EDUCATION AND RELIGION

EDUCATION AND RELIGION ARE TOGETHER LINKED IN FREEDOM As early as 1841, Missouri passed a law outlawing black preachers and the teaching of literacy and (numeracy) to black people, slave of free . At least one African American preacher, Hiram Rhodes Revel, a future United States Senator from Mississippi, was jailed for months in 1854, for preaching and teaching gospel literacy to his African Methodist Episcopal Church flock in Independence, Missouri. Wikipedia says of him: "In 1845 Revels was ordained as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME); he served as a preacher and religious teacher throughout the Midwest: in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, and Kansas.[3] "At times, I met with a great deal of opposition," he later recalled. "I was imprisoned in Missouri in 1854 for preaching the gospel to Negroes, though I was never subjected to violence."[5] During these years, he voted in Ohio." The 1841 statute forbidding black literary, that prompted Rev. Hiram Rhodes Revel's arrest, also explains why another black preacher, Rev. John Berry Meacham of the African Baptist Church, that he founded, while he also owned a profitable barrel-making business in St. Louis, was forced to move his school from the church's basement onto a moored steamboat that he owned in the middle of the Mississippi River, under federal jurisdiction. One of Rev. Meacham's most famous scholars was James Milton Turner, assistant Superintendent of Education of Missouri in Reconstruction, who established black public schools in Missouri. Even before Revels or Meacham, (who died in 1854, the same year that Revels was arrested) former St. Louisan, Rev. Elijah Lovejoy, was a martyred. Lovejoy, a white abolitionist, newspaper publisher "The Alton Observer" and Princeton -educated Presbyterian minister , who was born in Maine, was shot and killed in Alton, Illinois, on November 7, 1837. At that time, his printing presses was thrown into the Mississippi River by white slaveholders for the 4th time! Lovejoy had employed an enslaved boy as copy-carrier and errand-runner , who became one of our greatest African American writers, William Wells Brown, who was also a great historian. Browns' story is every bit as fascinating as others'. There is undeniably a sinuous, if tenuous, condign continuity, between literacy, numeracy, in American history. All personal liberty in civilization's history is based upon literacy and numeracy; who would be free, to stay free, to dream , imagine, aspire, know this. It is also of greater significance that studying true religion, unfettered education to all people are the true sources or foundations of freedom in mankind and of derivative divine power, knowledge, love, law, to all.

GOD MADE

God made each of us alive, uniquely , specially, particularly, for this time, space, circumstance. I won't be critical of you for being yourself. Nor must you be critical of me for being myself. Each atom, each quark, each hair is of God.

'Query XIV

READ "NOTES ONTHE STATE OF VIRGINIA, QUERY XIV" TO SEE THE TRUE BASES OF NATIONWIDE HISTORY If generational inheritance in plants and animals and insects, is true for them, it must also true for mankind. We study rats, pigs, cats, fruit flies, bats, geology, plus plants for medical answers for humans ills. Similarities are genetically extant, contemporaneously, as they were, anciently, between us and others. My focus is not purely genetic, but epigenetic, meaning a combination of genetics and environmental law that were earlier learned, practiced, passed down to future generations, as symbiotic sociological wholes. Environmental changes produced behavioral changes. Over enough time, with enough reinforcements, behavioral changes become fixed . American history was a laboratory for race epigenetics (I almost said 'eugenics') in so-called "white" and in so-called "black" people. These culturally, legally, economically reinforced social behavioral changes witnessed the adoption of racial discrimination and racism. Racism is enforced discrimination based upon, dependent upon, race. It was effected by disguising ancient African (Ethiopian and Egyptian) conceptual truths as "shibboleths" of religion, law, art, literature, philosophy, history. That is to say they were treated as being alien to their African inventors, but indigenous to Western European and others who were the usurpers. This racial heresy was mired in their alleged universal assertion of their "right" to liberty, equality and justice for all, meaning "white." These mockeries of history were done only secretly to justify highly successful epigenetic systems of economic African chattel slavery . Such became their white masked philosophical masquerade , their untrue, and irrational basis for white supremacy and superiority; and black lowliness and inferiority, that were backed by law, custom, police power, military might , prison, miseducation, culture and most importantly personal beliefs, from generation to generation among enough white and enough black people in the United States America's petri-dish to impress the cretinous distortion permanently of fact upon the hearts, minds, backs, spirits of black and white peoples . It did not matter to them that the slave and the free blacks had greatly helped certain American "whites" to acquire their vaunted liberty from the English monarchy. No sooner than the war was won, they were consigned, condemned back to permanent slavery based on color. Thomas Jefferson wrote of this American occult occlusion (maladjustment) of liberty between "whites" and "blacks" in his initially privately published, later secretly distributed how-to book, now widely known, if not widely read, (or taught); it being the prime work of American pre-Constitutional deceit, that the author later publicly acknowledged as his own : NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA (1785), Query, XIV. Read it and see!

