BETWEEN TWO "LOVES"

BETWEEN TWO "LOVES"

5/2/2010

BY REV. DR. LARRY DELANO COLEMAN

"No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and money." Matthew 7:24 (ESV)

Make money your servant, or it will make you its servant.

Resolution of this conundrum came by way of inspiration of the holy spirit.  Initially, indeed, for years, the above quoted scripture from Matthew stumped me, subdued me, stultified me.

We make money our servant by putting God, first, in our value system, and realizing that money is merely one means, among many, to achieve an end, albeit it a convenient one.

Hereby, one serves only one "master," God, the creator of all things, including "money." Hereby, one avoids the fallacy, and attains a new level of mastery.  Hereby, there is only one "love," God.

As "The Lord is my shepherd," Psalm 23:1, so, "Money is my servant." And, I shall not, and do not,want. Amen.

Princess Takushit

And ain't I a woman?..." Sojourner Truth

Image of
Princess Takushit of Upper Egypt @ 700 B.C.

Statue of the princess and priestess Takushit

This perfectly preserved solid cast statue, made of a mixture of bronze and silver, is the only representation of the princess and priestess Takushit. Takushit was the daughter of Akanuasa, a ruler during the reign of the Pharaoh Pianhi. She is shown walking, her body shapely and full, her facial characteristics intense. She wears a long chiton, which emphasizes her figure and is covered with engraved motifs. These motifs, which are damascened with electrum (gold and silver alloy), are representations of deities from Lower Egypt and Hieroglyphic texts with prayers and dedications addressed to these deities. This statue was probably the priestess's funerary monument. Its only parallel is the statue of Karamama of the twenty-second Dynasty (924-887 BC) in the Louvre (inv. 500). It was donated by Ioannis Dimitriou.

EUCLID'S PROPOSITION 1 AND AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

Euclid's Proposition 1 and American Presidential Politics:


IN ORDER FOR EUCLID's PROPOSITION TO APPLY TO THE NEXT PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN 2016, A BLACK MAN (B) MUST FOLLOW BARACK OBAMA (A) INTO THE PRESIDENCY. THEREAFTER, A THIRD POINT (C) COULD BE LOCATED FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THEIR TWO DESCRIBED ORBITS. FROM THIS POINT (C), AN EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE CAN BE CONSTRUCTED, BASED UPON WHICH, FUTURE PROPOSITIONS CAN BE PROVEN AND RESOLVED. THE PROOF IS OUTLINED BELOW.

Let AB be the given finite straight line.

Describe the circle BCD with the center A and the radius AB.

Again describe the circle ACE, with the center B and the radius AB.

Join the straight line CA and CB from the point C at which point the circles cut one another to the points A and B.

Now since point A is the center of CDB, therefore, AC equals AB. Again, since point B is the center of CAE, therefore, CB equals BA.

But BC was proved equal to AB. Therefore each of the straight lines AC and BC are equal to AB.

And things which equal the same thing also equal one another. Therefore, AC and BC equals AB.

Therefore the straight lines AC , AB and BC equal one another.

Therefore the triangle ABC is equilateral, and has been connected on the given finite line AB.

ASYMMETRY

I read about the extremely small asymmetries favoring matter over antimatter in deGrasse Tyson and Goldsmith's ORIGINS: FOURTEEN BILLION YEARS OF COSMIC EVOLUTION. This asymmetry reinforced my faith in God!

New Clues Behind Antimatter Mystery Found by LHC : DNews

news.discovery.com

How the modern universe is primarily composed of matter and not antimatter has foxed astrophysicists for decades, but a result from an LHC experiment has uncovered a new clue behind the matter-antimatter asymmetry myster

AFRAID OF LIGHT

WHAT THEN IS MOST VALUABLE?

"INTANGIBLE ASSETS" LIKE LOVE, PERSPICACITY, PATIENCE, GOODWILL, WISDOM, COURAGE, FAITH, DETERMINATION, DESIRE OR HOPE, CANNOT BE VALUED EITHER CONVENTIONALLY, OR NOMINALLY.  THEY ARE LIKE GRAVITY WHICH HOLDS US DOWN; OR SUNLIGHT WHICH GIVES US LIGHT AND ENERGY; OR OXYGEN WHICH GIVES US CONSCIOUSNESS; OR MATTER THAT GIVES US FORM. NONE OF THESE INTANGIBLE, COSMOLOGICAL ASSETS CAN BE VALUED CONVENTIONALLY OR NOMINALLY EITHER. BUT WITHOUT THEM, THERE IS NO LIFE. WHAT THEN IS MOST VALUABLE?

