Kansas City Chiefs linebacker, Javon Belcher, has left more questions than answers. Its motive remains a mystery, dying with Kassandra Perkins, Belcher’s 22-year old, live-in girlfriend, and with 25-year old Belcher, himself.

Even so, certain lessons leap out from the few known facts.

First, their “live-in” domestic status was doubtless contributory. Javon’s mother had “visited” from New York to assist in carrying for their 3-month old daughter, now cruelly orphaned.  

Marriage with its expectations, conventions, duties and reciprocal obligations, beats live-in hands-down! That is lesson #1 as we move through this tragedy’s sad deconstruction.

Second, the baby, while blessed by God with birth, is now cursed by man in life with orphanage. Bottom line: defer child-bearing ladies, until he has “put a ring on it” as Beyonce sings famously! That protects the baby and you, precluding questions pertinent to paternity etc. So, lesson #2 is don’t have a baby until after you’re married “with papers” i.e., legally, under law.

Thirdly,  the KC Star newspaper article linked above reports that Kassandra Perkins had gone out to a concert, and afterwards had gone for drinks with her friends, arriving home “late,” in Belcher’s estimation. He, himself, had reportedly gone partying downtown and was later found by police asleep in his car on a mid-town street, Armour Blvd.

The point made here is that separate social agendas strain and imperil relationships to the breaking point,  especially live-in relationships! So, lesson #3 whether married or not: if you are living in, at least do things together as a couple, to thwart distrust or insincerity from arising.

There may be points others could add to this list. Many couples across America are “living-in” under circumstances not too dissimilar from Belcher’s and Perkins’. Ideally, they, too, will draw instruction from this all-too-hasty deconstruction and amend their lives together, accordingly.

#30

 

Blacks Are the True American Patriots!

http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventors/a/Banneker_2.htm

Benjamin Banneker's brilliant response to President Thomas Jefferson's "white supremist" expediency is the clearest declaration of human rights and interdependence ever written! It far exceeds the edited Declaration of Independence which the slaveholding Jefferson wrote before the American Revolution began, and which he abandoned thereafter for his own convenient profit.

Neither can it be forgotten that Jefferson fled Philadelphia during the "Yellow Fever" scare of 1793, when the black Free African Society came to the rescue of whites, at the risk of their own lives!

Blacks are the true American patriots as proven in history time and time again!

Compeers self-educate

Compeers make ideal teachers and students! Utilize their talent, empathy and intelligence!

Whither Canaan? Africa dismembered!

Canaan is missing: better known as Israel, Palestine, Lebanon!

Canaan is missing from this map, although it is geographically connected to Africa: historically, culturally, archaeologically, genetically and linguistically. Presently, Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon occupy this dismembered segment. Thereby, our connection to the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians is suppressed, obscured.

MARK 1-- TELL NO MAN...if you can!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=w-V_BgQaJpY#t=39s

MARK 1-- TELL NO MAN...if you can!

40 And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. 41 And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. 42 And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed. 43 And he straitly charged him, and forthwith sent him away; 44 And saith unto him, See thou say nothing to any man: but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.45 But he went out, and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in desert places: and they came to him from every quarter.Compare: Matthew 8:1-4; Luke 5:12-16

SELF-INVESTIGATION

Any thing can be misused or abused, by anyone, or, even by one's own self. That is no reason to fear, to resent or to avoid that thing, reflexively, without one's own independent investigation of that thing.

That thing first must be tested, proven, and assayed by you, in its own right, and in its own light, not in that of another nor not at all. That “thing” might be a substance, a government, a creed, a deed, an implement, an animal, a plant, a teaching, a person or a people. That “thing” might also be “you.”

“You” may now be or “you” may once have been consciously or unconsciously objectified, vilified and nullified, by others, or by your own indolent inertia, i.e. “apathy.” You may have consented by conduct.

Whether you are a self-abuser, a self-misuser, or that of another, candid self-investigation will reveal. From self-investigation will arise a methodology equally applicable to all other persons and things.

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aime Cesaire

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aime Cesaire, translated and edited by Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith, with an introduction by Andre Breton, (Wesleyan U. Press, Middletown, CT: 2001)

a book review

by Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

11/28/12

“Negritude” immediately comes to mind, when I hear the name Aime Cesaire. He invented that “Africentric” literary perspective, among Francophone blacks, along with his fellow Parisian-educated, colonial cohorts: Leopold Senghor and Leon Damas—whom I was honored and thrilled to meet my freshman year at Howard University.

Having studied French for 5 years in junior high and high school, where we read, as class assignments, Moliere's Le Bourgeoise Gentilhommme, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, and Guy de St. Exupery's Le Petite Prince, among others, I yet retained sufficient confidence, over 40 years later, to undertake Cesaire's widely acclaimed “piece de resistance,” Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natale, albeit in English!

While it did not disappoint, per se, I was less than enthralled with it awful honesty, its unabashed rawness, and the abject sense of futility about his Martinique island home.

Cesaire is a poet and a damn good one! His craft is commendable. But his images hurt. Perhaps, they hurt me, because my legacy is African-diasporic like his and millions more. A few images may suffice to illustrate my angst.