IRISHMEN AND AFRICANS

"The Irish people, warm-hearted , generous , and sympathizing with the oppressed everywhere, when they stand upon their own green island, are instantly taught , on arriving in this Christian country , to hate and despise the colored people. They are taught to believe that we eat the bread which of by right belongs to them. The cruel lie is told the Irish, that our adversity is essential to their prosperity. The Irish-American will find out his mistake one day . He will find that in assuming our avocation he has also assumed our degradation. But for the present we are sufferers. The old employments by which we have heretofore gained out livelihoods are gradually, and it may be inevitably, passing into other hands. Every hour sees us elbowed out of some employment to make room for some newly arrived emigrants, whose hunger and color are thought to give them a title to especial favor. White men are becoming house servants, cooks, and stewards, common laborers, and flunkeys to our gentry , and for aught I see, they adjust themselves to their stations with becoming obsequiousness. This fact proves that if we cannot rise to the whites, the whites can fall to us ." P. 443, MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM, Appendix, "The Slavery Party," (May 1853), by Frederick Douglass (1994)

OLD TIME RELIGION

OLD TIME RELIGION Cosmic cultural decapitation is a cultural estrangement from God. Once estranged from the Creator, from natural order of creation, that culture loses its self-orientation, loses self-confidence, knowledge. That culture becomes vulnerable to inner disease, conquest, genocide, delusion, enslavement, destruction. Fortunately, a few within our former cosmically, culturally, decapitated people were able to retain the vital spiritual connection to former old Gods by inspirations, imagination, association with natural resources, events, lives and faith experiences. Thereby they are able to retain the "old time religion that was good for Paul and Silas, the Hebrew Children and that is good enough for me!" Covertly, secretly, in brush arbors , in out of the way places, they met each other and met with each other and began to plot , plan, pray, sing, adduce a means to liberation from slavery to a better life for their own. They invented coded language, coded symbols, coded worship to camouflage their deepest designs and desires for freedom. Many just ran away. These tens of thousands of fleeing, fugitive spirits angered their owners, so maddeningly that the acts and facts of rebellion and runaways, made them secede and declare war on their former nation. These intuitive spiritual retentions help to explain the miracle of our people's transplant from Africa to the Americas for centuries and to explain our own incredible spiritual survival despite another century of subjugation after chattel slavery's termination in 1865 till 1960's laws. They also explain how our cosmic cultural retentions as embellished, as refracted in American history were seminal to our liberation and present status as African American citizens . We have still got "one more river to cross,"however! That is the river of reparations for our stolen legacy, property, lost wages. Our cosmic cultural retentions that brought us here to 2019 will see us through into 2020 & years ahead!

CONVERSION

[Yesterday I shared my Christian conversion experience in this comment. May it bless someone!] My change was gradual , at first, but later traumatic. I was raised in church. Mama and Daddy took us to church every Sunday. We were members of St. Matthew Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Meacham Park, Missouri . We were also keen on education . We kids played educational games to amuse ourselves and read books and magazines, in addition to playing kids' games. As I grew older, I began to read more broadly about black history. I asked the pastor if I could teach a black history class to the kids of the church, when I was 15 or 16. He rejected the idea from the pulpit in a sermon in which he said "black was ugly ." I never went back to the church as a regular member and became suspicious of other black churches. But my daddy and mommy remained steadfast and didn't bother me. Even so, I would search out preachers who knew and loved black history. At age 17, I heard a Rev. Ross on the radio in St. Louis preaching my kind of black history gospel. Me and my sister, Schleria, drove downtown trying to find the church where he was preaching. We never did, but at least, I knew that they existed! When I got to Howard, I audited a course on black theology at the old school of religion on main campus. But it was Jesus-rich and black history poor, so I dropped it. When I was in law school, I encountered Dr. Leon Wright, an adept Buddhist who brought another vision to me. Of course Rankin Chapel's Dean Evans Crawford had prayed some old school prayers that rocked my soul, not to mention the original Howard University Gospel Choir with Richard Smallwood , etc . , who blew the roof off! After law school I came to KC and started to get these letters from Mama, inquiring about my religion. She was as persistent as Monica was on Augustine . In the early 1980s, I began to write the great American novel. But I could not quite say what I wanted to say. So, I read a Gideon Bible that I had found in a motel room desk drawer and kept. In two years , I finished reading it. I then read the Quran that Muslims had given me as a gift for speaking at their temple and other works . Eventually, I wrote "Exhalations from My Soul" as the last issue of my THE NILE REVIEW black historical newsletter . It summarized my views of God and man and nature from my studies and experiences. In the early 1990s. I was hospitalized with several serious afflictions. I had surgery and survived miraculously. I promised Jesus if he gave me my life that I would give it back to him. He did! And I did! This is the story of my conversion ! Thereafter, in 1993, I joined Allen Chapel AME Church in Kansas City. It was pastored by Alvin L. Smith. His "Looking for a few good men" sermon, combined with his 39th Psalms invitation recitation slew me in the spirit! I joined and later became a preacher myself. And I am still here by God's grace in June 2019!

