Sunday, December 27, 2009
SNOWBANK REVERIES
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
‘Twas the day after Christmas
With snow on the ground; ice
Underneath, and more coming down.
I drove to my office to pick
Up a fee; but, an unplowed
parking lot greeted me.
Never to fear with my four-wheel
Drive, I revved up the engine,
And in I dived.
When, what to my horror should
Ensue: There was a lurch, then
A thud; and I’m stuck in the “goo!”
I gunned it and rocked it, but did
Nothing but spin. “What,” I lamented,
“a pickle I’m in!”
Then, from up on the Hilltop, a brother
Came down: wearing brown cover-alls,
crunching snowy ground.
Without saying a word, he put his
Shoulder to the hood, and pushed
And pushed, till I was cleared for good.
When I was free, only then
Did he grin. I returned
The favor and gave him a ten!
First day of Kwanzaa:
“Umoja,”-- unity,
http://www.holidays.net/kwanzaa/7days.htm
though it took a snow bank
to bring it to me!
# 30
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Unbanked, unchurched, unlearned
Greetings:
The link below opens an executive summary prepared by the FDIC, pursuant to an act of Congress to document and to develop programs to deal with persons known as "the unbanked" and "the underbanked."
It was just released to the public within the past week.
This timely and informative report may afford an opportunity for the application of Esusu, in conjunction with the extension of the R3 model, reaching also, thereby, "the unchurched," and "the unlearned."
At our December 18, 2009, meeting we must address its application. 'Tis the season!
There's even a listing of a participating Kansas City Bank with whom we may partner.
More broadly, this report may be of value to persons in other cities with similar interests. Please share.
"Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters." Luke 11:23
Much Love,
Larry D. Coleman, Esq.
larryslibrary@blogspot.com
http://www.fdic.gov/unbankedsurveys/unbankedstudy/FDICBankSurvey_ExecSummary.pdf
Central Bank of Kansas City, Kansas City, MO (Total assets: $165 million)
Central Bank of Kansas City (CBKC) is a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) that works to develop
products to serve the unbanked and underserved. CBKC is committed to achieving its goal of developing programs that
resonate with and deliver value to the community. As a result, the bank has created more effective approaches, including
its payroll card program for low income employees and participation in wider community events for educational outreach,
informed by past experiences and continued insight into its dynamic market.
EXHIBIT 2
FDIC Activities to Encourage Economic Inclusion
The FDIC’s Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion (ComE-IN) was established by Chairman Sheila C. Bair and
the FDIC Board of Directors in November 2006 pursuant to the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The mission of the
Committee is to provide the FDIC with advice and recommendations on important initiatives focused on expanding
access to banking services by underserved populations. This may include reviewing basic retail financial services such as
check cashing, money orders, remittances, stored value cards, short-term loans, savings accounts, and other services that
promote asset accumulation by individuals and financial stability.
The FDIC’s Alliance for Economic Inclusion (AEI) is the FDIC’s national initiative to establish broad-based coalitions
of financial institutions, community-based organizations and other partners in ten markets across the country to bring all
unbanked and underserved populations into the financial mainstream. AEI focuses on expanding basic retail financial
services for underserved populations, including savings accounts, affordable remittance products, small-dollar loan
programs, targeted financial education programs, alternative delivery channels and other asset-building programs. To
date, 952 banks and organizations have joined AEI nationwide; more than 65,000 new bank accounts have been opened;
45 banks are in the process of offering or developing small-dollar loans; 33 banks are offering remittance products; and
more than 61,000 consumers have been provided financial education.
The FDIC’s Affordable and Responsible Consumer Credit (ARC) small dollar loan pilot program is a two-year pilot
project to review affordable and responsible small-dollar loan programs in financial institutions. The purpose of the study
is to identify effective and replicable business practices to help banks incorporate affordable small-dollar loans into their
other mainstream banking services. Best practices resulting from the pilot will be identified and become a resource for
other institutions.
