"THE NATURE AND SOURCE OF EVIL"

"Those inquiring whence Evil comes into beings, or rather into a certain order of beings, would be making the best beginning if they established, first of all, what precisely Evil is, what constitutes its Nature. At once we should know whence it comes, where it has its native seat, and where it is present merely as an accident ; and there would be no further question as to whether it has Authentic -Existence. "But a difficulty arises . By what faculty in us could we possibly know Evil? "All knowing comes by likeness. The Intellectual-Principle and the Soul being Ideal-Forms, would know Ideal-Forms and have a natural tendency towards them ; but who could imagine Evil to be an Ideal-Form, seeing that it manifests itself as the very absence of Good? "If the solution is that the one act of knowing covers contraries , and that as Evil is contrary to Good the one act would grasp Good and Evil together, then to know Evil there must be a clear perception and understanding of Good , since the nobler existences precede the baser and are Ideal-Forms while the less good hold no such standing , are nearer to Non-Being." P. 56, "The Nature and Source of Evil," THE ENNEADS by Plotinus (1991)

QUANTUM REFUTES DIALECTICS

Quantum is an implicit refutation of dialectics.

JOHN BROWN, ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE ELECTION OF 1860

When he heard about Brown’s death while speaking in Leavenworth, Lincoln announced, “Old John Brown has just been executed for treason against a state. We cannot object, even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed, and treason.” He went on to look clearly ahead to the coming canvass and warned secessionists: “So, if constitutionally we elect a [Republican] President, and therefore you undertake to destroy the Union, it will be our duty to deal with you as old John Brown has been dealt with. We shall try to do our duty. We hope and believe that in no section will a majority so act as to render such extreme measures necessary.” View Lincoln's Visit to Kansas in a larger map Two days later, still in Leavenworth, Lincoln spoke even more politically, calling any attempt “to identify the Republican party with the John Brown business” an “electioneering dodge.” A reporter noted that in “Brown’s hatred of slavery [Lincoln] sympathized with him. But Brown’s insurrectionary attempt he emphatically denounced. He believed the old man insane, and had yet to find the first Republican who endorsed the proposed insurrection.” Republicans didn’t cause slave insurrections, Lincoln exclaimed for the first time in public – slavery did. He added that even the staunchest Fire-Eater (a secessionist Southerner) couldn’t fairly blame the Nat Turner slave rebellion of 1831 on the Republican Party. Henry Villard, no fan of Lincoln’s to that point, called the Leavenworth speech “The greatest address ever heard here.” Lincoln took his notes and reactions from his Kansas trip home to Illinois, where he pored over old law books and historical documents, resulting in the speech he delivered at the Cooper Union in New York City. The address catapulted his campaign onto the national political stage. An essay by Jonathan Earle, Louisiana State University In many respects, Kansas—and the question of whether slavery, legal in neighboring Missouri, would be allowed to spread to the territory—was the central issue of the 1860 presidential election, the most significant in U.S. history. Curtailing slavery’s expansion and admitting Kansas as a free state was a key plank in the Republican Party’s platform that year, just as it was during the party’s first presidential election in 1856. The seemingly unanswerable “Kansas Question” and the issue of slavery’s expansion split the venerable Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions, allowing the Republican Abraham Lincoln to win the election without a single Southern electoral vote.http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/essay/kansas-territory-election-1860-and-coming-civil-war-national-perspective

AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCHES

The remains of an abandoned AME Church is a testament that black people had once come that way to live before in reasonable quantities. We saw one such with an 1888 cornerstone in Nicodemus, Kansas, in 1989, on route to California on family vacation. I read of another one tonight, in Cabin Creek, Indiana, that serviced that area's contingent of landowning blacks in Randolph County during slavery days and thereafter . I pastored one such church, Grant Memorial AME Church that once serviced black employees of a nearby packing house in St. Joseph, Missouri. It reached its heyday in the 1920s, before the plant moved to Omaha, Nebraska, destroying that church's economic base. As a consequence, Grant later merged into Ebenezer AME in St. Joseph, which is still going. Also still going is Brooks Chapel AME Church founded in 1871, in Butler, Bates County, Missouri. This still -active church, I pastored from 1995-2004. It is the only black church between Jackson County and Jasper County, (Joplin) in western Missouri some 200 miles. This AME church founded in 1816, is our "canary in the coal mine" for our people. What about you? Are there any AME Churches nearby?

MAY DONALD TRUMP RUE THE DAY?

MAY DONALD TRUMP RUE THE DAY? What Nixon did to the government, and through it, Trump does outside of the government & in spite of it. While Richard Nixon, twice, tried to become President after first having fallen short, Donald Trump may soon become President as, almost, an afterthought . What for Nixon was opportunity, may become for Donald Trump an importunity. Both Republican men may jointly rue the day that they rose up to play at being President of the USA! That military, cultural, global American empire and its many moving parts. Elections in years 1968 and 2016 may appear to be different yet they are in some respect the same. So too are Nixon and Trump alike yet different. Roux may have dissimilar colors, tastes, or consistencies. But just dissolve flour in cold water, stir partisan spices into hot skillet over favorite meat, then add heat! Roux.