PATRONIZE YOUR OWN

"With all his fickleness, the Frenchman never forgets to find out and patronize his own people. Italians flock together and stand by each other, right or wrong. The Chinese are clannish, and stick by one another. The Caucasian race is the foremost in the world in everything that pertains to advanced civilization,--simply owing to the fact that an Englishman never passes the door of a countryman to patronize another race ; and a Yankee is a Yankee all the days of his life, and will never desert his colors. But where is the Negro? "A gentlemanly and well-informed colored man came to me a few days since, wishing to impart to me some important information, and he commenced by saying, 'Now, Doctor, what I am going to tell you, you may rely on its being true, because I got it from a white man--no nigger told me this.'... "It is the misfortune of our race that the impression prevails that 'one nigger is good as another.' Now this is a great error; there are colored men in the country as far ahead of others of their own race as Webster and Sumner were superior to the average white man. "Then again we have no confidence in each other. We consider the goods from the store of a white man necessarily better than can be purchased from a colored man. "No man ever succeeded who lacked confidence in himself. No race ever did or ever will prosper or make a respectable history which has no confidence in its own nationality. "Those who do not appreciate their own people will not be appreciated by other people.... "Generations of oppression have done their work too thoroughly to have its traces wiped out in a dozen years. The race must be educated out of the ignorance in which it at present dwells, and be lifted to a new level with other races. Colored lawyers, doctors, artisans , and mechanics, starve for patronage, while the Negro is begging the white man to do his work.... "The great achievements of scientific men could not have been made practical by individual effort. The great works of genius could never have benefited the world , had those who composed them been mean and selfish. All great and useful enterprises have succeeded through the influence and energy of numbers. "I would not have it thought that all colored men are to be bought by the white man's smiles, or to be frightened by intimidation. Far from it. In all the Southern states we have some of the noblest specimens of mankind , --men of genius, refinement , courage, and liberality, ready to do and to die for the race." P. 838-841, "My Southern Home," WILLIAM WELLS BROWN (2014)

GOD IS ABLE

GOD IS ABLE TO REDEEM Back in my pagan, pre-Christian days of the 1980's, a prominent Kansas City pastor whose late parishioner's estate I was handling reminded me that I had once told him to his face that I did not believe in Jesus Christ. I did not deny that. But I declared that unlike the current "Apostle Paul", who had presided at the stoning of Stephen, I had not done such; nor pursued Jesus' disciples unto Damascus for the purpose of killing them. Yet, the same Paul, née "Saul" was now a part of authorized Christian canon. He smiled, demurred and assented. The Lord is able to redeem, to save all who seek, regardless of history!

PERFECTION BEGETS

PERFECTION BEGETS REPARATIONS June 22, 2019, the same day that I received in the mail MODERN AFRICA: A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY (1994) by Basil Davidson, was also the same day that I had read a revealing passage in ex-St. Louis Cardinals center fielder, Curt Flood's stimulating autobiography, THE WAY IT IS (1970). Flood's statement was: "Absolute perfection was required ." P. 117. Instantly, I wrote on Facebook the following quip: "Perfection is essential if we are ever to attain, are ever to regain, the mastery of our ancient days on the Nile River." The "we" refers to the children of "Ham:" Cush, Mizraim, Phut, Libya (Nimrod). These are the allegorical ancestors of the descendants of the Africans who were captured, sold, transshiped to the Americas where they were, first indentured servants, later slaves for life , from 1619 at Jamestown , Virginia, until they attained their self-realization on June 19, 2019, with the Reparations Hearing on Capital Hill in the House of Representatives. African Americans are they to whom the Old Testament in the Bible refers in ordinal prophesy : Genesis 15:12-15 New International Version (NIV) "12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age." I have long been of the conviction that Matthew 5:48: "Be you therefore perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect," as it was declared by Jesus Christ, is our key to redemption: personal and corporate. That admonition is applicable to each of us, presently as formerly. The loss of our beloved commitment to the principle of divine perfection, as exemplified in our ancient forbears' pyramids, temples, monuments, art, crafts , numbers, letters, ships, literature, sciences , geometry, ethics; all as celebrated by Homer, Herodotus , Hesiod, Pythagoras, Aesop , Euclid and many many more has become the difference. As embodied in Egypt (Kemet) and Ethiopia (Cush) these divine perfection principles were studied, copied, and lived by Greeks, Romans, others to become as the African gods of whom they wrote, themselves ! It was therefore the principle of perfection's diminution among Africans as a philosophical, cosmological, paradigm that is and that was an element of destruction. The loss has enabled the less-than-perfect non-Africans to catch up with, to neutralize , to conquer, plunder, enslave, brainwash them and us (by extension) for centuries. The Aesop parable of "the tortoise and the hare" neatly approximates, neatly apostrophes, this historical turnaround about us and others. Our souls have been insinuated with the surreptitious lie that we are inferior; worse that perfection is impossible , even by our preachers, teachers, so-called leaders have voiced such self-calumnies! If we could not be perfect , how else could Jesus Christ have said "greater works than these shall you do for I go unto my Father," Jn 14:10. Why would Jesus have said, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Jn 8:32. John 14:12 King James Version (KJV) 12 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. King James Version (KJV) Public Domain John 8:32 New King James Version (NKJV) 32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” New King James Version (NKJV) Many Western European Enlightenment" era lies, that were paid for and promulgated to rationalize and to justify our ritual enslavement and to maintain our ignorance of self, do yet insinuate themselves into our hearts , souls, heads , hands, societies, values. These have already contributed greatly to our 400 years conquest. "Conquest" and its alleviation is where Basil Davidson 's book comes in. I have not yet read this book, having found a reference to o it in another book. But I intuit that Africans' and African Americans' "reabsorption" may be enfolding, may be embracing, enveloping and imminent as their/our primal-natal philosophy, cosmology of divine perfection becomes known and applied in group and individual life.