MYSTIC MOON

GOODWILL

It is better to sacrifice temporary profits, in order to retain permanent goodwill, than to retain such profits and to lose that goodwill. This admonition applies in business and in non-business life equally as well. Goodwill is deemed to be a revenue producing asset, a form of capital, which, if lost, dooms any enterprise of any kind. This is why "Honest" Abraham Lincoln sagely observed that: "A lawyer's time and reputation is his stock in trade."

Merriam-Webster Search for iPhone

i.word.com

You have reached the home page for the Merriam-Webster iPhone application. This site is intended for use with Apple's iPhone or iPod touch. Check out this page with an iPhone or visit Merriam-

ILLUSIONS AND PERCEPTIONS

ILLUSIONS AND PERCEPTIONS...

Whether life is predetermined, or not, has long been the subject of debate, speculation, and inquiry. Whatever may be one's answer to this question, one thing is certain. Our planet, Earth, rotates on its axis, while it revolves around the Sun, which revolves around the center of the Milky Way, which also rotates and revolves in its own right. These revolutions and rotations are astronomically predictable and mathematically verifiable. Comets come and go at regular intervals, as do day and night, and the tides and seasons. If then these greater things are ordered, would not lesser things, like us, also be ordered? We do not perceive the motions of revolution or rotation either. Yet, we do rotate at a 1000 miles per hour on the Earth, even as it revolves at 66,000 miles per hour around the sun. Yet, for all of that order, both phi and pi--mathematical concepts--are both "irrational" in that their decimal value is infinite and indeterminate, not "rational" or finite. Yet, their intrinsic relational values are everywhere displayed in us and in nature. So, then where are we; what are we?

Victorious!

1968 Olympics: Tommie Smith, gold (c); John Carlos, bronze (r); Australian, silver (l) -- 200 meter winners in Mexico City.

Let's celebrate black history everyday !

How they built the pyramids

http://www.livescience.com/29030-bureaucracy-meat-production-crucial-to-building-egypt-s-pyramids.html

Organization, record-keeping, scribes. No slaves or Hebrews.

Bureaucracy, Meat Production Crucial To Building Egypt's Pyramids

www.livescience.com

AESCHYLUS' "PROMETHEUS BOUND" AND THE PRESENT

This earliest tragedy by Aeschylus,"Prometheus Bound", evokes great familiarity with later events and allusions occurring well more than 500 years after this 6th century BC poet and playwright lived and wrote in Ancient Greece. In the beginning of the play, as Prometheus is being nailed and pinioned to a barren, remote rocky cliff by Hephaestus upon the order of Zeus, and at the insistence of Power (or Kratos), I am reminded of both the Crucifixion of Christ on the Cross by Rome at the instigation of his fellow-Jews. I am also reminded of blacks being manacled and chained during the Middle Passage into slavery. Prometheus brought the gift of divine fire to man; Jesus brought the gift of eternal life to man; blacks brought civilization, riches and power to Arab-Muslim man and to Western-European Christian man! One timeless, literary seam connects all three persons/myths/events to us through life, even as this prescient drama continues to unfold...

The Internet Classics Archive | Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus

classics.mit.edu

<​!--quoteTitle> by Aeschylus, part of the Internet Classics Archive

my personal prepositions

My Personal Prepositions

Go beyond, see beyond, do beyond, your horizon has no end.

Feel within, hear within, love within,
Your innermost is your friend.

Taste among, smell among, create among, the locus of your focus.

Build with, dream with, conceive with,
Spiritually minded others.

Open to, enter into, unburden to,
Your soul's secret chamber.

Share about, care about, seek answers about, riddles of life divine.

Come in from, and daily shun, doubting limits placed on your mind.

Work the work, perfect the gift, that is your stock in trade.

Be strong and bold and very sure: no profit nor joy's in being afraid!

Stay ready for: prepare for, keep studying for, this plane's final exam.

Each score is weighed, measured and counted out, by Great I Am!

