Typifying Latent Possibilities

These young graduates typify latent possibilities in properly raised and properly educated black urban youth. This production must be replicated through home-schooling, church-schooling, peer-schooling, community organizational-schooling, fraternity and sorority-schooling, until the public school mess is resolved in Chicago, if it is ever resolved. "Why we can't wait" on the public schools, to borrow a phrase from Dr. King, (who lost his fight in Chicago to the same intransigence that spawns the young black male killers and mis-education), is reflected in this photograph with utmost clarity.

DIVINE DNA

God's divine code is also written upon the innermost parts of man

PURPLEXION

"CONTRABANDS: THE PIVOT OF AMERICAN CIVIL WAR HISTORY

http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2011/may-june/the-forgotten.html#.UVYMARfFVp5

More than a metaphor...much more.

More than a metaphor...much more.

DAHOMEY BRONZE

authentic American music

"Negro melody has been called the only autochthonous music of the American continent. The inner soul of the red man is not preserved to us in song. The European brought his folk-thought and folk-song acquired by his ancestors in unremembered ages. It was reserved for the transplanted African to sing a new song racy of the soil, which has been baptized with his blood and watered with his tears. This music is the spontaneous expression of the race soul under new and depressing environment. It is the folk genius of the African, not indeed on his ancestral heath, but in a new though beloved land. Unlike the captive Jew, who, under like circumstances, hung his harp upon the willow and sat down by the rivers of Babylon and wept, the transplanted African made a contribution to the repertoire of song which moistens the eye and melts the heart of the world. These songs are not African, but American. The scene, circumstances, and aspirations are not adapted to some distant continent, but to their new environment in a land, not of their sojourn, but of their abiding place...

"There is a disposition on the part of the more sensitive members of the colored race to affect to feel ashamed of these melodies which solaced and sustained their ancestors under burdens as grievous as any the human race has ever been called upon to bear. They fear to acknowledge a noble influence because it proceeded from a lowly place... A race that is ashamed itself or of its historic humiliation which has been overcome, makes a pitiable spectacle in the eyes of the world to which it appeals for sympathy and tolerance. A people afraid of their own shadow must forever abide in the shade..."

P.236-238, Race Adjustment: essays on the Negro in America, "Artistic gifts of the Negro," by Kelly Miller (1909)

SCIENTIST PHILOSOPHER SLAVE

"The Negro student needs other skills--skills in how to remain poised and hopeful and jubilant in an environment that is not always friendly to his ambition and strivings. He needs the mind of the scientist, the wisdom of a philosopher, and the religious faith of the Negro slave."

p.148, BENJAMIN ELIJAH MAYS: SCHOOLMASTER OF THE MOVEMENT, A BIOGRAPHY, by Randal Maurice Jelks (2012)

pulchritude

Pulchritude punctuates the drabness of living with colorful and energetic swatches of latent perfectibility.

MORAL ENERGY AND INTELLECTUAL LAW

"I find this loss of moral energy particularly harmful and pernicious, for it affects the individual's mental health. Ultimately, intellectual inequalities among individuals, if not among races, may be explained by differences in temperament or moral complexion. Indeed, in intellectual endeavors as in any other enterprise, only self-confidence and will power guarantee success. Thus, a man who is told over and over that he is naturally inferior ends up doubting that he has any natural abilities. He is stopped in his path; in fact, he is condemned to stagnate...

"What better rebuttal can one oppose to the arguments of the proponents of black inferiority than all those Haitians who have excelled in all sorts of intellectual fields, and those American blacks and Liberian blacks who have shown indisputably superior abilities in all sorts of intellectual endeavors? In Haiti as elsewhere, the considerable progress made by Ethiopians in literature and in the philosophical, biological, and natural sciences, may not be matched by similar progress in higher mathematics, a field which many persist in considering as the highest manifestation of intelligence. But we cannot pass judgment until they have career opportunities in this field. In fact, it seems that progress follows a pre-established pattern, as Claude Bernard suggests: 'It is rightly said that literature is the elder sister of science. There is an intellectual law, according to which a nation always produces its poets and philosophers before it does its scientists.'"

