ANDREW CHAPEL METHODIST REDUX

Reminds me of my paternal grandparents church in Pickens, Mississippi, Andrew Chapel Methodist.

SERMON ON THE MOUNT AND AFRICAN AMERICANS

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT AND AFRICAN AMERICANS The "Sermon on the Mount" of Jesus Christ sets forth super-human attributes for mankind to follow to achieve "perfection." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sermon_on_the_Mount As slaves in America, Africans were forced to become 'superhuman' simply to survive, and even thrive, under torrid conditions, like living in the hungry lions' den like Daniel, or like surviving the fiery furnace, like Shadrach, Meshak, and Abednego. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Dispiriting indeed was slavery, and dispirited also were the slaves, but the assurance of heaven was hope. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." Mourning was common as kinsmen were torn away, then sold away, from shrieking relatives in slavery. These words of Jesus gave them their blessed assurance of comfort. "Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth." Meekness was our methodology of survival then as now in many times. Though criticized as capitulation, meekness preserves one to fight on another day in some better way. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled." No one has hungered and thirsted more for righteousness in America than the deeply wronged Africans. The promise of fulfillment is being realized in our time within our view! "Blessed are the merciful , for they will be shown mercy." During the Civil War, when many able bodied white men were away fighting to preserve their slavery, there were no slave rebellions, nor murders, nor rapes. Rather, the slaves' mistress was shown mercy. "Oh, oh! Oh mercy mercy me. Oh things ain't like they used to be," sang Marvin Gaye for us in the '70s. Mercy we gave; seldom got! But ours is an abiding faith in God. "Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God." A "pure heart" is pure, light as the feather of Maat, at the Judgement Scene of Osiris, as balanced on the scales of justice against your heart. An impure heart is eaten by a dog, having weighted down the scale. A pure heart enters into immortality. "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God." "Walk together children there is a great camp meeting up ahead." This stanza from a song inspired fleeing slaves on their journeys. Later, the intervention of the slaves for the Union brought victory to it; which brought peace to the U.S.A. We are the children of God, indeed! "Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Persecution in every imaginable form we have known and yet know. Over and over, we have urged our nation , this country , to do the right thing by us, by its documents! Heavenly home is right here in us! "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and say all manner of evil falsely against you because of me." "Because of me" speaks to the redeeming ministry of Jesus Christ as intuited, as interpreted, as temporized, by our falsely insulted, persecuted, reviled forebears, who created institutions to sustain us ! "Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way persecuted they the prophets who were before you." The heaven of which Jesus speaks is not a place where men say "lo here nor lo there." Rather "the kingdom of heaven is inside of you." That means it is inside of us. Inside of our righteous assembly, and outside of it too we have been repeatedly insulted, persecuted, reviled, and dispirited; repeatedly we have mourned, been meek, have hungered and thirsted for righteousness; have shown mercy. Repeatedly we have been pure in heart; have been peacemakers. We have borne our burdens as Jesus bore his cross up Calvary aided by our black brother, Simon of Cyrene, in whose shoes be stand in history! So then, having embodied the heart and soul of the "Sermon on the Mount" as written in Matt. 5:3-12, we have been "perfect," as Jesus preached in Matthew 5:48. Rejoice and again I say "Rejoice!"

FORKS IN THE ROAD/FORT MCPHERSON

https://npsseac.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/fort-mcpherson-meets-the-forks-of-the-road-the-nexus-of-slavery-freedom-and-resistance-in-civil-war-era-natchez-mississippi/ This description of "Forks-of-the-Roads" near Natchez, Mississippi, and the former Fort McPherson, contrasts sharply with that neo-conservative tripe being blithely parroted by so-called "black" websites! Black is the truth, not uncorroborated tripe! Here, there is no mention of women and children starving and dying of disease in the thousands, desirous of returning to the plantations, as was claimed in the false tale! Here, black troops kept watch over their families even as they pursued Confederate guerillas in Mississippi and Louisiana. Here they tore down the slave pens and built Ft. McPherson to fight and to win their freedom. After the war, the Rebel elements returned to power , tore down the fort, whitewashed history also! H/t Sheryl Owens, beloved Bison sister!

CONCESSION AND ACCESSION

After 100 years of trying to "simplify" Dr. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity calculations, physicists have opted to drop these short-cut simulations of the iconic one's original calculations, which short-cuts had consistently failed. Now, finally conceding the absence of a better model, they are using Einstein's originals, in computer codes, scaled up to "graph" the universe. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160624105045.htm

"COMMON KNOWLEDGE" MUSINGS

COMMON KNOWLEDGE MUSING "Common knowledge" is not so common as it sounds or seems. Which knowledge is referred to? Is it that "common," intuitive, knowledge that is mysteriously embedded in the neural and cellular morphology of mankind prior to birth; that is genomically, culturally, epigenetically recycled into embryos, being the naturally selected byproduct of all prior generations' ontology? Or is "common knowledge" that body of acquired, codified information that is shared among certain nations, as man's common heritage? Included within this broad category would be mathematics, music, science, dance, art, farming, medicine, technology and many others? Which knowledge is "common" and which is uncommon ? Otherwise stated, which brand of common knowledge does the idiom refer to? Both?

NATURE IS LOVE EXPRESSED AS SPIRIT

NATURE IS LOVE EXPRESSED AS SPIRIT Nature shells and sorts among us . It shakes, bakes, freezes, works us. Washes, illumines, darkens, burns . Nature does to us all whatever it wants to do: however, whenever, wherever, to whoever or whatever. Nature is Love expressed as Spirit. As Spirit, Love's Nature precedes time and space and imagination, then, as mysteriously, proceeds to manifest "life" that they as three in one--Nature, Love, Spirit,--in each one of us individually as in all of us corporately, differentially:  create, empower, enable, restore, animate, reclaim, renew, until their reconsecration by death & dawn.

