USING OUR INNATE GIFTS TO WIN
Expediency, victory, requires the use of what one has, in order to acquire what one wants or needs .
What African Americans have is a great abundance of faith in God, an inarticulable belief that the Lord will make a way, somehow. Such faith, such belief, in all its manifold forms, has brought them, has brought us:
"over the way that with tears, has been watered ; treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered... Out from the gloomy past till now we stand at last..at the bright place for which our fathers sighed...God of our weary years..."
These faith-in-God-sentiments were expressed lyrically in "Lift Every Voice," now known as "The Negro (or black) National Anthem," that was written by James Weldon Johnson, Esq.; scored musically by J. Rosamond Johnson, his brother, in 1900, in Jacksonville, Florida.
"Ode to Ethiopia" that was written by Paul Lawrence Dunbar in 1896, was popularized, ritualized, in/by Marcus Mosiah Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), expressed even earlier very similar African American faith in God sentiments:
"Be proud, my race, in mind and soul; thy name is writ on glory's scroll, in characters of fire.
High 'mid the clouds of Fame's bright sky, thy banner's blazoned folds now fly, and truth shall lift them higher."
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2OXmKehGDmE
Faith and music have brought us through hell-fires: of slavery, lies, oppression, and jealous obsession. We would be unwise, disrespectful to abandon what was expedient for what we have not and do not know.
Sojourner Truth, the great former slave, spiritualist, abolitionist, aptly summed up this sentiment, to wit:
"Besides, if the Lord comes and burns--as you say he will--I am not going away; I am going to stay here and 'stand the fire' like Shadrach, Meshak, and Abnego. And Jesus will walk with me through the fire, and keep me from harm. Nothing belonging to God can burn anymore than God himself ; such will have no need to go away to escape the fire! No, I shall remain. Do you tell me that God's children 'can't stand fire?' And her manner and tone spoke louder than her words, 'It is absurd to think so!'"
P. 104, NARRATIVE OF SOJOURNER TRUTH (1850, 2013)
Friday, November 24, 2017
INNATE WINNING GIFTS
USING OUR INNATE GIFTS TO WIN
Expediency, victory, requires the use of what one has, in order to acquire what one wants or needs .
What African Americans have is a great abundance of faith in God, an inarticulable belief that the Lord will make a way, somehow. Such faith, such belief, in all its manifold forms, has brought them, has brought us:
"over the way that with tears, has been watered ; treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered... Out from the gloomy past till now we stand at last..at the bright place for which our fathers sighed...God of our weary years..."
These faith-in-God-sentiments were expressed lyrically in "Lift Every Voice," now known as "The Negro (or black) National Anthem," that was written by James Weldon Johnson, Esq.; scored musically by J. Rosamond Johnson, his brother, in 1900, in Jacksonville, Florida.
"Ode to Ethiopia" that was written by Paul Lawrence Dunbar in 1896, was popularized, ritualized, in/by Marcus Mosiah Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), expressed even earlier very similar African American faith in God sentiments:
"Be proud, my race, in mind and soul; thy name is writ on glory's scroll, in characters of fire.
High 'mid the clouds of Fame's bright sky, thy banner's blazoned folds now fly, and truth shall lift them higher."
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2OXmKehGDmE
Faith and music have brought us through hell-fires: of slavery, lies, oppression, and jealous obsession. We would be unwise, disrespectful to abandon what was expedient for what we have not and do not know.
Sojourner Truth, the great former slave, spiritualist, abolitionist, aptly summed up this sentiment, to wit:
"Besides, if the Lord comes and burns--as you say he will--I am not going away; I am going to stay here and 'stand the fire' like Shadrach, Meshak, and Abnego. And Jesus will walk with me through the fire, and keep me from harm. Nothing belonging to God can burn anymore than God himself ; such will have no need to go away to escape the fire! No, I shall remain. Do you tell me that God's children 'can't stand fire?' And her manner and tone spoke louder than her words, 'It is absurd to think so!'"
P. 104, NARRATIVE OF SOJOURNER TRUTH (1850, 2013)