WATCHING AND WAITING FOR GOD

WATCHING AND WAITING ON GOD As I read a chapter in AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY: THE PHARAONIC PERIOD 2780-330 B.C. by Dr. Theophile Obenga, entitled, "Variations in the length of day and night at different times of the year," wherein he transliterates and translates a text, "Kemi," which sets forth the lengths of each day and night, of each season, not only do I marvel that there were those who did that, I am reminded of the Bible texts, urging us to watch and wait: http://biblehub.com/micah/7-7.htm Micah 7:7, "But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God, my Savior; my God will hear me." http://biblehub.com/proverbs/8-34.htm Proverbs 8:34, "Blessed are those who listen to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway." http://biblehub.com/psalms/130-6.htm Psalms 130:6, "I wait for the Lord, more than a watchman wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning."

A PRIORI

A PRIORI Equilibrium . Status quo ante. Root. Homeostasis . Baseline. Balance . All of the above states suggest a prior state before action, motion. That prior state is or was stillness, oneness, quietness, nothingness . We humans are not fitted, sensorily blessed; neither equipped bodily to perceive either: beyond or before these seemingly innocuous states. Though we do sense, we do feel the presence of much much more; that undefinable "much much more" must dwell on a very distant shore, in the eternally incipient realms of theretofore heretofore forevermore. As there is more light than we can see, more sound than we can hear, more texture than we can feel, more scent than we can smell, more flavor than we can taste, our imagination: theoretical or applied, is our link to this domain or source.

1 TIMOTHY 1:8-10

1 Timothy 1:8-10 New International Version (NIV) 8 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine New International Version (NIV) Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER , MY FOREMOST CIVIL WAR HERO

Lloyd Monroe "I had the fullest reports made to me of the acts of individual bravery of colored men on that occasion, and I had done for the negro soldiers, by my own order, what the government has never done for its white soldiers – I had a medal struck of like size, weight, quality, fabrication, and intrinsic value with those which Queen Victoria gave with her own hand to her distinguished private soldiers of the Crimea... These I gave with my own hand, save where the recipient was in a distant hospital wounded, and by the commander of the colored corps after it was removed from my command, and I record with pride that in that single action there were so many deserving that it called for a presentation of nearly two hundred." –Benjamin Franklin Butler

VOODOO

voo·doo ˈvo͞oˌdo͞o/Submit noun 1. a black religious cult practiced in the Caribbean and the southern US, combining elements of Roman Catholic ritual with traditional African magical and religious rites, and characterized by sorcery and spirit possession. synonyms: witchcraft, magic, black magic, sorcery, wizardry, dark arts, devilry, hoodoo, necromancy, mojo "the elders still practice voodoo" verb 1. affect (someone) by the practice of voodoo. IF VOODOO WORKED, OTHER THAN IN THE MINDS OF MESMERIZED, SUPERSTITIOUS, BLACK PEOPLE, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO WHITE PEOPLE LEFT TO ENSLAVE THEM. THAT THE WHITES REMAINED, PROVES VOODOO'S FATEFUL FALLACY. EVEN SO, IT WORKED WELL ENOUGH EARLY IN SAINT DOMINIQUE AS A RALLYING AGENT FOR HOODOO PRIEST, AND LEADER, BOUKMAN, BEFORE TOUSSAINT L'OVERTURE, A DEVOUT AND LITERATE CHRISTIAN, ROSE UP TO LEAD MORE PERFECTLY. TOUSSAINT LED THE BLACK SLAVES OF SAINT DOMINIQUE TO FREEDOM FROM FRENCH SLAVERY TO "HAITIAN" MILITARY GLORY. HAITI WAS LATER LED INTO NATIONHOOD, UNDER DESSALINES, HIS MORE EFFICIENT SUCCESSOR. TOUSSAINT WAS TRICKED, DECEIVED BY THE FRENCH, WHO BAITED HIM WITH FLATTERY ABOARD THEIR ADMIRAL'S SHIP WITH HONORS AND PRAISES. ONCE THERE, TOUSSAINT WAS KIDNAPPED, SAILED TO FRANCE, AND STARVED TO DEATH IN A DUNGEON IN THE JURAL ALPS BY HIS FRENCH FELLOW-CATHOLICS UNDER PRETENSES OF PEACE. VOODOO OR NOT BEWARE FAWNS OF FLATTERY!

FACTS AND "EUCLID"

http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/elements/bookV/propV3.html FACTS AND "EUCLID" Facts are foundational to truth. Facts precede, are fundamental to all else . Law arises from facts, not facts from law. Any nuance of facts alters perceptions, outcomes, law. Grasp the facts, all of the facts, so then you may command effectively. Not having knowledge of all of the facts can be, and, has often been, disastrous in battle, in school, life. Some attempt to subdivide facts into categories, like material facts, substantive facts, procedural etc., have been attempted by scholars. Such nebulae are immaterial here. The focus here is upon the fact itself, a fact itself, any fact itself . Now defining a fact is difficult. For facts are a blend of objectivity and subjectivity, of perception and of conception. Thus, facts are proven; facts must be proven to be facts. Facts may be proven variously. Proof of asserted facts means, indeed, a proof of asserted facts specifically demands, an actual demonstration of the existence of the alleged facts that is sufficient to exclude the existence of other sets of facts contending for proof. The clearest, cleanest exposition and proof of geometric facts that I have ever seen are in EUCLID'S ELEMENTS. "Euclid" was not an actual person. No autobiography of him exists. No ancient images of him exist, except for certain vain imaginings by covetous Greeks. Instead of a person, Euclid is a pseudonym, I surmise, for an ancient African scribal society 's accumulated corpus of rules and algorithms that were bequeathed over thousands of years, from ancient Egypt, after being applied in their construction of temples , pyramids, levees, megaliths, that have been brought forward to us. The work is exemplary. Despite its antiquity, its reliability yet remains unsurpassed by any work that I have yet read or seen. It defines, explains, directs, demonstrates all of its proofs step-by-step, logically, sequentially, graphically, easily . The work takes note of corollaries, lemmas , porisms, postulates, common notions, all of such with repetitions that are reinforcing all others, rigorously, indeed ritually, and religiously throughout this 13-book, mathematical masterpiece.