MY APOLOGY

MY APOLOGY I apologize to modern era black people for my many condemnations of their too-often fickle fidelity to the black race in their consumerist spending practices for needed goods and important services. I was wrong! These consumer practices did not begin in the modern era, post-Jim Crow, as I had wrongly assumed, and heard others, in business, say. Reading in the works of William Wells Brown, fellow Missourian, and internationally-traveled author, who was a self-taught, escaped slave, I note that he decried the same tendencies in the 1880s! So too did New York native, Dr. James McCune Smith, erudite, Scotland-educated physician, abolitionist, newspaper columnist, and polymath, who died in 1865, decry this, anti-self development disposition, prevalent back then! So, it is not new. Perhaps our people's subconscious acumen knew something, sensed something, about black economic patriotism that preserved us intact. Certainly those places where economic self-help was practiced most successfully did not survive the white terrorist mobs' bombs and arson in Wilmington, NC; in Tulsa, OK; and dozens of others, where racial consumer patriotism was most assiduously practiced! Again forgive my ignorance and my silly, unwarranted condemnations!

FAITH IS A SENSE

Faith is a sense Being "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," Faith is a sense in the same manner as are the more commonly regarded, five other acknowledged human senses: sight, hearing, scent, touch, taste. As some folks are blind or deaf, others are handicapped by a lack of Faith in God. As some folks have highly acute taste buds and tactile senses, others have an indomitable "Through it all"- type of Faith. Faith is strongly allied with what is known as extra sensory perception or ESP, which is a form of intuition . Whether or when pure science ever may come to quantify or to qualify the neural source of Faith, ESP, or intuition, those folks with these 'gifts of the spirit' will go on, certain of their divine source in God, as are they, themselves, and as all else is!

MONKS DON'T NEED MONASTERIES

Monks don't necessarily need monasteries. President Barack Obama describes the "monk-like existence" that he led as an undergraduate student at Columbia University in New York, while he was majoring in political philosophy, after transferring from Occidental College in California. I had read of this curious scholastic sinecure in one of his two masterful autobiographies: DREAMS OF MY FATHER, THE AUDACITY OF HOPE. One had to be preconditioned for that degree of detachment from the many, fabled allures of New York, New York. Looking back, it makes perfect sense. He was making preparations to become President of the United States! As I sit in my home and study, I appreciate him and his monastic-like life, more and more each day. Reading about Pachomius from Luxor, Egypt, who launched the Christian monastery movement, in Thomas C. Oden's blockbuster book, HOW AFRICA SHAPED THE CHRISTIAN MIND (2007), I now have deeper insights into Obama. I also have deeper insights into the life of Jesus who went into a desert place to pray, even the wilderness . Luke 5:16. Those who are called to do a great work must segregate themselves from worldly distractions, so they may hear the song in their hearts. In short, "monks" do not need monasteries necessarily,but peace.

OF EPIGENETICS AND COLLARD GREENS

This recent, 2016, successful experiment with rehabilitating mice from trauma, that is described in this linked scientific article, reminded me of what I had intuitively described, hypothetically, in 2011. That was the proven sociological methodology for reversing inhering epigenetic trauma in younger African Americans. I set it out in THE COLORED GREEN TREE @ Amazon.com. My short, "collard greens-based," metonymic novella is ready for you whenever, if ever, you are ready for it. Take your time till then. Love! https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160623120307.htm

GETTING AHEAD

GETTING AHEAD "Getting ahead" means doing well for oneself, which means, in some way moving forward, from where one began. Usually this connotes financials. That is because in our capitalist society money is the main mete by which movement is measured in life as well as in death, after death too! While this is certainly credible in the sense that money is as a life boat that carries one across this sea, even a ship is no security from life's destiny as tens of thousands of ship wreckages on sea beds say! Thus broadening somewhat the notion of "getting ahead" from that of strictly a single, linear plane into some multidimensional planes, one also departs a financial metric with which to measure one's own life's success. Thereby, other meters emerge like service, compassion, inspiration , education, training, defense, beauty, creativity, faith, diligence, humility, perseverance. Each must be true to oneself in life. Get ahead multidimensionally in the manner that best suits your savor

TRUE BLACK REVOLUTIONARY

"The MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT a Black Man can commit is to raise up a strong, happy loving and ambitious family!" Larry Delano Coleman Artist, Daniel Minter

UBIQUITY

The infinite vacuity of cosmic eternity contains the unknown ubiquity of time-space matter-energy light-darkness life-death quantity-quality constant-variable integer-fraction fusion-fission and the marvelous mystery that is God.

HOW AFRICA SHAPED THE CHRISTIAN MIND, excerpt...

