THUNDERSTORM

Thunder rolls in bodaciously.
Asserting climatological sovereignty.
Comes, too, rain intermixed with hail.
Reminding us just how frail,
We, the living, truly be within Divine destiny!

Sixth Circuit Smacks Down Crack's Sentencing Disparities Retroactively

Sixth Circuit Smacks Down 'Crack's' Sentencing Disparities Retroactively

by Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.

05/24/13

Mincing few words, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, last week, struck down, as “racist” and as violative of the equal protection of law, federal sentencing guidelines which, at one time, punished crack cocaine 100-1 times more severely than powder cocaine. Crack is a form of cocaine primarily used by blacks; powder cocaine is primarily consumed by whites.

This is one of the most significant decisions in American legal history! Unless stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court, it may set thousands of black "crack" captives free from federal prisons, at least in Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and Michigan, the federal 6th Circuit Court of Appeals' states! The other 11 federal courts of appeal may now do likewise, being emboldened. The gauntlet has been thrown down!

Elena Kagan is the circuit justice for the Sixth Circuit. Being an Obama appointee, it is unlikely that she would issue a stay unilaterally, nor grant a petition seeking certiorari from federal prosecutors, given the state of prevalent judicial politics.

The case is unusual in more than one way. First, the appellants, two currently incarcerated cousins named Blewett, did not challenge the unconstitutionality of the crack-cocaine sentencing disparity on appeal at all, on any ground whatsoever. Perhaps, they were prudent or deterred by the negative, seemingly futile, outcomes in similar constitutional challenges. So, for any court sua sponte—on its own—to reach a constitutional issue is rare, though not unprecedented.

The second unusual aspect of this decision is that it completes the legislative relief, for those unconstitutionally wronged, that Congress was unwilling to finish: grant retroactive application to those wrongly incarcerated under the old 100-1 guidelines which were mitigated to 18-1 in 2010 by the Fair Sentencing Act.

The Court wrote:

This is a crack cocaine case brought by two currently incarcerated defendants seeking retroactive relief from racially discriminatory mandatory minimum sentences imposed on them in 2005. The Fair Sentencing Act was passed in August 2010 to "restore fairness to Federal cocaine sentencing" laws that had unfairly impacted blacks for almost 25 years. The Fair Sentencing Act repealed portions of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 that instituted a 100-to-1 ratio between crack and powder cocaine, treating one gram of crack as equivalent to 100 grams of powder cocaine for sentencing purposes. The 100-to-1 ratio had long been acknowledged by many in the legal system to be unjustified and adopted without empirical support. The Fair Sentencing Act lowered the ratio to a more lenient 18-to-1 ratio. However, thousands of inmates, most black, languish in prison under the old, discredited ratio because the Fair Sentencing Act was not made explicitly retroactive by Congress.

In this case, we hold, inter alia, that the federal judicial perpetuation of the racially discriminatory mandatory minimum crack sentences for those defendants sentenced under the old crack sentencing law, as the government advocates, would violate the Equal Protection Clause, as incorporated into the Fifth Amendment by the doctrine of Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954) (Fifth Amendment forbids federal racial discrimination in the same way as the Fourteenth Amendment forbids state racial discrimination). As Professor William J. Stuntz, the late Harvard criminal law professor, has observed, "persistent bias occurred with respect to the contemporary enforcement of drug laws where, in the 1990s and early 2000s, blacks constituted a minority of regular users of crack cocaine but more than 80 percent of crack defendants." The Collapse of American Criminal Justice 184 (2011). He recommended that we "redress that discrimination" with "the underused concept of `equal protection of the laws.'" Id. at 297.

In this opinion, we will set out both the constitutional and statutory reasons the old, racially discriminatory crack sentencing law must now be set aside in favor of the new sentencing law enacted by Congress as the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. The Act should apply to all defendants, including those sentenced prior to its passage. We therefore reverse the judgment of the district court and remand for resentencing.

This case emerges in the context of variegated assaults on the so-called “War on Drugs,” which became crystallized very sharply with the release of Michelle Alexander's jaw-dropping factual and statistical revelations in her bestselling book, THE NEW JIM CROW: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness. Her work eviscerates as it illuminates every corner, nook, and cranny of the intentionally racist drug war, which targets blacks, the seldom-acknowledged minority of drug users, sellers or importers, disproportionately, with mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, reflecting their intrinsic insidiousness. A video presentation of her work given at a Pasadena, California, library may be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7IB-e3SrH0 . Alexander's views and findings are more than vindicated by this decision.