The FDIC’s Money Smart financial education curriculum is designed to help individuals outside the financial mainstream
enhance their money skills and create positive banking relationships. The FDIC also oversees the Money Smart
Alliance, which consists of over 1,500 financial institutions, nonprofit organizations, schools, government authorities and
others that partner with the FDIC to provide financial education targeted to LMI households and others.
The link below opens an executive summary prepared by the FDIC, pursuant to an act of Congress to document and to develop programs to deal with persons known as "the unbanked" and "the underbanked."
It was just released to the public within the past week.
This timely and informative report may afford an opportunity for the application of Esusu, in conjunction with the extension of the R3 model, reaching also, thereby, "the unchurched," and "the unlearned."
At our December 18, 2009, meeting we must address its application. 'Tis the season!
There's even a listing of a participating Kansas City Bank with whom we may partner.
More broadly, this report may be of value to persons in other cities with similar interests. Please share.
"Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters." Luke 11:23
Much Love,
Larry D. Coleman, Esq.
larryslibrary@blogspot.com
http://www.fdic.gov/unbankedsurveys/unbankedstudy/FDICBankSurvey_ExecSummary.pdf
Central Bank of Kansas City, Kansas City, MO (Total assets: $165 million)
Central Bank of Kansas City (CBKC) is a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) that works to develop
products to serve the unbanked and underserved. CBKC is committed to achieving its goal of developing programs that
resonate with and deliver value to the community. As a result, the bank has created more effective approaches, including
its payroll card program for low income employees and participation in wider community events for educational outreach,
informed by past experiences and continued insight into its dynamic market.
EXHIBIT 2
FDIC Activities to Encourage Economic Inclusion
The FDIC’s Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion (ComE-IN) was established by Chairman Sheila C. Bair and
the FDIC Board of Directors in November 2006 pursuant to the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The mission of the
Committee is to provide the FDIC with advice and recommendations on important initiatives focused on expanding
access to banking services by underserved populations. This may include reviewing basic retail financial services such as
check cashing, money orders, remittances, stored value cards, short-term loans, savings accounts, and other services that
promote asset accumulation by individuals and financial stability.
The FDIC’s Alliance for Economic Inclusion (AEI) is the FDIC’s national initiative to establish broad-based coalitions
of financial institutions, community-based organizations and other partners in ten markets across the country to bring all
unbanked and underserved populations into the financial mainstream. AEI focuses on expanding basic retail financial
services for underserved populations, including savings accounts, affordable remittance products, small-dollar loan
programs, targeted financial education programs, alternative delivery channels and other asset-building programs. To
date, 952 banks and organizations have joined AEI nationwide; more than 65,000 new bank accounts have been opened;
45 banks are in the process of offering or developing small-dollar loans; 33 banks are offering remittance products; and
more than 61,000 consumers have been provided financial education.
The FDIC’s Affordable and Responsible Consumer Credit (ARC) small dollar loan pilot program is a two-year pilot
project to review affordable and responsible small-dollar loan programs in financial institutions. The purpose of the study
is to identify effective and replicable business practices to help banks incorporate affordable small-dollar loans into their
other mainstream banking services. Best practices resulting from the pilot will be identified and become a resource for
other institutions.
The FDIC’s Money Smart financial education curriculum is designed to help individuals outside the financial mainstream
enhance their money skills and create positive banking relationships. The FDIC also oversees the Money Smart
Alliance, which consists of over 1,500 financial institutions, nonprofit organizations, schools, government authorities and
others that partner with the FDIC to provide financial education targeted to LMI households and others.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
AFGHANISTAN’S EERIE ECHOES
AFGHANISTAN’S EERIE ECHOES
By Larry Delano Coleman Esq.
Afghanistan is the belly-button of Asia. http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/countries/country_afghanistan.html
It is surrounded by the ancient Persians (Iran), the ancient Slavs (Indo-Europeans), the ancient Mongols (China), and ancient “Indians” (Pakistan). Then, too, “Afghanistan” boasts its own antiquity; it melded all of these forces under the spiritual influence of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and others. http://ancienthistory.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&zTi=1&sdn=ancienthistory&cdn=education&tm=107&gps=106_212_806_357&f=00&tt=14&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/kush/hd_kush.htm
This land of 30 million Sunni and Shiite Muslims is known as “the grave yard of empires.” It represents a conundrum for American military might. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4lXzptzWTg.