"The Christianity that was once indigenously present throughout North Africa was forced to flee from Vandal and Arab invasions. These refugees were exiled and became implanted in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries in Spain, Gaul, Sardinia, Italy, and Britain. Their influence spread largely through quiet, inconspicuous, scholarly, monastic communities formed under Pachomian (and Augustinian ) rules out of Egypt and Numidia. "The best example is the unexpected trajectory of monasticism from Africa to Ireland to Europe and then back to Africa in a thousand-year cycle. This is the next surprising step of our investigation: how Africa influenced Ireland and how the Irish monks then shaped the formation of medieval Europe. "The history of the planting of African monasticism in Ireland is one of the most astonishing of all the stories of the preservation of civilization . The trajectory was from Africa to Sicily to the Isle of Lerins to Ireland. This transit happened before the Arab conquest, but its consequences became critical only after the Arab conquest.... "The period of the fifth through tenth centuries, though very lively is still dubbed the Dark Ages. This says more about our darkness than about the events occurring at the time. A shroud of obscurity hangs over Western culture during these times. These centuries are least studied with less empathy and less contextual information, than any others of Western history.... "The most surprising chapter of the story, however, is the return to Africa of classic Christianity--that same ecumenical Christianity that was so well formed in Africa. By this time, the mutations that occurred made it unrecognizable as African. So the exegesis and theology and liturgy that were first refined in Africa finally returned to Africa in the prayerbooks and penitential practices of both Catholics and Protestants, but in forms that seemed unrecognizable as African. Indeed, by the time it returned, it seemed alien to Africa, like Odysseus reclaiming his bed... "This unexpected trajectory proved to be the seeding of medieval Christianity, Western law, and ultimately Western democracies and their teachings of human dignity. All the marks of special providence appear to classic theologians to be embedded in this strange and surprising trajectory... "African intellectual history has no need to be defensive or self-effacing . We are learning that Africa taught Europe before Europe was prepared to teach Africa. Europe has slept for many centuries without being fully aware of its vital intellectual sources in Africa. " P.73-76, "Defining Africa," HOW AFRICA SHAPED THE CHRISTIAN MIND : REDISCOVERING THE AFRICAN SEEDBED OF WESTERN CHRISTIANITY by Thomas C. Oden (2007)

WEALTH IS KNOWLEDGE

ROUGHING IT....excerpt

"'But at last a Gentile said, 'Go to Brigham Young!--these small fry cannot do you any good.' I did not think much of the idea, for if the 'law' could not help me, what could an individual do who had not even anything to do with either making the laws or executing them? He might be a very good patriarch in a church and a preacher in its tabernacle, but something sterner than religion and moral suasion was needed to handle a hundred refractory subcontractors. But what was a man to do?... "Then Mr. Young turned to a man waiting at the other end of the room and said 'Take this list of names to So-and-So, and tell him to have the men here at such and such an hour.' "They were there to the minute. So was I . Mr. Young asked them a number of questions, and their answers made my statement good. Then he said to them: "'You signed these contracts and assumed these obligations of your own free will and accord?' "'Yes.' "'Then carry them out to the letter, if it makes paupers of you! Go! "And they 'did' go, too! They strung across the deserts now, working like bees. And I never heard a word out of them. There is a batch of governors, and judges, and other officials here, shipped from Washington, and they maintain the semblance of a republican form of government--but the petrified truth is that Utah is an absolute monarchy and Brigham Young is king!... "Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to calling the attention to the nation at large once more to the matter. I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here--until I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly, and pathetically 'homely' creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, 'No--the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindest applause of mankind , not their censure--and the man that marries sixty of them had done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.'" P.609-610, ROUGHING IT by Mark Twain (1984)

THE 3/5'S INFRACTION

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise Taxation Representation Racial Oppression all flowed from the 3/5s Clause and sequel

HAVING THE WILL TO DO RIGHT

HAVING THE WILL TO DO RIGHT Majority rule savages minority interests, rights, sensibilities, oppressively. That has been the legislative history of the United States at state and federal levels. If a 3/5s rule could be devised to acknowledge a minority group's presence electorally, a 5/3s rule can be devised to remediate the political-economic-legal deficits and disabling incongruities that followed the cruel effects of the infamous 3/5s compromise from the 18th century into the present. Will can do whatever it wills to do! Where there is a will there's a way!

ST. LOUIS WHERE THE CIVIL WAR WAS "WON" IN 1861

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River_campaigns_in_the_American_Civil_War When early the Confederate States of America lost St. Louis, Missouri, in 1861, due to the intuitive guile and intrepidity of Gen. Nathaniel Lyon, who had twice outfoxed then outgunned secessionist Governor Claiborne Jackson, it lost also the Civil War, in effect. This is so even though New Madrid, Missouri, was site of the escarpment, Island #10, which had resisted into May 1862. This landed loop in the Mississippi River was a narrow strip of land under Confederate control, until a siege of it & Union bombardment of New Madrid caused a severance of its only supply line to Tennessee, and its capitulation and surrender. Military control of the Mississippi River, assured control of its trade and commerce, all along its feeder rivers systems, especially the Ohio River, and all cities along its banks. This so-called "Trans-Mississippi Region," defined the westernmost communicable border of the South. With its communications being shut down, river transportation, troop movements, and resupply options were disrupted, within the cities along it, from St. Louis to New Orleans. Asphyxiation set in. It is not without significance that Ulysses S. Grant's campaign began in the west along the Mississippi and moved east only after having successfully secured the west from New Madrid/Island #10, Memphis; in 1863: Vicksburg, Port Hudson, to the Atlantic from the Mississippi. The point here is that while the eastern theater gets well-earned attention, it is the western theater where that war was lost and won, from St. Louis, Missouri in 1861. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Arsenal

SOURCES

SOURCES The sources of springs, rivers, and things, teach us much about their offsprings. You are what you are. Nascence is given by its source. Therefore, knowing sources is smart. Reading an author 's sources reveals its degree of rigor. Perusing a politician 's election funding sources, or a television program 's advertising revenue sources, tells you whose interests they are representing in earnest. What are the sources of your religion or philosophy? Have you investigated them to their sources? Some years ago, our family visited Lake Itaska, Minnesota, the source of the Mighty Mississippi River. We traveled north from Minneapolis at the conclusion of the National Bar Association Convention that year. We were able to walk around in this placid pool of water in bare feet. In addition to the headiness of that epic realization, we were further surprised to learn that in parts of Minnesota, the Mississippi also flows north, like the Nile, before then heading south past St. Louis, Memphis, Vicksburg, and New Orleans, into the Gulf of Mexico. Sources teach the truth! Find them!