FALLEN ICON : KING LOUIS XIV

One more icon of my youth has fallen! "Le Roi Soleil" --King Louis XIV--whom we had learned to praise in Mrs. Ferry's French class in 7th grade at Steger Junior High School, has just fallen in one fact: "King Louis XIV originally issued the Black Code or 'Code Noir' in March 1685 as slave law for the French West Indies, but as slavery in French America expanded, it was applied elsewhere." P.27, "The Code Noir," BONDAGE IN EGYPT by Darrel Dexter (2011)

GOOD AND BAD CONJOINED

GOOD AND BAD: CONJOINED Why does evil always seek to hide itself among the good? Why does wickedness always malevolently masquerade as an angel of light, being that it is in actuality the prince of demons and of darkness? Is evil, demonic wickedness afraid, ashamed to stand its own ground ? Or, do we who are privileged to read, and privileged to observe the so-called "good" and "bad" in history and in our lives, and in literature, both sacred and sacral, instead, err? Do our own prejudices and biases ignorantly obscure our futile , if innocent, attempts to discern between these coefficients of existence, due to our incapacity? Take a plain example the African slave trade: It is generally agreed that the African slave trade was evil and wicked, lasting 400 years, and tearing up entire families, killing millions of people in order to "civilize," to populate and to develop the Americas, which are now global powers. Let me concede the point, even if in so doing, I deny my African American self, who would not be, but for that so-called evil, wicked occurrence! Not only would I not exist, nor be, as a person, but for the assimilative processes of cruel chattel slavery, but neither would anyone nor anything else that is American, or African American, or any of many permutations of the two, exist or be, but for the African slave trade that is now universally accepted as so wicked and so evil! Yes, it was wrong! But, despite its wrong, that wrought so much havoc, it has also brought forth so much good! Good and bad are conjoined twins .

INFLUENCES

INFLUENCES We influence more people than we know or that we could ever know, even those living centuries after our deaths. Influence is like those mysterious microwave background resonances left over from the "Big Bang." Each life and death, is too, akin to a Big Bang, being a big deal. We read books written by people who are long dead. We view their art ; enjoy their music; worship their God; salute their flags; eat their foods; visit their structures; learn their arts and sciences; speak their languages; celebrate, or emulate their exploits; and most importantly, embrace their values. We hear of exploits of people long dead. We all are descendants of people long dead, some dating back millions of years. Proof positive of our influence is us, are our offspring, our acts, our lives. Never worry about your influence; just live, work, breath, and mate. The rest is all in the will of divinity. http://www.space.com/20330-cosmic-microwave-background-expl… 

THE LAWBREAKERS PASS LAWS

THE LAWBREAKERS PASS LAWS Why do our federal or state legislatures pass so many laws? And why are these endless laws never enforced, so very seldom enforced, just selectively enforced? I consulted scripture, 1 Tim. 1:8-10, for a better understanding, of this legal curiosity, and was amazed to see that our lawmakers pass these very laws for themselves, to guard against their own innate iniquities! https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/… "We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that the law is not made for the righteous but for lawbreakers and the rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious , for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murders, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers --and for whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine." The answer to the above question is set forth plainly in holy scripture!

SOFT THINGS

SOFT THINGS Soft things overcome hard things by a gentle persistent pressure. Thus winds reduce mountains to rubble over time, just like water seeps through, under, and around that same range. Softness wins. A baby's mere presence reorders , even disorders its environment, making mothers coo and daddy's cry out loud for joy and happiness. Women's softness overcomes men's hardness, literally and figuratively, over and over again! Heat of soft sunshine evaporates rivers and desiccates grasslands, and melts the mightiest of glaciers. "A soft answer turns away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger." Proverbs 15:1. Soft things overcome hard things in time. For, Time is the softest thing of all.

PLANT A FLOWER

"Plant a flower!" This beautiful expression was the motto of the late, great Bernard Powell of Kansas City, Missouri, founder of the Social Action Committee 20, a now -defunct, black self-help, community improvement organization in KCMO. I met Bernard Powell briefly in the 1970s here in KC, before he was shot and killed by a black man, a fellow KC "ghetto-dweller," in an after-hours club, who knew him well, it was reported. The term "ghetto-dweller" is placed in quotation marks, because when I arrived here in 1976 from Washington DC, what they called the ghetto here was nothing compared to the District! Bernard apparently sensed the nexus between squalor and broken spirits. Thus, his lovely, admonitory "plant a flower" motto yet resonates with me, as redemptive, worthy of remembrance. Other sayings of this brilliant brother were "each one teach one" and "ghetto or goldmine? the choice is yours."