Afghanistan is not really a “country.” It is a biomass whose improbable life is leeched from its strategic geography along trade routes, inaccessible mountainous redoubts, virulent, recombinant and militant tribalism (Pashto, Afghan Persian (Dari), Uzbek, Turkmen, 30 minor languages) and entrenched opium trade. http://ancienthistory.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&zTi=1&sdn=ancienthistory&cdn=education&tm=26&gps=67_69_806_357&f=00&tt=14&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.fsmitha.com/h1/map13al.htm
It is an impoverished nation whose gross domestic product is approximately $700 per person, whose life expectancy is 46 years, and whose literacy rate is only about 36% of the population. http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/maps/map_country_afghanistan.html
“Jinn” -like are the people of Afghanistan, who have repelled all invaders, including Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the British, the Russians, and now the Americans and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it would appear. Their warlike tenacity and perseverance is legendary, mythical.
“In Islamic theology jinn are said to be creatures with free will, made from 'smokeless fire' by Allah in the same way humans were made of earth.[10] According to the Qur'an, Jinn have free will, and Iblis used this freedom in front of Allah by refusing to bow to Adam when Allah told Iblis to do so. By disobeying Allah, he was thrown out of Paradise and called “Shaitan”. Jinn are frequently mentioned in the Qur'an, Sura 72 of the Qur'an (named Al-Jinn) is entirely about them. Another Sura (Al-Nas) mentions Jinn in the last verse.[11] The Qur’an also mentions that Muhammad was sent as a prophet to both “humanity and the Djinn”.[12][13]
Similar to humans, jinn have free will allowing them to follow any religion they choose. They are usually invisible to humans and humans do not appear clear to them. However, jinn often harass and even possess humans, for various reasons, such as romantic infatuation, revenge, or because of a deal made with a practitioner of black magic. Jinns have the power to travel large distances extremely quickly and live in remote areas, mountains, seas, trees, and the air, in their own communities. Like humans, jinns will also be judged on the Day of Judgment and will be sent to Heaven or Hell according to their deeds.” [14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie
The Muslim holy book, the Quran, provides in Surah 51:56-59:
051.056
YUSUFALI: I have only created Jinns and men, that they may serve Me.
PICKTHAL: I created the jinn and humankind only that they might worship Me.
SHAKIR: And I have not created the jinn and the men except that they should serve Me.
051.057
YUSUFALI: No Sustenance do I require of them, nor do I require that they should feed Me.
PICKTHAL: I seek no livelihood from them, nor do I ask that they should feed Me.
SHAKIR: I do not desire from them any sustenance and I do not desire that they should feed Me.
051.058
YUSUFALI: For Allah is He Who gives (all) Sustenance,- Lord of Power,- Steadfast (for ever).
PICKTHAL: Lo! Allah! He it is that giveth livelihood, the Lord of unbreakable might.
SHAKIR: Surely Allah is the Bestower of sustenance, the Lord of Power, the Strong.
051.059
YUSUFALI: For the Wrong-doers, their portion is like unto the portion of their fellows (of earlier generations): then let them not ask Me to hasten (that portion)!
PICKTHAL: And lo! for those who (now) do wrong there is an evil day like unto the evil day (which came for) their likes (of old); so let them not ask Me to hasten on (that day).
SHAKIR: So surely those who are unjust shall have a portion like the portion of their companions, therefore let them not ask Me to hasten on.
On December 1, 2009, when President Barack Obama announced an increase of 30,000 additional U.S. troops, for the subjugation of Afghanistan, I marveled that a brilliant black man who ran and was elected on a historic platform of “change we can believe in,” would acquiescence in, and, even raise the stakes upon, a course of conduct so fraught with futility.