BEING ME PROVERBIALLY

BEING ME PROVERBIALLY Writers need readers . Readers need writers. As left and right go hand in hand, readers and writers do too. Evolved readers are readers whose preferences have evolved. Evolved writers are writers whose capabilities have evolved. We do not, cannot remain in place, for we are whirling rapidly about, along in space on this prescribed planet, in this proscribed dimension of time. Writers record what they observe, sense, research or assume. These bits accumulate, are codified, and become a corpus to be consumed by those readers in this age, or the next, who are either informed by, influenced by, amused by or simply bemused by, that writer's corpus. Between these two spheres are a few hybrids like me who read what others have written and who write pieces of it for others who may not have read it or apprehended as me. I am not so much a popular writer, at least not so far, as I am a popular reader, of whatever may appeal to my evolved reader's tastes. Then, In response to subliminal stimuli, I prepare a context, a gruel, in which to serve, online, other's writings. Along the way, like that proverbial, fabled bee which goes from flower to flower, from nectar to nectar, I too am able to pollinate, and to cross-pollinate, before I buzz back to the beehive to offload my cache. I be what I be, whatever I may be! 

JUST ME AND THE BOYS

IF YOU HEAR ANY NOISE IT'S JUST ME AND THE BOYS

PUTTING "WHO" OVER WHAT

PUTTING "WHO" OVER WHAT It mattered more that the work be done, than it be known who did it. This selfless view of labor placed the focus upon product not producer. By virtue of this view the pyramids were built and civilizations founded. This view fell victim to vanity in later ages, inverting the primal paradigm. The focus then had flipped from what was done to who had done it. Man came to adore property, one's own private property, particularly. Focused on private property, "who over what," man's values declined. Mankind sunk to the point that it claimed other humans as property. Rather than just "holding all things common," another religion arose. Acquisitive kinds of religion arose, proclaiming this, but practicing that. Publishing one thing, but secretly propagating its doctrinal converse. It mattered more who was being paid, than what work was being done. "Who over what" in the present age, explains what went wrong and why. Explains what is wrong: it is vanity, vanity, all is vanity: values and laws.

FATHERS ARE REVOLUTIONARIES

FATHERS ARE REVOLUTIONARIES Fathers and mothers make families. From these two flow the future of mankind. Around them life pivots. Therefore the most revolutionary act that can be committed is also the most evolutionary act that has been committed, making families! Making babies is the easy part, is the lazy part, lasting for but a few seconds, more or less, when it is contrasted with the harder, much more difficult work of child-rearing. As a descendant of strong, intact black families in the United States of America, in 2016, I can state boldly, unequivocally, that the most revolutionary act that a black man can commit is to raise up a strong, happy, loving, and ambitious family! The same is true for any other man. HAPPY FATHERS DAY TO ALL OUR GOOD MEN WHO RAISE FAMILIES!

FATHER'S DAY, FAMILY DAY

Fathers relish fatherhood and family life! live in the moment !

WHITE MEN HAVE ALSO TAUGHT TRUE BLACK HISTORY

Many white men and women have told the truth about black history as far back as Plato. Far more, however, since the 19th century in Europe and America have not. The Arabs like the Europeans have both told the truth and lied, since the 9th century at least. Blacks must study to find the truth for themselves and not rely upon our adversaries, of any type, even if they too are "black" to tell the truth! "Study to show thyself approved before God, a workman that need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth!" https://www.facebook.com/BlackHistoryRevealed/videos/491518554385101/

GLORY WONDER MAJESTY

The glory, wonder and majesty of God is all around and within us, at every longitude, latitude, similitude, versimilitude, whether it be at the Great Pyramids at Giza or at the Altar-Stonehenge in England Amen.

DECEIVED TO BELIEVE A LIE

DECEIVED TO BELIEVE A LIE Too many good folks are deceived to believe that there is something inherently wrong with looking out for one's self and one's own, before looking out for others ' interests! "It's a mighty poor dog that doesn't wag its own tail," Daddy used to say. That means do you faithfully! Jesus ' parable about the man who found the hidden treasure buried in a field makes the same point. That man did not blab his findings to the world. Instead, he bought that field! Anyone or anything that would have you surrender your worldly goods for their comfort and their convenience is a deceiver and liar! They do not do what they ask of you! If so, it is only with their remains!! Bear these facts in mind when the next solicitation comes around! Predators use pretexts all of the time to pray upon your stuff! "Anyone that does not provide for their own relatives, especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever ." 1 Timothy 5:8

"FALSE POSITIONS"

