"16 So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen." MATT. 20:16
SPEAKS TO MANKIND ALLEGORICALLY, UNIVERSALLY, COSMICALLY, NOT MERELY LINEARLY, NOR NARROWLY ARITHMETICALLY IN ONE DIMENSION; NOR UNILATERALLY TO EARTH. ONE MIGHT ALSO SAY THAT IT SPEAKS TRUTH GEOMETRICALLY TO, OF, ABOUT THE ORDER OF DIVINELY SPHERICAL INFINITY.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin", though a pre-Civil War, bestselling "novel"--for sake of a better description--engages far more than fiction in its portrayals, depictions and stories.
It ever so subtly weaves in history and even scriptural eschatology for the few readers who are capable of knowing its wisdom when they see it on the written page, if they read !
She refers to the slave Tom, "in his well-brushed broadcloth suit, smooth beaver , glossy boots, faultless wristbands and collar, with grave, good-natured black face , looking respectable enough to be a Bishop of Carthage , as men of his color were in other ages."
This Carthage reference employed by Harriet Beecher Stowe, refers to a series of black bishops of the Latin-Christian era, centuries after the iconic "Hannibal of Carthage" whose war elephants whipped Rome for 16 years before his defeat at Zama, Tunisia, by Rome, whose main allies were African Numidians.
Stowe's footnote 140 reads : "'Bishop of Carthage ' --ancient city in North Africa near Tunis. Colonizationists often appealed to the achievements of the Egyptian, Ethiopian, and Carthaginian civilizations to prove that repatriated African Americans could thrive in Liberia."
Back in the text , Stowe continued:
"If ever Africa shall show an elevated and cultivated race--and come it must, sometimes, her turn to figure in the great drama of human improvement--life will awake there with a gorgeousness and splendor of which our cold western tribes faintly have conceived ....In all these they will exhibit the highest form of the peculiarly 'Christian life ,' and, perhaps, as God chastened whom he loveth, he has chosen poor Africa in the furnace of affliction, to make her the highest and noblest in that kingdom, which he will set up, when every other kingdom has been tried, and failed; for the first shall be last and the last first."
P.167, UNCLE TOM'S CABIN by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Wordsworth edition (1852, 1987)
OPPOSITIONS ATTEST
Moment contains eternity. Base neutralizes acid. Unity diversity. Positive negative. Courage fear. Outside inside. Science poetry. Spirit matter. Energy time. Wet dry. Hot cold. Knowledge ignorance. Water fire. Man woman. Life death. Inhaling exhaling . Income outgo. Build up tear down. Life and death .
Oppositions balance ideals , while attesting to prior presence of God.
The universe is ordered per the ancient sages, astronomers, Ethiopians, Egyptians, observable, provable. Randomness is a modern speculation, not observable, not provable; a theory imposed for modern pedagogical, propaganda purposes.
Black people have been the engines, buffers, ball-bearings, transmissions, gyroscopes of the United States of America, historically, by working free for, serving under, standing with and often between, competing groups of hitherto-hostile bands of Western European tribes, reconfigured in America as “white.”
"RACE" STUDIES PROPAGANDA
Weekly, "studies" are released measuring black peoples' indices relative to white peoples' indices.
It is rather like the technique used by curious parents to record the relative heights of their children by dated, pencil-markings on a wall.
Yet, never have I seen nor heard of any such race study in which the blacks were given any discount for destabilizing slavery, for Jim Crow segregation, for peonage, for unequal education expenditures, for federal and state laws that discriminated against them by race, because of race. No discount is given for discriminatory banking, and lending practices, for excessive police violence, and unfair sentencing by courts; for ghettoization and its impoverished concentrations of ennui; for historical wage, salary, price, costs, interest, tax, and wealth disparities.