OMNIDOXY

"OMNIDOXY" The good or the bad that we do toward each other are always repaid. Repayment not necessarily linearly nor necessarily reciprocally, from the same person or place delivered; neither orthodoxly nor heterodoxly, in accordance with usual or expected means. But, our deeds are all repaid, "omnidoxly," which means from anywhere or from everywhere at anytime and at anyplace; from anything, from everything or from anyone, even by or from or to ourselves! Pluripotent and omnipotent are the universal forces that we do blithely unleash!

me and baby brother.....

New baby brother on the block, Tiye Therese! Meet Miles sleeping on Julian.

KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF: WHEAT AND TARES

KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF: WHEAT AND TARES Sunday, September 25, 2016 By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Which is most firmly held, which is most deeply rooted, in humans: Knowledge or Belief? Put another way, which is most difficult to amend or to annul in humans: Knowledge or Belief? Knowledge is that which is perceived: seen, heard, felt, smelt, tasted. Belief is that which is conceived: sensed, intuited, apprehended, imagined, confessed. Both knowledge and belief are personally experienced and personally embodied by and in humans. Perhaps, knowledge and belief are like, wheat and tares of the Bible, so connected that no human can appreciate which, knowledge or belief, is most deeply rooted, which of these two is most firmly held. All must abide the harvest of souls of man before the answer to this riddle may be known; unless, of course, you can discern the distinction and the answer to this inquiry, now. If so, please do share it!

I LOVE MARK TWAIN

https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/10/24/mark-twain-on-slavery-empathy-compassion/ I love Mark Twain, my Missouri homeboy, whose works I am reading religiously out of profound respect for this sage of our age!

SEASONS OF APPLES AND MAN

SEASONS OF APPLES AND MAN Winds blow some apples down. Others fall down on their own. Remaining apples are all plucked. In the end, none outlives a season. Apple trees shed blossoms and fruit every year, that more may follow. Tragic though it seems, it is the way of all: apples, man, and life.

SUPERNAL LAW VS. COMMON LAW

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supernal COMMON LAW IS LAW BASED ON LOCAL CUSTOM AND USAGE, SKEWED IN FAVOR OF THEN-SOVEREIGNTY, FROM ENGLAND, ROME, GREECE, WHICH YET PREVAILS IN AMERICAN COURTS. IN THIS INTERNET AGE OF MASS COMMUNICATIONS, MANY "COMMON LAW" OUTCOMES ARE CRITIQUED, COMPARED, CROSS-EXAMINED GLOBALLY FOR THEIR RIGOR, JUSTICE, EQUITY OR CONSISTENCY. IN EFFECT A FORM OF 'SUPERNAL LAW,' LAW BASED ON DIVINE JUSTICE, EMERGES FROM THESE ONLINE EXAMINATIONS, WITH INTERNATIONAL, NOT LOCAL, DIMENSIONS, RAMIFICATIONS:ABSENT CROSS BARRIERS AND DIVISIONS OF CIVIL - CRIMINAL; COMMERCIAL-ECCLESIASTIC. THIS IS SUPERNAL INTERNET ACCRETION TO RENDITION OF GLOBAL JUSTICE, AND I WOULD URGE ITS PRUDENT STUDY AND ADOPTION AS AN INTERNATIONAL MATRIX OF JUSTICE.

LIFE IS TENUOUS TO EVERYONE

LIFE IS TENUOUS TO EVERYONE Bogarting is bullying is abusing; all of these are wrongs, it is claimed. Killings of unarmed black civilians, because you can, is the worst kind of bogarting, bullying, abusing. It violates not just the sanctity of life, but erodes the legitimacy of power, of governance, inviting anarchy! Those who unleashed this dread evil upon civil society by laws that immunize, court decisions that tend to rationalize police terrorism, epitomize evil, invite recriminations. Undo what you have done if you can, while you can, legislators, judges, governors, Presidents! The earth is spherical and is laden with miracles embedded in human life . If it were round, the winds that blow in the east eventually blow in the west; what is done in the dark is soon disclosed in the sunlight. These sentiments are stated in what you say is your Holy Book, but saying them, white not doing them proves that you would lie on God! Those who deceptively, deceitfully violate their own vaunted laws and founding documents, in bullying others, and who discountenance God, are unfit to lead, maybe unfit to live! Life is tenuous to everyone! 

AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY, EXCERPT

"The hymn says that in its long -distance voyage each day, for it a mere instant , the sun travels across a distance ...of millions and hundreds of thousands of leagues . Now let's do the math: one league is 10.5 kilometers . So a million leagues is 10,500,000 kilometers, while a hundred thousand leagues is 1, 050,000. According to the text, then , the distance travelled by the sun in the mere instant that a day represents to it, is several million plus hundreds of thousands of kilometers. "We know that light travels from the sun to the earth, a distance of 150 million kilometers, in eight minutes and 22 seconds. We also know that sunlight takes 5 hours to reach the farthest of the known planets, Pluto. As for the moon, it is just a second distant from the earth, at the speed of light. Such are the enormous distances, crossed in a flash, by the light of the sun. "Swthi and Hor's hymn to Amon is one of an exceedingly small number of ancient texts to refer to the speed of sunlight . And it uses orders of magnitude that , given the truly astronomical--that is to say, unimaginable--distances involved, seem quite realistic. "It may be worth recalling here that the ancient Egyptians calculated the size of the earth, whose shape they knew to be spherical , by tracking shadows left by sunlight on earth. They knew the Great Bear. The Great Pyramid is oriented almost exactly true north. Somers Clark and R. Engelbach (1930) thought that the precise orientation might have been by using sightings of the movement of a star, plotting its positions at its rising and setting, then bisecting the angle between the two positions.... "It is also true, turning to Ancient Greece, that philosophers there made it their priority to grasp the entire world of experience in a single comprehensive view. The concept of the Whole (holon) was always of importance in Hellenic philosophy. The cosmos (the word, of course, is Greek) was coterminous with the Whole and outside the Whole there was nothing . Here, on the precise issue of knowledge of the universe, the ancient Egyptians were in a position to say to the Greeks: 'Solon, Solon , you Greeks are perennial infants. Not a single Greek is an Elder.' What the Egyptian priest meant was that the Greeks of that age , unlike the Egyptians,had no body of thought bequeathed by antiquity, no ancient tradition , no knowledge hallowed by time. In time, the Greeks received much from abroad, especially from the land of the Pharaohs, where people had started out on the adventure of civilization millennia before them. "Heraclitus of Ephesus (about 540-480 bc) thought that God, known as Harmony, was the eternal principle of an equally eternal universe. The universe was one, since its soul was one. And the ultimate goal of human existence was integration into the universal soul, which was God. There was also the thesis of Plato (428 or 427-348 or 347 bc), according to which the cosmos was born as a work of the Demiurge in his beneficent divinity. Created by the Demiurge , it lasts forever because that is the creator 's wish. "These are restatements of Egyptian concepts, nothing more. Ra is the soul and consciousness of the universe, a god-universe, eternal , infinite, active as a universal force represented more or less felicitously by various images: Amon the solar ram, Khepri the sacred scarab , Ra the sun, Atum, and so forth . As for the idea of the fusion of the human soul with God after life, it is a recurrent motif in 'The Book of the Dead.' "To be more explicit , Plato adopted from Pharaonic Egypt the idea of the nature of the universe . The Egyptians thought of the universe as an entity that emerged from 'Nwn' informed with spirit (Atum), and gifted with energy plus a conscious soul (Ra). In similar fashion, Plato endows the universe with a body (soma), penetrated by reason (nous) and gifted with a soul (psyche). "Borrowings notwithstanding, all speculations of the Greek philosophers fell short, in a manner of speaking, of established ancient Egyptian insights on the speed of solar light and the astronomical scale of distances in the universe. Admittedly, as early as the middle of the 4th century BC , Greek astronomers were already propounding mathematical hypotheses about solar and lunar distances and dimensions. However, the degree of precision was lower than that indicated by the Egyptian text from the time of Amenophis III, who reigned from 1408 to 1372 BC." P.142-143, 144-145, "The Speed of Light and the Astronomical Distances of the Universe, (Stele 826, British Museum)" AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY: THE PHARAONIC PERIOD 2780-330 B.C. by Theophile Obenga (2004)

WILLFUL LIARS ARE CRETINS

It is disgraceful that liars perpetrate fraud on FB and the internet for its own sake, since such lies have no material reward, only the demonic satisfaction of knowing that such factual distortions discourage hopes in civil redemption !

AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY, excerpt....

"The hymn says that in its long -distance voyage each day, for it a mere instant , the sun travels across a distance ...of millions and hundreds of thousands of leagues . Now let's do the math: one league is 10.5 kilometers . So a million leagues is 10,500,000 kilometers, while a hundred thousand leagues is 1, 050,000. According to the text, then , the distance travelled by the sun in the mere instant that a day represents to it, is several million plus hundreds of thousands of kilometers. "We know that light travels from the sun to the earth, a distance of 150 million kilometers, in eight minutes and 22 seconds. We also know that sunlight takes 5 hours to reach the farthest of the known planets, Pluto. As for the moon, it is just a second distant from the earth, at the speed of light. Such are the enormous distances, crossed in a flash, by the light of the sun. "Swthi and Hor's hymn to Amon is one of an exceedingly small number of ancient texts to refer to the speed of sunlight . And it uses orders of magnitude that , given the truly astronomical--that is to say, unimaginable--distances involved, seem quite realistic. "It may be worth recalling here that the ancient Egyptians calculated the size of the earth, whose shape they knew to be spherical , by tracking shadows left by sunlight on earth. They knew the Great Bear. The Great Pyramid is oriented almost exactly true north. Somers Clark and R. Engelbach (1930) thought that the precise orientation might have been by using sightings of the movement of a star, plotting its positions at its rising and setting, then bisecting the angle between the two positions." P.142-143, "The Speed of Light and the Astronomical Distances of the Universe, (Stele 826, British Museum)" AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY: THE PHARAONIC PERIOD 2780-330 B.C. by Theophile Obenga (2004)

U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT REPRESSION

http://www.law.com/sites/almstaff/2016/09/21/doj-civil-rights-chief-links-local-distrust-of-police-to-unconstitutional-tactics/?kw=DOJ+Civil+Rights+Chief+Links+Local+Distrust+of+Police+to+%E2%80%98Unconstitutional%E2%80%99+Tactics&cn=20160921&pt=AfternoonUpdate&src=EMC-Email&et=editorial&bu=Law.com&slreturn=20160822174911 The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice should have long-since been a mighty, anti-terrorists-fighting organization, were it permitted to be such by over a century of racist, recalcitrant, even hostile Congresses, which must approve its budget and confirm its Director, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, as it also confirms the Attorney General. Congress represents its constituents. These constituents are predominantly "white" in the craven, chromatic, dichotomy of American politics, meaning "privileged," whereas the "blacks" were "underprivileged" by race. So, Congress would handicap the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division by the means aforesaid, and legislatively, to preserve citizenship privileges to whites exclusive of blacks. In dong so, Congress was responding to the will of its voters, political parties, and funders to preserve and to promote white supremacy, by any means necessary, including by breaking its own laws, by violating its own Constitution, by letting white terrorists militias run amok lynching, bombing, burning, assassinating "uppity" blacks to intimidate and to frighten others from voting or attempting to rise out of their underprivileged status. The federal courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court, have cooperated with Congresses, since the 1880s through the present, except for huge hiccups culminating in Brown v. Board in 1954, overturning "Jim Crow's" Plessy v. Ferguson.