Constructing their decision carefully and deliberately from Supreme Court precedents as well as other cases, Congressional legislative history of relevant statutes, the words of the affected statutes, and secondary authorities, the split panel which handed down the May 17, 2013, opinion over the dissent of one of its 3 members appeared to fortify itself against a motion for rehearing to the entire court.

The case is United States v. Blewett, No. 12-5226 (6th Cir. May 17, 2013).

http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=In%20FCO%2020130517095.xml&docbase=CSLWAR3-2007-CURR

#30

the unraveling...

http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm

PAY YOURSELF FIRST!

PAY YOURSELF FIRST!



05/28/13



By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman



One would think that the sheer necessity of paying yourself first is self-evident. After all, you earned the money, by labor and effort. So, who is better suited?
Pay yourself, first, please! Forget the dumb stuff! Break off some for you, first!
The Bible supports this common sense notion. 2 Timothy 2:6-7 says:
6 The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits.
7 Consider what I say; and the Lord give thee understanding in all things.



Paying yourself first incentivizes work. It gives you an incentive, a desire, a reason to return to the rigors of work. Payment separates work from slavery. Paying yourself first separates labor from drudgery.

3 John 1:2

New King James Version (NKJV)

2 Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.



Earthly reward for labor enables health to the body and prosperity to the soul.

7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk?8 Do I say this merely on human authority? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? 9 For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.”[a] Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10 Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us,because whoever plows and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. 1 Cor. 9:7-10

“What's in it for me?” is not a selfish question. It is a very sensible! So is the question: “Where is mine?” equally sensible, as this scripture attests! Get paid!

Only when you can and have helped yourself are you able to help others!

A starving man needs help, as does a drowning man. Paying your self first helps to ward off starvation and helps to prevent drowning financially in debt.

Then, when and after you have gained some measure of reasonable stability and joy, must you seek opportunities to spread your joy and to enhance your inner stability by helping others, be they persons, causes, or charitable crusades.

6 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. 7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.

“Neither reluctantly or under compulsion,” in 2 Cor. 9:6-8 above, means nobody can dictate any duty, nor deliver any decree, respecting what, if any, percentage of your money should be given; rather only “what you have decided in your heart to give” is required. Unless you are giving cheerfully, don't do it! Pray to God, instead, for deliverance from bondage that robs you of your joy and good cheer!

Matthew 15:8-9 teaches you to guard against insincere talkers, who exploit Jesus Christ for personal gain or aggrandizement, whose acts belie their utterances:

8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

You are the pivot and the vortex after God, who made you, and all that is or was!

That is made very clear in the greatest commandment taught by Jesus Christ in Matthew 22: 34-40:

The Greatest Commandment

34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law,tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

“As yourself” in the 39^th verse supplies the terms for “loving your neighbor.” Jesus does not mention tithes or money in this passage for a very obvious reason:

God does not need your money!

PSALM 50:10,12 NLT
10 For all the animals of the forest are mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills.
12 If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for all the world is mine and everything in it.

God's love created us. God's love provides for us. God's love abides with us. Amen.

1 John 4:16-21

New International Version (NIV)

16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.



Paying one's self is “love.”

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Galatians 5:14

So, too, is paying your neighbor after you pay yourself “love.”

James 2:8
New International Version (NIV)
8 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,”[a] you are doing right.

Paying one's self first is the “royal law” rooted in love. Amen!

God's Love

God's love created us. God's love provides for us. God's love abides in

us. Amen.

brave heart tortured soul

OF CONSCIENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS: THE MIDDLE-MUDDLE

OF CONSCIENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS: the middle-muddle

05/26/13 

Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

One's conscience or value system is either inborn, acquired, both, or neither. Consciousness is the vital life force that animates all of life. Conscience is a subset of consciousness pertinent to human behavior. It marks “man.” All life has consciousness. But, not all life has consciences.

The Bible's opening phrase, "In the beginning God," is the conclusion of the whole matter of being and human existence. That one phrase expresses consciousness, which, itself, implies the possible existence of conscience. “He said, 'In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man.'” Luke 18:2.