AFRICA'S GIFT TO AMERICA

WOMEN TO THE FORE! A BLACK WOMAN, DAUGHTER OF WALL STREET'S FAMED, FRAUNCES TAVERN OWNER, THREW OUT A BOWL OF PEAS THAT HER BOYFRIEND, A BRITISH-AGENT HAD SECRETLY POISONED, WHICH SHE WAS TO SERVE TO DINER GEORGE WASHINGTON, THEN-HEAD OF THE COLONISTS' CONTINENTAL ARMY, ACCORDING TO J.A, ROGERS AMAZING HISTORY BOOK, "AFRICA'S GIFT TO AMERICA." THE CHICKENS WHICH ATE THE DISCARDED PEAS PROMPTLY FELL DEAD IN THE YARD! THIS ACCOUNT IS NOT IN YOUR POLITICALLY PRESCRIBED TEXTS. YOU MUST STUDY BEYOND!

ORIGINAL TRINITY

THE 4 J'S: JOBS, JUSTICE, JESUS AND JOY

Purposeful economic withdrawal, otherwise known as "benign neglect," is at the center of the black family breakdown in America. Bring back the jobs; administer even-handed justice; end the black-oriented drug war; enable and facilitate capital formation, with tax incentives and/or forgiveness for over a century of purposeful deprivation; then, the black family breakdown problem will reverse itself as "the four j's" rightfully kick in: jobs, justice, Jesus and joy.

TIRHAKAH OR TARHARQA, KING OF EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA, ACTUAL AND BIBLICAL

 9And he heard say concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, He is come out to fight against thee. And when he hea
rd it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying,    ISA. 37:9

AFRICA AND TOWER OF BABEL

That is why it was called Babel --because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth. Gen.11:9 Africa was man's primordial homeland, which explains the multiplicity of its languages.

SLAVES IN AMERICA WERE SUPER-HUMAN SURVIVORS AND PRODUCERS

We must read and re-read more American and African American history and stop dishonoring our ancestors, those super-human achievers, who thrived amid, and through, unspeakable horrors to produce us! Those same horrors killed off the Caribbean and North American Indians, the beaver, the bison and the carrier pigeons. Our ancestors, whom we ignorant ingrates would impugn and dismiss as mere "slaves," as though they were sub-human, are glorious specimens of humanity, the greatest in world history. "Slave" is not a bad word to me. It is a good word! The sooner we accept that and emulate their strategies, initiatives, faith, determination, and burning learning desire, the better "we" will be!

"EARMARKS OF AN EDUCATED MAN"

p.145, BENJAMIN ELIJAH MAYS: SCHOOLMASTER OF THE MOVEMENT, A BIOGRAPHY, by Randal Maurice Jelks (University of North Carolina Press: 2012)

“Earmarks of an Educated Man.”

“The Morehouse presidency was not simply a job to [Benjamin Elijah] Mays—it was his pulpit on the national and world stage. Underlying his preachments to students was a philosophy of education rooted in his principled democratic beliefs and an ethical theological vision.

“Mays had long held that education was more than professional certification. In 1928, in a speech before a YMCA gathering in Tallahassee, Florida, he gave a talk titled “Earmarks of an Educated Man.” He told the young men gathered that to be educated is to be radical. A radical person is one who thinks for himself by getting at the root of an issue, and in the case of the black man, radicalism prompts him to acknowledge that the “Negro is not an inferior.” The second mark of an educated man was an “open mind.” It was important in life to always learn and seek out new truth. The third mark was the “courage of conviction.” To act on a belief, whether it was the Christian faith or not, required courage. If a person believed in a desegregated society, he proclaimed his belief without equivocation. Jesus, for example, died for his convictions. The fourth mark of an educated man was restlessness. He urged his audience members never to be satisfied or complacent. Self-satisfaction was always disastrous. Easy contentment never brought out the best in a person or lead to high achievement. The fifth mark was “an appreciation of all values and all knowledge.” It was important for students to understand that knowledge was vast and wide and came from many places. He emphasized that the goal of education was to instill in a people an appreciation of different philosophical and cultural values as they shaped their own lives. The final mark was sensitivity to “social and economic injustices.” It was important that an educated person be sensitive to the most vulnerable in society. For Mays, it was not enough for an educated individual to serve his own needs; education was a privilege requiring that an individual serve others. Being truly educated, he believed, meant that one should practice altruism and self-sacrifice.”