How does one battle jinn, much less defeat them? And, supposing that we “win,” whatever that is, what have we won, worth having? Rocks, opium poppies? More important, how do we hold it, the rocks and the opium poppies of Afghanistan, for how long, to what end, and at what cost? Scott Ritter, a foreign policy expert and military intelligence officer, has raised similar concerns, in “McChrystal Doesn‘t Get It--Does Obama?” written in November 2009. http://dprogram.net/2009/11/02/mcchrystal-doesn%E2%80%99t-get-it-does-obama-scott-ritter/
It would appear that our brilliant young black president has been bewitched, if not beguiled, into making such a catastrophic decision in the midst of an economic crisis, diverting additional billions away from a domestic program too long deliberately deferred by domestic demons intent upon dominance.
In that respect, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said regarding the connection between militarism and the alleviation of domestic poverty, in his Riverside Church address in New York on April 4, 1967, entitled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”:
Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html
What was true for Vietnam is perversely and conversely true for Afghanistan. Dr. King’s prophesy still rings true. Attempts to equate President Barack Obama, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to conflate their legacies are vainly driven by illusionists and t-shirt marketers, being well off the mark. Dr. King was a prophet. President Obama is a “politician,” just like his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, said at his, now infamous, National Press Club appearance:
MODERATOR: What is your motivation for characterizing Senator Obama's response to you as, quote, "what a politician had to say"? What do you mean by that?
WRIGHT: What I mean is what several of my white friends and several of my white, Jewish friends have written me and said to me. They've said, "You're a Christian. You understand forgiveness. We both know that, if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected."
Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever's doing the polls. Preachers say what they say because they're pastors. They have a different person to whom they're accountable.
As I said, whether he gets elected or not, I'm still going to have to be answerable to God November 5th and January 21st. That's what I mean. I do what pastors do. He does what politicians do.
I am not running for office. I am hoping to be vice president.
(LAUGHTER) http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2008/04/28/transcript-rev-wright-at-the-national-press-club/; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2H1dMbkYa4
Being a politician, President Obama has fallen sway to the powers and forces of the military industrial complex of which President Dwight Eisenhower warned as he left office:
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.
Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual --is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Military-Industrial_Complex_Speech
Unless ancient history reverse its inexorable course, which I doubt, the eerie echoes of Afghanistan will din into us the painful lessons taught former would-be conquerors of this dusty, distant, desiccated and denuded land: Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the United Kingdom, the former Soviet Union: “Welcome to the Graveyard of Empires, United States and NATO!”
Saudi Arabians, Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, perhaps, jinn themselves, are smokeless and invisible, except to other jinn in this desolate, mystical non-country now known as Afghanistan. Leave them to the tender mercy of the indigenous Taliban of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They, like other non-Pashtun invaders, will sooner or later get the boot from these bellicose, Islamic avatars who abhor literacy, modernity, science and women’s rights.
#30
By Larry Delano Coleman Esq.
Afghanistan is the belly-button of Asia. http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/countries/country_afghanistan.html
It is surrounded by the ancient Persians (Iran), the ancient Slavs (Indo-Europeans), the ancient Mongols (China), and ancient “Indians” (Pakistan). Then, too, “Afghanistan” boasts its own antiquity; it melded all of these forces under the spiritual influence of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and others. http://ancienthistory.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&zTi=1&sdn=ancienthistory&cdn=education&tm=107&gps=106_212_806_357&f=00&tt=14&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/kush/hd_kush.htm
This land of 30 million Sunni and Shiite Muslims is known as “the grave yard of empires.” It represents a conundrum for American military might. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4lXzptzWTg.
Afghanistan is not really a “country.” It is a biomass whose improbable life is leeched from its strategic geography along trade routes, inaccessible mountainous redoubts, virulent, recombinant and militant tribalism (Pashto, Afghan Persian (Dari), Uzbek, Turkmen, 30 minor languages) and entrenched opium trade. http://ancienthistory.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&zTi=1&sdn=ancienthistory&cdn=education&tm=26&gps=67_69_806_357&f=00&tt=14&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.fsmitha.com/h1/map13al.htm
It is an impoverished nation whose gross domestic product is approximately $700 per person, whose life expectancy is 46 years, and whose literacy rate is only about 36% of the population. http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/maps/map_country_afghanistan.html
“Jinn” -like are the people of Afghanistan, who have repelled all invaders, including Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the British, the Russians, and now the Americans and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it would appear. Their warlike tenacity and perseverance is legendary, mythical.