If these discounts were faithfully and accurately applied to resultant race matrices, it is more than likely that the blacks will be shown to be leading, rather than to be trailing the whites. Now as I write, I wonder for whose benefit or detriment these studies are consistently being funded ? Are they funded to assure the whites of their supremacy or to confirm the blacks of their inferiority? Or may be it is for both! To impress the whites and to demoralize the blacks at once!
Nor is much regard given in such studies to the converse, to millions of blacks who were able to escape the maze of malefactors and webs of wickedness intended to capture, them; intended to entrap them and their progeny, legacy, dreams, bequest in limbic pools of despond.
Propaganda is what it is! Pure racist propaganda are such metrically unreconciled, thus unqualified, race studies that are weekly pillaging, and pillorying our senses and national sensibilities! They benefit none but those who pay to keep alive racial antagonism! The bitterest irony is that no "race study" depicts anyone squarely, accurately, being but a hackneyed blend of composite pieces, whose innate accuracy is necessarily suspect as indicated.
One such study is cited below:
https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2018/04/broken-ladder
DR. DUBOIS ' "TALENTED TENTH "
Dr. W.E.B. DuBois in the iconic 1903 essay, "The Talented Tenth," in THE NEGRO PROBLEM, edited by Booker T. Washington, has conjoined and encapsulated two contrary observations that signify the essence of our mixed spiritual dilemma as black people, who have been scattered and peeled, whose heroic forbears, brought from far to America in the execrable holes of slave ships from Africa, survived!
One observation is sociological. It is accurate. The next observation is anthropological . It is inaccurate. I set them forth below to illustrate:
"And so we come to the present--a day of cowardice and vacillation, of strident wide-voiced wrong and faint hearted compromise ; of double-faced dallying with Truth and Right. Who are today guiding the Negro people? The 'exceptions' of course. And yet so sure as this Talented Tenth is pointed out, the blind worshippers of the Average cry out in alarm: 'These are exceptions, look at death , disease and crime--these are the happy rule.' Of course they are the rule, because a silly nation made them the rule: Because for three long centuries this people lynched Negroes who dared to be brave, raped black women who dared to be virtuous, crushed dark-hued youth who dared to be ambitious, and encouraged and made to flourish servility and lewdness and apathy. But not even this was able to crush all manhood and chastity and aspiration for black folk. A saving remnant continually survives and persists, continually aspires, continually shows itself in thrift and ability and character. Exceptional it is to be sure, but this is its chiefest promise; it shows the capability of Negro blood, the promise of black men. Do Americans ever stop to reflect that there are in this land a million men of Negro blood, well educated, owners of homes, against the honor of whose womanhood no breath was ever raised, whose men occupy positions of trust and usefulness , and who, judged by any standard , have reached the full measure of the best type of modern European culture? Is it fair , is it decent, is it Christian to ignore these facts of the Negro problem , to belittle such aspiration, to nullify such leadership , to attempt to crush these people back into the mass out of which by toil and travail they and their fathers have raised themselves?"
The foregoing quotation is as correct in its substance in 2018 it was as in 1903. We have, many of us have, raised ourselves up from where we began. I surely have . My siblings surely have. My friends surely have. Tens of millions have. Yet, tens of millions have not raised themselves beyond their parents! It is in the next paragraph that I have taken issue with certain assertions as too loosely made by Dr. DuBois:
"Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way more quickly raised than by the effort and aristocracy of talent and character? Was there ever a nation on God's fair earth civilized from the bottom upward? Never, it is, ever was and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to their vantage ground. This is the history of human progress; and the two historic mistakes that have hindered that progress were the thinking first that no more would ever rise save the few already risen; or second it would be better the unrisen pull the already risen down."
P. 10-11.
I will not linger in my criticism of Dr. DuBois' upside down criticism of the black mass, or his unsupported generalizations about "progress" in human "civilization," except to say that I am unaware of any civilization on "God's fair earth" that did not begin at the bottom: in agriculture, hunting, fishing, gathering, and from there gradually built itself up. These nations include those of Africa, where civilization began; where it reached its ancient zenith in the arts, sciences, humanities, architecture, engineering and from whom the Greeks acquired their own before passing it to Europe via Rome, which benefited from Africa!