SPIRITUAL NEUTRINOS

When spiritual neutrinos from the Sun slam into the nucleus of the human heart, photons, or energy, is released in some form of human praise, and activity, automatically.

Inspired by Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, "The Elemental Zoo," pp.174-175, by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith (2005)

HELIOPOLIS OR CITY OF THE SUN. CALLED "ON" IN THE BIBLE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliopolis_(ancient)

Also known in the Bible as the City of "On," Heliopolis or the "City of the Sun" is now buried beneath Cairo. Heliopolis was the capitol of the fabled land of Goshen. Its obelisks are now in London and New York. It was ransacked for building materials by Arab invaders, and robbed of its treasures by European invaders. Learning and libraries and a labyrinth are its legacy. Many Greeks learned here.

IT CAN HAPPEN!

Colored people living in wisdom love knowledge peace and power. It can happen!

Deir el-Medina, Tomb TT1, SENNEDJEM

WE ARE NUMBERED

http://plus.maths.org/content/golden-ratio-and-aesthetics

We are numbered. The very hairs on our heads are numbered. The steps we make are numbered. The breaths we take are numbered. All numbered. Counted, and, therefore accountable are we to that great, ontological, infinite, unknowable "Geometer" who: gives all,  is all, is in you all! Rejoice. We matter. We are particular and particulate matter in the maelstrom of God's cosmological love.

ETHIOPIAN SATAN TYPIFIES INDOCTRINATED EURO-CHRISTIAN PERCEPTION

"To captivate the imagination of the ignorant masses, the priest depicts God as a white man and the devil as a black man, if he is dealing with white potential converts; but he makes the same God black when he is among black savages. Actually, he would even make the devil white if he himself were not white. In this manner the priest insinuates himself everywhere, caressing the passions instead of fighting them. And so he triumphs by capturing souls through underhanded methods. But wherever he has trodden, his footprints remain, and they can be completely erased only through centuries of effort and the relentless action of an incorruptible science. Indeed, even after Europeans stop believing in the devil, they will go on for a long time thinking of the Negro as a mean, deceitful, and cunning being, the repository of all those vices which their fearful medieval ancestors ascribed to Satan himself...

"The myth of the Devil, which is an integral part of the history of Christianity, is barely broached in theological treatises. Should one decry the effects of religious propaganda on the mentality of European Christians, an example of which is the black and hideous devil with Ethiopian features that are distorted and caricatured, a learned theologian would have no problem proving that church dogma and doctrine deny such a fact. This I have attempted to do, inasmuch as a layman can see through the arcana of the divine science. Nevertheless, as soon as one moves away from this carefully structured field of knowledge to venture into the folk traditions, such as the lives of the saints, and everything else that makes up the better part, if the least recognized one, of the history of the Church, it is a different story. There the myth of Ham, made more vulgar and striking by its conjunction with the fiction of Satan, takes on an importance that reveals clearly the extent of the aberration into which the ignorant masses have fallen, an aberration which some scholars and scientists are now trying to perpetuate by means of the absurd theory of the inequality of the human races."

