THE SPIRIT

The Spirit, being immortal and immaterial, belongs to no one gender, nor nation, nor race. The Spirit may fall on anyone, anywhere at anytime. The Spirit of inquiry, of love, power, evil, envy, poverty, business; spirit of achievement or spirit of destruction. Spirit visits where it is invited and where it is not invited. Pray that the spirit of discernment may enter into you to warn you of evil and guide you to opportunity. Amen 🙏

MAN ALIGN!

ALLOYED MAN! ALIGN WITH DIVINE LAW All life is alloy: alloyed by spiritual and by material. None is purely one or the other that exists, man or not. Water is hydrogen and oxygen and the spirit; fire is fuel, oxygen, heat, and a chemical reaction (the spirit). Gold and silver are alloys as well. Man is alloyed with woman, as well as women are as alloyed with men. There is simply nothing that is unalloyed on or in earth that lives, including air. Hyperbolic are idioms such as unalloyed evil-plain purity. Plotinus, the 3rd Century African philosopher, evoked these facts. He examines a question that black folks, our boys especially, seem to grapple with in this walk of grace : "There remains the other phase of the question--the distribution of evil to the opposite classes of men: the good go bare while the wicked are rich: all that human need demands, the least deserving have in abundance ; it is they that rule; peoples and states are at their disposal. Would not all this imply that the divine power does not reach to earth?" Some form of this assertion never fails but to issue as condemnation from athletes, from vigorous minds that accompany manliness. Their inquiries are fair. Those who would reach them to evangelize them had better know what to say and how! Plotinus answers himself this way: "We answer that the universe is one living organism...And even granting that those less noble members are not in themselves admirable it would still be neither pious nor even reverent to censure the entire structure... "But humanity, in reality, is poised midway between gods and beasts, and inclines now to the one order , now to the other; some men grow like to the divine; others to the brute, the greater number stand neutral. But those corrupted to the point of approximating to irrational animals and wild beasts pull the mid-folk about and inflict wrong upon them; the victims are no doubt better than the wrongdoers, but are at the mercy of their inferiors in the field in which they themselves are inferior, where, that is, they cannot be classed among the good since they have not trained themselves in self-defense. "A gang of lads morally neglected, and in that respect inferior to the intermediate class, but in good physical training, attack and throw another set, trained neither physically nor morally, and make off with their food and their dainty clothes. What more is called for than a laugh? "And surely even the lawgiver would be right in allowing the second group to suffer this treatment, the penalty of their sloth and self-indulgence: the gymnasium lies before them, and they, in laziness and luxury and listlessness have allowed themselves to fall like fat-loaded sheep, a prey to the wolves. "But the evildoers also have their punishment: first they pay in that very wolfishness, in the disaster of their human quality: and next there is laid up for them the due of their kind; living ill here , they will not get off by death; on every precedent through all the line there waits its sequent, reasonable and natural--worse to the bad, better to the good. "This at once brings us outside the gymnasium with its fun for boys; they must grow up, both kinds, amid their childishness and both one day stand girt and armed. Then there is a finer spectacle than is ever seen by those that train in the ring. But at this stage some have not armed themselves--and the duly armed win the day. "Not even a God would have the right to deal a blow for the unwarlike: the law decrees that to come safe out of battle is for fighting men , not for those that pray. The harvest comes home not for praying but for tilling; healthy days are not for those who neglect their health: we have no right to complain of the ignoble getting the richer harvest if they are the only workers in the fields, or the best. "Again: it is childish , while we carry on all the affairs of our life to our own taste and not as the Gods would have us, to expect them to keep all well for us in spite of a life that is lived without regard the conditions which the Gods have prescribed for our well-being. Yet death would be better for us than to go our living lives condemned by the laws of the Universe. If things took the contrary course, if all the modes of folly and wickedness brought no trouble in life--then indeed we might complain of the indifference of a Providence leaving the victory to evil. "Bad men rule by the feebleness of the ruled: and this is just; the triumph of weaklings would not be just." P. 143-145 

TRUTH LOVE HOPE

SPREADING TRUTH LOVE HOPE As one who is an inveterate reader and knowledge-sharer, I cannot help what I do. I have always been this way, I am pleased to say. It is my calling, my gift, my solemn duty. Therefore I neither seek nor expect accolades, rewards, riches, fame, nor sinecure for what I find nor share. It is sufficient that God has spared me to do what I do, as God has spared and has enabled you! If something that I have read and shared appeals to you, resonates with you, please be so kind as to share it with others, as I have done, with you. I share whatever, whenever, wherever, from whomever I may be blessed to encounter any divine truth, beauty, love, knowledge, and inspiration. As I sow I have reaped abundantly!

MAHALA VALHALLA AND ALASKA

https://www.fgcquaker.org/cloud/penn-valley-friends OUR FAMILY SPENT THE NIGHT IN WASILLA, ALASKA, IN AUGUST, 2004, AT THE FABULOUS HOME OF A BLACK QUAKER-ATTORNEY-LEGISLATOR, SHE WAS A SINGLE MOTHER OF TWIN BOYS, WHO WAS A GRADUATE OF OUR HOWARD U. LAW SCHOOL CLASS OF 1946, SHE HAD BEEN A CHILDHOOD FRIEND/NEIGHBOR OF ROSA PARKS IN ALABAMA. THE NAME OF THIS REMARKABLE WOMAN WAS MAHALA ASHLEY DICKERSON, ESQ. SHE HAD HOMESTEADED TO ACQUIRE HER PALATIAL 160-ACRE ESTATE, AND LIVED IN A TRAILER ON SITE, DURING ITS CONSTRUCTION. ON HER ESTATE SAT THE FRIENDS' (QUAKERS') MEETING HOUSE. WE WALKED PAST IT IN A MORNING NATURE WALK WITH HER ALONG WITH HER HAPPY MALEMUTE DOG. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahala_Ashley_Dickerson

THE REAL THING

AIN'T NOTHING LIKE THE REAL THING If you think relying on others is shaky, trying doing it all yourself! Better than either of these, others or yourself is exclusive reliance on the Creator- God who made others, you, me, eternity, infinity, all else! Anyone or anything that is relied upon than the Source of all is vain, wasteful, idolatrous . "Ain't nothing like the real thing, baby. Nothing like the real thing," sang Tammy, Marvin; Aretha, others, you and I!