Relating them both, conscience and consciousness, to man has challenged humans since the beginning of time, and yet challenges each person, daily.

In this brief essay, I share excerpts from 4 works which I respect: For the Inward Journey by Howard Thurman, A Rebirth for Christianity by Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith, and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn. It is hoped that this 4-part melding, and my careful editing, will yield an empowering synthesis which will inspire further understanding “of conscience and consciousness.”

“To use the oft-repeated phrase of Augustine, 'Thou has made us for Thyself, and our souls are restless till they find their rest in thee.' There is an order, a moral order in which men participate, that gathers up unto itself, dimensional fulfillment, limitless in its creativity and design...

“The moment we accept the literal truth, we are once again faced with the urgency of vehicular symbolism. To be led astray by the crassness, the materialistic character of the symbolism so that in the end we reject the literal truth, is to deny life itself of its dignity and man the right or necessity of dimensional fulfillment. In such a view the present moment is all there is—man is no longer a time binder but becomes a prisoner in a tight world of momentary events—no more and no less. His tragedy would be that nothing beyond the moment could happen to him and all his life could be encompassed within the boundary of a time-space fragment. For these slave singers such a view was completely unsatisfactory and it was therefore thoroughly and decisively rejected. And this is the miracle of their achievement causing them to take their place along side the great creative religious thinkers of the human race. They made a worthless life, the life of chattel property, a mere thing, a body, worth living! They yielded with abiding enthusiasm to a view of life which included all the events of their experience without exhausting themselves in those experiences. To them this quality of life was insistent fact because of that which deep within them, they discovered of God, and his far-flung purposes. God was not through with them. And he was not, nor could he be exhausted by, any single experience or series of experiences. To know Him was to live worthy of the loftiest meaning of life. Men in all ages and climes, slave or free, trained or untutored, who have sensed the same values, are their fellow pilgrims who journey together with them in increasing self-realization in the quest for the city that hath fountains, whose Builder and Maker is God.” – FOR THE INWARD JOURNEY, “Deep River,” by Howard Thurman (1984), pp. 222-223.

Thurman's cogent observation that the slaves' cosmology was “along side the great creative religious thinkers of the human race” is confirmed directly and emphatically by Alvin Boyd Kuhn if also, perhaps, unknowingly:

“Our challenge to Christianity has been primarily that it has abstracted the divine element from man's nature and externalized it, leaving him nothing but his grosser self. Christianity's failure to transform man for the better stems largely from this mistake.

“We have said that when it allocated to Jesus alone the divinity that was the heritage of all, Christianity dismembered integral man. Deprived of the power to redeem himself, man was left to grovel, ashamed and afraid to stand on his own feet and demand his birthright as heir to the kingdom of blessedness. He thus abrogated his title to Sonship of the Father and joint heir of his omnipotence. This reduced man to to the level of pitiful supplicant. Under such an influence, people enter the race of life without self-confidence, and so are defeated from the start...European man lived deprived of any sense of the value of his intrinsic self until the fourteenth-century Renaissance rediscovered and reaffirmed his innate ability and resources...

“No one will question that the struggle of the soul with its polarized opposite is a strenuous ordeal, often tragic and crucial. But, in the long run, this struggle is salutary, for it strengthens the soul's capacity to come to grips with life in action. Without temptation, without the long fight, there is no victory...

“Man must learn a balanced, sane, and happy integration of soul and body, if he is to lead the good life on earth intended for him. The attribution of evil to the sensual side of human nature has not been fully considered by Christian thinkers in the light of the damage it can cause to the psychic life. Yet it should be obvious that if human consciousness is taught to look with contempt and revulsion upon the instrument through which it has access and relation to life, the result must be injurious feelings of guilt and resentment...To laud spirit alone and condemn matter is to render the spirit impotent in action and to condemn man to self-deprecation, doubt, and fear. Such a position saps the will to joy, to adventure, to victory.” – A REBIRTH FOR CHRISTIANITY, “Death Throes and Birth Pangs,” by Alvin Boyd Kuhn (2004), pp.239-241.

Many African American descendants of slaves are among those who have practiced the “balanced, sane, and happy integration of soul and body, if he is to lead the good life on earth intended for him,” of which Alvin Boyd Kuhn has written, echoing Howard Thurman.

