AMERICAN INCOMMENSURABLES
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
I first consciously encountered the word “incommensurable” while reading Plato’s The Laws, a treatise on nation-building in his hypothetical, ancient Greek nation of “Magnesia.”
My next encounter with it was in Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, a mathematical, mechanical masterpiece founded upon esoteric Biblical wisdom.
To be used by such icons of world intellectual tradition, automatically places this very rare, recondite word in the ionosphere of incomparable scholarship.
But, it was not until afterwards, as I was feeling its presence, and intuiting its unnamed application, in Frances E.W. Harper’s wonderfully redemptive, Civil War-era novel, Iola Leroy,Or, Shadows Uplifted, that I was inspired to write about this profoundly provocative and mysterious word, “incommensurable.” Whether Ms. Harper belongs in such august company as Plato and Newton is for the reader of her novel to determine. Her poetry and her prose impress me!
Com·men·su·ra·ble (k-m n s r--b l, -sh r-) adj. means:1. Measurable by a common standard. 2. Commensurate; proportionate. 3. Mathematics Exactly divisible by the same unit an integral number of times. Used of two quantities.
Based on this definition, simple fractions would be mathematically incommensurable, because the integers producing them are NOT “exactly divisible by the same unit an integral number of times.”
Whether or not something is measurable by a “common standard”—another definition-- is more problematic, because “common standard” is subjective. For example, what is the “common standard” of beauty or courage or freedom or justice or intelligence? These value-laden qualities or virtues are, per se, “incommensurable.” Yet, a “common standard” is imposed upon such words, concepts, and people, with procrustean efficiency, regardless of variations or consequences. Such societal, normative impositions are rarely challenged by those most adversely affected, by those most detrimentally afflicted, usually.
The word, “Incommensurable,” does much more than negate commensurable quantities. Beyond negation, it also debases, deprecates, demeans, and dehumanizes. It denies substance to its objects. Its diminutions, in fact, plumb the depths of metaphysical abnegation, transforming matter into antimatter! Beyond zero, its objects represent negative forces which require quarantine.
This amorphous concept has suffused philosophy, mathematics, science, as well as African American literature millennia apart. Yet, in a matter of less than a month, we—me and “incommensurable”-- had met thrice, in widely divergent contexts: Plato, Newton, Harper. “How curious,” I mused, “this must mean something. Let’s write about this incommensurable ‘tri-incidence!’”
Yet, how can anything existing on earth be really and truly incommensurable with any other thing existing on earth? If it exists on earth, isn’t it necessarily commensurable with all else that exist on earth? Is not Earth-life, itself, the “common standard” of each thing’s existence? Space, time, motion, matter define the physics of life on earth, per Newton. Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen define earth’s elemental chemistry. These are common to all things.
Christianity agrees: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” Romans 8:28-30.
Yet, generations of American ‘Christians,’ curiously, have been among the most strident, incommensurable of creatures by so readily demonizing others!
The word “incommensurable” means “adj. a. Impossible to measure or compare. b. Lacking a common quality on which to make a comparison. 2. Mathematics a. Having no common measure or number of which all the given lengths or measures are integral multiples. b. Having an irrational ratio. n. One that is incommensurable.”
There is a dimension of life, “The Soul,” per Plato, with priority and dominion over physics and chemistry! It is the domain of the spirit. It is the unknown and unknowable source and end of life, from which everything has come and to which everything returns! Also, known as the Unmoved Mover and the Uncaused Cause, this Spirit has innumerable names. I simply say “God” or “Amen.” Plato wrote of “the Gods” repeatedly in The Laws. They define the parameters of morality. Newton’s esoteric Biblical references in the Scholia of his Principia are nuanced, oblique and intrinsically laced within his mathematical demonstrations. Prudence demanded such seclusion, given his contemporaneity with Galileo, and the mortal risks he faced in light of his own “apostasy.”
The Holy Spirit is the centerpiece of Harper’s trope of the black slaves’ awakening, acceptance, and affirmation of their inherent worth as God’s creations, before, during, and after the Civil War. It addresses, centrally, the dilemma of “colored” children raised “white”, on a remote Red River, Louisiana plantation with black slaves. After their white father’s death, they brutally discover that they are themselves ‘colored.’ This ‘shadow’—their ‘Negro’ race-- deprives them of their patrimony under Louisiana law, as well as their status as ‘free.’ The novel explores their dislocations, dangers, flirtations, and restorative familial resolutions, within that transformative era freedom for the oppressed.
That above-referenced “unnamed application” of “incommensurable,” redolent of Plato and Newton, read and felt by me-- an attorney, African Methodist Episcopal preacher, historian, poet, science student, and author-- is from Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy, or, Shadows Uplifted (Dover Publications, Inc. Mineola, NY: 2010 ; an unabridged republication of the second edition published in 1893 by Garrigues Brothers, Philadelphia). That potent and portentous excerpt is below in bold italics:
“I think,” said Dr. Latrobe, “that we are right in suppressing the negro’s vote. This is a white man’s government, and a white man’s country. We own nineteen-twentieths of the land, and have about the same ratio of intelligence. I am a white man, and, right or wrong, I go with my race… You speak as if we wronged the negro by enslaving him and being unwilling to share citizenship with him. I think that slavery has been of incalculable benefit to the negro. It has lifted him out of barbarism, and fetish worship, given him a language of civilization, and introduced him to the world’s best religion. Think what he was in Africa and what he is in America!...”
“Don’t you think,” asked “Dr. Gresham, that we have been too hasty in our judgment of the Negro? He has come handicapped into life, and is now on trial before the world. But it is not fair to subject him to the same tests that you would a white man. I believe there are possibilities of growth in the race which we have never comprehended.” (emphasis added)
“The negro,” said Dr. Latrobe, “is perfectly comprehensible to me. The only way to get along with him is to let him know his place, and make him keep it.”
Dr. Latrobe is an unapologetic racist! Voter suppression is justifiable against ‘the negro,’ this being a “white man’s country and a white man’s government.” The white man owns 19/20’s of the property, and owns that same amount of intelligence, says he. Enslaving the negro “was of incalculable benefit to the negro,” according to Dr. Latrobe. Not sharing citizenship with the negro is perfectly normal. He also claims that “whites”—“introduced him [the negro] to the world’s best religion. Think what he was in Africa and what he is in America!...”
Latrobe’s racial banalities were quite commonly held in that era. Their residue lingers, flaring up especially during election cycles, contaminating each new generation. But, Latrobe’s blatant racism has, thankfully, morphed into latent racism. It is fueled by the clash between such unresolved national subtexts as—on the one hand: certain whites’ subconscious guilt, their dissembled deceit, and backdoor betrayals of “the Negro;” and-- on the other hand: unresolved black grievances, unfulfilled promises, and governmental refusal of compensation for the deprivation of “commensurable,” if not “equal,” legal, political, economic rights. Our national “center of forces” to use Isaac Newton’s phrase is reposed in our founding documents, whose centripetal forces pull on this nation’s political/economic infrastructure, viscera and conscience, inexorably.
Dr. Latrobe was right about this nation being, historically, a “white man’s country.” Yet, it was the black man’s indispensable loyalty, labor, energy, and inventiveness, which are inseparable from, and incommensurable with, that fact.
Two political compromises in the 1770-1790’s established this as a “white man’s country.” The first compromise was in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, itself. Therein, any reference to ‘slavery’ was purposefully omitted. And wisely so! Slavery had been out-lawed in England in June 1772 in the case James Sommerset v. Charles Stewart, http://medicolegal.tripod.com/somersetvstewart.htm 4 years before the slaveholding colonies declared independence by and through a moneyed cabal of Southern slaveholders and Northern merchants. The second compromise was in the United States Constitution, itself, in Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 3, where blacks were given only fractional political status, 3/5’s of a man, for purposes of enumerating, and, thus, determining the extent of Southern congressional representation and of direct taxation:
“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”
This fractional allocation was also effected by the same moneyed cabal of Southern slaveholders and Northern merchants, as had excluded mention of slavery from the Declaration of Independence. So, “the negro’s,” fractional constitutional status, made him an “incommensurable” denizen from the very ‘birth of this nation.’ White men were made whole persons, but not all others. Given such incommensurable status, Frederick Douglass’ biting inquiry in his 1854 speech, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July,” is understandable! http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=162
President Abraham Lincoln is popularly perceived to be a ‘friend’ of the negro, known as “The Great Emancipator” in American history. Yet, this quote from Lincoln sounds very much like Frances Harper’s character, Dr. Latrobe:
"I will say, then, that I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races---that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race." -- Abraham Lincoln, "Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate, September 18, 1858, Charleston, Illinois," in "Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings" (New York: Library of America, 1989), p. 636, and in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 5, page 371
These sentiments by Abraham Lincoln were expressed in 1858, over a year after Justice Roger Taney in 1857, had held similarly in the infamous Dred Scott v Sanford decision. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
Therein Dred and Harriet Scott, former Missouri slaves, who had also lived in “free states” and in territories not yet states, were turned back in their bid for freedom that other Missouri slaves had routinely obtained through “slave-litigation.” The profligate denial of the Scotts’ bid [“That the black man had no rights that the white man was bound to respect”] http://home.earthlink.net/~ynot/slacases.html somewhat hastened the eruption of Civil War.