SOUL IS CHARACTER
A person's soul, or character, as it were, may be an amalgam of divine sparks that are continually being instated into our "mud," earthly matter, flesh foisted on a spindle in time and space that receives and emits energy from near and far, in a whirling dynamic spin until death.
In every day life, man's weakest links can "break life's divine chain," easily.
Therefore it is best to accept a holistic view of life, than a mere linear view.
Then, many broken links are not fatal nor notable! Life goes on despite death of anyone or the extinction of species! — with Anthony Coleman.
OUR WORSHIP OF GOD IS OUR SECRET TO REDEMPTION
Once upon a time worshiping God was an act of insurgency for enslaved African people in America. And greatly feared by godless men and women, unless a safe white man was leading worship. So, slaves took to the deep forests for their own secret, sacred fellowship, under kettles to suppress sound. Here they could worship God in peace, in the own way, free of coercion, condemnation, brainwashing, soul-sapping servitude. Worshiping God is still the essential ingredient in our freedom quest, and will ever be, because we are God's chosen people, God's first people on Earth, from whom all others descended. This is that sacred secret knowledge that too few of us suspect.
APPRECIATING THE "PAR"
Finding par. Making par. Doing par.
What is "par?"
Par is a standard of expectation and experience used to define, to quantify, many levels of normalcy, competency in various disciplines.
Perhaps if perfection were par, there would be less need for so many varying standards among men. But perfection is impossible, we are told. We are told this even though Jesus said "be you perfect as your father in heaven is perfect." Matt. 5:48. We are told this even though the pyramids of Egypt are perfect, as is Euclid's geometry. We are told this, although the whole natural world is perfect; and humans are productions of nature.
Par is Godlike, Godliness, in truth.
Once one accepts less than perfect as par, any formulation will suffice!
BATES COUNTY MISSOURI'S CIVIL WAR
Butler, Bates County, Missouri, is a small town in a real small county lying south of Kansas City 60 miles or so, down I-49 (old 71 HWY)
I used to pastor the modest Brooks Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church there from 1995-2004. It is quite remarkable: the county, town and the church . The church's story and spirit are significant symbols of America's past history and future.
The population of Bates county is 7,000 souls, or was, when I was there. The town of Butler had 4,000 souls, of whom about 50 were black. Historically, Bates County was unofficially allied with slaveholders. It was sympathetic to the Confederacy. Willam Quantrill and his murderous guerrilla rebels were succored by Bates' residents.
I mention this renowned, infamous Confederate bushwhacker William Quantrill, because the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, in the "Battle of Island Mound," kicked his irregular buttocks and 400 of his men, straight out of Bates County on October 28-29, 1862, months before Colored troops were eligible to enlist in the U. S. Army by the Emancipation Proclamation, 1863.
I did not know this fact of the existence of black troops fighting in Civil War-Era Missouri, when I first came down to Butler in 1995, as a licentiate (licensed but not ordained). I was driven down to Butler by then-Presiding Elder W. Bartalette Finney , who , like me, is native to St. Louis, Missouri. The Elder could not find the church when we reached Butler! He kept circling the same general street locality, while he was muttering something under his breath. I sensed we were lost. At least he was lost and I was enjoying the ride in the "Dick Sally and Jane"-looking town. Finally, as beads of perspiration appeared on the Elder's forehead , I decided to become proactive in the search for this modest outpost of our Zion.
Down the street, I saw an old white man in overalls walking down the street, carrying two mason jars of tomatoes. I said, "Pull over PE. Let me talk to this man. I bet he knows where our church is!" He pulled over and rolled down the window. I said "'Scuse me, sir. Can you tell me where the colored folks church is around here?" mimicking my best Mississippi accent. He said "Sure! Can't miss it! Turn left at the corner. Go two blocks. It's on the right! Can't miss it!" Grateful, I said "Thank you, Sir!" And PE drove off.