“Our survey of origins brings us, as we knew it would, to the most intimate and arguably the greatest mystery of all: the origin of life, and in particular of forms of life with which we may someday communicate....

“Some day—perhaps next year, perhaps during the coming century, perhaps long after that—we shall either discover life beyond Earth, or acquire sufficient data to conclude, as some scientists now suggest, that life on our planet represents a unique phenomenon within our Milky Way galaxy. For now, our lack of information on this subject allows us to consider an extraordinarily broad range of possibilities: We may find life on several objects in the solar system, which would imply that life probably exists within billions of similar planetary systems in our galaxy. Or we may find that Earth alone has life within our solar system, leaving the question of life around other stars for the time being. Or we may eventually discover that life exists nowhere around other stars, no matter how far and wide we look. In the search for life in the universe, just as in other spheres of activity, optimism feeds on positive results, while pessimistic views grow stronger from negative outcomes.” – ORIGINS: FOURTEEN BILLION YEARS OF COSMIC EVOLUTION, “Life in the Universe,” by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith (2004), pp. 225-227.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an internationally-esteemed astrophysicist of African American descent. He is not a Christian mystical-philosopher, like Howard Thurman. Neither is he a comparative religions scholar-philosopher, like Alvin Boyd Kuhn. He is, instead, a scientist, who insists upon much more “information” about the origins of life in the Cosmos, before he will “conclude, as some scientists now suggest, that life on our planet represents a unique phenomenon within our Milky Way galaxy.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson's reticence to capitulate to life's exclusivity to Earth notwithstanding, without evidence of “life on several objects in our solar system,”--be they planets, their moons, or other-- “which would imply that life probably exists within billions of similar planetary systems in our galaxy,” pessimism mounts exponentially that life will be found beyond our galaxy. This even he readily concedes! So, Tyson has been trapped, paradigmatically, by the lack of corroborative evidence from science. Meanwhile, in reliance on other “evidence,” his enslaved forebears inferred through their peculiar faith, life beyond this time-space continuum. That faith freed their spirits to feel and to know a sacred consciousness of God in the present world, infinitely beyond, as well as within, their own consciences. Tyson must ineluctably suspect, as Howard Thurman writes, that under his view: “man is no longer a time binder but becomes a prisoner in a tight world of momentary events—no more and no less....encompassed within the boundary of a time-space fragment.” Meanwhile his compeers have transcended the “time-space fragment” spiritually, intellectually by the mysterious soul-force of faith.

In chapter 3 of his famous book denominated, “The Nature of Normal Science,” Thomas S. Kuhn states:

“What then is the nature of the more professional and esoteric research that a group's single paradigm permits? If the paradigm represents work that has been done once and for all, what further problems does it leave the united group to resolve? Those questions will seem even more urgent if we now note one respect in which the terms used so far may be misleading. In its established usage a paradigm is an accepted model or pattern, and that aspect of its meaning has enabled me, lacking a better word, to appropriate 'paradigm' here....

“Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute. To be more successful is not, however, either to be completely successful with a single problem or notably successful with any large number. The success of a paradigm—whether Aristotle's analysis of motion, Ptolemy's computations of planetary motions, Lavoisier's application of the balance, or Maxwell's mathematization of the electromagnetic field—is at the start largely a promise of success discoverable in selected and still incomplete examples. Normal science consists in the actualization of that promise, an actualization achieved by extending the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays as particularly revealing, by increasing the extent of the match between those facts and the paradigm's predictions, and by further articulation of the paradigm itself.

“No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others. Instead, normal-scientific research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies.” – THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, “The Nature of Normal Science,” by Thomas S. Kuhn (University of Chicago: 2012), pp. 23-24.

This “actualization of promise,” which Thomas S. Kuhn's “nature of science” paradigm portends, has an almost-religious ring to it. “Belief” or “faith” is here coupled with a fact-specific interest. Coupling is the key: facts with paradigm to bequeath actualization of promise. There must be such a “match,” after all, to make a pattern. Rhetorical recursion or repetition is more than mere ornate flourish. It is also, when rigorously applied, substantive: a seminal crossing of matter with spirit. Birth ensues. Birth of an idea, a movement, a person, a product. It is “actualization of promise.” Thus, any false dichotomy between science and religion is erased in this divine moment of actualization, of transfiguration, of manifestation. “Eureka's” cum “Hosanna's” cum “Amen” proceed from epiphany to life in joyful creative irruption!