“At the end daybreak...a cursed venereal sun.” The poem opens. “...the hungry Antilles, the Antilles pitted with smallpox, the Antilles dynamited by alcohol, stranded in the mud of this bay, in the dust of this town sinisterly stranded.” It continues. “...an aged life mendaciously smiling, its lips opened by vacated agonies; an aged poverty rotting under the sun, silently; an aged silence bursting with tepid pustules, the awful futility of our raison d'etre.” One wonders why he would ever want to return to: “...this inert town, this desolate throng under the sun, not connected with anything that is expressed, asserted, released, in broad earth daylight, its own.” Fear is palpable in such an “inert town” that is “not connected with anything...its own.” Such are those “fears perched in trees...dug in the ground...adrift in the sky, of piled up fears and their fumaroles of anguish.”

I was reminded of novelist, Richard Wright's, American Hunger, a social anthology by his African American counterpart and contemporary, when Cesaire drools upon hunger's insidious effect: “And neither the teacher in his classroom, nor the priest at catechism will be able to get a word out of this sleepy little nigger, no matter how energetically they drum on his shorn skull, for starvation has quicksanded his voice into the swamp of hunger...”

He places Martinique in a neo-geographic, if not historic context, when he writes “And my non-fence island, its brave audacity standing at the stern of this polynesia, before it, Guadeloupe, split in two down its dorsal line and equal in poverty to us, Haiti where negritude rose for the first time and stated that it believed in its humanity and the funny little tail of Florida where the strangulation of a nigger is being completed, and Africa gigantically caterpillaring up to the Hispanic foot of Europe, its nakedness where death scythes widely.”

Apostate, sneering, hideous, complicitous, “rouge of dust mixed with rheum;” these biting words are bullets in his expiatory arsenal. Cesaire rages about his own “cowardice rediscovered!” Declaring “My heroism what a farce! This town fits me to a t. And my soul is lying down. Lying down like this town in its refuse and mud.”

Purging himself, finally, he sighs reverently “At the end of this daybreak of my virile prayer...the lover of this unique people... I accept, I accept it all...to you I surrender my conscience and its fleshy rhythm...my abrupt words...embrace, embrace us at dusk...”

Poignant, palpable, powerful. Only such an impassioned soul as that of Aime Cesaire, could have imprinted the soul of fellow Martiniquan and psychiatrist, the iconic Franz Fanon, his devotee and student, whose virile works—BLACK SKIN/WHITE MASK and THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH—so imprinted me and others like me!

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IN PRAISE OF AUNTS AND UNCLES

IN PRAISE OF AUNTS AND UNCLES
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Monday, January 31, 2011

All of us have them. Or, have had them at one time or another.

We might even be “them” right now, ourselves. But, what is their familial purpose? Aunts and uncles—our mothers’ and fathers’ siblings; or, our grandparents’ siblings? What is our familial purpose relative to our own nieces and nephews?

This question has intrigued me ever since I read the Old Testament book of ESTHER, and became acquainted with that book’s hero, Mordecai, Queen Esther’s uncle. Mordecai is the archetypical uncle. He is wise. He is loving. He is pragmatic. He is courageous, and decisive. His orientation is family-first! Due to all of these virtues, and others, he successfully maneuvered his niece, Esther, into becoming the new Queen of Persia, consort of King Ahasuerus, King of Persia and Media, (known to the Greeks as “Xerxes” or “Artaxerxes”), who ruled over 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia.

This King had replaced his former consort, Queen Vashti, for refusing to appear before him, as he had commanded, during a banquet at Susa with his court and military generals. http://nlt.scripturetext.com/esther/1.htm

After Esther becomes Queen, through Mordecai’s help, she, in turn, saves herself, her uncle, and their Jewish people from genocide by interceding with the King, risking her own life thereby. She famously said, ”I will go to the king even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.” http://bible.cc/esther/4-16.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Esther

Broadly speaking of course, aunts and uncles are family. In that sense, they are somewhat akin to surrogate parents, endued with the authority to instruct, reprove or discipline, and are, conversely,  implicitly obligated to protect, provide and encourage their nieces and nephews
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Love and laughter, hugs and kisses, tall tales and short quips are what I mostly associate with my aunts and uncles. Whenever we gather, there’s generally joy, food and festivities, whether planned or not. There are also boisterous recollections, generally of the type you can’t refute, because you were too young to remember; like, “Boy, when you were little, we had to switch them little legs all the time! You remember that?” Of course not! Your dumb silence would engenders more, tearful laughter.

Aunts and uncles are also good at supplying connective tissues in family history. One of my uncles told me where and how my parents first met, something I did not know and would have never asked. One of my aunts once told me that her father, my grandfather, was so revered for his piety and moral rectitude that his white, Mississippi, farming neighbors would have him to come by and pray for them during their illnesses, although he was black. This was something else I could not have known, but now fully appreciate.

Aunts and uncles are praiseworthy. Some have had to “take in” and raise nieces and nephews following those children’s parents’ simultaneous deaths, or other calamities, as Mordecai did with Esther. In other instances, “aunt” and “uncle” was an honorific given to deserving folks who were no actual kin, but who were part of one’s extended family.

Aunts and uncles may also provide occasional gifts and presents: Christmas, graduations, weddings, birthdays, etc. Mainly, though, aunts and uncles produce cousins. Cousins are our lifetime playmates, friends, fellow travelers, family. If aunts and uncles produced no more than this, their job will have been well done!

Whether as Mordecai in the Book of Esther or as “Aunty Emily” in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, or as “Uncle Tom” in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, aunts and uncles have played, and continue to play vital and praiseworthy roles in popular culture, and in our daily lives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Em http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/StoCabi.html
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