When we got to the church, there were 5-6 people sitting there, who had been patiently waiting on us. Black people are punctual in Butler, unlike certain over big-city venues. I had not expected an overflow crowd, but neither did I expect so few! When the Elder introduced me as the new Pastor and asked for the members to please stand, only one person stood up, Mother Helen Cooper. Lord have mercy. I sighed! Driving 60 miles one-way , twice a month, for one member, one soul!
Fortunately, I had been raised in a very small church rather like it! It was St. Matthews CME Church in Meacham Park, Kirkwood, Missouri.
Actually, Brooks Chapel had three "members", but only one was in the church that Sunday. The others there were not "members," but they showed up every Sunday. Who is a member ceased to matter to me in time. Even so, non-members went to the Zion United Methodist Church across the street. It was open on alternative Sundays (twice a month), when we were closed. That church across the street had the bathroom too! Brooks Chapel, though founded in 1870, from a feedlot store front frame and moved to our lot, had not acquired a restroom in over 100 years!
Fortunately, one of our most helpful non-members was a member of the church across the street. Each Sunday as certain as Bible text, my wife would insist on going to the bathroom across the street after church. It was like a form of Chinese water torture!
Her bathroom promenades and the status of our church's physical plant prompted me, soon, one Sunday to suggest that rather than pay me the $35.00 per visit as salary, why not just pay it into a building fund? That way, we could fix our roof which was in disrepair, paint, and get us a bathroom for the convenience of all! The church agreed: Ended up with them giving me the check which I put into the collection plate, which Kemet, our youngest son would carry around, which offering I would later bless.
During this process, I came to know Mr. Walter Wright, extremely technically-gifted husband of our church treasurer, Mildred Wright, now deceased . "Millie" was a jewel and Walter was her setting. Mr. Wright, who may or may not have been a "member," came to church every Sunday that I was there. He had built their home across the street with his own hands from drawings. He later also put in our bathroom from drawings, even affixing it to the line running down the street. He was in on the roof rehabilitation also. I believe he was the one telling me that there had been a snake on the roof, living inside of the roof. Wasps I knew about and combatted, but a snake? Surely the Lord was with us.
Long story shortened: at Ft. Scott, Kansas, bookstore 4 years later , my eyes alighted on a book from across the room. It was LIKE MEN OF WAR BLACK TROOPS IN THE CIVIL WAR, 1862-1865, by Noah Trudeau (1998). I opened it up and the first thing that I saw was a map naming Butler, Missouri! What was Butler doing in a Civil War history book about black troops?! That was how I learned about the "Battle of Island Mound" in October 1862. Astounding! I knew nothing of this battle at all, and had never heard of it being mentioned at church! Turns out that no one there had ever heard of it either; knew nothing about that battle, and they had been in Butler all of their lives!
We decided to honor those brave, fallen black Civil War soldiers, whose remains were still doubtless unconsecrated , lying in some field!
So we set about the business of putting together a celebration in the Butler City Hall, free and open to the public, in honor of the lives, the memories of these heroic men, who fought for freedom: ex-slaves, freed men, white officers and a Cherokee Indian and his six men, his former slaves, from Oklahoma . It was a great big success! Well attended by hundreds of people we were able to collect over $300.00 to build a statue to these troops in tribute to them, for black history.
Around this time, a white ex-Marine who lived in Butler, who was also a cartographer (map-maker), Chris Tabor, was researching and writing articles for the local newspaper, THE XPRESS, about the 1st Kansas Colored's valorous exploits. His multiple articles appeared in print the same weekend that our City Hall celebrated these troops in our church-sponsored event. He did not know me nor of me; I did not know him, nor of him ! God is real!