DISARMING DISBELIEF

People who question others' faith or beliefs frequently do so without stating their own. Disarm them by insisting they do.

CONCEPTIONS OF JESUS CHRIST

CONCEPTIONS OF JESUS CHRIST Jesus did not condemn the beliefs of others. Belief is a combination of faith, understanding and culture. Jesus Christ's disciples, however, did condemn and still do condemn to this very day in 2019. If believers yet wrestle with the mystery, wonder, glory of Christ Jesus, there can be no doubt that unbelievers surely do as well. I have been on both sides of the question: believer and unbeliever. Therefore, I was forced to "work out my own salvation with fear and trembling." So had my forebears done before me in the hellfire of Mississippi. So must you do for your own salvation. It is remarkable that, and how, one man whom some claim did not exist could claim so large a number of followers, literature, monuments, redeemed souls, and could liberate so many enslaved people against such powerful odds with so few friends and with fewer resources! My African American people are prime examples of the power of Jesus to free, liberate, consecrate! History, my love, absolves Jesus. It was not the Council of Nicea, 325 AD, that "created" Jesus; rather it "crowned" its common conception of an already existing Jesus Christ . Conceptions are beliefs based on your faith in God, understanding of nature, inside confines of culture. Not only is my existence, presence, puissance, progeny a gift of God, it is also a product of my forebears' and my parents' conceptual beliefs in Jesus, whose lives, teachings, loves, works, abided their beliefs! If other people have wrought evil and wickedness behind the cloak of Christ, as the millions have done, they have now their reward and shall have it again in eternity, say all African religious creeds preceding that of Jesus Christ and especially including their descendant Christ's!

FATHERS' DAY REMEMBRANCES

REMEMBERING DADDY AND FRISKY FOR FATHERS' DAY I was four years old when Daddy took me down Electric Street to view a litter of puppies at Tamp's house, a few doors east of our home. I saw the mother with her brood of puppies, but could hardly decide which one to pick. Daddy said get this one! He's more frisky than the others . So I did select him and "Frisky" became his name. We grew up together , Frisky faster than me. Dogs' years equal seven man-years, I was told. Any way, at age eight we moved from Electric Street to Big Bend Boulevard in Kirkwood, near Crestwood, across from Oak Hill Cemetery, next door to Burton's Flower Shop. We lived in a house surrounded by woods, a stream, fields . A great place for kids to play and explore and for a dog to romp unfettered by fences. One day we noticed that Frisky had not returned home as usual from his daily runabouts. One day grew into two and two into three. On the fourth day, I happened to see Daddy coming from the south across the fallow fields carrying Frisky in his arms. My heart leaped! Was Frisky dead? I rushed into the backyard to see him. Daddy had found him laying in the field, very badly beaten up, his flopping ears torn off in places; his throat mauled and his white breast blood-stained, and his jet black coat was rent as well. He was barely alive. Daddy took him to a veterinarian. A little while later Frisky was frisky again. We never knew what in the world had happened to Frisky; whether he had been whipped by a pack of dogs or by a single dog. We went along with the dog park theory as Frisky had been in enough one-on-one dogfights for us to know that he knew how to deport himself in battle. Nor did we ever learn how he had been so badly pummeled. A little bit later at age twelve, we bought our family home in Rockhill, Missouri , near Steger Junior High School, an area that was black middle class, and distinguished by fenced single family home yards . Here our attempts to confine Frisky, who was accustomed to unabated freedom proved futile . The mailman would not deliver the mail, because of his fear of being bitten by our family dog, Frisky. Daddy turned to me and said "Well son. We can have him put down; or we can take him far away and let him loose in the woods . He can eat squirrels and rabbits." I opted for the woods, given the other option. Next day, me, Daddy and Frisky drove far west of Kirkwood about seventy miles into the woods. We put Frisky out and left him there to do for self. About a week later, Mr. Burton, our former lessor, called to say that Frisky had returned. He asked that we come and get him. I was happy, sad, and amazed that Frisky could find his way all the way back home from all the woods and traffic! Daddy said dogs had strong homing instincts. Evidently! We fed him. Played with him. Then tried to find a secure way to tie him up, lest he again escape to frighten the mailman. Long story short, it didn't work out. So once again me, Daddy and Frisky piled into the car and headed for the humane society in Maplewood. As Frisky departed the car for a final time, beside Daddy on a leash, he looked back at me crying, stoically. Then soldiered on.