Abolitionist patriots like John Brown eventually decided to pursue armed struggle, in order to extirpate the baleful blight of slavery from the country. First, Brown and his family moved from Ohio and fought in the Kanas-Missouri “Border Wars.” Then, later, he liberated a score of Missouri slaves and personally took them to Windsor, Canada and freedom from Missouri through Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan on a 1200 mile trek via the “Underground Railroad. Finally, having resolved to die as a martyr for freedom, his now infamous, sacrificial raid upon the national armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia in October 1859, elevated him to revolutionary sainthood, even though he failed to secure arms for a planned slave rebellion utilizing the Allegheny Mountains’ crevices.
But, in spite of John Brown’s vain heroism, it was Abraham Lincoln’s mundane election in 1860 that was the final straw for the insatiable South. If, in 1861, the South seceded in the face of such truculence, exhibited by Roger Taney in 1857, and by Abraham Lincoln in 1858, what level of racial prejudice, of racist rabidity did it actually possess? To what could it be compared?
Lerone Bennett, Jr., the former Senior Editor of Ebony Magazine, and author of such books as Before the Mayflower, and Forced Into Glory, has written relentlessly about Lincoln’s racism. But, conceding Lincoln’s and Taney’s racism, the South was determined and delusional! “My way or the highway!” was its creed! So, the “Freedom War,” as slaves termed it, came!
The slaves, themselves, by escaping to Union lines eviscerated Lincoln’s desultory peace overtures toward the South! The slaves were waging their own “Freedom War” under the cover of the broader Civil War conflict! Initially, they ran away, or sailed away. For example, in May 1862, the slave, Robert Smalls, stole “The Planter” a Confederate steam-powered warship of which he was pilot, from its Charleston, South Carolina, harbor and utilized his intricate knowledge and skill to sail her past Confederate mines, and batteries at Ft. Sumter and Ft. Wagner, into to a shocked Union blockade beyond. He took along his family and his enslaved crewmen and their families, under a white flag, in predawn hours. http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1862/june/robert-smalls-planter.htm That amazing feat startled the nation, and delighted the Union! I t should have been an omen to the South.
Earlier, three male slaves had escaped from Confederate fortifications they were building by rowing themselves across the James River to Ft. Monroe, Virginia, in May1861, where Union Gen Benjamin Butler would term them “contraband of war,” in legal parlance. Butler, a lawyer, would refuse to return them to a Confederate officer, who sought them under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, due the state of rebellion then extant. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03CivilWar-t.html?pagewanted=all
Later, the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, created by Kansas U.S. Senator, James Lane, fought and won the Battle of Island Mound, at Butler, Missouri, in October 1862, against Confederate bushwhackers, at least twice its size, in defiance of Lincoln’s policy forbidding black troops. http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=54126
So, in these and myriad other ways, the slaves’ self-help insurgency continually forced Lincoln’s political hand! His Emancipation Proclamation, of January1, 1863, freed no one, but it was great symbolic drama, which was widely celebrated as the herald of a new day by escaping slaves and by abolitionists: those lecturing, legislating, and writing, and by those in uniform fighting!
The Dred Scott decision has never been judicially overturned. Instead, it was nullified by an estimated1,000,000 combined casualties and fatalities in the Civil War , 1861-1865, proving that the black man was, indeed, entitled to much respect, whether “incommensurable” or not! That historically condign, judicial decision was functionally superseded by the 13th Amendment which freed the slaves, the 14th Amendment which gave them due process of law, equal protection of law and privileges and immunities, and the 15th Amendment which gave them the right to vote. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War
No amendment gave the freedmen land, supplies, tools, back wages, restitution, or grant money. Nor did any ensuing law or judicial decree make them commensurable to white people socially, politically, or economically.
This financial dearth, this property poverty, this want of means and measures left the freedmen in a state of economic dependence upon their former masters, upon vengeful, returning rebels, or upon swindlers and hucksters of all hues and varieties. The Bureau of Freedmen and Refugees headed by Union Gen. Oliver Otis Howard helped some freedmen temporarily to adjust to their new-found status, providing food, shelter, and schools, most prominently Howard University in Washington, D.C. But, politics shut down the Freedmen’s Bureau too soon, Congress having appropriated too little for these millions of landless and penniless people, without whom there would have been no Union!
Soon, white men reached political rapprochement to abandon the freedmen to the South’s laws, customs, remedies, in exchanged for federal power. So, once again that cabal of Southern landowners and Northern merchants combined to cripple the black man’s independence and vitality for the white nation’s benefit!
The phrase from Harper’s character, Dr. Gresham, “But it is not fair to subject him to the same tests that you would a white man” is the application of “incommensurable,” sensed, felt, and used herein. Equals may be “fairly” subjected to the same tests. But that is not so for un-equals. And, it is even less so for incommensurables—those for whom common measurement is literally, historically, impossible! In fact, due to the effects of black chattel slavery, followed by unrestrained white terrorism by government officials and private citizens on the federal, state and local levels, it was sagely predicted that blacks would become “extinct” by some so-called “experts!” Wrong!
Blacks are not bison. They are descendants of this planet’s original man. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans From these “Africans,” “Ethiopians,” and “Egyptians”, all other homo sapiens evolved, along with all other civilizations, wherever situated. The proof of their mettle is evidenced by their tremendous capacity to suffer, to love, to endure, to create, to fight, and to procreate, notwithstanding centuries of horrendous oppression. Their faith in God was their not-so-secret weapon. As Howard Thurman writes in Jesus and the Disinherited, slaves saw through the “white man’s preachers” and would “steal away” into bush arbors, away from white folks’ prying eyes and ears, where they would praise and celebrate their God in their own way, through preached word, spiritual music, and personal testimony, focused on freedom! Worship was hopeful and cathartic, as Benjamin Mays writes in The Negro’s God, published in the 1930’s, based on songs, sermons, poems, prose, prayer. Blacks’ innate divinity fueled the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. It was “led” by Dr. Benny Mays’ gifted theology student at Morehouse College, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Council. King used “the sword of the spirit” to trounce “Jim Crow,” and massive civil disobedience to demolish segregation.
Even so, centuries of discrimination, poverty, imprisonment, lynching, forced mass black migration into Northern ghettos where chronic unemployment, and depersonalization had a deleterious impact upon these “Exoduster’s” from Southern peonage and oppression! Dr. King’s remedies availed not in these teeming northern ghettoes. Here, traditional Southern values that had defied slavery, and defeated Jim Crow evaporated into the illusion of liberty. So, not only did Dr. King’s strategies not work, but even less effective were more militant approaches pursued by the Black Panther Party, Nation of Islam and others. The notion of “incommensurability” had entered into the blacks’ spirits!
After assassinations, exile, and imprisonment robbed the Movement of its best leaders in the 1960’s, those left behind attempted to employ racial quotas to rectify undisguised systemic discrimination, or its more discreet twin, latent discrimination. But, Labor union funding and Jewish philanthropy—the primary sources of their organizational income-- balked at mathematical racial quotas as hurtful to their members’ interests. So instead of hard quotas, “discretionary goals and timetables” –non-mandatory and advisory only—were used to impart belated quasi-proportionality to future: jobs, private contracts, government grants or contracts. Mathematical quotas had been rejected or termed ‘reverse discrimination’ by cynical courts and critics, as well as faint-hearted “leaders”.
Thus, “incommensurabilty” continues between the wealth of the two groups and in certain other indices, including that of the spirit. Meanwhile, perversely, Blacks pushed ahead in the misery index, disproportionately, leading in incarceration, unemployment, homicide, poverty, and educational deficits. At the base of it all is the enforced “incommensurable” relation between blacks and whites in America. Simply put, in America, “whiteness” is property, as UCLA law professor, Cheryl Harris, brilliantly proves in her famous Harvard Law Review article. Conversely, “blackness” is property’s antithesis in America! http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=927850
Beyond cavil or quibble, the history of the “negro” and of “whites” in the United States of America reflects a purposefully designed and implemented national construct produced by powerful moneyed interests to exploit “the negro’s” labor and produce for the sole benefit of privileged “white’s.”
“Whites” are another designed class, part of that same national governing construct, comprised of traditional European combatants, who became “white” allies upon immigration to America, and powerfully privileged! Ultimately, this arrangement worked well for the ruling cabal. It facilitated their rule over both groups, white and black. America from the middle 1660’s forward, whether as a British colony, or whether as an independent nation, since 1789, was designed by laws, mercantile custom, force, violence and deceit to oppress “the negro” and to keep him down on the bottom regardless of any individual merit, as attested by Dr. Latrobe.
This master-slave relationship is and was, at bottom, economic and has remained so since 1789, when this country was founded, through 1865, when the Civil War terminated the formal master-servant relationship. From 1865 through 1876, there was a much-too-brief “Reconstruction”—“Restoration” is more apt term, since it restored the rebels’ full rights, lands, powers, privileges. Meanwhile the blacks were handed the allure of Republican politics as the pathway to freedom. The ensuing “Jim Crow” era ended with the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, and the Voting Rights Act. The resulting Affirmative Action era continues with and through the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008 through today! His epochal election, and reelection, notwithstanding, Blacks remain, arguably, pragmatically: incommensuable, economically, legally, and politically!
Given this “Incommensurable” situation, Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television has proposed to Congress the following:
1. Allow black businesses to be eligible for government set aside contracts if they own 10 percent of a business rather than the existing 51 percent rule due to the 10-to-1 wealth gap; and significantly increase the dollar volume of set aside contracts for Black businesses across all government agencies.