The "false positions" educational debates between Frederick Douglass and Dr. James McCune Smith in 1853--described below--pitting the education of the hands, versus that of the heads, that has since strained so many nerves and that has displaced so much energy into the 21st century; and that has been carried on under various guises like "busing & integration," versus the "community control of schools," was an early historical predecessor to the later, more infamous Booker T. Washington, versus W.E.B. Dubois "false positions'"controversy, between "hands and heads." Even more so, was their iconic dispute vehemently expressed in the intellectual war that was waged between various proponents of Marcus Garvey 's Universal Negro Improvement Association versus various personages from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from Dubois to James Weldon Johnson to Walter White and Roy Wilkins, which has yet to abate! They were all based upon the much earlier 'false-position mathematics' that is rooted in an ancient African methodology, that is based on trial and error, duplation and mediation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/…/Ancient_Egyptian_multiplication In THE WORKS OF JAMES McCUNE SMITH : BLACK INTELLECTUAL AND ABOLITIONIST, the Editor, John Stauffer (2007), writes: "In 'The Inventor,' McCune Smith places enormous weight on the love of craft and craftsmanship as the means to elevate the race and breakdown hierarchies. The very fact that whites felt threatened by skilled black laborers, and closed their workshops to them, was a sign of partial victory: whites feared that blacks would be better craftsmen, and 'it is our business to confirm their fears.' McCune Smith offers as an example of an Alabama slave who proved himself to be the best mechanic in the state. With so much show of 'mechanical genius in a slave state,' blacks would dominate the skilled labor market in a free state if they became 'hand workers.' "'The Inventor' is partly a response to an essay by Frederick Douglass, who argued that manual labor kept blacks degraded. McCune Smith understood that what the Greeks called 'hand workers' required enormous intellectual skill and energy. There was little difference between an artist and an artisan, a writer and a barber, a physician and a carpenter... Although he does not explicitly say it, McCune Smith implies that the skilled laborer is more effective than the man of wealth for achieving moral uplift and self-understanding and for fighting the debilitating effects of racism." P.216.

"THE EDITOR"

I had once thought that the lack of self-reliance was a 20th century phenomenon among our black people, an incident of insidious urbanization! But, I was wrong! At least as early as 1853, Dr. James McCune Smith wrote in "Frederick Douglass ' Paper," the following editorial titled: "The Editor": "In the transition state of colored-Americandom, the editor must be an amphibious animal, half orator, half editor; he must tear the fibers of his brain one way to adorn his columns for the inspection of the most fastidious and merciless newspaper critics in the world--I mean colored Americans; and then, he must tear the fibers of his brain another way, to coax, beg, or wheedle money enough out of chance audiences to print his paper and keep a coat on his back . Lord help him! For his faith must be of the kind which moves mountains if he rely upon the 'amour proper' of negrodom for his support. One of the bitterest evils slavery has imposed on our people, one of the safest defenses with which it hedges itself in, is the almost entire destruction of self-reliance and clannish-ness in our character ." P.213, THE WORKS OF JAMES McCUNE SMITH : BLACK INTELLECTUAL AND ABOLITIONIST edited by John Stauffer (2007)

BIRDS ARE BACK IN TOWN

BIRDS ARE BACK IN TOWN When birds don't sing in early morning, I marvel. Where can they be? What does this say to me? What could the matter be, with them or me or matter this morning? At 4:30 , 4:45 some faint whistles, thrushes or chortles normally flow. But. Now, it is 5:27. Still, no show. Wait and betide, none other beside, I now am constrained to do, till the birds bestir, bask, then whir a tune. Hark! No sooner is said than, as though from the dead, comes the days' earliest tweets! Three bursts of bird sound, announcing to all around, the birds are back in town! 

AFRICAN AMERICAN SYNERGY

AFRICAN AMERICAN SYNERGY  It may be worth considering that if there had been no trans-Atlantic slave trade from Africa to America, that, neither you nor I, nor anyone else of African descent, would be here now, nor anyone of European descent either, given our synergies. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/synergy

TERTULLIAN,"THE APOLOGY"

"And we affirm indeed the existence of certain spiritual essences; nor is their name unfamiliar. The philosophers acknowledge there are demons; Socrates himself was waiting on a demon's will.... "Their marvelous subtlely and tenuity give them access to both parts of our nature.... "What is daintier food to the spirit of evil, than turning men's minds away from the true God by the illusions of a false divination? ... Their swiftness of motion is taken for divinity, because their nature is unknown . Thus, they would have themselves thought sometimes the author of things which they announce; and sometimes, no doubt, the bad things are their doing, never the good. The purposes of God, too, they took up of old from the lips of the prophets, even as they spoke them; and they gather them still from their works, when they hear them read aloud. Thus getting, too, from this source some intimations of the future, they set themselves up as rivals of the true God, while they steal his divinations... What need, then, to speak of the other artifices, or yet further of their deceptive power which they have as spirits..." P.42-43, THE APOLOGY by Tertullian (2013)

REPUBLICANS' RECENT RACISTS

Racism must be an attribute for recent Republican Presidential candidates, rather than a demerit. It may even be a qualifying characteristic for most of them . Beyond cavil, their elected Presidents since 1968: Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes were renowned "conservatives," which is a polite euphemism for racist.

"THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN"

The Black Man�s Burden (A Reply to Rudyard Kipling) in When Africa Awakes (New York, 1920) Take up the Black Man�s burden--- Send forth the worst ye breed, And bind our sons in shackles To serve your selfish greed; To wait in heavy harness Be-devilled and beguiled Until the Fates remove you From a world you have defiled. Take up the black Man�s burden--- Your lies may still abide To veil the threat of terror And check our racial pride; Your cannon, church and courthouse May still our sons constrain To seek the white man�s profit And work the white man�s gain. Take up the Black Man�s burden--- Reach out and hog the earth, And leave your workers hungry In the country of their birth; Then, when your goal is nearest, The end for which you fought Watch other�s trained efficiency Bring all your hope to naught. Take up the Black Man�s burden--- Reduce their chiefs and kings To toil of serf and sweeper The lot of common things: Sodden their soil with slaughter, Ravish their lands with lead; Go, sign them with your living And seal them with your dead. Take up the Black Man�s burden--- And reap your old reward; The curse of those ye cozen, The hate of those ye barred From your Canadian cities And your Australian ports; And when they ask for meat and drink Go, girdle them with forts. Take up the Black Man�s burden--- Ye cannot stoop to less. Will not your fraud of "freedom" Still cloak your greediness? But, by the gods ye worship, And by the deeds ye do, These silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your gods and you. Take up the Black Man�s burden--- Until the tail is told, Until the balances of hate Bear down the beam of gold. And while ye wait remember The justice, though delayed Will hold you as her debtor Till the Black Man�s debt is paid. --- BY HUBERT HENRY HARRISON(1920)

SUBSIDIES NOW, PLEASE!