Brush arbpr benevolence

The valuable free space afforded to us by FACEBOOK is comparable to a brush arbor-based spiritual motivational meetings of our sainted forebears in the slavery era. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak, to reason, to expound for free with hundreds, if not thousands of people each day. But the great run seems to be ending for me, at least, as I am an "influencer" who has been identified, curtailed and maybe soon censored. Truth is too revolutionary for liars to tolerate indefinitely. So "goodbye !" in case, I am cut off by FB's disablers abruptly! I thank them for the privilege of suffrage and I thank you for listening , dear friends. It is all grace, anyway. So, I also must thank God for allowing me tthe privilege to be here! Our forebears formerly frequented "brush arbors" like this free FB space, in woods, swamps, private places to revive, inform, comfort, strengthen, lift up, one another before 1865 (and after by some), so we have serendipidously continued their hallowed holy tradition! https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brush%20arbor?fbclid=IwAR0Bs_M_wPu3xpwQJObdydgtex53i0iOJhWGoStSlKSM4DY3p6ItJGQpCz8

$1,2 TRILLION WASTED

$1.2 TRILLION WASTED ANNUALLY Cigarettes , chewing gum, soda pop, candy , potato chips , cigars , are all consumables that confer no healthy benefits--indeed are quite unhealthy --and take away billions of dollars each month from black people's collective pockets due to the lack of conscious consumer spending discipline. Saving is reverse spending. Spending is reverse saving. The lack of conscious consumer spending discipline by black people is further impoverishing them, us. That is because we don't own the means of ordinary production, promotion, distribution, retail of the unhealthy consumables listed above, and unnamed others, which take a triple toll on us, unwittingly and daily: our pockets, health, and community enrichment. The marketing professionals peg the black consumer market at $1.2 trillion dollars annually. Want some reparations? There you have them! Save don't spend. Freedom comes! They write for the end of 2017: "Black consumers account for a disproportionate amount of product sales in a number of fast-moving consumer goods categories. Again, with $1.2 trillion in spending power, African-American consumers are an important population for smart brands that want to grow market share and brand preference. More importantly, the data suggests that Black consumer spending already significantly affects the bottom line in many categories and industries, and brands can't afford to lose favor or traction with this segment without potential negative impact. "The enormous buying potential of Black consumers has put a spotlight on many popular brands' ability to navigate the nuances of culturally relevant and socially conscious marketing. African Americans are more likely than non-Hispanic white peers to interact with brands on social media or to use social networks to support companies and brands (44% more likely). As the almost nuclear power of social media collides with an increasingly educated, affluent, tech-savvy black consumer base, there's never been a more critical time for companies to build and sustain deeper, more meaningful connections with black consumers—not only to grow their relationships, but to protect them. “When it comes to African-American consumer spend, there are millions, sometimes billions of dollars in revenue at stake,” said Andrew McCaskill, Senior Vice President, Global Communications and Multicultural Marketing, Nielsen. “With 43% of the 75 million Millennials in the U.S. identifyinTRILLIONg as African American, Hispanic or Asian, if a brand doesn’t have a multicultural strategy, it doesn’t have a growth strategy. The business case for multicultural outreach is clear. African-American consumers, and all diverse consumers, want to see themselves authentically represented in marketing, and they want brands to recognize their value to the bottomline.” https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2018/black-impact-consumer-categories-where-african-americans-move-markets.print.html Our black liberation power is in our very hands! We spend it, we waste it, on junk, then beg from others for what we have thoughtlessly imprudently wasted on unhealthy consumption. Woe is me! Woe are we! Woefully!