“In Islamic theology jinn are said to be creatures with free will, made from 'smokeless fire' by Allah in the same way humans were made of earth.[10] According to the Qur'an, Jinn have free will, and Iblis used this freedom in front of Allah by refusing to bow to Adam when Allah told Iblis to do so. By disobeying Allah, he was thrown out of Paradise and called “Shaitan”. Jinn are frequently mentioned in the Qur'an, Sura 72 of the Qur'an (named Al-Jinn) is entirely about them. Another Sura (Al-Nas) mentions Jinn in the last verse.[11] The Qur’an also mentions that Muhammad was sent as a prophet to both “humanity and the Djinn”.[12][13]
Similar to humans, jinn have free will allowing them to follow any religion they choose. They are usually invisible to humans and humans do not appear clear to them. However, jinn often harass and even possess humans, for various reasons, such as romantic infatuation, revenge, or because of a deal made with a practitioner of black magic. Jinns have the power to travel large distances extremely quickly and live in remote areas, mountains, seas, trees, and the air, in their own communities. Like humans, jinns will also be judged on the Day of Judgment and will be sent to Heaven or Hell according to their deeds.” [14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie
The Muslim holy book, the Quran, provides in Surah 51:56-59:
051.056
YUSUFALI: I have only created Jinns and men, that they may serve Me.
PICKTHAL: I created the jinn and humankind only that they might worship Me.
SHAKIR: And I have not created the jinn and the men except that they should serve Me.
051.057
YUSUFALI: No Sustenance do I require of them, nor do I require that they should feed Me.
PICKTHAL: I seek no livelihood from them, nor do I ask that they should feed Me.
SHAKIR: I do not desire from them any sustenance and I do not desire that they should feed Me.
051.058
YUSUFALI: For Allah is He Who gives (all) Sustenance,- Lord of Power,- Steadfast (for ever).
PICKTHAL: Lo! Allah! He it is that giveth livelihood, the Lord of unbreakable might.
SHAKIR: Surely Allah is the Bestower of sustenance, the Lord of Power, the Strong.
051.059
YUSUFALI: For the Wrong-doers, their portion is like unto the portion of their fellows (of earlier generations): then let them not ask Me to hasten (that portion)!
PICKTHAL: And lo! for those who (now) do wrong there is an evil day like unto the evil day (which came for) their likes (of old); so let them not ask Me to hasten on (that day).
SHAKIR: So surely those who are unjust shall have a portion like the portion of their companions, therefore let them not ask Me to hasten on.
On December 1, 2009, when President Barack Obama announced an increase of 30,000 additional U.S. troops, for the subjugation of Afghanistan, I marveled that a brilliant black man who ran and was elected on a historic platform of “change we can believe in,” would acquiescence in, and, even raise the stakes upon, a course of conduct so fraught with futility.
How does one battle jinn, much less defeat them? And, supposing that we “win,” whatever that is, what have we won, worth having? Rocks, opium poppies? More important, how do we hold it, the rocks and the opium poppies of Afghanistan, for how long, to what end, and at what cost? Scott Ritter, a foreign policy expert and military intelligence officer, has raised similar concerns, in “McChrystal Doesn‘t Get It--Does Obama?” written in November 2009. http://dprogram.net/2009/11/02/mcchrystal-doesn%E2%80%99t-get-it-does-obama-scott-ritter/
It would appear that our brilliant young black president has been bewitched, if not beguiled, into making such a catastrophic decision in the midst of an economic crisis, diverting additional billions away from a domestic program too long deliberately deferred by domestic demons intent upon dominance.