We were finally able to raise by various means enough money, some $30,000 by 2008, with which to pay our sculptor, Joel Randall, (whose daddy is a preacher) from Edmond, Oklahoma, and to have it placed on the Bates County Court House grounds in the town square, beside other such historical statuary . This placement was also greatly expedited by Walter Wright and Troy Burton, Brooks Chapel AME regular attendees, who are also some elected county officials.
A big ceremony attended the Amen Society's October 2008 dedication with a parade, 1st Kansas Colored reenactors from Oklahoma and two happy United States Congressmen, Emmanuel Cleaver and Ike Skelton, speeches, songs, salutes, poems.
Our beautiful statue was dedicated to the memory of Mrs. Elnora Burton, our first Amen Society president, who had predeceased this historic dedication. She was also our church pianist; Mother Cooper's daughter; and whose own daughters, Rene and Nikki, were our church and Amen Society's gospel choir! I had organized the Amen Society as a benevolent corporation in 1999, to separate it from the church financially.
In 2012, the State of Missouri dedicated a memorial 40-acre park in Bates County, in homage to the "Battle of Island Mound," thanks to many folks, near the battle scene.
I am hopeful that Bates County, in capsule, will augur a like outcome for the rest of the country around the Civil War and a valorous spirit! That is largely why I wrote about it.
THE WAY
Each must make its own way out of its "womb" into life, aided by forces unknown .
Each must make its own way through life, aided by forces known and unknown .
Each must makes its own way from "life" back into the domain of death, aided by forces unknown.
At every step, at every stage, of any way that we have come here to live, or to go away from here, those same unknown forces that brought us here, enabled us here, surely take us away from here. For we all go: from non-life to life to non-life.
We "know" all thoughts obscurely . We know our capabilities gradually. We know parents, family kin, early, and earth, universal kin, eventually.
We know so little about the so little that we think we know that indeed and in fact we know nothing about nothing compared to, contrasted with, what surely came before, and what probably lies beyond this life.
This way is governed by unknown forces who, or which, permitted the intermit of life to cohabit, briefly, a place, a plane of infinite space-time for humans finally to inhabit at last.

PHILOSOPHY IS A BIG TENT ⛺️
Philosophy is a big tent under which all of our disciplines find origins, familiarity, nurture, life.
"Tent" allegorizes all commonality.
The heart and brain belong to one completely integrated living body.
Yet certain philosophy isolates the heart from the brain then allegorize their differences making the brain represent males, the heart females.
Philosophy itself has undergone similar dissection. God has been removed from philosophy's core.
But such a philosophical "removal" of God was as erroneous, was as fraudulent, was as apocryphal, was as apocalyptic, as was isolating the male from female, by allegorizing heart and brain within one and the same body; then, extending the paradigm to encompass society, government, religion, science, literature, art, law, mathematics.
Philosophy is a big tent under which all of our disciplines find origins, familiarity, nurture, life.
Too few of our '50-'60's black awareness era have taught the knowledge, the values, the expedients, the sacrifices, or the morals of that era to youth; so , today, "cussing" and "dew-rag-wearing" is considered "black" along with a host of other social dysfunctions, whom others have "educated" in them to be representative of what blackness is. "Blackness" is,excellence in all things, not its antithesis as is exhibited in self-abnegation, dysfunction, desuetude. Instead of pointing fingers, criticizing, or pooh-poohing them, teach them, love them, help them. Their conduct cries out for that older generational nurture which, obviously, too few of them have had, growing up. Start with your very own children, grands, great-grands, and their friends. You may discover that you have as much to learn from them as they do from you! Fit in with those who best fit with you in spirit, orientation, interests! All life has value by reason of existence.
BOSTON TEA PARTY REFRACTIVE
Rushing through a reading, and oversimplification of that read, are twin terrorists to understanding.
The so-called "Boston Tea Party" for example is touted as a popular uprising against British tyranny.
In throwing competing British tea overboard competing colonial coffee merchants, who disguised themselves as Indians to hide their true identities were cornering the Boston market for coffee over tea.