2. Encourage majority-owned businesses to invest in black-owned companies by deferring the taxes on the economic gain similar to the FCC "tax certificate program" which motivated major media companies to sell to minorities.
3. Allow African American families earning less than $250,000 annually to defer federal income taxes, without interest, provided tax deferrals are placed into a 401(k) type savings account which can only be drawn out at retirement or upon death at which time the government would be reimbursed for the deferred taxes. The gain on the 401(k) investment would be available to the families at retirement or passed on to future generations.
4. Create a Treasury-backed fund to securitize short-term borrowing or emergency loans made by minority banks or other lending institutions to Black families provided these loans are marketed and made in a regulated and transparent manner. The securitized loans would encourage banks and lenders to make short-term or emergency borrowing available at reasonable rates and end "payday" lending as we know it today.
5. Require large banks under the Community Reinvestment Act to fund a nationwide marketing campaign targeted to the Black community with a focus on financial literacy and savings.
To this outstanding list, I would add a one-time economic stimulant of $2500 per individual tax payer, regardless of race, which will boost the economy greatly through consumption, investments, and savings both short-term and long-term, while it helps to erase debt burdens and restores faith in government.
In this manner, black American “Incommensurables,” their bane of poverty and stigmatization—their “shadow”-- having been “lifted,” will remain such no more.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
AMERICAN INCOMMENSURABLES
AMERICAN INCOMMENSURABLES
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
I first consciously encountered the word “incommensurable” while reading Plato’s The Laws, a treatise on nation-building in his hypothetical, ancient Greek nation of “Magnesia.”
My next encounter with it was in Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, a mathematical, mechanical masterpiece founded upon esoteric Biblical wisdom.
To be used by such icons of world intellectual tradition, automatically places this very rare, recondite word in the ionosphere of incomparable scholarship.
But, it was not until afterwards, as I was feeling its presence, and intuiting its unnamed application, in Frances E.W. Harper’s wonderfully redemptive, Civil War-era novel, Iola Leroy,Or, Shadows Uplifted, that I was inspired to write about this profoundly provocative and mysterious word, “incommensurable.” Whether Ms. Harper belongs in such august company as Plato and Newton is for the reader of her novel to determine. Her poetry and her prose impress me!
Com·men·su·ra·ble (k-m n s r--b l, -sh r-) adj. means:1. Measurable by a common standard. 2. Commensurate; proportionate. 3. Mathematics Exactly divisible by the same unit an integral number of times. Used of two quantities.
Based on this definition, simple fractions would be mathematically incommensurable, because the integers producing them are NOT “exactly divisible by the same unit an integral number of times.”
Whether or not something is measurable by a “common standard”—another definition-- is more problematic, because “common standard” is subjective. For example, what is the “common standard” of beauty or courage or freedom or justice or intelligence? These value-laden qualities or virtues are, per se, “incommensurable.” Yet, a “common standard” is imposed upon such words, concepts, and people, with procrustean efficiency, regardless of variations or consequences. Such societal, normative impositions are rarely challenged by those most adversely affected, by those most detrimentally afflicted, usually.
The word, “Incommensurable,” does much more than negate commensurable quantities. Beyond negation, it also debases, deprecates, demeans, and dehumanizes. It denies substance to its objects. Its diminutions, in fact, plumb the depths of metaphysical abnegation, transforming matter into antimatter! Beyond zero, its objects represent negative forces which require quarantine.
This amorphous concept has suffused philosophy, mathematics, science, as well as African American literature millennia apart. Yet, in a matter of less than a month, we—me and “incommensurable”-- had met thrice, in widely divergent contexts: Plato, Newton, Harper. “How curious,” I mused, “this must mean something. Let’s write about this incommensurable ‘tri-incidence!’”
Yet, how can anything existing on earth be really and truly incommensurable with any other thing existing on earth? If it exists on earth, isn’t it necessarily commensurable with all else that exist on earth? Is not Earth-life, itself, the “common standard” of each thing’s existence? Space, time, motion, matter define the physics of life on earth, per Newton. Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen define earth’s elemental chemistry. These are common to all things.
Christianity agrees: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” Romans 8:28-30.
Yet, generations of American ‘Christians,’ curiously, have been among the most strident, incommensurable of creatures by so readily demonizing others!
The word “incommensurable” means “adj. a. Impossible to measure or compare. b. Lacking a common quality on which to make a comparison. 2. Mathematics a. Having no common measure or number of which all the given lengths or measures are integral multiples. b. Having an irrational ratio. n. One that is incommensurable.”
There is a dimension of life, “The Soul,” per Plato, with priority and dominion over physics and chemistry! It is the domain of the spirit. It is the unknown and unknowable source and end of life, from which everything has come and to which everything returns! Also, known as the Unmoved Mover and the Uncaused Cause, this Spirit has innumerable names. I simply say “God” or “Amen.” Plato wrote of “the Gods” repeatedly in The Laws. They define the parameters of morality. Newton’s esoteric Biblical references in the Scholia of his Principia are nuanced, oblique and intrinsically laced within his mathematical demonstrations. Prudence demanded such seclusion, given his contemporaneity with Galileo, and the mortal risks he faced in light of his own “apostasy.”
The Holy Spirit is the centerpiece of Harper’s trope of the black slaves’ awakening, acceptance, and affirmation of their inherent worth as God’s creations, before, during, and after the Civil War. It addresses, centrally, the dilemma of “colored” children raised “white”, on a remote Red River, Louisiana plantation with black slaves. After their white father’s death, they brutally discover that they are themselves ‘colored.’ This ‘shadow’—their ‘Negro’ race-- deprives them of their patrimony under Louisiana law, as well as their status as ‘free.’ The novel explores their dislocations, dangers, flirtations, and restorative familial resolutions, within that transformative era freedom for the oppressed.
That above-referenced “unnamed application” of “incommensurable,” redolent of Plato and Newton, read and felt by me-- an attorney, African Methodist Episcopal preacher, historian, poet, science student, and author-- is from Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy, or, Shadows Uplifted (Dover Publications, Inc. Mineola, NY: 2010 ; an unabridged republication of the second edition published in 1893 by Garrigues Brothers, Philadelphia). That potent and portentous excerpt is below in bold italics:
“I think,” said Dr. Latrobe, “that we are right in suppressing the negro’s vote. This is a white man’s government, and a white man’s country. We own nineteen-twentieths of the land, and have about the same ratio of intelligence. I am a white man, and, right or wrong, I go with my race… You speak as if we wronged the negro by enslaving him and being unwilling to share citizenship with him. I think that slavery has been of incalculable benefit to the negro. It has lifted him out of barbarism, and fetish worship, given him a language of civilization, and introduced him to the world’s best religion. Think what he was in Africa and what he is in America!...”
“Don’t you think,” asked “Dr. Gresham, that we have been too hasty in our judgment of the Negro? He has come handicapped into life, and is now on trial before the world. But it is not fair to subject him to the same tests that you would a white man. I believe there are possibilities of growth in the race which we have never comprehended.” (emphasis added)
“The negro,” said Dr. Latrobe, “is perfectly comprehensible to me. The only way to get along with him is to let him know his place, and make him keep it.”
Dr. Latrobe is an unapologetic racist! Voter suppression is justifiable against ‘the negro,’ this being a “white man’s country and a white man’s government.” The white man owns 19/20’s of the property, and owns that same amount of intelligence, says he. Enslaving the negro “was of incalculable benefit to the negro,” according to Dr. Latrobe. Not sharing citizenship with the negro is perfectly normal. He also claims that “whites”—“introduced him [the negro] to the world’s best religion. Think what he was in Africa and what he is in America!...”
Latrobe’s racial banalities were quite commonly held in that era. Their residue lingers, flaring up especially during election cycles, contaminating each new generation. But, Latrobe’s blatant racism has, thankfully, morphed into latent racism. It is fueled by the clash between such unresolved national subtexts as—on the one hand: certain whites’ subconscious guilt, their dissembled deceit, and backdoor betrayals of “the Negro;” and-- on the other hand: unresolved black grievances, unfulfilled promises, and governmental refusal of compensation for the deprivation of “commensurable,” if not “equal,” legal, political, economic rights. Our national “center of forces” to use Isaac Newton’s phrase is reposed in our founding documents, whose centripetal forces pull on this nation’s political/economic infrastructure, viscera and conscience, inexorably.
Dr. Latrobe was right about this nation being, historically, a “white man’s country.” Yet, it was the black man’s indispensable loyalty, labor, energy, and inventiveness, which are inseparable from, and incommensurable with, that fact.