SUBJECT TO TIME

SUBJECT TO TIME Time is priceless Yet it seems free Time is communal Time is not owned But for time There is no space But for time There is no energy But for time There is no mass But for time There is no life But for time There is nothing Time carries us Not we carry it Time gives and takes To what or whom it will Time is infinite We are finite Time begins nor ends We begin and end Time ferries everything Everything abides time All is subject to time Time is subject to God. Praise God for time! Praise God for time! Amen. Amen. Amen.

SUBJECT TO TIME

SUBJECT TO TIME Time is priceless Yet it seems free Time is communal Time is not owned But for time There is no space But for time There is no energy But for time There is no mass But for time There is no life But for time There is nothing Time carries us Not we carry it Time gives and takes To what or whom it will Time is infinite We are finite Time begins nor ends We begin and end Time ferries everything Everything abides time All is subject to time Time is subject to God. Praise God for time! Praise God for time! Amen. Amen. Amen.

SPIRITUALLY WICKED ONES RULE AMERICA

WHEN OUR BLACK LIVES DO NOT MATTER, NOR THE FACTS, NOR THE TRUTH, THEN, THE FORCES THAT WE ARE DEALING WITH ARE SPIRITUALLY WICKED, EVIL, DEMONIC, WHICH MUST BE DEALT WITH REMEDIALLY, DECISIVELY, IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT. HOW THAT IS CARRIED OUT IS BEYOND MY KEN.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY

"Generally we think of white supremacist views as having their origins with the unlettered, underprivileged, poorer-class whites. But the social obstetricians who presided at the birth of racist views in our country were from the aristocracy: rich merchants, influential clergymen, men of medical science, historians, and political scientists from some of the leading universities of the nation. With such a distinguished company of elite working so assiduously to disseminate racist views, what was there to inspire poor, illiterate, unskilled white farmers to think otherwise? "Soon the doctrine of white supremacy was embedded in every textbook and preached in practically every pulpit. It became a structural part of the culture. And men then embraced this philosophy, not as the rationalization of a lie, but as the expression of final truth. In 1857 the system of slavery was given its ultimate legal support by the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott decision, which affirmed that the Negro had no rights that the white man was bound to respect. "The greatest blasphemy of the whole ugly process was that the white man ended up making God his partner in the exploitation of the Negro. What greater heresy has religion known? Ethical Christianity vanished and the moral nerve of religion was atrophied. This terrible distortion sullied the essential nature of Christianity ." P. 88, "Racism and White Backlash," WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE:CHAOS OR COMMUNITY by Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967)

MANKIND AND NATURAL LAW

MANKIND AND NATURAL LAW Either man is subject to natural law or not. So too is mankind, itself, subject to natural law or not. The lesser in the greater, and the greater in the lesser. If not subject to natural law, then s/he can live without natural laws' goods: oxygen, food, hydration, and s/he can produce and reproduce himself or herself, alone, living forever, gods. If subject to natural law, then, s/he is bound, as all else is bound, to natural law, whether that law be near or far, including their need to breathe, to eat, drink, produce and reproduce. Clearly man is subject to natural law. Thus, notions of "sin" or "the fall" are natural in man, natural to man, if man is subject to natural law. That is to say man is powerless to resist sin, as the stars are powerless to resist shining. If man is not subject to natural law, then sin could not exist, because there would be no eternal, infallible, celestial, standard apart--from mankind, itself--by which to assess sin's presence. That is to say that everything, sin and good, truth and lies, would all stand in absolute moral relativism, due to mankind 's exceptionalism to natural law, if such were the case. My own view is that mankind is part of nature, and being such, is subject to natural law. Hence, mankind and each man is managed by the same laws, as those that govern the plethora of minute constituent elements that comprise each man: atoms, chemicals, molecules, matter, gravity, forces, planets, stars, galaxies, black holes, oceans, time, energy. Sin, too, if it does really exists, is part of man's and mankind's naturally ordered algorithms, logarithms, biorhythms, in this microscopic world, the same as the orbits, seasons, ebbs, tides, day, night, life, death, beyond. So, if man is subject to natural law, then mankind would necessarily lack the capacity to do right or to do wrong, to be good or bad, on his own, on its own, all these natural characteristics having been preternaturally preordered, preset in mankind, and in each man from before creation was extant in the will of God. Mankind as does each man has the power "to be" or "not to be," and to conceive of itself as indeed of being potent, by reason of its manipulative, mobility, reasoning and imaginative capacities. These capacities enable it and him to know God, to feel, and to intuit his and its attachment to God, even if but for an infinitesimal instant, in this evanescence of time and space, like a bright beam of rarified light streaking from here to there, from glory to glory by grace! Oh what a mighty God we serve ! Oh what a mighty God we serve !