Along the way, arguments against "taxation without representation" were swilling in--never mind that Indians were not taxed--and the self-interested larcenies of the few came to be viewed in oversimplified American history as revolutionary!
A careful reading might disclose to those who 'discern to learn' how to counteract present day advertising and resultant indiscriminate buying, using "patriotic" means of doing so, based on the Boston Tea Party: Simply disguise one's self and true purpose behind any cute folderol, while actively overthrowing others' competing products for your own!
One will have gained materially thereby and will have contributed symbolically to the "cause," seemingly, if anonymously. This Tea Party tactic was repeated by the Ku Klux Klan terrorists after the Civil War, during and after Reconstruction contra enterprising black businessman or farmers.
The Tea Party itself was extremely active during both Barack Obama administrations, but not since in the era of President Donald Trump! All who discern to learn daily note.
http://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/history-coffee/
"I have heard the words of Imhotep and Hordedef,
Whose sayings are still recited in their entirety.
What of their places?
Their walls are in ruins,
Their places are no more
As if they had never existed!
None returns from there
To tell of their conditions,
To tell of their ruin,
To ease our headache
Until we hasten to the place where they have gone!
"So be happy!
Ignorance is bliss!
Follow your heart as long as you live!
Put myrrh on your head,
Wear fine linen,
Anoint with the real wonders that belong to a god!
Increase your joys,
Let not your heart be weary ,
But follow your heart and your happiness.
Do as your heart commands while you are upon the earth!
When the day of wailing comes for you,
The Weary-Hearted hears not their wailing,
Their mourning rescues no man from the netherworld!"
P.226-227, "Harpist's Song from the Tomb of Intef," WRITINGS FROM ANCIENT EGYPT (2016) translation by Toby Wilkinson

"YELLOW JOURNALISM" is "RACE-BAITING JOURNALISM" is "FAKE NEWS".
American media--print, internet, and audiovisual-- is complicit, indeed implicit, in the propagation of American racism and terrorism. So states an ATLANTIC MAGAZINE article: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/white-supremacy-is-still-americas-biggest-security-threat/557591/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20180417&silverid=MzEwMTkwMTYwMjU3S0
The article is historically accurate and documented, also current covering Cambridge Analytica's Trump-supporting bots that exploited ever-sensitive "white" American racial fissures and fictions
DRED SCOTT RESTATED
Obsure Jesuitical language that is being utilized by the United States Supreme Court in 2018, to protect police officers who kill people, especially unarmed black people, under any number of legal rationales, restates the "Dred Scott" decision holding that a black man has no rights that white men (or police) are bound to respect!
This horrific legal decision led to John Brown 's 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry armory and to the the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, and Civil War, 1861-1865.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-467_bqm1.pdf
A 2018 court decision, Kisela v. Hughes follows the pattern of Tennessee v. Garner (1985) , Graham v. Connor (1989) @ police non-liability for killings, civil or criminal. Most police killings of unarmed black people are legal under law as a result of these decisions as shockingly fascist/racist as this may seem to be!
HASTE MAKES WASTE
Refusing to check my work was my principle short-fall, following grade school. Teachers repeatedly told us always "to go back over your work, class." I resisted doing so. One part was hardheadedness; another part was overconfidence. These flaws followed me into life after grade school , until one day, as the stakes grew larger and the repercussions, too, I decided to stop; to recall my sweet grade school teachers' many helpful admonitions to us all about work review. I regretted my errors. I grew contrite. I rectified my ways. I adopted a new (old) habit of work review! Not only did I learn that the aphorism "haste makes waste" was true for myself, but I had developed more compassion for others who, I noted, may not have yet learned the value of review, for any reason!
Governor Eric Greitens is a Republican and former Democrat . He defeated Attorney General, Chris Koester, a Democrat, and former Republican, in Missouri's 2016 gubernatorial race.