In that respect, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said regarding the connection between militarism and the alleviation of domestic poverty, in his Riverside Church address in New York on April 4, 1967, entitled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”:
Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html
What was true for Vietnam is perversely and conversely true for Afghanistan. Dr. King’s prophesy still rings true. Attempts to equate President Barack Obama, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to conflate their legacies are vainly driven by illusionists and t-shirt marketers, being well off the mark. Dr. King was a prophet. President Obama is a “politician,” just like his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, said at his, now infamous, National Press Club appearance:
MODERATOR: What is your motivation for characterizing Senator Obama's response to you as, quote, "what a politician had to say"? What do you mean by that?
WRIGHT: What I mean is what several of my white friends and several of my white, Jewish friends have written me and said to me. They've said, "You're a Christian. You understand forgiveness. We both know that, if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected."
Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever's doing the polls. Preachers say what they say because they're pastors. They have a different person to whom they're accountable.
As I said, whether he gets elected or not, I'm still going to have to be answerable to God November 5th and January 21st. That's what I mean. I do what pastors do. He does what politicians do.
I am not running for office. I am hoping to be vice president.
(LAUGHTER) http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2008/04/28/transcript-rev-wright-at-the-national-press-club/; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2H1dMbkYa4
Being a politician, President Obama has fallen sway to the powers and forces of the military industrial complex of which President Dwight Eisenhower warned as he left office:
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.
Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual --is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Military-Industrial_Complex_Speech
Unless ancient history reverse its inexorable course, which I doubt, the eerie echoes of Afghanistan will din into us the painful lessons taught former would-be conquerors of this dusty, distant, desiccated and denuded land: Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the United Kingdom, the former Soviet Union: “Welcome to the Graveyard of Empires, United States and NATO!”
Saudi Arabians, Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, perhaps, jinn themselves, are smokeless and invisible, except to other jinn in this desolate, mystical non-country now known as Afghanistan. Leave them to the tender mercy of the indigenous Taliban of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They, like other non-Pashtun invaders, will sooner or later get the boot from these bellicose, Islamic avatars who abhor literacy, modernity, science and women’s rights.
#30
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Of Heather and Cookie--Summoning the Righteous
Dear Loretta--
This communication arises from the Missouri judiciary's involvement with two African Americans, Heather Ellis of Kennett, Dunklin County,Missouri, http://www.semissourian.com/story/1588987.html and Charles (Cookie) Thornton of Kirkwood, St, Louis County, Missouri, http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2008/02/charles_cookie_thornton_meacha.php and nameless others.
1 Corinthians 7 says in part:
20 Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.
21 Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather.
22 For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant.
23 Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men.
24 Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.
Several years ago, I used this text to preach a sermon entitled "Stay in Your Lane."
I write to you, because few among us understand the interface between the law of God and the law of man, and the importance of our interface, as lawyers-juris doctors, between both.
Several things are converging, which afford an opportunity for us to leave a loving, if not lasting, legacy on the practice of law, civil and criminal, in Missouri and beyond.
I will be in St. Louis for Thanksgiving. The day after, I would propose a meeting somewhere: home, library, church, school, office to explore these opportunities with kindred spirits. A similar meeting will also be held in KC next month.
Do you have any suggestions?
Presently, I envision establishing a statewide organization of "righteous" lawyers/juris doctors--i.e. those who practice the "interface," above-referenced, in order to more perfectly inseminate law and equity: civil and criminal procedure, and trial and appellate practice, with that primordial divine "interface," which we frequently honor in form though not in substance.
Otherwise stated, the practice of law and the administration of justice might be improved by intercession of the righteous who fear God more than man. Then, those "holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof" may be identified, and "from these also turn away." 2 Tim.3:5. Dispararity and hypocrisy are their stock in trade. "This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me." Matt. 15:8.
I state "juris doctors," because we need help on every level and persons without law licenses can also be "righteous" and of value to all. Self-segregation is not an option at this time. The righteous are within and without the fold of licensees.
A mutual acquaintance in St. Louis of great spirit and resourcefulness is also being sent this communication to expedite realization of the aforesaid ends. Others, whose opinions I value, have also been bcc'd, and implicitly invited to share.
