Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Thursday, May 3, 2018
BETWEEN TWO STATES OF BEING
REVIVAL FROM A STATE BETWEEN
Nothing dead can be revived nor rehabilitated. If it can be revived or rehabilitated, it was not truly dead.
This I know from my left-side-arm personal experience. After my ischemic stroke in July 2010, that ended my legal career, my left arm was flaccid, devoid of life, in the sense that I could not move it, nor flex my fingers. My arm had sensation; was sensitive to pain and temperatures. But lacked mobility or movement. My left leg was too, although , I could walk on it slowly.
Although , my arm has progressed beyond the "pass me my left arm please dear," days of yore, it can still only do a few limited things. ,
I say this to say that one's sensitivity to pain, pressure, temperatures, are indeed signs of life, but, without movement or mobility, one's limbs are both alive and dead, at once.
Thus, there appears to be another state of being, another modality, in between life and death in persons, places and things in the United States of America in which aspects of life and death are now exhibited, experienced!
From myself, I wheel around, then, in an attempt to deftly analogize, to try to extrapolate, more broadly, from myself, by applying my own ischemia to black people's African American history. Therein, their mobility and movement, and mine, have been similarly limited, confined, frustrated by law enforcement, judicial decisions, cultural taboos, lies, religious mythological racism into a benumbed state of "disability," more generally.
Blacks exist between two states in American society, dead and alive.
We are sensitive to pain, pressure and temperatures, but we have no mobility, nor movement, that typifies complete citizenship. We are daily bruised, broken, battered, by billionaire rulers and by their agents: legislators and governors; mayors, city councils; and by local police, by all courts, by finance companies, banks, landlords, stores, credit cards, schools, etc.
Fortunately, we have the complete use of our minds, right arms even if our left leg's movements still remain limited.
The "strong right arm of God" can save us, having brought, sustained us, thus far on the way, for so long! As God's agents, actors, witnesses, we, too, have work to do in love, to revive, to rehabilitate, ourselves more fully, however encumbered, disabled, we may be! Take up your our beds ! Walk!
Still, through it all, I praise God for life! We praise God for life! "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine" as our black ancestors sung in worship, is true! Until my, our change comes; and then I, we, shall see and be the light!