P.416-417, The Equality of the Human Races, "Religious Myths and Words of the Ancients," by Antenor Firmin (1885, 2002)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: AT THE CROSS-ROADS WITH THE "LEAST OF THESE"

President Barack Obama is at a cross-roads in an enviable and epochal political career. His stupendous election blew my mind on many levels; as did he personally, his family, his books, his academic and his family history. He and it have rocked the world, for ages to come. His presidency has elevated America from merely world emperor to world god. Demonstrating that in a democracy, tainted by scandal, corruption, discrimination and racism, electoral politics can work, notwithstanding entrenched interests and entrenched money. Having said all of that, his true litmus test must remain what he does for, and specifically for, "the least of these," those he ministered to as an idealistic, young community organizer on Chicago's Southside. Those, whom his former Pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, preached about every Sunday during his 20 year membership, described by Jesus in Matthew 25, at the Trinity United Church of Christ. Those await his ministrations, his ablutions. Those. "As you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me." Those whom he left to attend Harvard Law School. Those for whom he campaigned for political office, repeatedly. Those whom he claims to love and to represent in his executive decisions and legislative proposals. Those. They are still there: waiting hoping watching as are we.

"INTEGRATION" HAS FAILED; ENTER "SYNCRETISM"

"Integration," as a paradigm for progress in American culture, has failed. Black communities, families, schools, businesses, jobs, individuals, and churches, quake and disintegrate under its incessantly destructive ravages, while crime, disease, and imprisonment surge.

A new and better format, paradigm for, economic advancement, social progression, and political cohesion is needed. "Syncretism" is needed, as it is a positive force, while integration is a negative force.

In syncretism, no one's élan or essence, nor institutions, are destroyed; instead, they remain intact and evolve, even as a more durable national homeostasis emerges. Diverse pluralities meld and combine what is best within each to form an even greater, national, entirety of the whole, which is sustainable, viable and honorable.

Syncretism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Syncretism/ˈsɪŋkrətɪzəm/ is the combining of different (often seemingly contradictory) beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought.

IBOGA CURES DRUG ADDICTION

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

Could this Iboga plant from West and Central Africa be the cure for heroin and cocaine addiction? It works overseas why not here?

intelligence lies in infant eyes

IN YOUR EYES INTELLIGENCE LIES

FREDERICK DOUGLASS: A SOUL MADE MANIFEST

‎"Our educational philosophers are ransacking their brains to prescribe wise curricula of study for colored youth. There is not so much need of that which gives information to the mind or cunning to the fingers as that which touches the soul and quickens the spirit. There must be first aroused dormant consciousness of manhood with its inalienable rights, privileges, and dignity. The letter killeth, the spirit maketh alive. The "Columbian Orator" contributed more to arousing the manhood of Mr. Douglass than all the traditional knowledge of all the schools. Of what avail is mastery of all branches of technical and refined knowledge unless it touches the hidden springs of manhood? The value of any curriculum of study for a suppressed class that is not pregnant with moral energy, and that does not make insistent and incessant appeal to the half-conscious manhood within is seriously questionable. The revelation to a young man of the dignity, I had almost said the divinity, of his own selfhood is worth more to him in the development of character and power than all the knowledge in all the deluxe volumes in the gilded Carnegie libraries.

"In the third place, Negro youth should study Mr. Douglass as a model of manly courage. In order to acquire a clear conception of principles let us discriminate sharply in the use of terms. Courage is that quality that enables one to encounter danger and difficulties with firmness and resolution of spirit. It is the swell of the soul which meets outward pressure with inner resistance. Fortitude, on the other hand, is the capacity to endure, the ability to suffer and be strong. It is courage in the passive voice. True courage sets up an ideal and posits a purpose; it calculates the costs and is economic of means, though never faltering in determination to reach that end. Bravery is mere physical daring in the presence of danger, and responds to temporary physical and mental excitation. He who is eager to fight every evil which God allows to exist in society does not display rational courage. Even our Savior selected the evils against which he waged war. The caged eagle which beats its wings into insensibility against the iron bars of its prison house is accounted a foolish bird. On the other hand, 'the linnet void of noble rage' has gained the everlasting seal of poetic disapproval. It is not genuine courage to go through the world like the knight in the tale with sword in hand and challenges on his lips to offer mortal combat to every windmill of opposition."