DEFAULT

DEFEATING PERSONAL DEFAULT The war is spiritual. For we war not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness in high places. There words, these precepts, from Ephesians 6:12 more fully declare: Ephesians 6:12 King James Version (KJV) 12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. King James Version (KJV) Public Domain Most wars are physical, involving clash of arms, death , destruction. More recently, Mahatma Gandhi, Kwame Nkrumah, Dr. Martin Luther King, jr., Nelson Mandela have all shown that physical death need not ensue massively in order to secure a victory for the oppressed ; to win, to triumph. These recent lessons from history should encourage us. But unless and until additional lessons are learned and applied from the Bible in individual daily lives respecting the duty of every person to acquire knowledge , to evince self-disciplined perfection, to love self, to love family, to love community, love of God and nature, there is likely to be a stultifying, a falling away, a backsliding default! We live in the default. In the midst of the great falling away! But there is hope! One need but to turn from their wicked ways @ 2 Chr. 7:14: 2 Chronicles 7:14 King James Version (KJV) 14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. These simple ethical lessons are olden, golden, lessons which are intended for those who are the called by God ; called by the still quiet voice of the Creator of all. For your life is not your own, however much it may appear to be so! Be you ever so guilty of "sin", you are still here, now, for a divine reason, rather than elsewhere in time and space, already dead or yet unborn. So get to work on yourself, perfect yourself by acquiring knowledge, by applying love to yourself, family, community; by obeying commands from the Heavenly Father; never fearing what you cannot control like death or incapacity or not winning! Emerge from the default state, your personal default state of inertia, of self-doubt, of uncertainty, of self-hatred! Pick up your bed and walk! These precepts may appear to be directed at you. They are not. They are aimed solely at me. If, even so, there is strengthening, if there is a valued encouragement for you too, give God the glory for connection! Amen.

3/5s

3/5s of THE UNITED STATES IS OUR AFRICAN AMERICAN SHARE Three fifths of the whole number of free persons, including those bound for a period of years, can never be more than the whole number, nor less. Our race quota was installed in the very first Article of the United States Constitution as "all other persons." The math is providential evidence of our value. 3/5's is more than half; is no less than half. If 3/5's was converted to goods, services, lands, positions, power , cash, privileges, we 60% African American descendants would be doing very well, socially, economically, politically, legally. But after the Civil War, those who wrote the Constitution ignored the literal language of Article I Sec.2. It was treated as though it were not. Later in the "quota debate" where certain black leaders--allegedly --sold out black peoples' 3/5's to feminists, whose civil rights spoils, recoveries, have been greater than African Americans', but who are not mentioned in the Constitution; and sold to Jews, who may have funded certain organizations, but who are not mentioned in the Constitution, either! Remarkably, we 3/5s beneficiaries seemed to have acquiesced in our own African American judicial, constitutional, divestment of our 3/5's quota by certain leaders', (post-1968 Martin Luther King, Jr., assassination) blasé blithe remedial capitulation to salacious solicitations and blandishments of others: feminists (who are superior to blacks as "whites"), and Jews (who disdain quotas ). But now all manners of other solicitors: LBGTQ, immigrants, Muslims are soliciting for what is ours by right: largesse, privileges, participation. Now we are less well off constitutionally, scribally, than we were previously, when 3/5s was our quota. Now there is none! Restore our 3/5's quota standards, a constitutional cup that accurately measured our value to the country in 1789 and since! Moreover, the fraction 3/5's is a great reparations measuring cup! Well we now have a number! 3/5s of the United States! 

CHRISTIAN LOVE

There is also a significant segment of black church folks who were the leaders of the anti slavery movement, who are the base of African American power , history, civilization , from the spirituals on up . I was once bitterly critical of Christianity, until I realized that they were the ones doing the heavy-lifting: Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Richard Allen, my mother, father , grandparents, uncles , aunts, cousins. So, I kept reading and studying! Lo and behold! Africans "invented" Christianity too, just as they had reading, writing, and the "idea of God," to quote Frederick Douglass, another Christian icon of black history. So it is in the spirit of love, I commend all of you black Christian skeptics to do further prolonged study . Then, you may find the truth. Bless you all !

COUNSEL

"Justice Brandeis described his legal practice before ascending to the Supreme Court as 'counsel to the situation' . In his view, the lawyer was more than an adversarial advocate. The lawyer was a counselor , a negotiator, a problem solver who sought to advance the client's objectives while maintaining the highest standards of ethics and serving the public interest. "At the Senate confirmation hearing on his Supreme Court nomination, Brandeis was berated for serving as 'counsel to the situation ' instead of counsel to the client. Did he not have a duty, he was asked, to represent vigorously his client's interest, even if the interests of other parties and the public suffered? In some specific instances. Brandeis may have taken the concept too far (compromising his obligation first and foremost to serve the client), but I fully agreed with his broader conception: first, in representing clients, a member of the bar has an obligation to uphold the standards of integrity and inform the client of the public interest considerations at stake, and, second, a truly outstanding lawyer is able to represent a client on a broad range of issues, calling in specialists, as needed, but also capable of mastering a set of complex interrelated issues and moving nimbly among legal disciplines. The kind of legal practice defined by Brandeis has been my aspiration as a lawyer. My informal advice to Bill Levitt while I was at the Dilworth firm, that his early policy of racial exclusion from the Levittown projects was unwise and in conflict with emerging national policy against racial discrimination in housing, illustrates the point. To distinguish my nuanced interpretation of the Brandeis philosophy, I have coined the term 'counsel for the situation.' I would be counsel to the client but willing and able to discuss any situation. P.367, "Counsel for the Situation," COUNSEL FOR THE SITUATION, RESHAPING THE LAW TO REALIZE AMERICA 'S PROMISE (2010) by William T. Coleman with Donald T. Bliss As I approach the end of his simply masterful personal historical legal autobiography of the remarkable Philadelphia lawyer, William T. Coleman, which I urge all lawyers to read, his substitution of the prepositions 'to' for 'for' displayed his knowledge, not only the power of nuance, but the quiet impact of precision upon public perceptions.