Jesus describes this process of becoming in this manner in Matthew 18: 19-20 – “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”

This “struggle of the soul with its polarized opposite” of which Alvin Boyd Kuhn speaks is personified poetically and empathetically in Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 – There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
4     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

Neither is “belief” beneath Neil deGrasse Tyson, the resolute scientist. He writes:

“If you believe, for example, that most planets suitable for life do produce life, and that most planets with life do evolve intelligent civilizations, you will conclude that billions of planets in the Milky Way produce an intelligent civilization at some point in their time line. If, on the other hand, you conclude that only one suitable planet in a thousand does produce life, and only one life-bearing planet in a thousand, evolves intelligent life, you will have only thousands, not billions, of planets with an intelligent civilization. Does this enormous range of answers—potentially even wider than the examples given here—imply that the [Frank] Drake equation presents wild and unbridled speculation rather than science. Not at all. The result simply testifies to the Herculean labor that scientists, along with everyone else, faces in attempting to answer an extremely complex question on the basis of highly limited information.” – ORIGINS: FOURTEEN BILLION YEARS OF COSMIC EVOLUTION, “Life in the Universe,” by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith (2004), pp. 229.

I beg to differ, respectfully, with Drs. DeGrasse Tyson and Goldsmith. Their “belief” is

indistinguishable from a similar belief held by Howard Thurman's “slave singers.” At least for the singers, however, life itself induced a feeling, wherein “quality of life was insistent fact because of that which deep within them, they discovered of God, and his far-flung purposes. God was not through with them. And he was not, nor could he be exhausted by, any single experience or series of experiences.”

Yet, as Thurman checks the scientists, so Alvin Boyd Kuhn, in turn, checks Thurman: “To laud spirit alone and condemn matter is to render the spirit impotent in action and to condemn man to self-deprecation, doubt, and fear. Such a position saps the will to joy, to adventure, to victory.” – A REBIRTH FOR CHRISTIANITY, “Death Throes and Birth Pangs,” by Alvin Boyd Kuhn (2004), pp.239-241.

Life, being the essential precondition for consciousness, both science and religion, its impetuous offspring, necessarily emanate from the same place and return to the same place: life. Whether zero or infinity is the opening predicate, or the closing refrain, if it is the same in each case, the middle term—the interregnum—is a muddle for both science and religion. How each unique epistemological and philosophical system addresses that middle-muddle is a question of conscience—or not--for each discipline.

#30

The Golden Ratio: Pythagorean triples

THE GOLDEN RATIO: The Story of Phi, The World's Most Astonishing Number, by Mario Livio, (Broadway Books, New York: 2002), p.28

“Thus, the square on the hypotenuse is clearly equal in area to the sum of the two smaller squares. In his 1940 book The Pythagorean Proposition, mathematician Elisha Scott Loomis presented 367 proofs of the Pythagorean theorem, including proofs by Leonardo da Vinci and by the 20^th president of the United States, James Garfield.

“Even though the Pythagorean theorem was not yet known as a “truth” characterizing all right angle triangles, Pythagorean triples actually had been recognized long before Pythagoras. A Babylonian clay tablet from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 1600) contains fifteen such triples.

“The Babylonians discovered that Pythagorean triples can be constructed using the following simple procedure, or “algorithm.” Choose any two whole numbers p and q such that p is larger than q. You can now form the Pythagorean triples p²-q²; 2pq; p²+q². For example, suppose q is 1 and p is 4. Then p²-q²=4²-1²= 16-1=15; 2pq=2x4x1=8; p²+q²=4²+1²=16+1=17. The set of numbers 15, 8, 17 is a Pythagorean triple because 15²+8²=17² (225+64=289). You can easily show that this will work for any whole number p and q. ...Therefore, there exists an infinite number of Pythagorean triples (a fact proven by Euclid of Alexandria).

God is good and merciful to all

God is Good and Merciful to All!

Sunday, August 28, 2011

By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

Great Is the Lord

[1] A Song of Praise. Of David.

145:1 I will extol you, my God and King,

and bless your name forever and ever.

2 Every day I will bless you

and praise your name forever and ever.