P.217-218, Race Adjustment: essays on the Negro in America, "Frederick Douglass," by Kelly Miller (1909)

INTELLIGENCE IS OF, BY, FROM THE CREATOR

Intelligence cannot be measured qualitatively or quantitatively; intelligence is an animating spirit from, by, and of the Creator.

NAACP'S ROLE IN UNDERMINING BLACK PROGRESS

The NAACP'S idea of racial remediation was replacing compulsory segregation with compulsory integration, in the public schools. But, they went far beyond merely remedying physical inequalities caused in most black schools by "Jim Crow" racism. They pursued the belief that anything that is all-black is "inherently inferior," as the axis of their litigation strategy. The Supreme Court agreed with the NAACP in Brown v. Board, et. al., and yet continues in quest of a remedy, beyond equalizing the money-- according blacks' their tax dollars No money. Sadly, the NAACP still pursues that self-loathing belief. They have relentlessly pursued this stratagem, heedless of its destructive consequences on black students, families, teachers, businesses, communities, jobs. Much of the destruction that we now decry, must be lain at NAACP'S dirty feet and their wanton integration strategy, which also sullied the names of such their "enemies" like Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey. Many will not understand this assertion. So be it. History speaks for itself.

IS VOTING A "RIGHT" OR AN ENTITLEMENT?

IF "VOTING" IS MERELY AN ARBITRARY ENTITLEMENT, EVEN THOUGH IT IS SET FORTH IN THE 15TH AMENDMENT OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION AS A "RIGHT," LIKE ALL OTHERS' RIGHTS, AND NOT SOME PREFERENTIAL QUOTA EXTENDED TO BLACKS, AS IMPLIED BY JUSTICE SCALIA'S VAINGLORIOUS AND RACIST COMMENT FROM THE BENCH DURING ORAL ARGUMENT, ON THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT'S PERTINENCE TO SOUTHERN, SCOFFLAW STATES; THEN, THE U.S. CONSTITUTION ITSELF ACCORDS "RIGHTS" TO NO ONE, AND ALL THAT IS SET FORTH THEREIN IS JUST AN ARBITRARY ENTITLEMENT! ONLY THE  U.S. SUPREME COURT DETERMINES "CITIZENS' RIGHTS," ACCORDING TO SCALIA, BY JUDICIAL FIAT; THUS, ELEVATING ITSELF OVER ITS CREATOR, THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, ITSELF! YOU'RE SO VAIN!

GONS NOT GUNS

More gons and fewer guns would advance understanding for all.

Polygons

www.mathsisfun.com

Polygons are 2-dimensional shapes. They are made of straight lines, and the shape is "closed" (all the lines connect up).

FIVE KEYS TO SUCCESS

The combination of all five things makes for a successful undertaking; the absence of any one making for failure. 

They are being:
1. at the right place,
2. at the right time,
3. With the right people, 
4. on the right matter, and
5. With the right means.

THE BETRAYAL OF MARCUS MOSIAH GARVEY

THE BETRAYAL,TRIAL, CONVICTION, AND DEPORTATION OF MARCUS GARVEY IS ONE OF THE MOST SORDID EPISODES IN AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY. IT INVOLVED BLACK MARXISTS/SOCIALISTS; WHITE AND BLACK INTEGRATIONISTS; EUROPEAN COLONIALISTS IN AFRICA AND THE CARIBBEAN; AND THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, COMBINED. TONY MARTIN'S BOOK, "RACE FIRST," IS A GOOD READ.