"SUBSIDIES" NOW PLEASE Subsidies makes music to me! Subsidies bring forth parities foreclosing racial disparities ! Subsidies afford subsistence, some measure of assistance to those historically indisposed; to those commonly circumscribed, to those traditionally vilified, to those unjustly tried without any process, much less any due process; to those denied any protection, much less, vaunted equal protection of the laws. Subsidies to relieve the lack of national economic comity coming to us, since the betrayal of presumed "Reconstruction" and the Freedmen's Savings Bank peculation and raiders; plus Woodrow Wilson's 1914, tyrannical usurpations fostered by income taxation of our hard-earned money for naught, as we paid for our own persecution! When our self-help efforts have met states' treachery & federal hostility, jealousy, hypocrisy. So bring on our subsidies, our tax refunds and tax abatements too, until our purloined financial portions are fully restored, with interest due! Meanwhile reparations can await that strait gate set to arise on all of God's beloved kingdom someday! Subsidies ! Every sector of the economy enjoys subsidies but us, local, state, federal subsidies. Solar energy subsidies, airlines, trade, shipping subsidies; railways, banks, farmers. The list is endless but none to us poor loyal black folks, just scorn!

THOMAS PAINE, EXCERPT..

Reading Thomas Paine's COMMON SENSE declarations, imprecations, against the evil King of England as written in February 1776, I was very easily transposing the name, King George, for his former colony, the United States of America , and was deducing thereby a number of analogies from this logic in 2016. For example, Paine writes: "We may be as effectually enslaved by the want of laws in America, as by submitting to laws made for us in England. After matters are made up (as it is called) can there be any doubt, but the whole power of the crown will be exerted to keep this continent as low and as humble as possible? Instead of going forward , we shall go backwards, or be perpetually quarreling or ridiculously petitioning ,--We are already greater than the king wishes us to be, and will not he hereafter endeavor to make us less? To bring the matter to a point. Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper person to govern us? Whoever says 'No' to this question is an 'independent,' for independence means no more, than, whether we shall make our own laws, or, whether the king, the greatest enemy this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us 'there shall be no laws but such as I like.'" P.30, (1955, 1984) As I was reading Thomas Paine, I was also subliminally "substituting collaterals," a phrase from my legal days of amicable negotiations with automobile insurance company claims adjusters involving my client 's property damages, where they owed more on the car, than its FMV value to a lender! "Upside down!" His passage above also brought to mind the ancient African "False Position Methods " of multiplication that I had recently read about in AFRICAN MATHEMATICS by Robin Walker and John Matthews (2014), dating back thousands of years to ancient Kemet and ancient Nubia.

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT How did mankind learn to swim? No other creatures swim like us ? Or. How did our species learn what foods were nutritional and to cook? Or. Fire. How did man learn the use of fire and to harness its power ? Many of the things that we daily do like reading or speaking or writing were passed down to us by others . Imagine the intelligence it took to discern these things from nature! The point of this "how did" vignette is to foster greater appreciation for our forebears, and for ourselves, by looking at the environment in which we live; at our cars, houses, planes, ships, boats, submarines, bicycles, guns and bullets, bows and arrows, and everything else that was made, outside of nature, itself, our unique species has made & passed down! We have written sacred scriptures of poetry of ourselves. In these psalms, hymns, proverbs, wisdom books, gospels, testaments, Vedas, Surahs, songs, chants, we ardently wondrously ascribe to divinity, to some deities apart from ourselves, the genesis, apotheosis of all that is, that was, or that ever shall be. To these deities, to our gods, or to our God, be they (singular or plural: or singular yet plural), we attribute omniscience, impute omnipresence, consign omnipotence, in the sacred pages of our holy books that we worship. We give our gods cosmic powers, prescience, even personality, i.e. God repented, God is jealous. Our holy books describe our special deities' acts of creation. We sculpt, paint, carve images of them and create philosophy and theology about them, wherein we attribute many facets of mankind to them. So, how did mankind truly learn to worship? To praise, to pray, to love? To study, to read to write to speak? You are a fact of nature and a force of nature. You! So, think on these things for yourself . Look around, sweep around your own front door! As is said in Philippians 4:8: "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, if there be any praise , think on these things." Amen! 

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Higgs_Nichols What an athlete has done in sports another athlete can do better, if what has previously been done becomes known. "Records are made to be broken." How true it is! Not just in spectator sports, but in many other realms of endeavor, perhaps every other, this fact is also true. Given time, knowledge and the opportunity for pursuit by enough people, prior records fall! This fact--what mankind has done another person can do better--underscores the tremendous importance of knowledge and its broadest, effectual dissemination as possible. It also explains why, conversely, education is politically allocated and information is, too ! Knowledge is power. Knowledge applied is mastery. Censorship of government documents, media news, school curriculum, church literature, are all censored to keep power in the hands of the powerful. This has nothing to do with race. Power is about the retention of power, the reinforcement of power, and the denial to others of power. And a main source is knowledge ! You shall KNOW THE TRUTH and the truth shall make you free! John 8:32.