DETACHED

DETACHED BEINGS Detached are we spiritually from material existence. We are spiritual beings. We have built our nests on earth, as do bees, wasps, birds. At any given moment, certain people may detach themselves from their material world. Some may opt for suicide. Others may strike out to prospect for gold in California or Venezuela or Africa. Others may abandon hearth, home, husband/wife, children to migrate. Nothing binds us here on earth but our love for a commingling of both, our spiritual selves, with materials. Imagination of man is weightless, mysterious, instantaneous. It is also otherworldly in its essence: atomic, genomics, photonics, astronomic. Dyad we are. Double . Dual-Dwat. We hyphenate. We demarcate. We celebrate our God, until we return. Detached we are. Detached we seem to be to ourselves from it all, till we stop to consider the duties, the dependencies that rely on our adept, industrious, creative, loving negotiation of this physical realm. Amen.

THE WALLS OF JERICHO

"But Shine did not repeat what Todd Bruce said from this point on. Enough to admit that you 'd been in a church, without further confessing a genuine interest in the meaning of a sermon--especially if the meaning was a little too deep for you anyhow. "Bruce spoke quietly, without show but with impassioned conviction ; and though many of his hearers no more grasped his message than did Shine, there was none who felt the same when Bruce ended as when he began. His honesty and sincerity were contagious and the very defects in his imperfect analogy revealed a convincing absence of artifice, a contempt for trifling disparities , an impressive disregard of minor obstacles in conveying a major idea . "'Many a man laughs,' said he, his voice penetrating like his eyes, 'at the preposterousness of this Hebrew fairy-tale. Some of you perhaps are laughing now. For your sake I am going to say something that a minister of the Gospel is not expected to say. I am going to say this: that I don't care the least bit whether this thing ever happened or not. To us it does not matter. Consider it a Jewish legend, a parable of Paradise, if you will, a myth , without any basis of factual truth. Even so, the spiritual value of the story looms and remains tremendous. "'You, my friend, are Joshua. You have advanced through a life of battle. Your enemies have fallen before you. On you march till a certain day that sooner or later comes to us all. And then you find yourself face to face with a solid blank wall--a wall beyond which lies the only goal that matters-- the land of promise. "'Do you know what that goal is? Is it the knowledge of a man's own self. Do you know what that blank wall is ? It is the self-illusion which circumstance has thrown around a man's own self. And so he thinks himself a giant when in reality he is a child, or considers himself a weakling when truly he is strong, or more often judges himself the one or the other when he is actually both . There are still subtler contrasts: he may consider himself irreligious when he at heart is devout . Atheists and agnostics--this may be heresy, but it's true--are likely to be most profoundly religious of all men, and clergymen, with whom all is so routine, the least. A man may think he is black when he is white; boast that he is evil and merciless and hard when all this is but a crust, shielding and hiding a spirit that is kindly, compassionate, and gentle; may pledge himself to a religion when he is by nature a pagan, thus robbing himself and his generation of all that might have come out of honest self-expression. "'There is no better advice, I think, than that of the ruffian on the street , whose motto is 'Don't kid yourself.' But we can't help kidding ourselves sometimes, and we almost always kid ourselves about our Self. And what is our Self, our knowledge of ourself, if not Jericho--chief city of every man's spiritual Canaan? And how can we strip off the illusion and take possession of our own soul save by battle? No man knows himself till he comes to an impasse; to some strange set of conditions that reveals to him his ignorance of the workings of his spirit; to some disrupting impact that shatters the wall of self-illusion . This, I believe, is the greatest spiritual battle of a man's life, the battle with his own idea of himself.... "'Self-revelation is the supreme experience, the chief victory, of a man's life. In all the realm of the spirit, in all of the Canaan of the soul, no conquest yields a greater reward. "'I urge you therefore to besiege yourselves; to take honest counsel with the little fraction of God, of Truth, that dwells in us all. To follow the counsel of that Truth and beset the wall of self-deception. So will towering illusion tumble. So will you straightway enter triumphant into the promised land.'" P. 182-187, THE WALLS OF JERICHO by Rudolph Fisher (1928)