Also, the hostility of the U.S. and white society to African economic advancement during the period is revealed in the fact that only two years after the launching of the Black Star Line, the Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma was attacke...See More

"WALT WHITMAN" by Kelly Miller

pp.205-208, RACE ADJUSTMENT: essays on the Negro in America, “Walt Whitman,” by Kelly Miller (The Neale Publishing Co., New York, Washington, D. C: 1909)

“The growth and expansion of modern literature is co-extensive with the rise and development of African slavery, This literature is tinged throughout with the contemptuous disdain for the Negro which he is made to feel in all the walks and relations of life. In it he finds himself set forth in every phase of ridicule, and derided in every mood and tense of contempt. It appears in our text books, in our works of travel, in history, fiction, poetry and art.

“The same spirit does not obtain in the Oriental and classical literatures. These never refer to the Negro except in terms of endearment and respect. The gods of Homer are not too fastidious to spend a holiday season of social intercourse and festive enjoyment among the blameless Ethiopians...

“Walt Whitman's poetic principle does not depend upon superficial distinctions, but upon the eternal verities. He does not believe the 'jay is more precious than the lark because his feathers are more beautiful, or the adder better than the eel because his painted skin contents the eye,' He is 'pleased with the homely woman as well as the handsome.' This concession would bankrupt almost any other poet by depriving him of half his stock in trade. Truly his poems 'balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and sexes.' He does not relegate the Negro to the backyard of literature, but lets him in on the ground floor...

“I know that his bold, bald manner of expression sometimes grates harshly upon the refined sensibilities of the age. But he speaks with the unblushing frankness of nature. To the pure all things are pure. 'Leaves of Grass' must not be judged by isolated lines, but we must consider the general drift of its purpose and meaning. Whitman does not despise the perfumeries, graces, and adornments of life, but he will not be intoxicated by their exhalations. He maintains his soberness and sanity amid these enticing allurements...

“All truly great souls spend themselves in selfless service. Whitman would drag none down, but would lift all up. He would ring in for the world 'the nobler modes of life, with purer manners, sweeter laws.' He would bring mankind everywhere 'flush' with himself.”  

"PHI" UNIFIES ALL THINGS AND SUFFUSES ALL THINGS

"PHI" UNIFIES ALL THINGS AND SUFFUSES ALL THINGS

Overview of Phi, the Golden Ratio, Divine Proportion and Fibonacci series

www.goldennumber.net

Explore phi, the mysterious number behind the golden ratio, or Divine 

Mini-commentary on the 9th commandment

Mini-commentary on the 9th commandment:

"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.” Exodus 20:16

Literally interpreted, this can mean "do not give false testimony against another person, whether under oath or otherwise."

It does not appear to banish lying generally. In fact, there is no commandment that specifically says, "Thou shalt not lie." Nor, to my knowledge, is there one that says: "Thou shall not deceive."

Lying and deceit are among humanity's very first natural defenses, starting in infancy. They later evolve from a defense to an offense.

We are all guilty of it, even if we do no more than lie to ourselves, to deceive our selves, rather than others. In this respect, deceit, humans are joined by plants, animals and all kinds of microbes.

Maybe lying and deceit are inherent in life, being the ever present deflected shadow of light.

GRAND-DADDY AND THE ATOM

I recall trying to explain the atom to our mother's father in the late 50s or early 60s, while still in grade school. The combined look of pride and incredulity on his face was classic old school; it was tacitly saying: "Boy, you must be crazy. But, I love you, anyway!"

I showed him the crude drawing of the atom that I had sketched with pencil and paper, with its nucleus of protons and neutrons, and its whirling electrons, too tiny to see or to feel that made up all stuff, all matter, all things.

"What do you mean by 'everything is made out of atoms, ' he asked after listening respectfully to me, his eldest grandchild explain something he had just learned in science class that day, and was excited to share.

"'Moving?' What you mean moving?" He asked. "That chair you're sitting in ain't moving.'"He insisted, hurling my own words back into my face. "This pencil in my hand ain't moving. You ain't moving and I ain't either. Solid," he said, knocking on wood for emphasis.

I sensed it was time to leave that alone. So, I said nothing more.