If any proof were ever needed that political labels determine nothing in politics, this does. As former, long-term, St. Louis, Missouri, Congressman William Clay, Sr., is reputed to have said years ago in his book: "We have no permanent friends, nor permanent enemies, just permanent interests."
RESOURCE DEPRIVATION AND US
Resource deprivation stunts growth.
After the end of the second American "Reconstruction" in 1968, our cities were deprived of federal and states' monetary resources as punishment for some black people fighting for access to those resources to which we were entitled by "law". We had migrated as "refugees" to the North to escape the South after the lawless repressive terrorism against us. Soon the mutated lawlessness came North. They had already killed off our wisest, moral leader and philosophical epicenter in 1968. They elected recidivist Richard Nixon. They parodied us. They passed laws. They persecuted us. They cut off tax resources to the urban areas and encircled them with concrete roads.
What did we do while this was being done to us, to thwart us, to terminate us, to stymie enough of us to arrest our further advance and development?
Look at yourself, look at your family, look at your friends and their families. After looking, then you can best answer for "what did we do while this was being done to us" post-1968.
Your honest answer will explain much about our current woes, and dilemma.
It will also declare what must be done.
"Maat was a prescriptive value concerned with how humans might live best; Nwn was the descriptive reality of the most basic, fundamental kind, the medium from which the universe emerged to become what it is now: the immense cosmos, the human population of planet Earth, the primal structure with all its vital, essential interconnections, and the invention of self-knowledge , inseparably linked with the concept of duty.
"Such was the original matrix of Pharaonic philosophy. It was expressed as early as the major pulsations that produced the pyramids, in which Nwn expressed the ideas of operative matter, while Maat, that value expressed in its perfect hieroglyphic image, expressed the sublime concept of moral perfection. Nwn was dynamic living matter, the essence of all things, that on its own accomplished the transition from nonbeing to being, created the airy passage leading from Before to After. It accomplished the passage from dormant consciousness to the awakening of reason. It embedded reason using Word as instrument to name, identify, classify, coordinate, and order reality--in a word, to make possible the conscious life. On the cosmic level, Maat is a kind of pre-established harmony; it is Order, Truth-Justice, and supreme Wellbeing . It calls upon humans as social beings to behave and speak, to think and act, to live and die, in accordance with what is true, what measures up to the optimal standard, what does not violate a just balance , to live a just life as understood by the black Egyptian mind, with its commitment to hieratic, traditional, transcendent , imperative , and absolute norms.
"Viewed in its proper context, the contemplation of death was really of secondary importance in ancient Egyptian thought. What mattered most was the contemplation of ways of living , of acting in accordance with justice and truth. That was the primary, essential, preoccupation , the motivation and the justification of all rituals and codes. The constant ideal was to sustain and support life, here and in the hereafter . For that, purity of heart was an incomparable asset. The tomb may have been decorated and ornamented ; funeral rituals may have been dear to the deceased. But in the country of the Pharaohs the outer show was never more than an incidental prop. What mattered most was a stellar destiny, an afterlife spent among the deathless stars. This glorious destiny was reserved only for just souls, persons of integrity, and its pursuit was inseparable from the moral philosophy of Maat."
P. 603-604, "Addendum, Summation ," AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY THE PHARAONIC PERIOD, 2780-330 BC by Theophile Obenga (2004)
LITERARY LAGNIAPPE
An addendum (or appendix) is as vital a part of a book as the main body, as it distills its essence.
Tolstoy's "Science of History," at the end of the epic historical novel, WAR AND PEACE is one such. Zora Neal Hurston's "My People! My People! My People!" at the end of her delightful autobiography DUST TRACKS ON A ROAD (1942, 1995) is another. And Theophile Obenga's "Conclusion " in the Addendum to his epic AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY THE PHARAONIC PERIOD: 2780-330 BC (2004) is epochal!
As pot liquor from collard greens is nutritious, is medicinal, as truth; as love, as order, balance, justice ; so also are appendices or addenda at the end of greatest books, literary "lagniappe!" An author's "Aloha!"