JESUS HEAVEN AND EARTH

Those Christian folks who defer their present earthly duties for their believed heavenly blessings had better re-read Matthew 18: 18 which Jesus says equalizes each place with reference to both human experiences; "whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Handle your business, the business, God's business, here & now! …17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, regard him as you would a pagan or a tax collector. 18Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on the earth will be loosed in heaven. 19Again, I tell you truly that if two of you on the earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by My Father in heaven.…MATTHEW 18.

LIARS

SINCE INVETERATE LIARS : often get: hired, elected, promoted, confirmed, grow wealthy, avoid taxes, get acquitted, married, baptized, published, admired, & feted, ONE MIGHT REASONABLY WONDER: Why ever would one tell the truth? PERHAPS BECAUSE LIFE EXTENDS BEYOND EARTH & DEATH.

"WE ARE ALI," IN SOUL AND IN SUBSTANCE

"WE ARE ALI" IN SOUL AND IN SUBSTANCE Our people's blessed adaptability, agility, flexibility, speed, quickness, sagacity, humility, amiability, honor, integrity, humor, affability, fertility, faith, rhyme, rhythm, soul, and love were all imprinted, all embedded in our late champion, Muhammad Ali. Those same virtuous qualities are embedded in us, as Ali is a product of our people, genetically, culturally and historically. 'We' each 'are Ali.' "We are Ali!" This exhortation, was what a young, pretty, female eulogist proclaimed, yesterday, in Louisville, Kentucky. "We are Ali," indeed, individually, collectively, synergistically, divinely, in soul and substance. He is our son and scion. http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/06/10/1537218/-Powerful-Eulogy-by-19-yo-Natasha-Mundkur-We-are-Ali Each biological cell is a reduced, yet, a comprehensive specimen of the whole, being its fractal, being its fraction, but containing all of its morphology, histology, neurology. So are we with Muhammad Ali, and so was Ali with us. That "We are Ali" is self-evident. With the same dispatch with which he disposed of Sonny Liston, twice, our people, twice, secured their freedom from chattel slavery for themselves, while, at the same time, preserving "the Union," the United States of America, from self-destruction, and from self-annihilation, 1861-1865. That same personal integrity that was displayed by Muhammad Ali, when he refused to be inducted into the United States armed forces to fight the VietCong in Vietnam, was also on display by our people, when they fought, under the commanding, inspired, leadership of many, especially that of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we defied, defeated "Jim Crow," 1955-1968. As Ali had first boldly defied, then later defeated, the craven federal executive branch's attempt to put chains on him, so too we as a people first defied, then defeated, the betrayal of our unappreciative nation, which not only denied to us our just share of the spoils of the Civil War victory that we fairly won. We also won by Supreme Court decisions over decades from the 1930s-1960s, as Ali had won! Not only were we denied the spoils of war, but worse, we were made the spoils of national reconciliation! Agents of the federal government had secretly agreed prematurely to end "the Reconstruction's " few spoils, material benefits to some of us, while despoliation of the mass of us, proceeded unrestrained by terrorists acts of law officers, and private citizens. This began with withdrawing the needed protection of federal troops from the still-seething South. At the same time, the U.S. Military was deploying its black troops to extreme southern Texas (or farther West to subdue the Indians), to get them out of the way, to immobilize any effort they may have made toward armed self-defense to avenge the myriad depredations inflicted by former Confederates on the newly freed man and woman, by art of the deal. They thought that we would die out, like the beaver and the bison. Predictions of our forthcoming "extinction" by their so-called "learned men" we're confounded, refuted by our forebears' survival . So too they thought that when they stripped of his title, prohibited him from boxing in the nation, had him thrown into jail that they would kill the audacious will of Muhammad Ali. Wrong about him and wrong about us! We are him & he is us, in soul, and in substance, having been sent to do God's will in this country, this recrudescent Rome! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i1gBM8GSFsQ 

TREE AND FRUIT

Trees fruits Fruits trees.... If we can judge a tree by its fruits, we can judge the man by his wife, the woman by her husband, their children by both parents, blended, and both parents by their children !

AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY by Theophile Obenga, excerpt....

"The present universe, that is to say, the Totality of all that exists, encompasses everything in the world, in nature, the abode of the dead, ...the sky above,...the inhabitable world, or ...to, humans of the planet Earth...ancestral divinities ancestors...death..,to die. "Human intelligence normally strives to understand how all this came to be. Frequently, a demiurge , a creator, is imagined at the beginning of beginnings, at the very origins of the universe. Creation, or the coming into being of the world, including all components of the universe, is supposed to be the work of that demiurge . This is the constant postulate in all the world's mythologies, save one. "The exceptional vision comes from Egypt. Unlike all other mythologies, Egyptian mythology came up with the concept of a universe preceding the present universe, a different universe that existed before the demiurge and all its creation. Here the mind, liberated from orthodox approaches to issues of genesis and origin, enters a realm with no questionable premises. What is posited is a kind of 'matter.' Yet it has no thematic form. It is absolute in its sovereignty, before it becomes involved, through the agency of the demiurge , in a process of becoming. The concept was of a sort of spatial medium antedating space and time, beyond time and space. All perceptible reality would, in the future be projected from this originating 'medium ' within it. The result of that activity would be the generation of the universe as we know it now, the reality explored and exploited by human ingenuity... "Before generation and corruption, then, there was ungenerated, uncreated reality, that which was neither born nor made. To that substratum without form or shape, an amorphous reality, the ancient Egyptians gave the name, 'Nwn.'... "Egyptian thinkers posited a state of matter before God and all his creation. Better still, God the artificer and creator himself emerged from this primal matter, itself 'uncreated .' The ancient Egyptians posited uncreated reality before God the demiurge . St. Augustine posited con-created matter, created by God at the same time as the other creatures. Between the two conceptions, that of uncreated matter is more materialistic than that of con-created matter. "Around 3,000 BC, with Menes, all at once, was born the pharaonic institution that unified Egypt from South to North, a coherent organization for channeling and harnessing the waters of the Nile through systematic irrigation, accompanied by a writing system useful for regulating ceremonies and rituals, setting the calendar, and communicating the pharaoh's messages across great distances. All at once, too, Egypt created a set of impressive architectural constructions--the step pyramid with its prodigious complexity. Thus Egypt accomplished the leap from unbaked bricks and wood to chiseled stone. Again in the Old Kingdom, and just as rapidly, emerged the first philosophy. It was as vigorous as the geometry of the pyramids, precise as pharaonic ritual. Here, right from the beginning, was a dynamic system all complete, astonishing in the radical sharpness of its vision. At the beginning of what is, from our present perspective , the result of a creative effort worthy of a demiurge , there was uncreated reality. P.37-41, "African Philosophy: The Pharaonic Period," AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY THE PHARAONIC PERIOD 2780 BC-330BC by Theophile Obenga (2004)