Seems like grand-daddy's and atomic theories don't mix, I thought to myself. My crudely drawn image of the lithium atom--or was it hydrogen, back then?-- did not translate into his life. It did not "move" him, whom I loved. 

So, I put away my atomic lesson with my Grand-Daddy and moved on.

watermelon shame

TO BE ASHAMED OF WATERMELON IS THE EPITOME OF BRAINWASHING! ASHAMED OF BLACK HERITAGE--ANCIENT EGYPTIAN TOMB WALLS CONTAINED ITS IMAGES--ASHAMED OF YOUR GOD, WHO MADE THEM; ASHAMED OF YOUR MOMMA, WHO ATE THEM ! SICK!

Click "Like" if you love Watermelon!

women are equal to men

Our women were originally equal to our men.

(•.•)UBUNTU(•.•)

“The first accomplishment of the African woman, in partnership with the man, was the creation of a functioning family unit. This major step in human development laid the foundations of the organization of all subsequent societies and institutions. In Africa the woman’s `place’ was not only with her family. She often ruled nations with unquestioned authority.” - Dr. John Henrik Clarke

ALBERT SCHWEITZER'S THEOLOGY

"More is to be found in the words of the beloved theologian-physician-musician-humanitarian, Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer spent years in the most searching and conscientious study of Christian history. In the end, he summed up his conclusions in one sententious paragraph that can be found in his work, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. This Jesus, he says--who came forward, as others did, with the announcement that he was the Messiah; who proclaimed the near coming of the Kingdom of God, and urged men to repent that they might be prepared; and who sealed and consecrated his message by his death--this Jesus never existed. He stands to the world as a character conceived by liberal theological doctrinism and projected into historicity by the heads of the Christian religion... Facts themselves have become the strongest critics of this supposititious history. It is not the Jesus of the Gospels who can be meaningful for our time, says Schweitzer, but the Christ that can be known within the arena of man's inner experience. The theologians had been sure that mankind could be saved and brought to the glorification of the inner life by the propagation of faith in the Nazarene biography authenticated as history. But, this tactic has failed according to Schweitzer. It was bound to fail, as will all doctrine that looks to a source other than man's own innate, divine potential--which is one with, part of, the true Christ, the divine ground of all. We thought, says Schweitzer, that we could use the Jesus of history to lead the world to the mystic Jesus who is the living, spiritual power today. But the road leading through the historical Christ to the brooding Christ-spirit proved too forbidding and never brought the pilgrims to the longed-for Mecca. What is more, this detour has now been closed by genuine history."

A Rebirth for Christianity, "Jesus and the Christos," by Alvin Boyd Kuhn, pp. 188-189 (2005)

guerilla gardener

An "eco-lutionary" brother! I am laughing and crying out loud!

Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA | Video on TED.com

Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA -- in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a c...

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DRED SCOTT DECISION

Slave lawsuits were common in Missouri from the 1820's through the 1850's. The slaves usually won before all-white juries. So, Dred and Harriet Scott realistically felt they would win, too. They also won freedom before an all-white jury, but the Missouri Supreme Court reversed that decision. So, the Scotts sued in federal court, where they lost, definitively, the Supreme Court declaring "we the people of the United States" did not include any blacks, slave or free, within its meaning; it also said that blacks were so lowly regarded that blacks had no rights that whites were bound to respect, being no more than chattel. This declaration of law led John Brown, a fierce white, Christian freedom fighter, to lead a caravan of slaves from Missouri to Canada successfully; and to travel through New York, Massachusetts, Ohio and other states, recruiting volunteers and raising funds for his heroic raid on the federal Harper's Ferry Armory in Virginia in 1859, by which he had hoped to acquire arms for slave revolts down the spine of the Allegheny Mountains. He failed and was hung. But, Scotts' lawsuit and Brown's raid, helped to launch the Civil War's freedom.