Two political compromises in the 1770-1790’s established this as a “white man’s country.” The first compromise was in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, itself. Therein, any reference to ‘slavery’ was purposefully omitted. And wisely so! Slavery had been out-lawed in England in June 1772 in the case James Sommerset v. Charles Stewart, http://medicolegal.tripod.com/somersetvstewart.htm 4 years before the slaveholding colonies declared independence by and through a moneyed cabal of Southern slaveholders and Northern merchants. The second compromise was in the United States Constitution, itself, in Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 3, where blacks were given only fractional political status, 3/5’s of a man, for purposes of enumerating, and, thus, determining the extent of Southern congressional representation and of direct taxation:
“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”
This fractional allocation was also effected by the same moneyed cabal of Southern slaveholders and Northern merchants, as had excluded mention of slavery from the Declaration of Independence. So, “the negro’s,” fractional constitutional status, made him an “incommensurable” denizen from the very ‘birth of this nation.’ White men were made whole persons, but not all others. Given such incommensurable status, Frederick Douglass’ biting inquiry in his 1854 speech, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July,” is understandable! http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=162
President Abraham Lincoln is popularly perceived to be a ‘friend’ of the negro, known as “The Great Emancipator” in American history. Yet, this quote from Lincoln sounds very much like Frances Harper’s character, Dr. Latrobe:
"I will say, then, that I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races---that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race." -- Abraham Lincoln, "Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate, September 18, 1858, Charleston, Illinois," in "Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings" (New York: Library of America, 1989), p. 636, and in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 5, page 371
These sentiments by Abraham Lincoln were expressed in 1858, over a year after Justice Roger Taney in 1857, had held similarly in the infamous Dred Scott v Sanford decision. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
Therein Dred and Harriet Scott, former Missouri slaves, who had also lived in “free states” and in territories not yet states, were turned back in their bid for freedom that other Missouri slaves had routinely obtained through “slave-litigation.” The profligate denial of the Scotts’ bid [“That the black man had no rights that the white man was bound to respect”] http://home.earthlink.net/~ynot/slacases.html somewhat hastened the eruption of Civil War.
Abolitionist patriots like John Brown eventually decided to pursue armed struggle, in order to extirpate the baleful blight of slavery from the country. First, Brown and his family moved from Ohio and fought in the Kanas-Missouri “Border Wars.” Then, later, he liberated a score of Missouri slaves and personally took them to Windsor, Canada and freedom from Missouri through Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan on a 1200 mile trek via the “Underground Railroad. Finally, having resolved to die as a martyr for freedom, his now infamous, sacrificial raid upon the national armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia in October 1859, elevated him to revolutionary sainthood, even though he failed to secure arms for a planned slave rebellion utilizing the Allegheny Mountains’ crevices.
But, in spite of John Brown’s vain heroism, it was Abraham Lincoln’s mundane election in 1860 that was the final straw for the insatiable South. If, in 1861, the South seceded in the face of such truculence, exhibited by Roger Taney in 1857, and by Abraham Lincoln in 1858, what level of racial prejudice, of racist rabidity did it actually possess? To what could it be compared?
Lerone Bennett, Jr., the former Senior Editor of Ebony Magazine, and author of such books as Before the Mayflower, and Forced Into Glory, has written relentlessly about Lincoln’s racism. But, conceding Lincoln’s and Taney’s racism, the South was determined and delusional! “My way or the highway!” was its creed! So, the “Freedom War,” as slaves termed it, came!
The slaves, themselves, by escaping to Union lines eviscerated Lincoln’s desultory peace overtures toward the South! The slaves were waging their own “Freedom War” under the cover of the broader Civil War conflict! Initially, they ran away, or sailed away. For example, in May 1862, the slave, Robert Smalls, stole “The Planter” a Confederate steam-powered warship of which he was pilot, from its Charleston, South Carolina, harbor and utilized his intricate knowledge and skill to sail her past Confederate mines, and batteries at Ft. Sumter and Ft. Wagner, into to a shocked Union blockade beyond. He took along his family and his enslaved crewmen and their families, under a white flag, in predawn hours. http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1862/june/robert-smalls-planter.htm That amazing feat startled the nation, and delighted the Union! I t should have been an omen to the South.
Earlier, three male slaves had escaped from Confederate fortifications they were building by rowing themselves across the James River to Ft. Monroe, Virginia, in May1861, where Union Gen Benjamin Butler would term them “contraband of war,” in legal parlance. Butler, a lawyer, would refuse to return them to a Confederate officer, who sought them under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, due the state of rebellion then extant. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03CivilWar-t.html?pagewanted=all
Later, the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, created by Kansas U.S. Senator, James Lane, fought and won the Battle of Island Mound, at Butler, Missouri, in October 1862, against Confederate bushwhackers, at least twice its size, in defiance of Lincoln’s policy forbidding black troops. http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=54126
So, in these and myriad other ways, the slaves’ self-help insurgency continually forced Lincoln’s political hand! His Emancipation Proclamation, of January1, 1863, freed no one, but it was great symbolic drama, which was widely celebrated as the herald of a new day by escaping slaves and by abolitionists: those lecturing, legislating, and writing, and by those in uniform fighting!
The Dred Scott decision has never been judicially overturned. Instead, it was nullified by an estimated1,000,000 combined casualties and fatalities in the Civil War , 1861-1865, proving that the black man was, indeed, entitled to much respect, whether “incommensurable” or not! That historically condign, judicial decision was functionally superseded by the 13th Amendment which freed the slaves, the 14th Amendment which gave them due process of law, equal protection of law and privileges and immunities, and the 15th Amendment which gave them the right to vote. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War
No amendment gave the freedmen land, supplies, tools, back wages, restitution, or grant money. Nor did any ensuing law or judicial decree make them commensurable to white people socially, politically, or economically.
This financial dearth, this property poverty, this want of means and measures left the freedmen in a state of economic dependence upon their former masters, upon vengeful, returning rebels, or upon swindlers and hucksters of all hues and varieties. The Bureau of Freedmen and Refugees headed by Union Gen. Oliver Otis Howard helped some freedmen temporarily to adjust to their new-found status, providing food, shelter, and schools, most prominently Howard University in Washington, D.C. But, politics shut down the Freedmen’s Bureau too soon, Congress having appropriated too little for these millions of landless and penniless people, without whom there would have been no Union!
Soon, white men reached political rapprochement to abandon the freedmen to the South’s laws, customs, remedies, in exchanged for federal power. So, once again that cabal of Southern landowners and Northern merchants combined to cripple the black man’s independence and vitality for the white nation’s benefit!
The phrase from Harper’s character, Dr. Gresham, “But it is not fair to subject him to the same tests that you would a white man” is the application of “incommensurable,” sensed, felt, and used herein. Equals may be “fairly” subjected to the same tests. But that is not so for un-equals. And, it is even less so for incommensurables—those for whom common measurement is literally, historically, impossible! In fact, due to the effects of black chattel slavery, followed by unrestrained white terrorism by government officials and private citizens on the federal, state and local levels, it was sagely predicted that blacks would become “extinct” by some so-called “experts!” Wrong!
Blacks are not bison. They are descendants of this planet’s original man. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans From these “Africans,” “Ethiopians,” and “Egyptians”, all other homo sapiens evolved, along with all other civilizations, wherever situated. The proof of their mettle is evidenced by their tremendous capacity to suffer, to love, to endure, to create, to fight, and to procreate, notwithstanding centuries of horrendous oppression. Their faith in God was their not-so-secret weapon. As Howard Thurman writes in Jesus and the Disinherited, slaves saw through the “white man’s preachers” and would “steal away” into bush arbors, away from white folks’ prying eyes and ears, where they would praise and celebrate their God in their own way, through preached word, spiritual music, and personal testimony, focused on freedom! Worship was hopeful and cathartic, as Benjamin Mays writes in The Negro’s God, published in the 1930’s, based on songs, sermons, poems, prose, prayer. Blacks’ innate divinity fueled the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. It was “led” by Dr. Benny Mays’ gifted theology student at Morehouse College, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Council. King used “the sword of the spirit” to trounce “Jim Crow,” and massive civil disobedience to demolish segregation.
Even so, centuries of discrimination, poverty, imprisonment, lynching, forced mass black migration into Northern ghettos where chronic unemployment, and depersonalization had a deleterious impact upon these “Exoduster’s” from Southern peonage and oppression! Dr. King’s remedies availed not in these teeming northern ghettoes. Here, traditional Southern values that had defied slavery, and defeated Jim Crow evaporated into the illusion of liberty. So, not only did Dr. King’s strategies not work, but even less effective were more militant approaches pursued by the Black Panther Party, Nation of Islam and others. The notion of “incommensurability” had entered into the blacks’ spirits!
After assassinations, exile, and imprisonment robbed the Movement of its best leaders in the 1960’s, those left behind attempted to employ racial quotas to rectify undisguised systemic discrimination, or its more discreet twin, latent discrimination. But, Labor union funding and Jewish philanthropy—the primary sources of their organizational income-- balked at mathematical racial quotas as hurtful to their members’ interests. So instead of hard quotas, “discretionary goals and timetables” –non-mandatory and advisory only—were used to impart belated quasi-proportionality to future: jobs, private contracts, government grants or contracts. Mathematical quotas had been rejected or termed ‘reverse discrimination’ by cynical courts and critics, as well as faint-hearted “leaders”.
Thus, “incommensurabilty” continues between the wealth of the two groups and in certain other indices, including that of the spirit. Meanwhile, perversely, Blacks pushed ahead in the misery index, disproportionately, leading in incarceration, unemployment, homicide, poverty, and educational deficits. At the base of it all is the enforced “incommensurable” relation between blacks and whites in America. Simply put, in America, “whiteness” is property, as UCLA law professor, Cheryl Harris, brilliantly proves in her famous Harvard Law Review article. Conversely, “blackness” is property’s antithesis in America! http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=927850
Beyond cavil or quibble, the history of the “negro” and of “whites” in the United States of America reflects a purposefully designed and implemented national construct produced by powerful moneyed interests to exploit “the negro’s” labor and produce for the sole benefit of privileged “white’s.”