ARTIFICIALITIES

ARTIFICIALITY Artificial intelligence is now being sought with vigor to join artificial morality, religion, law, logic, love, sweeteners, government, foodstuff. Artificial is an artifice to thwart what is natural, to dissemble, to cozen, to confuse, to confound. Artificial people make artificial pledges , promises, personalities. Artificiality is the new world order!

Silences

Not all observed silences simulate muzzled thunder. Certain silences may be the calm before the storm or the pause before the explosion. Silence may also be some secret, subsonic summons for help, unheard by tormentors, but heard by sapid rescuers, like angry mama bears, who come hurtling, hustling to help! Honor the silences of others, so your peace and security can be!

"THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN" by Hubert Henry Harrison

Tonight, I fished reading WHEN AFRICA AWAKES by Hubert Henry Harrison (1920, 1998), where this powerful poetic parody closes it! "The Black Man�s Burden (A Reply to Rudyard Kipling) in When Africa Awakes (New York, 1920) Take up the Black Man�s burden--- Send forth the worst ye breed, And bind our sons in shackles To serve your selfish greed; To wait in heavy harness Be-devilled and beguiled Until the Fates remove you From a world you have defiled. Take up the black Man�s burden--- Your lies may still abide To veil the threat of terror And check our racial pride; Your cannon, church and courthouse May still our sons constrain To seek the white man�s profit And work the white man�s gain. Take up the Black Man�s burden--- Reach out and hog the earth, And leave your workers hungry In the country of their birth; Then, when your goal is nearest, The end for which you fought Watch other�s trained efficiency Bring all your hope to naught. Take up the Black Man�s burden--- Reduce their chiefs and kings To toil of serf and sweeper The lot of common things: Sodden their soil with slaughter, Ravish their lands with lead; Go, sign them with your living And seal them with your dead. Take up the Black Man�s burden--- And reap your old reward; The curse of those ye cozen, The hate of those ye barred From your Canadian cities And your Australian ports; And when they ask for meat and drink Go, girdle them with forts. Take up the Black Man�s burden--- Ye cannot stoop to less. Will not your fraud of "freedom" Still cloak your greediness? But, by the gods ye worship, And by the deeds ye do, These silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your gods and you. Take up the Black Man�s burden--- Until the tail is told, Until the balances of hate Bear down the beam of gold. And while ye wait remember The justice, though delayed Will hold you as her debtor Till the Black Man�s debt is paid."

HOW AFRICA SHAPED THE CHRISTIAN MIND, EXCERPT.....

"Why have these dynamics not been better understood ? The historical answer is that Euro-American intellectuals have transmitted these ideas to Africa, where they have been camouflaged as if to assume that these prejudices were genuinely African. "Here is the crucial test question: Compare these two lists: (1) Rousseau, Nietzsche , Marx, Freud, and (2) Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius, Augustine. Now ask which list is more African. Now ask which list has more deeply affected the past generation of African intelligentsia and of scholarship in and about Africa, and even of much African theology. A review of references in their books will show that the African list is quoted with far less frequency by a huge factor than the European list. It is thus evident how far African interpreters have gone in accommodating to European thinkers with minimal empathy for African sensibilities, metaphors and premises." P.71, HOW AFRICA SHAPED THE CHRISTIAN MIND by Thomas C. Oden (2007)

TENDENTIOUSLY SHAPED EURO-AMERICAN ACADEMIC CONJECTURES

"Modern interpreters of Africa have been tendentiously shaped by Euro-American academic conjectures. In seeking the anticipated legitimacy that comes from higher education, African scholars during the period in which independence was being fought for fell all too easily into the trap of idealizing , romanticizing and liberalizing motifs so familiar to Western modern traditions. They are not being criticized for seeking the best education available to them. But the best education was still highly imperfect , with all the limitations of the chief failures of modernity: autonomous individualism, hedonic narcissism, moral relativism, and reductive naturalism. None are characteristic of the African spirit." P.69-70, "Defining Africa," HOW AFRICA SHAPED THE CHRISTIAN MIND by Thomas C. Oden (2007) http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tendentious

FLOWER OF LIFE . ORIGINAL HOME IN ABYDOS. ANCIENT EGYPT.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/geometria_sagrada/esp_geometria_sagrada_6.htm