Much Love,
Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
This communication arises from the Missouri judiciary's involvement with two African Americans, Heather Ellis of Kennett, Dunklin County,Missouri, http://www.semissourian.com/story/1588987.html and Charles (Cookie) Thornton of Kirkwood, St, Louis County, Missouri, http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2008/02/charles_cookie_thornton_meacha.php and nameless others.
1 Corinthians 7 says in part:
20 Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.
21 Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather.
22 For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant.
23 Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men.
24 Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.
Several years ago, I used this text to preach a sermon entitled "Stay in Your Lane."
I write to you, because few among us understand the interface between the law of God and the law of man, and the importance of our interface, as lawyers-juris doctors, between both.
Several things are converging, which afford an opportunity for us to leave a loving, if not lasting, legacy on the practice of law, civil and criminal, in Missouri and beyond.
I will be in St. Louis for Thanksgiving. The day after, I would propose a meeting somewhere: home, library, church, school, office to explore these opportunities with kindred spirits. A similar meeting will also be held in KC next month.
Do you have any suggestions?
Presently, I envision establishing a statewide organization of "righteous" lawyers/juris doctors--i.e. those who practice the "interface," above-referenced, in order to more perfectly inseminate law and equity: civil and criminal procedure, and trial and appellate practice, with that primordial divine "interface," which we frequently honor in form though not in substance.
Otherwise stated, the practice of law and the administration of justice might be improved by intercession of the righteous who fear God more than man. Then, those "holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof" may be identified, and "from these also turn away." 2 Tim.3:5. Dispararity and hypocrisy are their stock in trade. "This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me." Matt. 15:8.
I state "juris doctors," because we need help on every level and persons without law licenses can also be "righteous" and of value to all. Self-segregation is not an option at this time. The righteous are within and without the fold of licensees.
A mutual acquaintance in St. Louis of great spirit and resourcefulness is also being sent this communication to expedite realization of the aforesaid ends. Others, whose opinions I value, have also been bcc'd, and implicitly invited to share.
Much Love,
Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Heather Ellis' symbol and sacrifice in Missouri
Dear Loretta--
Thanks for sharing.
Ms. Heather Ellis' bravery and plea exposed much about Missouri, even as it spared Missouri national disgrace.
First, her bravery and plea exposed the enduring legacy of racial animosity in Missouri's boothell (sic). It is, after all, south of Cape Girardeau, home of Rush--quiet as a mouse about this case--Limbaugh. The Walmart manager should've simply opened another register and cashiered Heather or the white girl, who first cut in line, separately. Numb skull or racist? Walmart's lines are too long, and too slow, notoriously,--hmm, I feel a premises liability theory evolving!
I was struck by the "Memphis SCLC" banner on the Dunklin County Circuit Court house steps in one published photograph. Were there no Missouri-based SCLC or NAACP presence? Their apparent absence exposes their weakness or diffidence, or both, in this still oppressed region of our state. They could've realized a public relations coup, as did Dr. Boyce Watkins, who attended and organized a rally, supporting Heather Ellis. Watkins is founder of the Syracuse, N.Y.-based Your Black World Coalition.
I was saddened by the fact that no black lawyers came to her aid, despite notice having been sent by me to three former presidents of the Mound City Bar Association. Are there any black lawyers practicing in Southeast Missouri? That's an indictment by itself on the quality of justice in Southeast Missouri (and Southwest) Missouri--all Missouri. As black lawyers, we should be embarrassed by this deficiency and impelled to seek remediation, somehow. This, too, falls under the heading of "exposure." This rings especially true for the National Bar Association, whose President is a St. Louisian.
I was heartened by the fact that at least one lawyer--of any stripe--stepped up to the plate, on behalf of Ms. Ellis, Mr. Scott Rosenblum, a criminal defense lawyer from St. Louis. I've sent him a thank you note. He "spared" Ms. Ellis.