WORLDS UNNUMBERED

ORIGINS: FOURTEEN BILLION YEARS OF COSMIC EVOLUTION, “Worlds Unnumbered, Planets Beyond the Solar System” by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith,pp.204-205 (W.W. Norton & Co., NY, London:2004)

“Nearly five centuries ago, Nicolaus Copernicus resurrected a hypothesis that the ancient Greek astronomer Aristarchus had first suggested. Far from occupying the center of the cosmos, said Copernicus,Earth belongs to the family of planets that orbit the Sun...

“If the Sun has a planetary family, so too might other stars, with their planets equally capable of giving life to creatures of all possible forms. Expressing this view in a manner that affronted papal authority brought Giordano Bruno to his death at the stake in 1600.Today, a tourist can pick his way through the crowds at the outdoor cafes in Rome's Campo di Fiori to reach Bruno's statue at its center, then pause for a moment to reflect on the power of ideas (if not the power of those who hold them) to triumph over those who would suppress them...

“Nevertheless, the verdict on extraterrestrial life in the solar system show enough likelihood of proving negative that supple minds now usually look beyond our cosmic neighborhood, to the vast array of possible worlds that orbit stars other than our Sun.”

1 King 19:9-18 and the Middle Passage

"Some intimation from the future," indeed, to quote Howard Thurman, gave our enslaved, Middle-Passage, ancestors hope. Some divine epiphany told them in the hovels and holds of fetid    slave ships, that life, with all its pain and tumult, held the promise, not death! They heard that still small voice and they relented to the whims of destiny! Bless them for hearing and for obeying that still quiet voice! They were the engine that powered the new world and which produced us! Such a cosmic spiritual insight and an awesome "intimation" evokes 1 King 19:9-18, to wit:

⁹ And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?

¹⁰ And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.

¹¹ And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before theLord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:

¹² And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

¹³ And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?

¹⁴ And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.

¹⁵ And the Lord said unto him, Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus: and when thou comest, anoint Hazael to be king over Syria:

¹⁶ And Jehu the son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel: and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room.

¹⁷ And it shall come to pass, that him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay: and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay.

¹⁸ Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.

I KINGS 19:9-18

FOR THE INWARD JOURNEY

Howard Thurman, FOR THE INWARD JOURNEY, “On Viewing the Coast of Africa,” pp.199-200 (Friends United Press, Richmond, Indiana: 1984)

“From my cabin window I look out on the full moon, and the ghosts of my forefathers rise and fall with the undulating waves. Across these same waters how many years ago they came! What were the inchoate mutterings locked tight within the circle of their hearts? In the deep, heavy darkness of the foul-smelling hold of the ship, where they could not see the sky, nor hear the night noises, nor feel the warm compassion of the tribe, they held their breath against the agony.

“How does the human spirit accommodate itself to desolation? How did they? What tools of the spirit were in their hands with which to cut a path through the wilderness of their despair? If only Death of the body would come to deliver the soul from dying! If some sacred taboo had been defiled and this extended terror was the consequence—there would be no panic in the paying. If some creature of the vast and pulsing jungle had snatched the life away—this would even in its wildest fear be floated by the familiarity of the daily hazard. If death had come being ushered into life by a terrible paroxysm of pain, all the assurance of the Way of the Tribe would have carried the spirit home on the wings of precious ceremony and holy ritual. But this! Nothing anywhere in all the myths, in all the stories, in all the ancient memory of the race had given hint of this tortuous convulsion. There were no gods to hear, no magic spells of witch doctor to summon; even one's companion in chains muttered his quivering misery in a tongue unknown and a sound unfamiliar.

“O my Fathers, what was it like to be stripped of all supports of life save the beating of the heart and the ebb and flow of fetid air in the lungs? In a strange moment, when you suddenly caught your breath, did some intimation from the future give your spirits a hint of promise? In the darkness did you hear the silent feet of your children beating a melody of freedom to words you would never know, in a land where your bones would be warmed again in the depths of the cold earth in which you would sleep unknown, unrealized, and alone.”

LIKE MIKE

FORTY MILLION DOLLAR SLAVES: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete, by William C. Rhoden (Crown Publishers, New York:2006), pp. 204-205

“I don't think people look at Michael Jordan anymore and say he's a black superstar. They say he's a superstar. They totally accepted him into the mainstream. Before he got there he might have been African American, but once he arrived, he had such a high level of acceptance that I think the description goes away.

“[David] Falk understood the mixed blessing of so-called racial transcendence. It's good because people accept an individual for accomplishments, independent of ethnicity.