ACKNOWLEDGE OTHERS' WORKS

ACKNOWLEDGE OTHERS' WORKS One's own stature or self-worth is not diminished by acknowledging others' work or their attributes, if anything, one's stature is enlarged ! My deceased friend, Guyana scholar, Ivan Van Sertima, an African studies professor at Rutgers University, iconic author of THEY CAME BEFORE COLUMBUS, who was later Founding Editor of "Journal of African Civilizations," has taught me many good things. Once, after our having left a Kansas City bookstore at which he had purchased several books, I noticed that he was opening the books from the back, first, mumbling under his breath; then setting it aside or literally throwing it away. When I asked him what he was doing and why, he replied: "My eyesight is poor. So, I cannot afford to read rubbish! I am scanning the authors' sources, index, bibliographies, their footnotes, first. Then I shall read those that are worthy of my time, given my weakening eyesight!" He began with the factual sources not the opinions or interpretations. No less an authority than the Bible makes reference to other books in certain places, as did Jesus, often saying "as written or said of old." Both Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein cited Euclid's Elements in their epochal works. Neither was diminished by having done so. Instead, because of their citations to Euclid, I began to read his 13 books myself! Supreme wisdom is demonstrated graphically therein; moreover this true book continually cites itself in succeeding chapters. Give credit where or when it is due. Grow wise, thereby. Do not be fearful, nor envious of citing the works of others, as authority. Be honest, thus, increasing in stature, respect, power, and love as those whom I have mentioned above .

NEVER MET PRESIDENT OBAMA

NEVER MET PRESIDENT OBAMA I have never met President Barack Obama, our 44th, our only black. But, I have seen him and heard him speak in person. That was in July 2008 at the African Methodist Episcopal Church's (AME) General Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. That was where that iconic photo was taken of him being blessed by our entire bevy of Bishops in the ritual known as "laying on of hands by the Presbytery," in prophetic prayer. http://biblehub.com/1_timothy/4-14.htm We, members of the National Bar Association (NBA), had hoped that we, the largest organized body of black lawyers in the world, might have seen him in session during our July 2008, Houston, Texas, Annual Convention. But it was not to be. He met with Democratic Party fundraisers there, instead, where he reportedly raised $1.5 million in 45 minutes and left. Having seen him and heard him speak, in person, already in July 2008, I was not offended by this apparent miff of NBA. Neither was anyone else, offended after we had learned about the large amount of money that he had raised from the Democrats, as reported by a small delegation from the NBA who were accorded viewer status, inside it. Of course, my wife and I attended his historic 2009 inauguration in Washington, DC. But I returned from the mall to my cousin 's residence, after battling with those overflow crowds for 3-4 hours in the cold. At my cousin's house in the warmth and comfort of home, I watched and heard him again, this time on television. My wife stuck it out in the massive lines on the mall. Feeling and sharing OBAMA today! 

MANIPULATION TOPS THOUGHT

MANIPULATION TOPS THOUGHT Tuesday, November 29, 2016 BY REV. DR. LARRY DELANO COLEMAN Mind over matter may not be true. This insight occurred to me in the wake of reading of John Harrison’s invention of the chronometer. A marine chronometer enables ships to calculate their location at sea, longitude, under all kinds of conditions. Harrison was a skilled laborer, working with his hands, as a carpenter, watch-maker, and musician. John Harrison’s contemporary English countryman, Sir Isaac Newton, whose MATHEMATICA PRINCIPIA marked him as one of the foremost intellectuals of that era or of any era, had vocally doubted that such a “chronometer,” such longitude-at-sea-finding-device could be made, given its extraordinary difficulty. “His difficulty was in producing a clock that was not affected by variations in temperature, pressure or humidity, remained accurate over long time intervals, resisted corrosion in salt air, and was able to function on board a constantly-moving ship. Many scientists, including Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens, doubted that such a clock could ever be built and favoured other methods for reckoning longitude, such as the method of lunar distances. Huygens ran trials using both a pendulum and a spiral balance springclock as methods of determining longitude, with both types producing inconsistent results. Newton observed that "a good watch may serve to keep a reckoning at sea for some days and to know the time of a celestial observation; and for this end a good Jewel may suffice till a better sort of watch can be found out. But when longitude at sea is lost, it cannot be found again by any watch".” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#Overview_of_the_problem_of_determining_longitude Notwithstanding the doubts of the men of thought, the man of hands made the marine chronometer. It revolutionized marine travel and certainly helped England master the seas. More to the point, however, it shows the old saw, that “mind over matter” is sometimes a myth! Thus manipulation—handling, working with—matter is greater than mere thoughts about matter. Otherwise stated, “Mr. Say ain’t nothing.Mr. Do is the man,” said Junebug Jabbo Jones!