COON

COON O COON! Down South, colored folks eat quite a bit of raccoon and possum too. Being born in the South, my family was typical of others, especially its older members. We kids had become more fastidious due to our Northern nurture out of the South. One Sunday, our family was invited to dinner, after church , at the home of Mr. Turner, an unmarried member. While he was heating up the pre-prepared meal, in the kitchen, its savory scent began to waft into the living room , where I was seated, my mouth watering. When we were finally called to the dining room table , all was elegantly laid out and nattily appointed , napkins, cutlery, and various steaming dishes: greens, sweet potatoes, salad, cornbread, and the covered entree , the piece de la resistance, which, I took for beef. After grace, we lit into the offering, at least, I did, with a hearty gusto becoming a youth approaching puberty. All was good, very good, even delicious, and I told Brother Turner, our able host so. I was especially complimentary of him on the tenderness of that beef, and its fine taste. I noticed daddy and mama smiling at each other, discretely. Then, our host said that the entree was not beef, but coon, as he thanked me! Coon? Coon! You mean I've been busily eating and enjoying coon? That did it! I politely completed the remainder of my plate and departed the table. Sometimes, it is better not to know!

"SHOT IN THE BACK" IS LEGAL

"Shot in the back" by police is still "justified," in the law, if the cop "feared for his life," says the U.S Supreme Court, with Scalia, Thomas and the rest in tow. Now, you see why the Senate refuses to conduct hearings to replace Scalia on the Court. That "fear" need not be reasonable in the public view. The test is not objective, but subjective, from the point of view of an officer on the scene at the time, of the shooting, not in the opinion of an expert, nor another cop who was not at the scene at the time! So even a 13-year old boy running away from the cops with a bb-gun, may justifiably be killed, shot in the back, 3 times, by American cops, under the law, and get paid vacation, while the public charade of an "investigation"--or possible Department of Justice involvement--is the palliative given to the public, until they forget, or move on to the next police shooting of other unarmed black men and boys--black people of any gender. This decision was instated in the 1980s by Rehnquist's Court. http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/09/19/just-autopsy-finds-black-child-killed-cops-shot-back-three-times/

NATURE ABIDES

NATURE ABIDES IN ALL When atmospheric conditions are ripe hurricanes, tornadoes, thunder storms erupt. When geophysical conditions are ripe earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis erupt. When human societal conditions are ripe rebellions, wars, revolution erupts. When our personal personal condition are ripe we mature, mentally, physically, spiritually,or we too erupt. Nature abides above, below, within all including ourselves fluently.

ALAIN LOCKE AND MARCUS GARVEY

I would suggest, respectfully, that the Honorable Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), in 1915, was the true "Father of the Harlem Renaissance," rather than the scholar, Alain Locke, author of "The New Negro," and Howard University Professor. Garvey organized millions,globally, and held Universal Negro conventions in Harlem in 1920-1921, lasting thirty days, drawing national and international delegations. Garvey also published "The Negro World" newspaper, the "Black Man Magazine," the African Orthodox Church headed by Bishop McGuire, and the Black Star Ship Line, which was sabotaged, by which he sought to repatriate Africans in the Diaspora back to Africa, for dignity, justice.

NATIVE GOLD

"'Gentleman ," said I , "I don't say anything ...but all I ask of you is to cast your eye on 'that,' for instance, and tell me what you think of it!' And I tossed my treasure before them. "There was a scramble for it, and a closing of heads together over it under the candle-light. Then old Ballou said: "'Think of it? I think it is nothing but a lot of granite rubbish and nasty glittering mica that isn't worth ten cents an acre!' "So vanished my dream. So melted my wealth away. So toppled my airy castle to the earth and left me stricken and forlorn. "Moralizing , I observed, then, that 'all that glitters is not gold.' "Mr. Ballou said I could go further than that, and lay it up among my treasures of knowledge , that 'nothing' that glitters is gold. So I learned then, once for all, that gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica." P.681-682, ROUGHING IT by Mark Twain (1984)

JESSE JAMES AND MISSOURI

Jesse James, Frank James, Cole Younger, Bill Anderson, and other bushwhackers and outlaws, were all part of William Quantrill's band of Missouri-based , Confederate irregulars, who burned down Lawrence, Kansas, in August 1863, killing 200 men in a predawn raid, resulting in Field Order # 11, by Col. Ewing, ordering the evacuation of 4 Missouri counties, bordering Kansas. Those counties were Platte, Jackson, Cass, and Bates where many irregular Confederate sympathizers lived, supplied, recruited.

COLIN KAEPERNICK

It would seem as though the focus of the so-called Colin Kaepernick national anthem protest has been diverted from police brutality, his stated goal, away from that for "honor our troops" by various ones. Meanwhile, the police killings of black men who are unarmed continue right on! And the largest police union has come out with its endorsement of Donald Trump, who previously criticized Colin Kaepernick.

WHY ELABORATE

WHY ELABORATE ? A scofflaw is an outlaw, though he makes, enforces, passes judgment on the very law that s/he violates. American history is full of scofflaws. Why elaborate? A hypocrite is a heretic though he preaches, publishes, teaches, a more perfect way for others to be. American history is full of hypocrites. Why elaborate?

TREASURY OF SLAVE NARRATIVES

Slave narratives are much more exciting than any other form of drama, because they are real instances of courage laced with danger and illegal too! In addition to the present book, there are over 6,000 other slave narratives--mostly unread --that depict other ways of "Put'n On Ole Massa!" There were also some white friends, brothers, true patriots, who risked their liberty and their lives to help the slaves escape! One such remarkable white man, who helped free 3,000 slaves was Levi Coffin, whose edited "Reminiscences" by Ben Richmond (2006), I am avidly reading now! He literally wrote his own book on "Put'n on Ole Massa," being a righteous Quaker!