“It's bad because if you are 'of color' you want that person to be a role model. It's like you finally got a great role model and people take away his leadership by assimilating him into the general culture.

“Depending on whom you speak with, Jordan's life mirrors the vision Dr. King laid out in his 1963 speech, his success determined by the content of his character. Rather than the color of his skin. But Jordan was also a dream come true for the NBA. The challenge for the NBA as it went from a majority white players to mostly black players was how to make a majority-black league palatable. How to take black style and showmanship, but somehow leave behind all of the more 'inconvenient' features of blackness in America. How to make race visible and invisible simultaneously.

“The answer was to have blacks act neutral, but perform spectacularly.

“Like Mike.”

push back ignorance

Our own ignorance, when pushed back, reveals hidden gems of knowledge.

ignorance is sin

Ignorance is the greatest of mortal sins.

"Human Rights" is misleading and awkward

The term "human right" is misleading and awkward. "Rights" are revocable political dispensations. Human is a taxonomic term designating our species of vertebrates. Implicit in the term "human," is a notion of conscious superiority to all other living things, extending to and including other "humans," some of whom our forebears (or contemporaries) either ate as food or worshiped as gods. Thus, the concept of "human right" is, like us, in a state of continual evolution, subject to whim and caprice; rationality and irrationality, order and disorder; knowns and unknowns; knowables and unknowables; losts and founds; confounds and impounds. And God.

Subscriptions and "Kickstart"

http://www.kickstarter.com/hello?ref=nav

"Subscriptions," such as those used in "Kickstart," a for-profit entity which collects a 5% fee on all funds generated for a given project, was similar to the manner by which Benjamin Franklin funded the establishment of the Philadelphia Public Library and the University of Pennsylvania, among others. It was also the method employed by Marcus Garvey to fund The Black Star Ship Line, before politically inspired prosecutions for "mail fraud" culminated in a contrived conviction, for which he served time in Atlanta Penitentiary, before his sentence was commuted by then-President Calvin Coolidge.

"Theodore Roosevelt" by Kelly Miller

pp.283-284, RACE ADJUSTMENT: essays on the Negro in America, “Theodore Roosevelt,” by Kelly Miller (The Neale Publishing Co., New York, Washington, D. C: 1909)

“Gratitude is not characteristic of a self-centered nature. When one is overburdened with a sense of his own ordained primacy, he naturally looks upon lesser men as being put in the world as auxiliaries of his higher mission. While the whole world was extolling the prowess of the Negro soldier, it was reserved for the chief beneficiary of that prowess to sound the sole discordant note. In a notable magazine article, where our present day warriors are wont to fight their battles with an ingenuity and courage rarely equalled on the tented field, Colonel Roosevelt either discredited their valor or damned them with such faint praise as to dim the luster of their fame. This ungenerous criticism dumbfounded the Negro race. Disparagement of the Negro soldier, as subsequent developments have clearly shown, touches the pride and arouses the resentment of this race as nothing else can do. The Negro's loyalty and patriotism, as exemplified in all the nation's wars, is perhaps the chief tie of endearment that binds him to the heart of the American people. If this tie becomes tenuous his hold upon the nation's affection would be precarious indeed. For a time there was no more unpopular man in America throughout African-Americandom. But election time was approaching. Political exigencies made him the available candidate for the governorship of the Empire State of New York. The chief factor in this availability was the military glamour that gathered about him because of San Juan Hill, where the colored troops fought so nobly. The results of this election depended upon the colored vote, whose resentment he had aroused. Candidate Roosevelt so mollified and qualified the strictures of Colonel Roosevelt as to take away much of the keenness of the sting. By the use of such blandishments as politicians know well how to apply to salve the sores of an aggrieved class during the unrest of a heated campaign, the injury was forgiven, or at least held in abeyance. Under the rallying cry of the Grand Old Party the Negro vote came to the rescue and supported him almost to a man. The slender margin of his victory showed that his victory showed that his success was due to that support....It was thus the Negro who saved his political life at the ballot-box as he had saved his physical life on the battlefield.”

multidimensional life

One of the great paradoxes of life is that good things can come out of bad things, and that bad things can come out of good things. Another one is that you can be wrong, and end up right, and that you can be right, and end up wrong! This Life is unpredictably multidimensional!