RHETORICAL UPBRINGING

MY RHETORICAL UPBRINGING "Minder the grinder , the sweet spot finder, a lover Supreme , God's gift to a woman's dream." This black street poetry and others like it was a part of our socialization as black boys in St. Louis County, Missouri, in the 1950's and 1960s. Its juxtaposition of rhythm, rhyme and prurience directed, corrected, if necessary, masculine orientation. It was just a part, but an important part, since it gave us a measurable rhetorical standard with which to launch, parry, fend off verbal barbs in our inevitable jousting contests. Practicing made for perfect i.e. , "I hate to talk about your mama, she's a sweet old soul, she got a.." Their residual sequelae marinate my everyday analyses of others' conformity to standards of rigor to which they may have been exposed as kids, or learned as adults. What I do know is that rhyme, rhythm, sex, still rock, mock, sock, like no other!

THANK YOU ARISTOTLE!

THANK YOU BROTHER ARISTOTLE ! As a body after a big meal or feast must rest, to allow its digestion, the processing of intake, along its way, through a body's system, so was I much obliged to rest from reading, as I digested, as I processed, an aspect of Aristotle's explication of justice, with present day practical applications for African American people respecting vainly sought "reparations" for wrongs done, in his classic work NICOMACHEAN ETHICS (1941, 2001). Therein he wrote: "This, then, is what the just is--the proportional; the unjust is what violates the proportion. Hence one term becomes too great , the other too small, as indeed happens in practice; for the man who acts unjustly has too much, and the man who is unjustly treated, too little, of what is good. In the case of evil the reverse is true; for the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with a greater evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the greater, and what is worthy of choice is good , and what is worthier of choice a greater good. This then is one species of the just. "The remaining one is rectificatory, which arises in connection with transactions both voluntary and involuntary. This form of just has a different specific character from the former. For the Justice which distributes common possessions is always in accordance with the kind of proportion mentioned above (for in the case also in which the distribution is made from the common funds of a partnership it will be according to the same ratio which the funds put into the business by the partners bears to one another); and the injustice opposed to this kind of justice is that which violates the proportion. But the Justice in transaction between man and man is a sort of equality indeed, and the injustice a sort of inequality ; not according to that kind of proportion, however , but according to arithmetic proportion. For it makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded a bad man or a bad man a good man, nor whether it is a good or bad man who has committed adultery; the law looks only to the distinctive character of the injury, and treats the parties as equal, if one is in the wrong and the other is being wronged, and if one inflicted the injury and the other received it. Therefore it is this kind of injustice being an inequality, the judge tries to equalize ; for in the case also in which one has received and the other has inflicted a wound, or one has slain and the other been slain, the suffering and the action has been unequally distributed; but the judge tries to equalize things by means of penalty, taking away from the gain of the assailant. For the term 'gain' is applied generally to such cases even if it be a term not appropriate to certain cases, e.g. to the person who inflicts a wound--and 'loss' to the sufferer; at all events when the suffering has been estimated , the one is called loss and the other gain. Therefore the equal is intermediate between the greater and the less, but the gain and the loss are respectively greater and less in contrary ways, more of the good and less of the evil are gain, and the contrary is loss; intermediate between between them is, as we saw, the equal, which we say is just; therefore corrective justice will be the intermediate between loss and gain." P. 1007-1008, [sections 1131-1132], THE BASIC WORKS OF ARISTOTLE (1941, 2001) Corrective justice or 'rectificatory' justice is a form of reparations in modern terms. When I realized the impulse what I was reading and its present day applications to African Americans, I was overwhelmed! Aristotle, a student of Plato, lived 300 years before the birth of Christ and was the tutor of Alexander the Great, who is said to have set out to conquer the known world, before being killed in battle, in or near Persia/Afghanistan. Egypt was among Alexander's conquests, where Aristotle was based in Alexandria with its great library, the principle repository of the world's knowledge, which was burned to the ground by who knows whom? May that Justice that Aristotle herein had defines as rectificatory, "rectification," or corrective justice, richly rectify, proportionally bless our people! The 400-year African slave trade was both a voluntary and involuntary transaction," as Aristotle describes. "African" who knew not they were "African" but tribal, voluntarily have profited by their insane self-pillaging and are yet paying for their own wantonly ignorant apostasy to fellow African Americans by colonization , coups, instability, and global exploitation. For their part, African Americans in the United States of America and in the Caribbean have made a go of it; have prospered amazingly under a regime of official white supremacy, terrorism, that imploded under the weight of internal contradictions, and various African resurgences. Thus, a final amend is rectification: setting aright thefts, usurpations, deaths, tyranny, abuses, since. at least, the Americans ': Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Civil Rights Movement and the rest, post-1865, with interest for loss. Thanks brother Aristotle!