BREAD OF LIFE

Mama taught me that as her eldest, it was my sacred responsibility to look out for my younger sisters and brothers. She said should the day ever come that I only had one piece of bread, and they had none, it was my duty to split it into equal parts and to share it equally with them. This comment by Mama taught me a very powerful lesson in fractions, in life, one that I am blessed by God to share with you, each day, by grace !

MAYBE DONALD TRUMP....

Maybe Donald Trump's GOP candidacy is a kind of eastern European adventurism. It clearly lacks traditional colonial American slavery linkages, alliances, and allegiances. This lack of allegiances, alliances and linkages is what frightens the establishment GOP, which never conceived that one without such, nor he, would win the Republican primary over mainstream GOP candidates! Stalinist, is Trump; faux-populist, tactful, opportunistic, RELENTLESS, disdainful of lower class of all colors, except where they can promote him..

WHOLE EARTH COVERING

Day and night cover the whole earth at different times and places. So too do the seasons. Does anything ever cover the whole earth at the same time ?

DIVINE GIFTS

DIVINE GIFTS Greater and lesser metrics skew understanding when that which is being measured is on the earth , but is not from the earth . These cosmic nodes include life, love, and intelligence, all of these being among extraordinary divine gifts to mankind in this space & time .

stomachs and stomata

STOMACHS AND STOMATA ENERGIZE AND SYNTHESIZE "An army marches on its stomach" the generals say. "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach" grandmas say. "The seat of wisdom is the stomach," the Buddhists say. "Having no stomach" for something expresses disagreement A "belly laugh," on the other hand, is a hearty guffaw. Stomach energize and synthesize inputs with outputs of energy. Stomachs are to human life as stomata are to green plant life

AFRICAN VISTA

"Our men, accustomed to our ways, thought that the English system of paying a man for his labor was the only correct one, and some even said it would be better to live under a government where life and labor were more secure and valuable than here. While with us, they always conducted themselves with propriety during Divine service, and not only maintained decorum themselves , but insisted on other natives who might be present doing the same. When Moshobotwane, the Batoka chief, came on one occasion with a number of his men, they listened in silence to the reading of the Bible in the Makololo tongue; but, as soon as we all knelt down to pray, they commenced a vigorous clapping of hands, their mode of asking a favor. Our indignant Makololo soon silenced their noisy accompaniment , and looked with great contempt on this display of ignorance. Nearly all our men learned to repeat the Lord's Prayer and the Apostle's Creed in their own language, and felt rather proud of being able to do so; and when they reached home, they liked to recite them to groups of admiring friends. Their ideas of right and wrong differ in no respect from our own, except in their professed inability to see how it can be improper for a man to have more than one wife. A year or two ago several of the wives of those who had been absent with us petitioned the Chief for leave to marry again. They thought that it was of no use waiting any longer, their husbands must be dead; but Sekeletu refused permission ; he himself had bet a number of oxen that the Doctor would return with their husbands, and he had promised the absent men that their wives should be kept for them. The impatient spouses had therefore to wait a while longer. Some of them, however, eloped with other men; the wife of Mantlanyane, for instance , ran off and left his little boy among strangers. Mantlanyane was very angry when he heard of it, not that he cared much about her deserting him for he had two other wives at Tette, but he was indignant at her abandoning his boy." P. 235-6, "The Makololo," EXPEDITION TO THE ZAMBESI by David and Charles a Livingstone (1865)

PUSHING

"Pushing" means more than thrusting externally against an external force or object. It also means extruding, excreting, exerting oneself against, what is inside one's self. Thus, when Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions sang "Keep on Pushing" they meant pushing not merely against spiritual wickedness on the outside, but that which is on the inside, as well, for transcendent and earthly deliverance!

WHITE MAN IN MY BARBER SHOP

WHITE MAN IN MY BARBER SHOP Wednesday at the barber shop, I saw a most unusual sight. A white man with a head full of white hair came in and quietly sat down. Soon, the barber who had just cut my hair, asked him if he wanted a cut. He said that he did and sat down in that barber's chair. To say I was shocked is to understate! In all of the 60+ years that I have been going to barber shops, this was the very first time that I can recall a white man inside of one, much less inside of one, for a cut. I had read that in the 18th and 19th centuries that free black men maintained such upscale sartorial salons for an exclusively white patronage, and did well. I also have seen on television that Eric Hosmer's barber is a black man, who gives the All-Star first basemen his signature haircuts. But, all of that is (or was) removed far from me, it seemed, at least so I had thought! Just never know what one might see in America these days; maybe even a black President ! What might be next?

ENOUGH WELL WATER FOR ME?

Enough Well Water for Me? Is there enough water in the well Is there enough water in the well Is there enough water in the well For me? Samaritan woman drawing water Jewish man asking her for a drink Who in the world is this wierdo? That woman would surely think? Yet he knew her personal history Though he never asked her name She listened; she marveled & ran. Telling all to come & see this man! A woman at the well gave to you Her pitcher its depths well knew Water, pitcher, woman, well, you Water, pitcher, woman, well, you. Six mens' thirsts had she slaked Your living water made her quake Though shaken she did not break Living water does salvation make. Is there enough water in the well? Is there enough water in the well? Is there enough water in the well? For me?

ON FIRST PRINCIPLES, EXCERPT....