BLACK EDUCATION TRAVESTIES AFTER 1968

NATIONAL BLACK EDUCATION TRAVESTIES AFTER 1968 Historical hindsight enables one to look back into the past , to chart its trajectory into the present, and to suggest , admonish, praise, warn about the future , without certainty, but with some reasonable degrees of assurance, based upon the past. In this respect such a one is like a meteorologist in forecasting the weather. One is like an astronomer or almanac author whose readings from the stars, enable forecasts of tides and ebbs; of times to plant and to harvest; and where to draw longitudinal and latitudinal lines and derivatives on land and sea. In this respect, human history may also lend itself to similar scrutiny. I would suggest that the litigation misadventures and missteps that were made in the education arena, after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case that overruled legal segregation, were consistent with these principles mentioned above. Rather than to equalize the money, which was the principal grievance, the remedy to disband segregation was wrongly misapplied to effect novel implementation of busing for integration, not just transportation. The deficits were, are numerous, its vaunted advantages dubious. I support desegregation and the community control of schools, including finances and curricula. But, I do not support dispersing black children away from their homes to satisfy some so-called "expert" psychologists' or social scientists' or lawyers' unproven, if ever tested, pedagogical theories. Nor do I support black school closures, loss of family heritage, firing of black teachers, staff, or administrators, its other casualties. These thoughts recur after noticing that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had made similar observations about the deleterious impact of certain educational thrusts as described above in his last book, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY (1967), p.165. Of course, SCLC was Dr. King's group, not the NAACP nor its LDF offshoot, who drove sharp wedges into a wasted black community, splitting civil rights contributions from whites. Who gained? Who profited? Follow the money. Public schools were taken over after 1968, after Dr. King's assassination by privateers, who raided the tax trough, under a pretense of education. These include: Charter schools operators, experts, contractors of all kinds, many black people among them. Public education is at grave risk, as the piratical privateers are in power.

MARK TWAIN: ROUGHING IT

"Going from mining to milling" is a new metaphor for me. I found this one, while reading ROUGHING IT by Mark Twain, wherein he writes: "We never found any ore that would yield more than fifty dollars a ton; and as the mills charged fifty dollars a ton for 'working' ore and extracting the silver, our pocket money melted steadily and none returned to take its place.... "At last , when flour reached a dollar a pound , and money could not be borrowed on the best security at less than 'eight cents per month ' ( I being without the security, too), I abandoned mining and went to milling. That is to say, I went to work as a common laborer in a quartz mill, at ten dollars a week and board." P.712, MARK TWAIN (1984)

TRADE IS BUSINESS

TRADE IS BUSINESS What we know as business is actually trade. I first realized this connection, recently. This is so even though the time invested in my 23-year law practice was my "stock in trade." This is so even though a former client once told me that he "appreciated my trade," at his gas filling station here in KC. Funny how one can be in a thing, of a thing, doing the thing, yet not knowing the true name of the thing or its ramifications. Children trade. Plants and animals trade. Microbes, atoms, and molecules trade. Here on FB we trade ideas, information. opinions. I now much prefer trade to business, as it is natural.

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. COMPARED TO WHAT?

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, BUT COMPARED TO WHAT? "Compared to what?" is more than a popular song from the 1960s by Eddie Harris and Les McCann. It is also the conundrum of our times. https://www.google.com/search… "Make America great again," being Donald Trump's campaign slogan begs the question: "Compared to what?" of ourselves and our nation. Any utterance that leaves to one's imagination what its its indefinite predicate may be, is deliberately deceitful. A predicate must be declared or be reasonably inferable from context. "Make America great again," is one such deceitful utterance. It has no predicate to compare to, nor for its verb to operate upon. That is left to the listener 's own imagination to make of it what he will! "Make America Great Again," is very simple sounding, yet it is also complex. It elides accountability to anyone or anything. Does that phrase mean before Barack Obama was elected President? Does it mean before 1954, when the U. S. Supreme Court overruled its former 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson,? Plessy legalized "Jim Crow." Brown v. Board of Education reversed Jim Crow, and outlawed segregation in public schools. And well beyond. Or does Donald Trump mean by his "Make America great again," slogan that more remote time, before his grandfather emigrated here from Germany, after the Civil War? With nothing to compare Donald Trump's slick, deceitful campaign statement or slogan to, there is no definite predicate nor premise for it to operate upon. There are as many craven, popular-delusional confusions about what he means as there are Trump voters! It is like the Bible verse, "where each does what is right in its own sight ," Judges 21:25; or as instated here, where one freely believes what is right in his or in her own mind! We are now in this dubious time described in scripture with a lame duck Democrat as President; a presumptive President-Elect who lost the popular vote ; an Electoral College yet to vote on 12/19/2016. When "Compared to what" meets "Make America great again," who knows what is real?

silk

BE SILK-LIKE IN ALL WORKS Fact is no more enriched by fiction, than nature is enriched by adding synthetics, whereby deceit is created. Whoever does such, corrupts the former, while distorting the latter. Silk retains its natural character, notwithstanding having been processed from the lining of, silkworm cocoons ' after pupae are destroyed . Silk is a blessed blend of these two , natural and the synthetic. A synthesis that honors man and elaborates God. May all humans' productions be as silk!

LACK OF HUMILITY RECONSIDERED

"LACK OF HUMILITY RECONSIDERED" SO REMARKABLE ARE WE THE LIVING, THAT MOST USUALLY FIND IT IS HARD TO PRACTICE HUMILITY. WHETHER MAN, MICROBE, ANIMAL, PLANT, FISH OR BIRD, OUR CELEBRATORY BOASTS ARE HEARD. SEASONABLY, WE CONGRATULATE OURSELVES FOR LIFE IN CONTEMPORANEOUS STORMS OF STRIFE. WHEREVER ONE COMES FROM, ONE INVARIABLY RETURNS, A LESSON THAT ALL MUST ONE DAY LEARN. PRECISELY WHAT ONE HAS BROUGHT TO LIFE, IS WHAT ONE RETAINS, UPON THE CESSATION OF LIFE. SO, THOSE WHO SEEM TO LACK HUMILITY ARE REALLY CELEBRATING GOD’S GRACE, MERCY, DIVINITY.