3 Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,

and his greatness is unsearchable.

4 One generation shall commend your works to another,

and shall declare your mighty acts.

5 On the glorious splendor of your majesty,

and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.

6 They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds,

and I will declare your greatness.

7 They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness

and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.

8 The Lord is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

9 The Lord is good to all,

and his mercy is over all that he has made.

10 All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord,

and all your saints shall bless you!

God belongs to nobody. Yet, God belongs to everybody: sinner or saint; saved or unsaved. “9 The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.”

This declaration may appear to be self-evident. But, in fact, it is hotly contested, and is at the base of uncountable wars and is the cause of innumerable tragedies.

I repeat: “9 The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.”

The Christians, Muslims, Jews, and other creeds claim exclusivity over God, and by extension, proclaim primacy over all other creeds, sects, or religions with God.

This self-righteous claim of exclusivity, and its ensuing proclamation of primacy, sets and manifests in humans: as water, sand, lime, mortar set in concrete; as gas condenses to liquid then solid; as faith and works create things imagined.

These transformative effects take place in churches, mosques, synagogues, in religious temples of any kind, where primacy is proclaimed, where exclusivity is asserted. “9 The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.”

Rather than closeted temples of secular impiety, mankind might be better served by open schools of natural inquiry and wonder, wherein people are taught, not indoctrinated; wherein people are free to speculate, not bound to regurgitate; where people are liberated, not incarcerated, in an open vision of love and awe.

Thus, righteous persons' choices have been reduced to this: trust in God not in vain man. “9 The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.”

#30

OF LIFE AND LIVELIHOOD

Who would take away one's livelihood would also take away one's life.

Who would deny one's opportunity to earn a livelihood also thereby denies one's right to life.

Redress these issues upon recognition appropriately!

And remember, conditioning either is neither "taking away" nor "denying" a livelihood, if the conditions are reasonable, and are applied to those similarly situated uniformly. That's life!

PARADIGMS: "THE NATURE OF SCIENCE"

 In chapter 3 of his famous book denominated, “The Nature of Normal Science,” Thomas S. Kuhn states:

“What then is the nature of the more professional and esoteric research that a group's single paradigm permits? If the paradigm represents work that has been done once and for all, what further problems does it leave the united group to resolve? Those questions will seem even more urgent if we now note one respect in which the terms used so far may be misleading. In its established usage a paradigm is an accepted model or pattern, and that aspect of its meaning has enabled me, lacking a better word, to appropriate 'paradigm' here....

“Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute. To be more successful is not, however, either to be completely successful with a single problem or notably successful with any large number. The success of a paradigm—whether Aristotle's analysis of motion, Ptolemy's computations of planetary motions, Lavoisier's application of the balance, or Maxwell's mathematization of the electromagnetic field—is at the start largely a promise of success discoverable in selected and still incomplete examples. Normal science consists in the actualization of that promise, an actualization achieved by extending the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays as particularly revealing, by increasing the extent of the match between those facts and the paradigm's predictions, and by further articulation of the paradigm itself.

“No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others. Instead, normal-scientific research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies.” – THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, “The Nature of Normal Science,” by Thomas S. Kuhn (University of Chicago: 2012), pp. 23-24.

CESARE BORGIA: "THE PRINCE" THAT IS JESUS CHRIST

True. Cesare Borgia also died at 33. But, this very wicked man was also THE PRINCE, of whom Niccola Machiavelli wrote in his political classic. Oh yes, Cesare Borgia was also reputed to be the Italian Renaissance artists' model for Jesus Christ.

TRUTH AND FACT

From benign to slowly twist to war!

"Mass incarceration" of the vulnerable, weak, and neglected among us is an even  more destructive killer than the "weapons of mass destruction" which never existed in Iraq. Doubtless, tens of thousands have now been killed, and millions of lives have now been impaired by the consequences of such a "benign neglect" policy--a Nixon-era political stratagem of H. R. Halderman--to withhold financial resources for post-1968 reconstruction of riot-torn black communities, from black people, and from urban areas. To "let them twist slowly in the wind," the evocative phrase of John Ehrlichmann, another Nixon operative, which suggests lynching, was vivified, stepped up dramatically, in the 1980 Reagan-era "War on Drugs," that most wanton waster of human potential, whose implements are poverty, guns, drugs and family dissolution!