IS DEMOCRACY TANTAMOUNT TO FREEDOM?

Is democracy tantamount to freedom?

We hear freedom and democracy together so often that they seem to be conjoined. But, history has shown that they are not conjoined, but are usually antagonists.

The United States, itself, is a good example. While this representative form of government purports to be a democracy, black men in the South could not vote, nor stand for office, before the "Freedom War," 1861-1865. Yet, those enslaved blacks were counted as 3/5's of a man for Congressional representation purposes in the South. Presumably, blacks in the North, prior to the "Freedom War," did not count at all, as they are not even indirectly mentioned, constitutionally.

So, in America, before the "Freedom War," there was neither freedom nor democracy, notwithstanding a representative form of government and a judicial system based upon the English common law, facetiously fair and disparately equal.

Even after the gains realized by blacks, immediately following the Freedom War, in the form of freedom from physical slavery, and the right to vote, a secret political compromise between Republicans and Democrats, northern and southern white men respectively, erstwhile adversaries, allowed a recrudescence or re-victimization of blacks, economically, politically, legally, educationally and socially in the South in exchange for the White House's power and privileges.

Lynching, bombing, burning, indiscriminate killing was the price paid by blacks seeking to exercise their newly acquired Constitutional "rights" for about 100 years.This denial of rights continued through the 1960's.

The Courts, wholly captive to the political process, for appointments, budgets and benefits, were of little help, usually conforming to the prevailing political winds favoring black repression, behind billowing clouds of sophistry and of legalistic legerdemain.

Both Hitler's Nazi Germany and the Union of South Africa's Apartheid fascists emulated America's own "white supremacy" doctrine, as did Italy's Mussolini.

Recently, the popularly elected government in Palestine was disrespected and undermined, because we disagreed with who won! This pattern had repeated itself over and over again in Asia, Africa, the America's and the Caribbean; usually "unpopular" governments were toppled by special operative funded or led by us.

So, no. Democracy is not tantamount to freedom. Too often, it has been freedom's principal antagonist as relates to colored people!

But, where on Earth do democracy and freedom coexist, where there are people of color, in what nation? I do not know. Maybe their joinder is the impossible dream that politicians and demagogues and oligarchs use to deceive, to beguile, to seduce us all!

snake-skinned leopard

Can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil. Jeremiah 13:23

comforting

ANTHONY AND MARY JOHNSON

Anthony Johnson, a native Angolan, captured in 1621, and later shipped to Jamestown, Virginia, where he became an indentured servant, is the classic tragic hero of African American history.

"Hero" in the sense that he and his wife, Mary, also presumably Angolan, shared many firsts in their new land. They were the first married couple; the first to be released from their terms of indenture; the first to purchase land, and the first to give birth to a black child born in America. They were also the first to acquire indentured servants of their own, who worked their 500 acre tobacco farm. It is here that tragedy sets in for Anthony and Mary Johnson.

Anthony Johnson sued in colonial court in Virginia in 1655 to prevent one of his indentured servant's release from his terms of indenture to Johnson. The colonial court ruled in Johnson's favor, ruling that the servant, John Casor Negro, would be Anthony Johnson's servant for life! Therefore he would not be entitled to the usual "freedom dues" that the released persons, like the Johnson's acquired upon release from indenture, consisting of land, seed, tools and money.

This ruling in 1655, literally means that a black man arguably became the first slave-owner in America. That is a gravely ironic tragedy.

In the ensuing years, Johnson had 100 acres of his land swindled out of his possession by a lying neighbor in court, who claimed Johnson was indebted to him as proven by a contrived letter that Johnson had written, though Johnson was illiterate unable to read or write. That in was 1657.

The colonial legislature in 1661 then abrogated indentured servitude altogether for Africans, making them slaves for life to drive a wedge between them and the equally abundant white indentured servants with whom they frequently ran away, married, or consorted with. Earlier in 1640, three runaways, 2 white and 1 black, upon recapture had been treated differently also. The whites had some years added to their term of indenture, but the black as punishment was made a slave for life.

So, Anthony Johnson may have used this 1640 precedent in his own case, although his servant had gone to work for a neighbor, which neighbor was required to pay Johnson's court costs. This precedent may mitigate the anomaly somewhat for Johnson, but when he died in 1670, the court gave practically all of his land to a neighbor, the court saying his being a Negro made him an alien, not entitled to land, as the monster of racism emerged full-bloom in colonial Virginia.