SIBLINGS POST-THANKSGIVING 2016

Post-Thanksgiving reunion, and party decompression with siblings: host, Anthony Coleman, (l); Pamela Coleman Chance, and Alvin Coleman (r)

UNCLE ARLANDER'S BIRTHDAY

UNCLE ARLANDER 'S BIRTHDAY Over the recently concluded 2016 Thanksgiving Holiday, our family celebrated our maternal uncle's 80th birthday, on the Friday after. Uncle Cyrus Arlander Moreland was often just overwhelmed by its breadth, beauty, pageantry, as was I . Seated beside him, at the head table, I marveled as he greeted each one of several great-great-grandchildren with a loving hugs. Watching my own 2-year old granddaughter, Tiye Therese Coleman, bounce, hop, skip and twist to the music on the dance floor, I silently gave thanks to God for being able to witness His glory at work in my life and in  mother's brother's life, despite my and my uncle's previous health challenges. We have had many memorable family gatherings of various kinds over the years, both in St. Louis, and elsewhere. But, this one may have topped them all! Praise God!

QUALIFICATIONS ARE FOR LOSERS!

QUALIFICATIONS ARE FOR LOSERS! If nothing else, Donald Trump 's alleged election as President of the United States certainly indicates that the old term, "qualification for office," is a canard, now overrated! Stated differently, If any American over age 35 can be President of the most powerful nation on earth, without any kind of qualifications, whatsoever, then, qualifications as a customary category of exclusion in most forms of American work, less than that, also are bogus! As a former labor and employment lawyer, I have often had to face the bevy of "greater qualified" defenses set forth methodically by many discrimination defendants, whom I was suing, in federal or state courts, both as a government lawyer, and as a solo practitioner. Here too Donald Trump breaks the mold, being one of many thus far!  "Qualifications are for losers," he may say, or may have said already !

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

"When people are mired in oppression, they realize deliverance when they have accumulated the power to enforce change... The powerful never lose opportunities--they remain available to them . The powerless, on the other hand, never experience opportunity--it is always arriving at a later time.... "We must frankly acknowledge that in past years our creativity and imagination were not employed in learning how to develop power. We found a method in nonviolent protest that worked, and we employed it enthusiastically. We did not have leisure to probe for a deeper understanding of its laws and lines of development. Although our actions were bold and crowned with successes, they were substantially improvised and spontaneous . They attained the goals set for them, but carried the blemishes of our inexperience . "For a moment, therefore, we must subordinate programs to studying the levers of power Negroes must grasp to influence the course of events. In our society, power sources are sometimes obscure and indistinct. Yet they can always finally be traced to those forces we describe as ideological, economic, and political." P..160-163, "Where we are going," WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY by Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967)

WORSHIP NEEDED IN CHILDREN

WORSHIP NEEDED IN CHILDREN The disciplined ritual of worship has collateral personal benefits in developing children whose lack produces in many of them baleful personal collateral consequences. Teach children to love, pray, study, to respect, praise God, as an ideal, not as an idol, and to apply these teachings rigorously to themselves, to their families, loved ones, to all. They must also be taught that not all things are good things, even if they may seem to be so, but are evil, hurtful, deadly. Discernment is thus one of many lessons to learn, learning being a lifelong discipline ritual needed to protect oneself. As a result a well-rounded person will emerge from youth's cocoon capable of negotiating life's snares.

RESILIENCE

THRIVING IN ADVERSITY Certain persons who can flourish in certain environments, fail in others. The same is true of plants, animals. A desert's aridity sustains some; an ocean's salty liquid sustains others. As with environment, so with every endeavor. Each has its own niche. A marathoner is rarely a sprinter, although very best have end-kicks. Blessed is he, she, them who may adapt to life's adversities to thrive.

"PENCIL-WHIPPED!"

PENCIL-WHIPPED! "Being pencil-whipped," is how a former, prospective, client from Oklahoma referred to his discharge from his job at a Post Office, there. That term "pencil-whipped," more broadly, refers to many instances in which unwary people overlook terms, nuances, and/or meanings in written documents, contracts, treaties, that they later come to regret, upon realization,much too late!. That term, "pencil -whipped" may also include the United States Constitution 's infamous 3/5's clause, which gave the large slave-holding South a Congressional representation advantage over the small non-slave holding North in Congress, and by extension, in the Electoral College. By counting blacks, who had no vote, as 3/5s persons, practically all early American Presidents were Virginians. Exceptions were John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams . President-Elect Donald Trump has benefited by reason of the same Constitutional, post-colonial, pencil-whipping, that gave the lesser-populated slave-holding South its gerrymandered (read "pencil-whipped") electoral mechanism to still win, even if it lost the popular vote. Their device survived Civil War, Reconstruction, etc. Despite losing the popular vote, now by 1.7 million, if the Electoral College follows suit with their states' popular votes to select Trump President on December 19, 2016, when votes are counted in the Senate, he will become the 45th President of the United States!

GOD PREDATES "CREATION" AND "THE BIG BANG"

http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html "The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once." Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html#jCp IF THESE "QUANTUM CORRECTIONS" TO EINSTEIN'S THEORY OF GENERAL RELATIVITY ARE ACCURATE AND RATIFIED BY OTHERS AS DEMONSTRABLY TRUE,NOT ONLY IS THE SO-CALLED "BIG BANG" NEGATED, BUT SO ALSO NEGATED ARE GENESIS 1:1 AND JOHN 1:1. THAT WOULD LEAVE US WITH THE "EVERLASTING TO EVERLASTING" PARADIGM OF THE UNIVERSE SET FORTH IN PSALMS 103:17 AND PSALMS 90:2, WHICH READS: "Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God."

AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY

"Mastery of time is mastery of self... a double mastery...of internal drives and external circumstances , of individual subjectivity and the world out there, independent of one's will ..." --"The Maxims of Kagemni," AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY 2780-330 BC by Theophile Obenga (2004)

MOTHER EGYPT'S SANCTUARY

MOTHER EGYPT'S SANCTUARY As a baby bear runs to Mama when it is afraid, so ran the Hebrews back to Egypt, in both Testaments, time after time and again; whether Abraham, Israel, Joseph and Mary and Jesus, always to Mama.

BOOKER T OR W.E.B.?

One of our sons, who is now on a "cultural sabbatical," texted that he had just one question: "WEB or Booker T?" To this never resolved issue among our African American people that yet pains, I replied: "Booker T. emphatically! I wrote "The Strange Career of Dr.W.E.B. DuBois," in the 1980s and published it in THE NILE REVIEW. Washington left Tuskegee , thousands of black teachers and schools and 12 books; DuBois, whose book DUSK OF DAWN (1940), I am now reading, left race division and integration, after attacking Washington and Garvey via the NAACP. Read them both completely!" Now, in retrospect, the question is rather like the one I asked yesterday about greens and onions; whether it is better to cook the onions with the greens, or to cut up fresh onions on top of the cooked greens afterwards; or to do both. Yesterday, I did both! And they were outstanding ! Yummy!

OUR REDEMPTIVE CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOGY

OUR REDEMPTIVE CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOGY Sunday, November 20, 2016 BY REV. DR. LARRY DELANO COLEMAN Each Sunday morning, all over America, black people drive, arrive, thrive in an anointing spirit of redemptive Christian sociology for burdened masses that speaks, peculiarly and particularly, to their oppressed bodies, yet, ever resilient, ever ebullient, spirits. No drugs, no doctors, no forms, no asylums. Just Jesus. Just Jesus. Just Jesus . Through it all, Just Jesus is seen! “At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light and the burden of my heart rolled away. It was there by faith I received my sight. And Now, I am happy all the day.” They say, we sang. I sang. I sing. Then, now, forever! “I will trust in the Lord until I die.” Song, praise, prayer, preaching, giving, testifying, meeting, greeting, smiling, laughing, shouting, sustained them for yet another week’s journey. “Lord you brought me from a mighty long way.” Intuitive, communal, connubial, rhythmic, throbbing, pulsing, melodic grace. Praise and worship brought us from the brush and bush arbors of secret, subversive sorties, into gilded temples and sanctuaries. Our progress is measured by our transformative habiliments. From forests to front street. Each step of the way we drew renewed strength from Adam, Eve, Nimrod, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; from Moses, from the Hebrew children crossing the Red Sea; from Daniel, Solomon, Samuel, David; from “dry bones” in the valley, from Shadrach, Meshak, Abednego; from Esther, from Rahab, from Ruth, from Mary, mother of Jesus; from Mary Magdalene, from the disciples, Paul; the Ethiopian eunuch in his chariot reading Isaiah. Each of these sacred symbols, allegories, ideas, is reified, is glorified, is manifest in the sainted, resurrection of Africans in the Americas, across the Atlantic Ocean, “beyond the river,” some 400 years later. We have become a “new people.” As a renewed people, in whose miraculous, divinely-fated redemption, we have descended anew, intact in our disassembled, now reassembled, still dissembled, barely remembered sameness that bids us sing and praise God all the day long. We watch, work and wait until our change comes. “Cheer up my brothers. We’ll understand why by and by. Live in the sunshine. We’ll understand it better, by and by. Farther along.” “Like Humpty Dumpty fell off a wall; when all the King’s horses and all the King’s men could not put Humpty together again. But, the King came! The King came! The King came!” Hallelujah!” So celebrated the Rev. Dr. E. Dewey Smith of Georgia, who sang, soothed, and who inspired me today! Such has our redemptive Christian sociology provided for us always. #30

BE BORN AGAIN

YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN There is need for rigorous respect, understanding, collaboration, love, on every level of global society. The present paradigms are inadequate , having been polluted, betrayed by barnacled sediments, sentiments, interpretive applications to society. This reconciliation, re-conception of the self, relative to itself, and relative to all existing baselines in the global community, which are set, governed, administered by such stewards of our common interests, indeed of our daily lives, as governments, businesses, business organizations, charities, social clubs, educational colloquia as universities, schools, religious institutions must restart, must be reborn again at the smallest unitary level. That unit is you and yours. Being "born again" is conceived in religious, indeed Christian, terms commonly, and appropriately so. For such Jesus Christ told Jewish Elder, Nicodemus, one night, when surreptitiously he inquired of how he might attain unto immortal life. He said "you must be born again." If that was true 2,000 years ago in Galilee it is even more emphatically true now in 2016 in America. An urgency is added by our ability to extend our sensory apparatuses by technology into space, and into the genome, or to obliterate human life. Do not think that Jesus Christ is anybody's property, even those who call upon his name, or who call themselves by his name. Jesus Christ, having "overcome the world," belongs to us all as does sun, wind, water, moon, dirt, life. Innate inside you is the knowledge needed for you to be born again. I cannot tell you what that is for you. Jesus did not tell Nicodemus, if he knew himself. Certain knowledge is exclusively in the province of God. But, we each woke up this morning. That is a hint as to where to start; start where you are, with yourself! From there you may spread abroad to personal levels, to family levels, to local levels, working in tandem with others who are being reborn in blessedness, knowledge, wisdom, power, prosperity; then agglutinate, to combine, spread ratably abroad, to be multiplied across the globe. "You are of God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world." 1 John 4:4.