"But just as there are many ways of apprehending Christ, who although he is wisdom, does not exert or possess the power of wisdom in all men, but only in those who apply themselves to wisdom in him; nor, although he is called physician , does he act as such towards all men, but only towards those who have realized their feeble and sick condition and fly to his compassion in the hope of obtaining health; so, too, I think, is it the case with the Holy Spirit, in whom is every manner of gift. For to some is granted by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to others the word of knowledge , to others faith; and thus to each individual man who is able to receive him the same Spirit becomes and is apprehended as the very thing of which he, who has been deemed worthy to partake of him, stands in need (cf. 1 Cor.12:8-9)." P. 147, Book II Chapter VII, "The Holy Spirit," ON FIRST PRINCIPLES by Origen (2013)

ABU SIMBEL IN GRADE SCHOOL

In 5th -6th grade in our "Weekly Reader," I remember reading articles about the British government and others, having to move these megaliths, Ramses II, Abu Simbel, Egypt, due to the flooding of the Nile River caused by the construction of the Aswan Dam, bordering Egypt and Sudan. I wondered then in 1962-63, why these thousands of year old monuments needed to be disassembled from their places of origin at this time? And, why the Nile needed a dam, given that its famous seasonal floods and ebbs had fed much of the Mediterranean world and Africa, for eons, as noted in the Bible and in legends? I still wonder these questions, to be frank about it!

TERTULLIAN AND ME

Being a cover-to-cover Christian, I am constrained by no means, no message, no ministration, but the whole armor of God, head to toe, when dealing with the other folk. My idea answers the 2nd century lament of "Father of African Latin Christianity," of Carthage Africa, lawyer, theologian, Tertullian, where he eloquently seems to ask, rhetorically and obliquely : "If we are enjoined, then, to love our enemies...whom have we to hate ? If injured, we are forbidden to retaliate, lest we become bad ourselves: who can suffer injury at our hands? In regard to this , recall your own experiences . How often you inflict gross cruelties on Christians, partly because it is your own inclination , and partly in obedience to the laws! How often, too, the hostile mob, paying no regard to you, takes the law into its own hand, and assails us with stones and flames! With the very frenzy of the Bacchanals, they do not even spare the Christian dead, but tear them, now sadly changed, no longer entire, from the rest of the tomb, from the asylum we might say of death, cutting them in pieces, rending them asunder. Yet, banded together as we are, ever so ready to sacrifice our lives, what single case of revenge for injury are you able to point to, though, if it were held right among us to repay evil by evil, a single night with a torch or two could achieve an ample vengeance? But away with the idea of a sect divine avenging itself by human fires, or shrinking from the sufferings in which it is tried. If we desired, indeed, to act the part of open enemies, not merely of secret avengers, would there be any lacking in strength , whether of numbers or resources? The Moors, the Marcomanni, the Parthians, themselves , or any single people, however great, inhabiting a distinct territory, and confined within its own borders, surpasses, forsooth , in numbers, one spread over all the world! We are but of yesterday and have filled every place among you --cities, islands, fortresses, towns, market-places, the very camp, tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum,--we have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods. For what wars should we not be fit, not eager, even with unequal forces, we who so willingly yield ourselves to the sword, if in our religion it would not be counted better to be slain than to slay?" P.60-61, THE APOLOGY (2013)

grandparents' legacy

My late, beloved paternal grandparents, landowners and farmers in Holmes County, Mississippi, were instrumental in the construction of the Andrews Chapel Methodist Church, and its neighboring school, of like name, which my father and his eight siblings all attended. My grandparents and two uncles are buried on the church grounds. It is, to be sure, up in the woods, but they were our woods, known to the inhabitants of that area. I have visited that now-abandoned church and school, in recent years, and came away, smiling and wondrous.

JESUS LIVES AND NAT TURNER LIVES

I once heard a fellow African Methodist Episcopal (AME) preacher agonize in a sermon over the gory details of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, here in Kansas City, Missouri. In like manner, today, I read that "Prophet" Nat Turner's skin has been flayed from his lifeless body and made into souvenir belts for trousers. Physical life departs once and with it all sensibility and sensation. Postmortem memorials or pleurae in word, craft, or artifact, neither ennoble their living bearers, nor ignoble the long-since dead, who are far beyond vain attempts to ridicule or to mock them. Rather, such ghoulish revelry with gory details, or tokens, are merely to frighten or to intimidate many living observers into cowardice of some form! Frankly, it's appalling! Such fear-baiting is a form of witchery, of devil worship, of idolatry, of satanic skull & bones, whether it is written or recited or crafted, to disengage your uncertain mind, to hobble your already-weak body, to cripple your empathetic spirit. But, push through! Push through. There is a limit and relief and rest, for you, too, just as surely as there was for Jesus! Just as surely as there was for Prophet Nat Turner in 1831 in Jerusalem, Virginia. All pain has a limit: death. But all human, physical deaths--no matter how gory, no matter how long ago, no matter how painful--are not necessarily be the end of any human "life" on earth. For human "life" is both spiritual and physical. Therefore to leave the physical realm is to enter more fully into the spiritual realm of our "life." All human lives reside both in the physical, earthly dimension, and, most permanently, in the realm of the eternal spiritual dimension. This is the realm that we now vaguely know as: the metaphysical, the philosophical, the theological, the mathematical, the astronomical the divine. The spiritual realm is also immured in realms that are: legendary, mythological, historical, allegorical, archaeological, musical, geometrical, natural, scriptural, testimonial! Jesus LIVES! Nat Turner LIVES! I know that Nat Turner "lives," because just today, I began reading about him in a book that I bought, but had not read until now: THE RESURRECTION OF NAT TURNER, PART TWO, THE TESTIMONY by Sharon Ewell Foster (2012). In the spirit is Nat! I know that Jesus "lives," because he lives in side of me, and of those who produced me.