A tragic hero has been defined as one who does not at first understand the implications of his own words or actions. "When he asserts himself, the tragic hero is committed, sometimes unconsciously to consequent suffering." p.11, Eight Great Tragedies (1963)

Such a definition indubitably fits the life and legacy of Anthony Johnson, the earliest prototype of latter-day African Americans.

Anthony Johnson, a native Angolan, captured in 1621, and later shipped to Jamestown, Virginia, where he became an indentured servant, is the classic tragic hero of African American history.

"Hero" in the sense that he and his wife, Mary, also presumably Angolan, shared many firsts in their new land. They were the first married couple; the first to be released from their terms of indenture; the first to purchase land, and the first to give birth to a black child born in America. They were also the first to acquire indentured servants of their own, who worked their 500 acre tobacco farm. It is here that tragedy sets in for Anthony and Mary Johnson.

Anthony Johnson sued in colonial court in Virginia in 1655 to prevent one of his indentured servant's release from his terms of indenture to Johnson. The colonial court ruled in Johnson's favor, ruling that the servant, John Casor Negro, would be Anthony Johnson's servant for life! Therefore he would not be entitled to the usual "freedom dues" that the released persons, like the Johnson's acquired upon release from indenture, consisting of land, seed, tools and money.

This ruling in 1655, literally means that a black man arguably became the first slave-owner in America. That is a gravely ironic tragedy.

In the ensuing years, Johnson had 100 acres of his land swindled out of his possession by a lying neighbor in court, who claimed Johnson was indebted to him as proven by a contrived letter that Johnson had written, though Johnson was illiterate unable to read or write. That in was 1657.

The colonial legislature in 1661 then abrogated indentured servitude altogether for Africans, making them slaves for life to drive a wedge between them and the equally abundant white indentured servants with whom they frequently ran away, married, or consorted with. Earlier in 1640, three runaways, 2 white and 1 black, upon recapture had been treated differently also. The whites had some years added to their term of indenture, but the black as punishment was made a slave for life.

So, Anthony Johnson may have used this 1640 precedent in his own case, although his servant had gone to work for a neighbor, which neighbor was required to pay Johnson's court costs. This precedent may mitigate the anomaly somewhat for Johnson, but when he died in 1670, the court gave practically all of his land to a neighbor, the court saying his being a Negro made him an alien, not entitled to land, as the monster of racism emerged full-bloom in colonial Virginia.

A tragic hero has been defined as one who does not at first understand the implications of his own words or actions. "When he asserts himself, the tragic hero is committed, sometimes unconsciously to consequent suffering." p.11, Eight Great Tragedies (1963)

Such a definition indubitably fits the life and legacy of Anthony Johnson, the earliest prototype of latter-day African Americans.

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the power of passive insistence

The power of passive insistence

"Passive resistance" as a powerful political tool was popularized by Mohandas K. Gandhi, first, in South Africa and, later and most definitively, in India, this East Indian attorney's homeland.

Inspired by Gandhi's example, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , a Baptist preacher, and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, applied Gandhi's principles to his own native land to free American blacks from the malignant vestiges of over a century of oppression and disparate treatment to which they had been subjected after, a far too-brief "Reconstruction,"following the slavery-ending, Union-preserving Civil War.

"Passive insistence" is a concept suggested by my recent observation of an 8-year girl, whose benign act of following a Tennessee state senator around the capital all day, induced that senator to drop her proposed bill, which had directly threatened that child's welfare nutrition benefits.

It was then that the thought "passive insistence" struck me. I saw it as a useful natural paradigm that could be employed in multiple contexts, even as it was already being employed in Nature and in human affairs.

Persistent pressure pays off! The "Importunate Woman," Luke 18:1-8, whose persistence this Tennessee child reprised, is a prime example.

Rock formations, riverbeds, deserts, and mountain chains have all been shaped and re-shaped by persistent pressure, sunlight, wind and water. 

Orthodontic braces and orthopedic aids straighten teeth and limbs through persistent applied pressure.

What if "passive insistence" was applied as a tool to combat such pernicious evils as beset the spiritually sodden, underclass of black people themselves, internally?

"Love" judiciously applied is one such powerful, persistent, pressure tool available. Surely, there are others.

John 13:13-15

13 Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.