STEM TO STEMS

CONNECTING S.T.E.M. TO 'S.T.E.M.S.' STEM is a highly popular 20th-21st Century acronym for promoting the deeper study of basic disciplines: Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, by African American college students & other minorities. However, barren, by itself STEM is incomplete alone to formulate new pathways in history or in civilization for underserved American groups and populations. No overarching theme or connecting stream ties the disciplines together integrally. To complete STEM , adding an 'S' for Spiritual would agglutinate the acronym into natural motive force. It is natural that nature be the basis of STEM, thence 'STEMS.' All of life is based upon nature, including all of the various STEM disciplines: Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics. Nature is divinely spiritual. Men studied the stars in the sky, the seasons, the tides, the weather, the soil, stone, meteorites, animal, birds, fish, and themselves. From this long culturally resonant study of intrinsic nature which was passed on, down, from very many generations: of priests, observers, farmers, fishermen, hunters , herdsmen, collectors, spinners, weavers, artisans, sailors, builders, tradesmen, cooks, brewers, tanners, teachers, etc., a condign conceptual consciousness of self arose based on the facts of their lives that conduced to the spiritual. These earliest people were African. They left incontrovertible proof of their priorities, anteriority, in stone, hieroglyphics, history, imagery, that yields secrets to Egyptology today! It is therefore only natural that our STEM revert to STEMS to include the spiritual, the essence of them all, indeed the sine qua non of all. Amen

CONCEPTION

Not a "steady roll" but "segments" is the conception affirmed in "existence is not an unchanging endlessness, but rather constant renewal."--THE DEATH OF THE GODS IN ANCIENT EGYPT "A Necessary Foundation" by Jane B. Sellers (1992), p. 26

DILIGENT BIBLE READERS

DILIGENT BIBLE READERS Diligent Bible readers note that the book has two testaments and far more testimonies written within its covers. Old and New Testaments: contain the letter and the spirit of the law, natural and man made law. One is eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth; the other is forgiving love. In fact, in season, we replicate both principles, unctuously, effortlessly. However much we pray, we yet must eat; however much we praise, we yet must drink; however much we give away, we yet must breathe, to receive blessings of being alive. Diligent Bible readers will find that the blessed book built upon sages of ages encompasses themselves.

JUDICIAL LAXITY

In the '80s, I took my first-born son , Imhotep , to Jackson County Court house on a trivial matter. Rather than waxing over the joys of lawyering, as was habitually done for visiting white boys, judge began to pick away at me over trivia in a near-empty courtroom.

ETERNITY

ETERNAL REST One can never "rest upon one's laurels." Day and night do not rest. Winds do not rest. Earth sun moon stars planets seasonal growth does not rest. Eating breathing drinking working sleeping loving eliminating reproducing are all a part of living . The iconic "Tortoise and the Hare" aphorism of wise ancient Ethiopian, Aesop, slave in Greece, crystallizes this law of active engagement in maxim, in other mosaics of prosaic. So too does the revealing history and examples of ancient Egypt and Ethiopia, which were so far in front of humanity in science, literature, music, mathematics, philosophy, civilization, that they coasted from the 4-5th dynasties pyramid-building eras onward through the rest of their history and beyond until today's archaeology, Egyptology, and study. But in a few thousand years , their heirs had lost the knowledge of self and had been defeated, enslaved, mocked! Perhaps falling is as inevitable as rising: sunrise as sunset, perhaps . If so, I confess error here and now! Perhaps we all recirculate anew as seed, as genome, photonics, ideas. If so. America will fall as Rome fell; as Egypt and Ethiopia fell, as all fall. Yet the fabled fall of our perception and conception of 'fall', falling, may be but glosses, glades, a phase of forever, which we term as 'eternity.' Active engagement demands rest! I have fallen asleep at the wheel on an interstate highway and survived with just a scratch after a collision. Rest is requisite in this realm if not in the nether realm, or the eternal realm, where there is no time, nor space, no movement, only eternity. "There exists no source or ground from which anything could make its way into that standing present; any imagined entrant will prove to be not alien but already integral. And as it can never come to be anything outside it, so, necessarily, it cannot include any past; what can there be that once was in it and now is gone? Futurity , similarly, is banned ; nothing could be yet to come to it. Thus no ground is left for its existence but that it be what it is. "That which neither has been nor will be, but simply possesses being; that which enjoys stable existence as neither in process of change nor having ever changed--that is Eternity. Thus we come to the definition: the Life--instantaneously entire, complete, at no point broken into period or part--which belongs to the Authentic Existent by its very existence, this is the thing we are probing for--this is Eternity." P. 216, "Time and Eternity," THE ENNEADS, Plotinus (1991).