“Whites” are another designed class, part of that same national governing construct, comprised of traditional European combatants, who became “white” allies upon immigration to America, and powerfully privileged! Ultimately, this arrangement worked well for the ruling cabal. It facilitated their rule over both groups, white and black. America from the middle 1660’s forward, whether as a British colony, or whether as an independent nation, since 1789, was designed by laws, mercantile custom, force, violence and deceit to oppress “the negro” and to keep him down on the bottom regardless of any individual merit, as attested by Dr. Latrobe.
This master-slave relationship is and was, at bottom, economic and has remained so since 1789, when this country was founded, through 1865, when the Civil War terminated the formal master-servant relationship. From 1865 through 1876, there was a much-too-brief “Reconstruction”—“Restoration” is more apt term, since it restored the rebels’ full rights, lands, powers, privileges. Meanwhile the blacks were handed the allure of Republican politics as the pathway to freedom. The ensuing “Jim Crow” era ended with the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, and the Voting Rights Act. The resulting Affirmative Action era continues with and through the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008 through today! His epochal election, and reelection, notwithstanding, Blacks remain, arguably, pragmatically: incommensuable, economically, legally, and politically!
Given this “Incommensurable” situation, Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television has proposed to Congress the following:
1. Allow black businesses to be eligible for government set aside contracts if they own 10 percent of a business rather than the existing 51 percent rule due to the 10-to-1 wealth gap; and significantly increase the dollar volume of set aside contracts for Black businesses across all government agencies.
2. Encourage majority-owned businesses to invest in black-owned companies by deferring the taxes on the economic gain similar to the FCC "tax certificate program" which motivated major media companies to sell to minorities.
3. Allow African American families earning less than $250,000 annually to defer federal income taxes, without interest, provided tax deferrals are placed into a 401(k) type savings account which can only be drawn out at retirement or upon death at which time the government would be reimbursed for the deferred taxes. The gain on the 401(k) investment would be available to the families at retirement or passed on to future generations.
4. Create a Treasury-backed fund to securitize short-term borrowing or emergency loans made by minority banks or other lending institutions to Black families provided these loans are marketed and made in a regulated and transparent manner. The securitized loans would encourage banks and lenders to make short-term or emergency borrowing available at reasonable rates and end "payday" lending as we know it today.
5. Require large banks under the Community Reinvestment Act to fund a nationwide marketing campaign targeted to the Black community with a focus on financial literacy and savings.
To this outstanding list, I would add a one-time economic stimulant of $2500 per individual tax payer, regardless of race, which will boost the economy greatly through consumption, investments, and savings both short-term and long-term, while it helps to erase debt burdens and restores faith in government.
In this manner, black American “Incommensurables,” their bane of poverty and stigmatization—their “shadow”-- having been “lifted,” will remain such no more.
THE BRAIN IN ANTIQUITY
I posted an article this week about a creature without a brain that thinks. Chaka Fattah's defeat and indictment in Philadelphia brought the brain back to the fore, when an article in "Science" lamented both given his support for neuroscience. Ancient Egyptian embalming did not think much of the brain, never preserving it in a canonic jar. But, liquefying and discarding it as nonessential. How vital is the brain to thought, really?
http://www.neferchichi.com/mum2.html
Thursday, April 28, 2016
ORCHIDS AND US
Orchids in the millions of species, in the Adirondack Mountains in New York, have returned to reclaim and to restore an abandoned the soil near, on, about, an iron ore strip mine, to the stunned amazement of naturalist/botanist, I have just read.
Look at God work!
Made possible by a symbiotic fungi that enable depleted soil to restore itself and as a consequence to facilitate the rare orchids ' root development from that so-called "depleted" soil. Thereby the fungus, which initiated this polluted soil's resurrection, thereby benefited, itself, from the grown orchids' photosynthesis, which nourished the fungi!
But for the depletion and destruction of the soil, none of this could be, scientists say.
Me being me, naturally, I see God and black history sending signals to us, by this botanty's phenomenology.
As souls have been drained and depleted, like that polluted soil, they too can be restored by nature, by God.
Glory Hallelujah!
The article states:
"All the orchids and the wintergreen are dependent on mycorrhizal fungi for seed germination. Without the fungi, there would be no plants. Yet after the deposit of the mine tailings, the below ground system had to develop from scratch and now we see that all the elements have returned for incredible floral displays. Indeed, it could be that the plants and fungi are so abundant because of the disturbance history, and I feel this adds a wonderful element to the site's conservation value."
--THAT WILL PREACH!
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160427095101.htm
NATURE KNOWS
One of the most powerfully prophetic, and informative books ever written by Joel Augustus Rogers of Negril, Jamaica, is this slim, self-published, expository work, whose time has surely come in America, with the race mixing solution to the race problem between blacks and whites on display. Neither politics, economics, law, religion, education, nothing, can do what nature can do through sex, or is doing, has done, in American society! Hallelujah!
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
RABBIS REBUKE OLD TESTAMENT AS CONTRIVED
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/most-rabbis-think-passover-and-other-old-testament-stories-are-fiction/
RELIGION SCIENCE= ANCIENT EGYPT
FACTS MATTER, TRUTH MATTERS
The destruction of Aristotle 's geocentric view of earth as being at the center of the solar system, by priests, Copernicus and Galileo, who superseded Aristotle's model with their own sun-centered, heliocentric model of the earth in our solar system, which is science today, was also a demonstrated refutation of the Aristotelian, man-based model of the universe, that the Holy Roman Catholic church had adopted centuries earlier as its cosmogony.
This apocalyptic science from its own learned priests was resisted at first, as it threatened to undermine the earthly power and paradigmatic primacy of the Catholic Church, if not of Christianity itself.
When facts matter, dogma departs.
Facts are foundational; facts are fundamental in determining truth.
Factual discrepancies in time grow, historically metastasizing into carefully crafted mythology, with self-aggrandizing priests, scholars, literature, art, "truth," dogma, stigmata, temples, votaries, schools, universities, the aura of authenticity, multigenerational legitimacy, money, shrines, power.
Well before Aristotle, eons before Aristotle's Greek teacher, Plato; also before Pythagorus or Thales, the first European geometers who had also emigrated to Africa to learn from and to study under Africans, earlier Africans in the now-dry, Sahara Desert, had migrated to Nubia when their rains had stopped, then followed the Nile north to "Kemet," now Egypt land.
These Africans had also mapped the stars, had created the world's first calendar thereon and written in 3 scripts: hieroglyphics, hieratic, demotic, and measured & weighed, in arithmetic, fractions, geometry.
These basic facts are irrefragable, worthy of learning, understanding. Such facts formed the foundation of this ancient African society.
They based their religion on these facts. Rhythmic astronomical redundancies and anomalies had been by them rigorously observed, recorded, and taught by their priests to their neophytes in their temples, for thousands of years before Jesus Christ's birth. These prime facts were further codified in the expertly wrought, perfectly masoned stones weighing megatons, that were hewn from distant quarries, then ferried from hundreds of miles away. These constructions, too, became the basis of their astronomically oriented, geodetically sound, buildings, architecture, of their engineering, of their mathematics and of all that has been so rightfully, ritualistically, relentlessly, studied by the world under the broad, mysterious, historical, reclamation project that since the early 1700s is called Egyptology.
DAWN AND DUSK
Day is 
indistinguishable from day in form, each having 24 hours.
Activity distinguishes day from day. Time is form, energy is content..
indistinguishable from day in form, each having 24 hours.
Activity distinguishes day from day. Time is form, energy is content..
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
THE PROCESS OF KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION AND LEARNING 
Knowledge acquisition is an elaborate, subjective, cognitive activity that consists of least twelve parts that mysteriously conjoin. Those parts are:
1) what knowledge you may already have as human;
2-3) the nature of knowledge that is conveyed directly, specifically to you by whom or by what;
4-5) in what form that knowledge that is transmitted and when;
6-7) how much of that knowledge you can absorb, and then process;
8) environmental conditions;
9) your state of active health, and
10) your attitude toward learning this knowledge;
11)knowledge that is not directly nor specifically conveyed to you, but elsewhere, that you nevertheless acquire;
✓ 12) innate Divine knowledge
"Understanding" is the product of that knowledge, however acquired, that is mixed with intuitive wisdom.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+13%3A9-11
Knowledge acquisition is an elaborate, subjective, cognitive activity that consists of least twelve parts that mysteriously conjoin. Those parts are:
1) what knowledge you may already have as human;
2-3) the nature of knowledge that is conveyed directly, specifically to you by whom or by what;
4-5) in what form that knowledge that is transmitted and when;
6-7) how much of that knowledge you can absorb, and then process;
8) environmental conditions;
9) your state of active health, and
10) your attitude toward learning this knowledge;
11)knowledge that is not directly nor specifically conveyed to you, but elsewhere, that you nevertheless acquire;
✓ 12) innate Divine knowledge
"Understanding" is the product of that knowledge, however acquired, that is mixed with intuitive wisdom.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+13%3A9-11
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
PIETY IS NOT UNCTUOUS
PIETY NEEDS NO NOTORIETY. IT
SIMPLY RADIATES LIKE THE SUN. UNCTUOUS, BEING RAMBUNCTIOUS, SELF-PROMOTES NOTORIOUSLY.
SIMPLY RADIATES LIKE THE SUN. UNCTUOUS, BEING RAMBUNCTIOUS, SELF-PROMOTES NOTORIOUSLY.