 14 If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.

 15 For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.

John 13:13-15

OF NORMAL SCIENCE AND PARADIGMS

THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, by Thomas S. Kuhn, pp.10-12, 15, introduction by Ian Hacking (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London: 2012)

“Aristotle's Physica, Ptolemy's Almagest, Newton's Principia and Opticks, Franklin's Electricity, Levoisier's Chemistry, and Lyell's Geology—these and many other works served for a time implicitly to define the legitimate problems and methods of a research field for succeeding generations of practitioners. They were able to do so because they shared two essential characteristics. Their achievements were sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity. Simultaneously, it was sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the undefined group of practitioners to resolve....

“Why is the concrete scientific achievement, as a locus of professional commitment, prior to the various concepts, laws, theories, and points of view that may be abstracted from it? In what sense is the shared paradigm a fundamental unit for the student of scientific development, a unit that cannot be fully reduced to logically atomic components which might function in its stead? When we encounter them in section V, answers to these questions and to others like them will prove basic to an understanding of normal science and to the associated concept of paradigms. That more abstraction discussion will depend, however, upon a previous exposure to examples of normal science or of paradigms in operation. In particular, both these related concepts will be clarified by noting that there can be a sort of scientific research without paradigms, or at least without any so unequivocal and so binding as the ones named above. Acquisition of a paradigm and of the more esoteric types of research it permits is the sign of maturity in the development of any given scientific field...

“In parts of biology—the study of heredity, for example—the first universally received paradigms are still more recent; and it remains an open question what parts of social science have yet acquired have yet acquired such paradigms at all. History suggests that the road to a firm research consensus is extraordinarily arduous.”

TRUTH: NO VARIATIONS

NOT ALREADY 'SAVED', A WORK IN PROGRESS

I AM NOT ALREADY "SAVED," AS MANY FELLOW-CHRISTIANS HAVE PROFESSED TO BE. I AM VERY MUCH A WORK IN PROGRESS. PRAISE GOD!

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. PHILIPPIANS 3:10-14

BLACK COMMUNITY: A DEFINITION

"Black Community": A nominal aggregation of persons, principally of African descent, without borders, constitution, or economy, to which a defined cultural and geopolitical identity is attributed; and, to which an imputed quasi-"sovereignty" is often blithely ascribed by others, including many black persons, themselves, as though it were true.

Is this definition valid in 2013? Or valid in prior years in The U.S.A.?

INDELIBLE IMPRINT

The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt is for "children" of all ages

Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly, 
'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy; 
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair, 
And I've a many curious things to shew when you are there." 
Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "to ask me is in vain, 
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again." 

"I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high; 
Will you rest upon my little bed?" said the Spider to the Fly. 
"There are pretty curtains drawn around; the sheets are fine and thin, 
And if you like to rest awhile, I'll snugly tuck you in!" 
Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "for I've often heard it said, 
They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed!" 

Said the cunning Spider to the Fly, " Dear friend what can I do, 
To prove the warm affection I 've always felt for you? 
I have within my pantry, good store of all that's nice; 
I'm sure you're very welcome -- will you please to take a slice?" 
"Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "kind Sir, that cannot be, 
I've heard what's in your pantry, and I do not wish to see!" 

"Sweet creature!" said the Spider, "you're witty and you're wise, 
How handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes! 
I've a little looking-glass upon my parlour shelf, 
If you'll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself." 
"I thank you, gentle sir," she said, "for what you 're pleased to say, 
And bidding you good morning now, I'll call another day." 

The Spider turned him round about, and went into his den, 
For well he knew the silly Fly would soon come back again: 
So he wove a subtle web, in a little corner sly, 
And set his table ready, to dine upon the Fly. 
Then he came out to his door again, and merrily did sing, 
"Come hither, hither, pretty Fly, with the pearl and silver wing; 
Your robes are green and purple -- there's a crest upon your head; 
Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead!" 

Alas, alas! how very soon this silly little Fly, 
Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by; 
With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew, 
Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and green and purple hue -- 
Thinking only of her crested head -- poor foolish thing! At last, 
Up jumped the cunning Spider, and fiercely held her fast. 
He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den, 
Within his little parlour -- but she ne'er came out again! 

And now dear little children, who may this story read, 
To idle, silly flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed: 
Unto an evil counsellor, close heart and ear and eye, 
And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the Fly.

The Spider and the Fly
Mary Howitt