THE DIAMOND THAT IS YOU

Respect yourself, love yourself, encourage yourself....then, others, in turn, as yourself.

SETTING BLACK "CRACK" CAPTIVES FREE!

http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=In%20FCO%2020130517095.xml&docbase=CSLWAR3-2007-CURR

This is one of the most significant decisions in American legal history! Unless stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court, it will set tens of thousands of black "crack" captives free from federal prisons, at least in Ohio, Michigan, and in other 6th Circuit states! May the other 11 federal courts of appeal to likewise. The gauntlet has been thrown down!

Buddha Cambodia

"Death Throes and Birth Pangs"

“Our challenge to Christianity has been primarily that it has abstracted the divine element from man's nature and externalized it, leaving him nothing but his grosser self. Christianity's failure to transform man for the better stems largely from this mistake.

“We have said that when it allocated to Jesus alone the divinity that was the heritage of all, Christianity dismembered integral man. Deprived of the power to redeem himself, man was left to grovel, ashamed and afraid to stand on his own feet and demand his birthright as heir to the kingdom of blessedness. He thus abrogated his title to Sonship of the Father and joint heir of his omnipotence. This reduced man to to the level of pitiful supplicant. Under such an influence, people enter the race of life without self-confidence, and so are defeated from the start...European man lived deprived of any sense of the value of his intrinsic self until the fourteenth-century Renaissance rediscovered and reaffirmed his innate ability and resources...

“No one will question that the struggle of the soul with its polarized opposite is a strenuous ordeal, often tragic and crucial. But, in the long run, this struggle is salutary, for it strengthens the soul's capacity to come to grips with life in action. Without temptation, without the long fight, there is no victory...

“Man must learn a balanced, sane, and happy integration of soul and body, if he is to lead the good life on earth intended for him. The attribution of evil to the sensual side of human nature has not been fully considered by Christian thinkers in the light of the damage it can cause to the psychic life. Yet it should be obvious that if human consciousness is taught to look with contempt and revulsion upon the instrument through which it has access and relation to life, the result must be injurious feelings of guilt and resentment...To laud spirit alone and condemn matter is to render the spirit impotent in action and to condemn man to self-deprecation, doubt, and fear. Such a position saps the will to joy, to adventure, to victory.” – A REBIRTH FOR CHRISTIANITY, “Death Throes and Birth Pangs,” by Alvin Boyd Kuhn (2004), pp.239-241.

"In the beginning, God..."

The Bible's opening phrase, "In the beginning God," is the conclusion of the whole matter of being and human existence.

DEEP RIVER

“To use the oft-repeated phrase of Augustine, 'Thou has made us for Thyself, and our souls are restless till they find their rest in thee.' There is an order, a moral order in which men participate, that gathers up unto itself, dimensional fulfillment, limitless in its creativity and design...

“The moment we accept the literal truth, we are once again faced with the urgency of vehicular symbolism. To be led astray by the crassness, the materialistic character of the symbolism so that in the end we reject the literal truth, is to deny is to deny life itself of its dignity and man the right or necessity of dimensional fulfillment. In such a view the present moment is all there is—man is no longer a time binder but becomes a prisoner in a tight world of momentary events—no more and no less. His tragedy would be nothing beyond the moment could happen to him and all his life could be encompassed within the boundary of a time-space fragment. For these slave singers such a view was completely unsatisfactory and it was therefore thoroughly and decisively rejected. And this is the miracle of their achievement causing them to take their place along side the great creative religious thinkers of the human race. They made a worthless life, the life of chattel property, a mere thing, a body, worth living! They yielding with abiding enthusiasm to a view of life which included all the events of their experience without exhausting themselves in those experiences. To them this quality of life was insistent fact because of that which deep within them, they discovered of God, and his far-flung purposes. God was not through with them. And he was not, nor could he be exhausted by, any single experience or series of experiences. To know Him was to live worthy of the loftiest meaning of life. Men in all ages and climes, slave or free, trained or untutored, who have sensed the same values, are their fellow pilgrims who journey together with them in increasing self-realization in the quest for the city that hath fountains, whose Builder and Maker is God.” – FOR THE INWARD JOURNEY, “Deep River,” by Howard Thurman (1984), pp. 222-223.