STARS OF GOD
That which is of God need not fear any confounding refutation, ever. Because all that is of God, that God has divinely wrought, corroborates it and each other, forever !
TAR BABY
TAR BABY WAS PROPHESY
Throwing out the baby with the bath water means being so fixed on discarding the lesser that one also discards the greater. It is rather like striking that fabled tar-baby of famed black oral tradition, only to get stuck yourself! Sticky dilemma.
So many snares, traps, artifices, and devices that have been tried upon America 's own tar babies have failed; or have backfired upon their heartless purveyors and feral fowlers, that these traps have assumed Biblical, allegorical equivalence.
Therefore, in many ways, racist white Americans have thrown out their own engineered baby, "white supremacy," in the bath water of fruitless bigotry. The very pitfalls designed for use in vainly trying to stultify, to kill off, blacks have recoiled on them.
We have escaped like a bird from the fowler 's snare; the snare has been broken and we have escaped.
http://biblehub.com/psalms/124-7.htm
Glory to God! Hallelujah!
Monday, April 25, 2016
THIS DAY BLESSED
Today I have been multiply blessed!
For instance, while reading THE ENNEADS by Plotinus the great 2nd century philosopher of Alexandria, Egypt, I read:
"Plotinus would be surprised at being thought of as the founder of a new school , 'Neoplatonism.' He considered himself a Platonist pure and simple, without prefix or qualification --in other words, as an interpreter and follower of Plato. Plato, in his view , possessed the truth, the whole truth. In his polemic against the Gnostics he accuses them either of plagiarizing Plato or, when they abandon him to 'split hairs' and invent new doctrines of 'departing from the truth' ."
Then, in footnote 14, Paul Henry, S.J., whose introductory "Place of Plotinus in the History of Thought," that I am reading, further writes:
"Among the 'Dialogues' [of Plato] those most frequently cited are first the 'Timaeus ' and then the Republic,' the 'Phaedo,' the 'Phaedrus,' the Symposium ,' the Theatecus,' the Philebus,' the 'Sophist,' the 'Parmenides.' There are few references to the works of Plato's youth in which he sets problems rather than solves them, and fewer still to the 'Laws.' Cf.'infra,' section vi, p.lxxv, the 'Plato dimidatus' of Theiler."
P. xlvii (Penguin Classics, London: 1991)
Fortunately, for me, I was blessed to buy (then read later) THE LAWS by Plato, at a close-out sale at Border's Bookstore in Overland Park, Kansas, some years ago.
I was also blessed to purchase Plato's COMPLETE WORKS online, and to read the lengthy 'Timaeus'. We had read the REPUBLIC at Howard University as part of a class assignment by Dr. Samuel F. Yette, our esteemed Journalism professor in 1972.
Nevertheless, in spite of the above named serendipitous encounters, Plato's broader philosophical context in relation to Plotinus,' I am just beginning to understand and to appreciate by reason of Paul Henry, S.J.'s erudition, whom I now thank!
For instance, while reading THE ENNEADS by Plotinus the great 2nd century philosopher of Alexandria, Egypt, I read:
"Plotinus would be surprised at being thought of as the founder of a new school , 'Neoplatonism.' He considered himself a Platonist pure and simple, without prefix or qualification --in other words, as an interpreter and follower of Plato. Plato, in his view , possessed the truth, the whole truth. In his polemic against the Gnostics he accuses them either of plagiarizing Plato or, when they abandon him to 'split hairs' and invent new doctrines of 'departing from the truth' ."
Then, in footnote 14, Paul Henry, S.J., whose introductory "Place of Plotinus in the History of Thought," that I am reading, further writes:
"Among the 'Dialogues' [of Plato] those most frequently cited are first the 'Timaeus ' and then the Republic,' the 'Phaedo,' the 'Phaedrus,' the Symposium ,' the Theatecus,' the Philebus,' the 'Sophist,' the 'Parmenides.' There are few references to the works of Plato's youth in which he sets problems rather than solves them, and fewer still to the 'Laws.' Cf.'infra,' section vi, p.lxxv, the 'Plato dimidatus' of Theiler."
P. xlvii (Penguin Classics, London: 1991)
Fortunately, for me, I was blessed to buy (then read later) THE LAWS by Plato, at a close-out sale at Border's Bookstore in Overland Park, Kansas, some years ago.
I was also blessed to purchase Plato's COMPLETE WORKS online, and to read the lengthy 'Timaeus'. We had read the REPUBLIC at Howard University as part of a class assignment by Dr. Samuel F. Yette, our esteemed Journalism professor in 1972.
Nevertheless, in spite of the above named serendipitous encounters, Plato's broader philosophical context in relation to Plotinus,' I am just beginning to understand and to appreciate by reason of Paul Henry, S.J.'s erudition, whom I now thank!
Sunday, April 24, 2016
REMEMBER "MAY," EVERYDAY!
REMEMBER "MAY," EVERYDAY !
Living on the water, one may get wet. Playing with fire, one may get burned.
Living in racist society, one may become racist. May .
I say "may" because each human is discrete. No human is a robot.
The process of social assimilation is akin to osmosis, where one may absorb, semi-permeably, certain prevailing environmental forces.
Remember that I say "may!"
Not all iron filings are magnetized by nearby magnet. Not all grapes are sweet; not all dogs will hunt .
Accounting for this divine element of uniqueness, of discreetness, is fundamental to solving any issue.
Young David was taken from the sheepcote, remember, by his father, Jesse, whose sheep he was tending, to deliver some food to his 3 older brothers and to their commander. These 3 brothers
were in Israel's army. They were the larger, older of the 8 sons of Jesse, who were too frightened to fight Goliath, as were all in Israel's army.
David was discrete, and unique, not only in the House of Jesse, but in the land of Israel as well. He and he alone was fit and was fitted by his faith in God, by his prior shepherd's experiences & by grace to do battle with the Philistines' champion, the giant braggadocio Goliath. Goliath for 40 days had cursed Israel; its King, Saul, and its God, Yahweh, as being weak wimps and cowardly.
David showed him, didn't he!
He said: "the Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hands of the Philistine". 1 Samuel 17:37. And he surely did!
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Samuel+17
Remember "may!" everyday !

SPACETIME EXPERIENCES VS. REALITY
That our daily spacetime experiences are other than, indeed, intrinsically different from, their perceived conceptional reality, is so incongruous, that it is enough to make one whistle in wonder by itself; and to bow down in wondrous adoration to almighty God above, within, and forever!
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160422115329.htm
BLESSINGS FROM PLATO, PLOTINUS AND THEIR SOURCE
Today I have been multiply blessed!
For instance, while reading THE ENNEADS by Plotinus the great 2nd century philosopher of Alexandria, Egypt, I read:
"Plotinus would be surprised at being thought of as the founder of a new school , 'Neoplatonism.' He considered himself a Platonist pure and simple, without prefix or qualification --in other words, as an interpreter and follower of Plato. Plato, in his view , possessed the truth, the whole truth. In his polemic against the Gnostics he accuses them either of plagiarizing Plato or, when they abandon him to 'split hairs' and invent new doctrines of 'departing from the truth' ."
Then, in footnote 14, Paul Henry, S.J., whose introductory "Place of Plotinus in the History of Thought," that I am reading, further writes:
"Among the 'Dialogues' [of Plato] those most frequently cited are first the 'Timaeus ' and then the Republic,' the 'Phaedo,' the 'Phaedrus,' the Symposium ,' the Theatecus,' the Philebus,' the 'Sophist,' the 'Parmenides.' There are few references to the works of Plato's youth in which he sets problems rather than solves them, and fewer still to the 'Laws.' Cf.'infra,' section vi, p.lxxv, the 'Plato dimidatus' of Theiler."
P. xlvii (Penguin Classics, London: 1991)
Fortunately, for me, I was blessed to buy (then read later) THE LAWS by Plato, at a close-out sale at Border's Bookstore in Overland Park, Kansas, some years ago.
I was also blessed to purchase Plato's COMPLETE WORKS online, and to read the lengthy 'Timaeus'. We had read the REPUBLIC at Howard University as part of a class assignment by Dr. Samuel F. Yette, our esteemed Journalism professor in 1972.
Nevertheless, in spite of the above named serendipitous encounters, Plato's broader philosophical context in relation to Plotinus,' I am just beginning to understand and to appreciate by reason of Paul Henry, S.J.'s erudition, whom I now thank!
PLATO, 'THE LAWS,' --BOOK REVIEW
Book Review—
THE LAWS, by Plato (Penguin Group, New York: 1970, 1975) with translation and introduction by Trevor J. Saunders, Preface by Richard Stalley
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Sunday, July 22, 2012
I bought this book on a whim from a now-defunct Borders Bookstore several years ago. It was on sale, so I scooped it up, along with another by Cicero, with the noble intention of possibly enriching my solo law practice, by their utilization. Ha! Such illusions and idealism!
Plato’s The Laws was as useful to a “grind’m out” lawyer—like me--as a kick in the knee!
However, to a student of ancient history and philosophy, also like me, it is a marvel and a masterpiece! Of course, I only had time to finish it after a stroke in 2010 peremptorily, if not prematurely, permanently terminated my 33 year law practice in Kansas City, Missouri.