On this date in 1857, the Supreme Court issued the Dred Scott decision, declaring no African Americans, freed or slaves, could ever be citizens.

It's importan...See More

FATHER TO SON

Trust in the Lord with All Your Heart

3 My son, do not forget my teaching,
but let your heart keep my commandments,
2 for length of days and years of life
and peace they will add to you.
3 Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you;
bind them around your neck;
write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 So you will find favor and good success
in the sight of God and man.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
7 Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
8 It will be healing to your flesh
and refreshment to your bones.
9 Honor the Lord with your wealth
and with the firstfruits of all your produce;
10 then your barns will be filled with plenty,
and your vats will be bursting with wine.
11 My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline
or be weary of his reproof,
12 for the Lord reproves him whom he loves,
as a father the son in whom he delights.

PROVERBS 3:1-12

THE CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF BLACK ADULT EDUCATION

Adult education is more important presently than youth education, for the simple reason that education's benefits can be more readily applied to life's problems, profoundly and presently in adults; while in children, it is deferred for years and may never be appropriately applied, given the vagaries of time, place, circumstance, chance, and the propensities of the child and its generation.

This has been the central post-reconstruction era failing of our people: the propensity to push off onto our children that which we ought to be doing ourselves, so that our children may follow our lead, our example and not we, theirs.

After the Civil War, our people went from, over 90% illiteracy to over 90% literacy in less than one generation, because of adult education during and after the war, acquired by any means necessary: self-help, peer to peer, church schools, missionary-founded schools, government-founded schools, and family home schools.

We must reprise this historic, and unprecedented, example of our forebears, who used their education to acquire 1/3 of the farm land in the South by 1900.

Later, their land was stolen back by murder, legal legerdemain, economic discrimination, chicanery, and racist terror; or, wasted away and lost by the desire of that generation's youth to abandon the rigors of rural life in the South in favor of the alluring "fleshpots" of the North.

money is nutritional, hormonal and enzymatic

MONEY IS NUTRITIONAL, HORMONAL, AND ENZYMATIC :

19 A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry : but money answereth all things. 

ECCL 10:19

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA'S BLACK MINORITY: A 'PECULIAR PEOPLE'

Reading Benny Mays' amazing biography by Randal Jelks: 

The African American freedom struggle has been the most remarkable in history! 

The black slaves in Haiti were the majority, when they ousted the French, and defeated the Spanish and the British by force of arms. 

Majorities also obtained in India, when Mahatma Gandhi and followers ousted the British colonialists, nonviolently, as did the African National Congress, in South Africa, when Apartheid fell, nonviolently to black majorities.

Likewise, Zimbabwe nee "Rhodesia" fell to Robert Mugabe and other guerrillas' violent peoples'-majority.

Across the continent of Africa, black majorities threw off their shackles, most nonviolently, but some violently.

The same is true throughout the world. Oppressed majorities rose up violently as in Vietnam or nonviolently to throw off European oppression.

Only in USA was freedom finally obtained, by an enslaved minority. This first came after a violent civil war, whose favorable outcome the black minority's 200,000 soldiers and sailors, incontrovertibly determined; which was followed by a nonviolent minority-led, freedom movement, a century later, that finally "secured these rights," so long denied, led by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a black Baptist preacher who was taught by, then-President, Rev. Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.

We are 'a peculiar people,' 1 Peter 2:9, special people; the peculiar people of God, who yet abides, rules and super-rules! Don't hate. Celebrate GOD'S great glory!

BACK TO THE LAND SYMPATHETICALLY

Just thinking. Might be worthwhile to explore acquiring some farm land, so the young and old can get some "dirt between their toes." And reconnect with the land through labor, self-sufficient gardening, rural rehabilitation--"rural-habilitation"--nature study, education, relaxation, fishing, swimming, storytelling, boarding, invention, planning, creation, animal husbandry, horseback riding, arts and crafts, astronomy, prayer, meditation, contemplation, hiking, biking, writing, canning, etc.

Just a thought...