FROM BEWILDERED ANGST TO PROVEN UNDERSTANDING

http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/elements/bookV/propV8.html Yesterday, I was stumped by the converse of this proposition. I posted my angst online. Then, this morning, 1 John 4:4 came to mind to reconcile my confusion. "You are of God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world." That scripture explained how a lesser magnitude's ratio could be greater that its multiple's magnitude of the same baseline, geometrically! Glory to God! And thank you, African Brother Euclid for your divinely profound geometric proofs!

RECENT ELECTIONS WERE A "WHITE THING"

RECENT ELECTIONS WERE A "WHITE THING" I take it from a lack of controversy about it that there was no feared cyber attack on the United States elections on November 8. It is now also obvious that neither the much speculated take over of the Senate nor White House by Democrats did not materialize as prognosticated. Rather than that, what appears to have occurred, is residual white male-feminist antagonism against Hillary Clinton, coupled with the white female acceptance of Donald Trump's "whatever's," merged on November 8, 2016, into a massive Democratic Party defenestration that had nothing to do with Russia. It was a "white thing"--excuse the parody--having to do with white folks themselves and their issues. There I rest.

STOP WORRYING ABOUT TRUMP!

STOP WORRYING ABOUT TRUMP Worrying is a worrisome thing. Right now the alleged "election" of Donald Trump, rather his putative --pending electoral college vote--election, has certain folks running around scared, like the sky is falling or like the earth is erupting! Chill. Trump may be our 45th American President, and our 29th President since slavery's end in 1865. Our forbears got us here having far less than we now have in worldly goods. They not only survived, but thrived! We, too, will thrive under Donald Trump, etc, as we have increasingly done under all of his predecessors before his putative election as our Chief Executive Officer, President! Notwithstanding all of that, each one of us still must "work out his own salvation with fear and trembling,"--that "fear" is of God, not man--as we definitely had to do under President Barack Obama. No difference in kind nor degree. "Them that's got shall get. Them that's not shall lose. So the Bible says and it still is news. Momma may have. And Poppa may have. But God bless the child who's got his own. Who's got his own." These immortal lyrics were the great Billie Holliday's soothing and Biblical palliative for our uncertain people in World War II, who had Hitler abroad, Jim Crow at home! Wake up folks, smell that coffee! That's Ethiopian coffee you smell! God has got this, too, for me, for you. And as always God will see us through, what God brought us to! Praise be to God for that enduring example of truth and of hope, that is found inscribed in the miraculous birth, life, death, resurrection, and redeeming legacy of Jesus Christ, whose residual legatees we are! 

KNOWN BY THEIR WORKS

KNOWN BY THEIR WORKS Working for oneself is wonderful. I did it for 23 years from 1986-2010. Working at all is wonderful, blessed whether it is for oneself or another. Working rewards your expenditure, your investment of time and energy with wholesome experiences, with self-confidence, self-identity, and as  importantly one's compensation. Being unemployed in some pursuit is the greatest waste of capital that there is! Positive things are busily doing, making, creating, working; negative things do not work, but exploit, those who do work for the means necessary for their being. By their works you will know them!

PRAYER LIST

What a mighty God we serve, beloved brothers and sisters. Our presence in America is our proof, as is our progress through oppression and obstruction. The same prayer and prayers that empowered and sustained our ancestors yet work for us too. Utilize your prayer list! That prayer 🙏🏿 list disposes of demons, injustice, evil and wickedness. No need to continue to pray ambiguously in generalities. Pray directly, pointedly, specifically as Mama'nem and Big Mama'nem did! As Daddy did and as Grand Daddy did! Do! "Call him up and tell him what you want!"

THANK YOU, LORD!

Lord I thank you: For being alive to thank you. For being able to thank you. For being humble enough to thank you. For having sense enough to thank you. THANK YOU LORD! THANK YOU LORD! THANK YOU LORD!

WARM "HOME" FEELINS

WARM "HOME" FEELINGS "Home," ideally, warms your own internal space, as much as a home occupies any external place. Home's "warmth" heats sweet memories of feelings gone by, of food, of family, of Fourth of July. One must dwell wherever one may roam, but lacking warm feelings, no dwelling is "home."

MOVE ON UP A LITTLE HIGHER

MOVE ON UP A LITTLE HIGHER One black dot. Just one particle may be pierced, may be penetrated, by an infinite number beams, waves, rays at once. This assertion is true in theory . It is also proven in science. "This new state of nuclear matter is one of an infinite manifold of constrained nuclear equilibria; but it is an especially interesting one that actually occurs naturally in a minority of Type Ia supernova cores." Says one scientist's book: STELLAR EVOLUTION, STELLAR EXPLOSIONS AND GALACTIC CHEMICAL EVOLUTION edited by Anthony Mezzacappa (1998) https://books.google.com/books… Humans are similarly penetrated by infinite rays, beams, and waves, as this one hypothetical dot depicts, continuously in theory, and in fact. The point here is that vastly infinite possibilities are effluent, mellifluent in us as living beings as such are in seemingly nonliving things, matter. Combining, assembling, applying these insurgently infinite forces, energies is a function of divinely philosophical self-conceptions rooted in proof, science and God. "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children." Hosea 4:6 We oppressed humans of African descent must "move on up a little higher," as our African American forebears have sung at church, at home and at work, in our personal self-estimations in order to be able to fully appreciate the truth of this teaching. Move on up a little higher. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=06gAdro-62E With our nuclear self-conceptions, we need fear no one and nothing, as we are insinuated by the infinite forces of Almighty God.

PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE

Agreeing in principle is one thing . Proving in practice is quite another.

SEA TURTLES AND MAN

If physical space in which to grow and to move about contributes to the size of sea turtles, as I have read, then it may also be true that mental and spiritual space in which to conceive ideas likewise enlarges man.

I BELIEVE IN HUMAN IMMANENCE

I BELIEVE IN HUMAN IMMANENCE From some mysterious interface of natural forces, and other interfaces too occult for mankind to discern, life on Earth comes into existence. Each life and peculiar form of life is assigned a niche. There the back and forth of frictions, fractions in life's reproductive rituals results in a fruition of mineral life, microbes, plant life, animal life, or human life. There, too, our very own lives are called into being for a season, into this niche of time and space by the spirit that is extant among those same occult forces that we cannot cognitively discern, nor positively understand, although we yet feel the spirit and know of it, intuitively. Our lives are customized by God. God is our conceptual sum total of all these forces mentioned above, natural and occult, that flow from forever to forever, outside of time and space . Being customized, we are specially fitted , perfectly placed, and exactly suited to do as we were called forth to do. To be, to do that which we were specially, particularly, peculiarly made to be, and do, ineluctably, as are, as do rain, wind, snowflakes, earthquakes here and now, in our interstitial time of life. Hereby we are blessed to perceive, to receive, to conceive, to relieve, to deceive, to believe, innately in our immanence in our God; "belief" being functionally substituted for our formal lack of cognitive knowledge or proof. Such I believe pending perfection. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/immanence

PERSONAL LIFE AGE DISCRIMINATION

Yesterday, I read about a male slave who married a prosperous free black woman in St. Louis in the early 1830s, who was much older than he. This man, Jonathan Duncan, went on to win his emancipation in a freedom suit against his former owner and to help others do the same because of his prosperity and perspicacity in marrying a prosperous woman, who was 20 years his senior. My reading about this unusual coupling brought to mind the many older women and girls that I had passed up, while growing up. Based on my reading, I now say that love is where you find it. Do not be intimidated by artificial age distinctions nor deterred by them from enriching your life by loving older ones. The book I that I was reading is titled , REDEMPTION SONGS: SUING FOR FREEDOM BEFORE DRED SCOTT by Lea Vandervelde (2014).

"MOVE ON!" TOWARD PROSPERITY

MOVE ON TOWARD PROSPERITY "Bigotry unleashed by Trump?" Reads a headline that I saw in passing. Is it really true? "Bigotry" I was surprised to learn is not the same as racism that we know well. "Bigotry" means "intolerance towards those who hold different opinions than oneself." Surprising! Trump as a businessman had no constituency. He was accountable to no one. The Republicans who rush in to claim him now and to chain him now (that he has won) had bitterly opposed him before! Trump has no constituency. His interests are global, world-wide. Customers and partners are his preferred people, not dogma, doctrine, program agendas, nor party platforms. Money he makes. Money he loves. Money he plainly manifests. To him, the Executive Mansion --the White House--is a ghetto, is a slum dwellers' dump, in comparison to his several opulent residences in New York, Florida, and elsewhere around the world. I did not vote for Donald Trump. I too was repulsed by his scandals. Yet, I am sensible to opportunity . If you are wise, you will be sensible too! If he has not read the U. S. Constitution, few have! Fewer still respect, apply, or follow it, or its post-Civil War Amendments to us! Trump did not "unleash" bigotry he benefited from it. He capitalized on it. He rode its restless, white-hot embers of dissatisfaction into electoral victory. He bashed foreign trade deals like NAFTA, illegal immigration, huge domestic job losses, Muslim extremists' terrorism, but not black racial matters, most typical fodder, on in! Trump is not a racist. He may be a bigot. We have got tens of millions of bigots in both political parties, who will forever exist, as they have ever existed, in the United States. If he is a racist, as some claim, why do his, pictured, admirers include people like Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson, and many other black leaders, stars, or celebrities? Profit with, from, Donald Trump, the most powerful man on earth! "Let's Move!" Toward prosperity! "What have we got to lose?" Ha!

ELECT TELEVISION CHARACTERS?

ELECT TELEVISION CHARACTERS? Television may have helped to elect Donald Trump as President. It also may have helped to elect Ronald Reagan. I do not mean televised appearances (though they do not hurt), nor news formats, but actual television : real, recurrent, weekly programs. Television programming, I have read, seriously and adversely impacts the social psychology of its viewers. Prison inmates have been known to beat, even to kill each other over what program will be watched on which night; and woe on whomever changes the tv 📺 channel, lacking etiquette or failing to observe prison protocols . In the 1950s and 60s some boys are said to have tied towels around their necks, in imitation of the television program "Superman" and leaped out of household windows to their deaths or grievous injuries. Maybe this televised programming theory is totally wrong, relative to the mass psychological impact of "Celebrity Apprentice," and "Death Valley Days," as having subtly boosted Donald Trump's and Ronald Reagan's recent electability. If so, this thought was induced by my response to an inquiry about a hypothetical I posted on Facebook, in which Trayvon Martin's acquitted killer, Florida's George Zimmerman, becomes a television celebrity and later becomes a candidate for U. S. President! What would happen? Would he win as Trump or Reagan? Hopefully his result will not be the next Trump/Reagan President-Elect reprise, that is an alleged surprise !

time and activity

Time and activity are wedded. Nothing done. Nothing happens. All activity demarcates inert dimensions of time. A synonym for activity is "motion," a term embellished by Sir Isaac Newton, and further refined by Dr. Albert Einstein in E = MC^2, all encompassed by time.