Having read that Plato had studied in Ancient Egypt, as had countless Greeks, whose primordial civilizing greatness was reified in stone pyramids and megaliths, mathematics, navigation, astronomy, philosophy, music, medicine, and agriculture, well over 2000 years before the founding of Greece, I was curious to read what Plato had to say about that iconic nation of black Nilotic siltation, whose proper name, “Kemet,” means “land of the blacks.”
Plato (427-347 BC) did not disappoint! Writing about “Artistic Censorship in Egypt,” he states: “…Long ago, apparently, they realized the truth of the principle we are putting forward only now, that the movements and tunes which the children of the state are to practice in their rehearsals must be good ones. They compiled a list of them according to style and displayed it in their temples. Painters and everyone else who represent movements of the body of any kind were restricted to these forms; modification and innovation outside this traditional framework were prohibited, and are prohibited even today, both in this field and the arts in general. If you examine their art on the spot, you will find that ten thousand years ago (and I’m not speaking loosely: I mean literally ten thousand), paintings and reliefs were produced that are no better and no worse than those of today, because the same artistic rules applied in making them.” Pp.47-48.
Then, this fabled teacher of Aristotle, who attended Plato’s Academy in Athens, continues his description of education in Egypt in his chapter entitled “Mathematics.” He writes: “Total ignorance over an entire field is never dangerous or disastrous; much more damage is done when a subject is known intimately and in detail, but has been improperly taught…So we should insist that gentlemen should study each of these subjects to at least the same level as very many children in Egypt, who acquire such knowledge at the same time they learn to read and write. First, lessons in calculation have been devised for tiny tots to learn while they are enjoying themselves at play: they divide up a given number of garlands or apples…they make uses of elementary arithmetic an integral part of their pupils’ play, so they get a useful introduction to the art of marshaling, leading and deploying an army, or running a household; and in general they make them more alert and useful persons. Next, the teacher puts the children on to measuring lengths, surfaces and solids—a study which rescues them from the deep-rooted ignorance, at once comic and shocking, that all men display in this field…I blushed not only for myself, but for Greeks in general.” P.267
Plato, the famed student of and successor to Socrates, who was condemned to death by 500-man jury by poisoning (hemlock) for teaching “foreign ideas” to the youth of Athens, curiously disparages “the sons of Old Father Nile” who were less hospitable to “aliens” than their forebears had been of old. P. 464 Such a nostalgic moniker bespeaks homage and deep familiarity with this African land created and fed by that ancient river.
There is so much, much more to the book than I have excised and highlighted here! It is rich! One can easily see how “Plato stands with Socrates and Aristotle as one of the shapers of the whole intellectual tradition of the West,” as book’s preface asserts.
Read it and rejoice, as I have done!
#30
GEORGE BOYER VASHON
The St. Louis question: "What high school did you go to?" Is often asked as a conversation starter there, since its answer conveys much useful information about the speaker. Students from Vashon High School came on a cultural visit to our high school, Webster Groves High, in 1969, about 40 of them. We had a broad discussion about the issues of the day. I was struck by their diffidence, given our own loquaciousness . Several days ago, an honors graduate of Vashon explained that the St. Louis question embarrassed her, due to Vashon 's [black] cultural context. Perhaps, if its students were conscientiously taught about the great George Boyd Vashon, its eponym, and that school's later proud legacy, such scholastic shame would vanish. I would surely hope so!
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/vashon-george-b-1824-1878
http://www.slps.org/domain/2956
Saturday, April 23, 2016
infinite facts
All that can possibly be done, and all that has ever been done, are but discrete facts within the universe of all those never-have-been-done-facts, and ever will remain so, constantly, given the ultimate fact of infinity.
DANCE OF THE DYADS
DANCE OF THE DYADS
At no point on this plane is:
substance without form;
good without bad;
life without death;
male without female.
Everything on this plane defines or reifies its reciprocal polar opposite.
Without one there is no other in this life, in this matrix of matter. Maybe elsewhere, at other points beyond our conceptions, such are.
But here. Right here. Dyad's and duality dance delightfully together inextricably, naturally, congenitally.
LIMITLESSNESS
LIMITATIONS AND NO LIMITS
God has no beginning nor end. Hence, there is no beginning nor end. Our conception of beginning or end, therefore, is wholly illusory.
There is finiteness, however. "We" inhabitants of earth are finite in form and in substance, not in spirit.

Our spirit is of God, without limits.
Friday, April 22, 2016
OBAMA MONEY, PLEASE!
PRESIDENT OBAMA MONEY, SIR!
Money will change you for the better, just like the lack of money will, also, change you for the worst.
Money is as essential as food, water, oxygen, shelter, clothing, in our avariciously capitalist country.
Black people in the United States of America need some money! Its lack is at the root of all of our evils.
Every effort or attempt to spread some money to that large segment of chronically poor black people is met with sadistic sneers, derision, obstruction from racist politicians.
This viral resistance began during and after the Civil War, when what had been an effort to put down a rebellion, morphed into the slaves' "Freedom War" to end slavery, after January 1, 1863, when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. After the war, under Lincoln's Vice President, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, in the short-lived era of "Reconstruction," 1865-1876, it was totally quashed !
Blacks were promised 40 acres of land and a mule as a portion of their "freedom dues," --land, money, seed, tools, and a horse--to enable them to start new lives outside slavery. "Freedom dues" had been historically paid to white indentured servants in Maryland & Virginia once their contract ended.
This promise was made in 1865, in Savannah , Georgia, by Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, and by Union General. William Tecumseh Sherman, to a representative group of black ministers, who were led by Rev. Garrison Frazier. When asked what they wanted these stalwart black men said that they wanted to be free, to be left alone to govern themselves with dignity with and with ample means provided to them by the government to do so.
"Freedom dues" were "paid" by acquiescence to some former slaves for a short time on certain of the abandoned plantations and islands near or in Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana and Mississippi, that they had formerly worked.
There, they grew crops as before, indeed, as they had also wisely done while in "contrabands' camps" during the Civil War in Corinth. Mississippi, Virginia, elsewhere. They also built schools and churches and commissaries .
They planted, truly well, but others harvested; for, Congress and the states refused to confirm in law what had been made by its plenary agents, Stanton & Sherman, in January 1865 in Savannah, which is set forth in "Special Field Order, No. 15," on January 16, 1865, by "Order Commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi" that General William Sherman signed.
Instead, nothing was given to them, beyond that mere " possessory titles" conveyed by General Sherman, by the U. S. Congress, after Lincoln's assassination, except orders to evacuate standing crops, since those promised lands had been sold to Northern investor capitalists or reclaimed by rebels!
This breach of faith and contract with the freed men and women by their government was continued by political successors like Andrew Johnson and later Congresses; all are the roots of the present lack of money among the slaves' progeny.
Even in 2016, any and every effort to remediate this festering legacy of economic injuries are constantly being rebuffed by banal politicians, whose complicity created them, and by the judiciary which dances around them in nullifying decisions.
That leaves only the President , Barack Obama, whose term is rapidly running out, and whose "Brother Keeper's" program is reliant upon private donations, being unfunded by the federal government. This unsatisfactory, woeful state of African-descendants' claims of restitution deepens an unspoken, yet pervasive racial, disappointment with President Barack Obama 's otherwise-exemplary two-term, hopeful, historical administration.

SEEDLINGS
An adult is a child lacquered over . At their core, they are evermore who they are, and who they were, seasoned. As the puppy, so the dog; as the kitten is, so is the cat; the seed and its fruit, and so on.
Thursday, April 21, 2016
ENTROPY PLASTICITY AND WE
Fluctuating forces on looped DNA, as attested in the bio-polymorphic link below, causally mirrors African American's historic plasticity in their movement towards freedom.
Each loop involves plasticity. Each involves entropy . The whole can be predicted in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics and affected by contrarian or counter-intuitive forces, at certain lengths.
These facts may mollify or mellow the malefactions of certain of us, like those of Dr. Ben Carson, a former Republican Presidential contender, of African descent, who has gratuitously opined that Harriet Tubman should be placed on the $2 bill, instead of on the $20 bill.
Entropic? Surely! But, the struggle continues apace, notwithstanding !
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160420111237.htm
WHITE MEN'S PERCEPTIONS BY 'UNSOPHISTICATED NATIVES OF AFRICAN'
"There must be something in the appearance of white men, frightfully repulsive to the unsophisticated natives of Africa; for, on entering villages previously unvisited by Europeans, if we met a child coming quietly and unsuspectingly towards us, the moment he raised his eyes, and saw the men in 'bags,' he would take to his heels in an agony of terror, such as we might feel if we met a live Egyptian mummy at the door of the British Museum. Alarmed by the child's wild cries, the mother rushes out of her hut, but darts back again at the first glimpse of the same fearful apparition . Dogs turn tail, and scour off in dismay; hens, abandoning their chickens, fly screaming to the tops of the houses. The so lately peaceful village becomes a scene of confusion and hubbub, until calmed by the laughing assurance of our men, that white people do not eat black folks; a joke having often times greater influence in Africa than solemn assertion."
P.152, "Chicova," NARRATIVE OF AN EXPEDITION TO THE ZAMBESI by David and Charles Livingstone (1865)
THOMAS PAINE, "COMMON SENSE"
"Some writers have so confounded society with government , as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants; and government by our wickedness ; the former promotes our happiness 'positively ' by uniting our affections, the latter 'negatively' by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last is a punisher.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in the best state is but a necessary evil ; in the worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries 'by a government ,' which we expect in a country 'without government ,' our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government , like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise . For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform , and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no lawgiver ; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish the means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore , security being the true design and end of government , it unanswerably follows that whatever 'form' thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others."