Amen!
WELL-DRAWN FICTIONAL CHARACTERS
When a fictional character is well-drawn by a writer, a reader feels with them, hears with them, anticipates and sees with them; becomes them vicariously .
Harriet Beecher Stowe's UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, whose instant reading has sparked this thought, contains such characters, as did Alex Haley's ROOTS, Frank Yerby's THE DAHOMEAN, Mark Twain's HUCKLEBERRY FINN & TOM SAWYER. So too did Margaret Walker's JUBILEE have well-drawn characters. Alexander Dumas' COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO is tops right along side Richard Wright's unforgettable NATIVE SON.
Any well drawn fictional characters' books known to you, Dear Reader?
THE REPAST
Everything comes from our past.
The past. We eat the past; drink the past ; breathe the past. We live in the past. Present and future are ideas, mere illusions, constructs .
Enjoy today's repast old-timers!
"OH HOW I LOVE JESUS!"
My afternoon meditation of a poignant passage in Aristotle's NICOMACHEAN ETHICS (1941, 2001), p. 1023-1024, was seamlessly augmented by the soul-stirring transportive music of the late Rev. James Moore:
"Oh! How I love Jesus !" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ihmePgaVcdg
Aristotle wrote:
"We said before that there are two parts of the soul--that which grasps a rule or rational principle , and the irrational; let us now draw a similar distinction within the part which grasps a rational principle . And let it be assumed that there are two parts which grasps a rational principle --one by which we contemplate the kind of things whose originative causes are invariable, and one by which we contemplate variable things; for where objects differ in kind the part of the soul answering to each of the two is different in kind, since it is in virtue of a certain likeness and kinship with their objects that they have the knowledge they have. Let one of these parts be called scientific and the other calculative; for to deliberate and to calculate are the same thing, but no one deliberates about the invariable. Therefore the calculative is one part of the faculty which grasps a rational principle . We must then learn what is the best state of each of these two parts; for this is the virtue of each.
"The virtue of a thing is relative to its proper work. Now there are three things in the soul which control action and truth--sensation , reason, desire.
"Of these sensation originates no action; this is plain from the fact that the lower animals have sensation but no share in action.
"What affirmation and negation are in thinking , pursuit , and avoidance are in desire; so that since moral virtue is a state of character concerned with choice, and choice is deliberative desire, therefore both the reasoning must be true and the desire right, if the choice is to be good, and the latter must pursue just what the former asserts . Now this kind of intellect and truth is practical ; of the intellect which is contemplative, not practical nor productive, the good and the bad state are truth and falsity respectively (for this is the work of everything intellectual ); while of the part which is practical and intellectual the good state is truth in agreement with right desire."
"Truth in agreement with right desire," as Aristotle explains, is practical virtue. That practical virtue also explains why, after reading both the Bible and the Qu'ran, I chose Jesus Christ .
The choice was also imminently practical, for me, being the religion of my immediate ancestors, and also being as true as Islam, Buddhism, Judaism or any other faith or religion existing on earth .
Oh! How I love Jesus! Indeed!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ihmePgaVcdg

AVOID THE "OBJECTIVITY" HOAX
A popular canard, deceit, untruth has long been propagated about "objective" journalism, history, science, religion, democracy. All that is written, studied, or presented by man that is not confirmed in nature is per se subjective.
Objectivity and subjectivity are natural. It rains on the just and the unjust, and sun shines on the good and the evil.
Man is both objective and subjective by nature. Yet man is driven by an inner impulse to always seem to be objective, God-like.
"A priest must always appear to be pious, but must never be," said Nicoli Machiavelli, medieval Italian philosopher, in THE PRINCE.
Read multiple sources. Triangulate information and stay abreast of later developments. Take all in with a grain or two of salt. Compare your observations, conclusions with others' conceptions, perceptions and then correlate all, eliminating, as necessary.