ACE WITH TRUMP

LET'S SERVE AN ACE WITH TRUMP! No sense "running around our backhands," moping, to use a tennis metaphor. Instead, volley a winner. Serve an ace! I contend that we, Americans, are blessed. All Americans. White Americans, of course historically, preferentially; but black Americans too, persistently, inevitably, finally. The election of Barack Hussein Obama as United States President, twice, certainly means, certainly marks, something, especially when we take into account the year 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton by Donald Trump in that Presidential election. What all of it may ultimately mean is whatever we make it mean by our incessant activism for good things. Activists are we by national birth. Our natural activist bonafides are bestowed on us in our founding documents, as ramified in history. How blessed are we? How blessed have we been, those of us who are yet blessed to still be alive, to have been witnesses to, to have been parties to, have contributed to, to have participated in, especially to have voted in, "voting" being itself another metaphor for: ballots, bullets, bayonets, bombs, lawsuits , boycotts, separatism, integration, dispersed in our history since 1789. Our American historical pageantry has witnessed a select number of influential men and women, black and white and others. Each played a role in transforming our nation. Some were elected officials. Most were not. All contributed to the ever-ongoing, refining process of that is United States of America. That uniquely American refining, defining process avidly pursues promised rights of liberty and justice for all; of life, property and the pursuit of happiness; and the general welfare of all of its citizens. Now as we embark upon 2017's renewing ritual of inaugurating a new President, one worth billions, whose Republican political party controls the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court, and most state legislatures and governors, now is the best, ideal time to press on toward final resolution of the issue of African American restitution! He wants to rebuild the inner cities and our decrepit infrastructures, by giving jobs to millions. Wonderful! We do too! Let us encourage him! Being a billionaire businessman, he understands money and taxes. He best knows how to make the one, how best to one avoid the other. No better man, no better person, than Donald Trump can finish the incomplete job that his Republican predecessors let fall to the ground with the Freedmen 's Savings Bank debacle, and the failure to deliver reparations, lands, money, mules, emoluments, benefits, spoils to the freedmen, after Civil War! They who saved the entire nation from destruction got only freedom itself. Too big for bribes, too brash for politicians, too individualist for any party platform. He is our man! He is our big money man! Donald Trump! How blessed are we? Very blessed, indeed! No more running around our backhands. Let's serve an ace!

MUSES

MUSES ARE SPRITES Muses are sprites that alight where they will. Factory, ocean, stream or field. Melting even hardest of wills. Reducing decorous dolts to frills.

"TRUMP TIGHT"

"TRUMP TIGHT" Idle legal talk about the possible impeachment of President-Elect Donald Trump relative to alleged Trump University frauds is quite moot, now, with Republicans in control of the House, the Senate, White House and the Supreme Court. That's definitive! In bid whist, when all of one's cards are trump-cards (of the same "trump" suit), that condition is called being "Trump tight!l" Such is President-Elect Donald Trump right now: money, power, position, fame. But God....

HOW AFRICA SHAPED THE CHRISTIAN MIND

"The Coptic calendar commences with 'The Era of the Martyrs,' which according to Coptic calculation is August 29, 284, the beginning of the Diocletian era of persecution in Africa. That is day one in Egyptian Christianity. "In the train of the martyrs followed the desert fathers and mothers who shaped monasticism first in Africa and then offered it to Palestine, Syria, Cappadocia, France and as far as Ireland. Long before Diocletian came the deep imprint of the martyrdom deaths of Mark in Alexandria, the seven men and five women of Scilli, and then Perpetua, Felicitas, and Cyprian in Carthage . "From that actual history of suffering comes the core death -to-life experience of early African Christianity. Its recollection is still seen in the oratories and martyria set aside as places of prayer and Eucharist where the martyrs were remembered as ready to die for their witness. This is how African Christianity took root. It was not easy.... "Convincing arguments are based on evidence. The evidence has not yet been thoroughly unpacked or accounted for.... "Africa is now poised to rediscover its own history, its deeper identity and its renewed vocation within world history. The literary and empirical data must be mined once again out of the early African voices and texts that produced wisdom." P.122-124, HOW AFRICA SHAPED THE CHRISTIAN MIND by Thomas C. Oden (2007)

ABERRANT OBAMA

ABERRANT OBAMA In an earlier post, I had referred to President Barack Obama as an "aberration," meaning by that his election was a break from the past. The truth of that characterization is evident in President-Elect Donald Trump, who is more typical in many respects, thus less aberration than President Obama. Trump brings scandals into the White House with him in many well-documented ways, not to mention litigations! Hillary Clinton also had her share of scandals, investigations, grand jury and Congressional subpoenas, and litigations during her years of public life as First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State, some dating back to her Arkansas days. I rejoice that I was able to witness President Barack Obama's full term in office, and to compare its basic and aberrant cleanness to others.