P.6-7, "Common Sense," PAINE : COLLECTED WRITINGS (1955)
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
LARRY DOBY
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Doby
"Larry Doby" was the sobriquet assigned to me by my mother, in my infancy, honoring the first black baseball player in the American Leagues--the Cleveland Indians--who was signed in 1947, the same year as the more famous Jackie Robinson with Brooklyn 's Dodgers.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
AUTHOR, WRITE US/RIGHT US!
AUTHOR, WRITE US/RIGHT US!
It is difficult for an author to edit its own writing. That author sees what is not there and does not see what is there. Too close to the creation to view the creature in an unbiased way, is its author. Let another edit.
"One pray and one preach," is one effective idiom that has resolved one family pulpit dilemma at rural reunions, involving two preachers . One man prays, while the other one preaches , and everybody sings!
Such a prudent division of labor is efficient and equitable, being like Paul planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. 1 Cor. 3:6.
Such segmented service is presented best in viewing the body's design, with each part serving its function in accordance with primal purpose. None being greater than the other. All rendering wholistic service, in accord with divinely devolved duty.
An author needs an editor as an editor needs an author. One such famous pairing in American literary history was William Dean Howells as editor, and Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne Clemons, as author.
Left -right; male-female; constant-variable; carrier-modulator are also pairings symbolizing this function .
That function is to allocate service equitably among and between all available parts, favoring none, each in accordance with its own purpose or design, then, harvest bountifully.
The author and finisher of our faith is Jesus, says Heb. 12:2. Asking God to "right us" from our greed or biased edits is a plea to that Author to write us, in the Book of Life, and to right us in the Walk of Life.
Monday, April 18, 2016
BUGS ON A WINDSHIELD
BUGS ON A WINDSHIELD
It is profoundly unprofitable to converse with, much less to quarrel with, persons exhibiting either willful ignorance or incontrovertible stupidity, to paraphrase Dr. King.
Hardly any better, and often very worse than these, is that notorious hired knave, that "nattering nabob of negativity," whose prime job is to obstruct, vilify, destroy, a la Jack Kilpatrick.
Bugs on a windshield they may be. But, in due course, that windshield must be cleaned of such noxious accumulated bug clutter for safety.
It is profoundly unprofitable to converse with, much less to quarrel with, persons exhibiting either willful ignorance or incontrovertible stupidity, to paraphrase Dr. King.
Hardly any better, and often very worse than these, is that notorious hired knave, that "nattering nabob of negativity," whose prime job is to obstruct, vilify, destroy, a la Jack Kilpatrick.
Bugs on a windshield they may be. But, in due course, that windshield must be cleaned of such noxious accumulated bug clutter for safety.
TRUTH VS. FACTS
"The truth may be more important than the facts" says Frank Lloyd Wright, but try finding the truth without the facts!
ZEBRA FISH RESEARCH PROVES ALL HUMANITY EVOLVED FROM BLACK-SKINNED PEOPLE
https://www.facebook.com/1676440995975056/videos/1711566942462461/
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/060201_zebrafish
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/060201_zebrafish
Sunday, April 17, 2016
LONNIE JOHNSON PAID MILLIONS OF UNPAID ROYALTY
http://news.aazah.com/content/super-soaker-creator-receives-729m-unpaid-royalties-hasbro#.VrJz-rKLS1s
GOD'S WORD IS BALANCED
GOD'S WORD IS BALANCED

Not against us is for us .
Not with us is against us.
Jesus said both of these things in http://biblehub.com/luke/9-50.htm; and in http://biblehub.com/matthew/12-30.htm.
They are not contradictory. Neither are they polarizing contrapositives.
They are relative; meaning, they are both immanent in each other in time and space; in any situation, organization, or person, including ourselves. They are quantum.
The same may be said about being "unequally yoked." Another false dilemma and informal fallacy is presented in First and Second Corinthians of the Apostle Paul. First he says, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/…. Next, he says http://biblehub.com/2_corinthians/6-14.htm
Again as with Jesus Christ we are again confronted with what seems to be a contradiction, a polarizing contrapositive in the Word of God. Nonsense ! Wet and dry coalesce. Day and night are at peace with each other. Negative and positive are mathematically compatible.
What I am saying in this note is that in balance is order, is equanimity, is stability, is totality; is contrast, too!
Therefore, the Word of God is balanced; for those who believe, and for those who do not believe.
For those who are equally yoked, or unequally yoked, or without a yoke!
A QUESTION FOR "YOU"
A QUESTION FOR "YOU"
Could each life have been naturally selected, or divinely chosen, or both, to occupy this niche in time and space and energy and matter, and no others in Earth's existence?
Such questions obtrude upon me.
Thought I might share it with you.
WONDROUSLY WE
WONDROUSLY WE
We cannot outpace our taste buds. We like what we like.
What appeals to the eye is beauty. What appeals to the nose is fragrant. Touch that pleases is tantalizing. Pleasant sounds soothe our inner spirits.
All senses' sensory experiences serve an array of neurological, immunological, epistemological matrices and interchanges at or of which we may guess or gape!
To love and enjoy what we can, where we can, while we can is best.
ONCE SAVED, ALWAYS SAVED?
ONCE SAVED, ALWAYS SAVED?
Some good preacher-friends of mine in the 1990s, at Niecie 's Restaurant over breakfast, used to debate the question of : "Is once saved always saved." Meaning by that, once having attained salvation from sin, it would be impossible to ever backslide back into sin, again.
Many cogent, even humorous, arguments were made on both sides. Naturally, no side ever won this debate. But, fellowship and oneupmanship was the point, not winning . A good time was had with the brethren, who were Baptists, primarily, but who thought it not robbery to welcome me, an AME!
Third century African-Christian Church Father, Origen, in his foundational work, ON FIRST PRINCIPLES (2013) has this to say on my friends' debate:
"In this way, then, through the ceaseless work on our behalf of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, renewed at every stage of our progress, we may perchance just succeed at last in beholding the holy and blessed life; and when after many struggles we have been able to attain to it we ought so to continue that no satiety of that blessing may ever possess us; but the more we partake of its blessedness , the more may the loving desire for it deepen and increase within us, as ever our hearts grow in fervor and eagerness to receive and hold fast the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But if at any time, satiety should possess the heart of one of those who have come to occupy the perfect and highest stage, I do not think that such a one will be removed and fall from his place all of a sudden. Rather must he decline by slow degrees, so that it may sometimes happen, when a slight fall has occurred, that the man quickly recovers and returns to himself. A fall does not therefore involve utter ruin, but a man may retrace his steps and return to his former state and once more set his mind on that which through negligence had slipped from his grasp."
P. 50
The brothers at the breakfast table would have loved this brother, Origen, whatever his denomination!
Saturday, April 16, 2016
IDEAS ARE ENERGY
Ideas are energy. Energy is power. Therefore ideas are power. Power threatens. Therefore ideas threaten.
THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE
THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE
We do not , we cannot, "know" God.
Neither can we speak for or to God.
We often flatter ourselves that we, creations of God, can do both.
That claim, that pretension, is vanity, vanity, vanity. Nothing but vanity .
We do not "know" our own essence, much less can we know we God's.
We are staked and stoked with life, with "life's" form, with earthly life's substances, for a fleeting season.
At season's end, our stake and our stoke are repossessed, taken back, remitted.
It is at the end that ever more clearly, the ecclesiastical Preacher proclaims: "vanity, vanity, all is vanity." Eccl.12:8
Upon our earthly remission, we leave residue in our wake, evidence of our sojourn, material or spiritual .
What is mainly and most significantly left is our memory, our idea. That memory, that idea is idealized in our various offspring.
Offspring are not cosmic collateral damage; instead, they are our successors, our fruit, our legacies and our legatees.
All of our "offspring" are neither biological, nor material. Much of that blessed "offspring" is spiritual.
We are blessed to conduce, to nurture, to engender, such other "offspring" unknowingly, through love, by love.
One candle can light others, be it one or many. The light is God. The candle is man. We two make one.
"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine! Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!"

Friday, April 15, 2016
belief and deed
What a person professes to believe is far less important than what they actually do or do not do.
THE ENNEADS by Plotinus
I received THE ENNEADS by Plotinus today, the 3rd century African philosopher and mystic who is described as the last ancient one; whose synthesis of the works of Plato, Aristotle , the Stoics, variants of the Trinity and other central Christian doctrines, among others, makes him not only the last great philosopher of antiquity, but a galvanizing force in the "thought" of modern times as well .
That apart, my Penguin Classics (1991) cover is of a nude Afroed brother standing spread-eagle, with arms extended . My cursory search of the Internet found no other like it. Thus, this photo!
COFFEE CONNOISEUR
I am not a coffee connoisseur even though I drink it every day. One brand tastes pretty much like the next to me. Jordon Coffee tastes like Folger's roasted classic. Jordon, "Kansas City's Best," since 1997, is made by my friend, and "Kansas City Globe" newspaper publisher , Marian Jordon. Coffee being coffee drink his!
Thursday, April 14, 2016
DR. J. ERNEST WILKINS, NUCLEAR FISSION INNOVATOR IN THE 1940S
http://www.northstarnewstoday.com/news/a-black-man-played-a-role-in-the-building-of-the-atomic-bomb/
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