Perhaps the over-arching lesson to be drawn is making a mountain out of a mole hill is impracticable for all concerned. Ms. Ellis' father, Rev. Nathaniel Ellis, a Church of God in Christ pastor, is reputed to have taught her to never admit guilt, when she is innocent of something. This is good advice in a vacuum. However, as ensuing events reflect, justice is a multifaceted gem. My plane may not be your plane, nor your facet my facet. It also shows the truth of Jesus' teaching to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. << Mark 12:17 >>
Jesus, too, was pragmatic at times.
Unto everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the sun. Eccl. 3:1.
Very Much Love,
Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
-----Original Message-----
From: Lmoorekc@aol.com
To: daryl89@sbcglobal.net; jehank@sbcglobal.net; Jorymetcalf@aol.com; ashenafi8660@att.net; LCole81937@aol.com
Sent: Fri, Nov 20, 2009 7:29 pm
Subject: Plea Bargained - Probably the best Outcome
Walmart defendant fate rests with jury
BY JIM SALTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
11/20/2009
Updated: 7:10 p.m.
KENNETT, Mo. -- With a jury still deliberating her fate, Heather Ellis made a surprise deal with prosecutors this evening that would spare her a possible felony conviction for a melee with police after a disturbance at a Walmart store here in 2007.
The family of Ellis, 24, who is black, had claimed she was the victim of discrimination by store employees and police, although defense lawyer Scott Rosenblum never made that claim during the three-day trial.
Ellis, a high school teacher who was raised in this Bootheel community but now lives in Lousiana, had previously rejected plea offers and insisted she would risk a felony conviction and possible prison sentence to make her point.
Under the terms worked out with special prosecutor Morley Swingle, she pleaded guilty of disturbing the peace and resisting arrest, both misdemeanors, in exchange for the dropping of felony charges of assaulting police.
She received a suspended imposition of sentence, which will clear her record if she successfully meets terms that include four days in county jail, one year of unsupervised probation and attendance of anger management classes.
The jury of 10 whites and two blacks was sent home after 2-1/2 hours of deliberations.
Officials claimed Ellis caused a disturbance in a dispute over who should be next in a checkout line, and that she kicked and punched police who first gave her an opportunity to just leave.
Loretta
Prayer is the most powerful method of communication.
Thanks for sharing.
Ms. Heather Ellis' bravery and plea exposed much about Missouri, even as it spared Missouri national disgrace.
First, her bravery and plea exposed the enduring legacy of racial animosity in Missouri's boothell (sic). It is, after all, south of Cape Girardeau, home of Rush--quiet as a mouse about this case--Limbaugh. The Walmart manager should've simply opened another register and cashiered Heather or the white girl, who first cut in line, separately. Numb skull or racist? Walmart's lines are too long, and too slow, notoriously,--hmm, I feel a premises liability theory evolving!
I was struck by the "Memphis SCLC" banner on the Dunklin County Circuit Court house steps in one published photograph. Were there no Missouri-based SCLC or NAACP presence? Their apparent absence exposes their weakness or diffidence, or both, in this still oppressed region of our state. They could've realized a public relations coup, as did Dr. Boyce Watkins, who attended and organized a rally, supporting Heather Ellis. Watkins is founder of the Syracuse, N.Y.-based Your Black World Coalition.
I was saddened by the fact that no black lawyers came to her aid, despite notice having been sent by me to three former presidents of the Mound City Bar Association. Are there any black lawyers practicing in Southeast Missouri? That's an indictment by itself on the quality of justice in Southeast Missouri (and Southwest) Missouri--all Missouri. As black lawyers, we should be embarrassed by this deficiency and impelled to seek remediation, somehow. This, too, falls under the heading of "exposure." This rings especially true for the National Bar Association, whose President is a St. Louisian.
I was heartened by the fact that at least one lawyer--of any stripe--stepped up to the plate, on behalf of Ms. Ellis, Mr. Scott Rosenblum, a criminal defense lawyer from St. Louis. I've sent him a thank you note. He "spared" Ms. Ellis.
Perhaps the over-arching lesson to be drawn is making a mountain out of a mole hill is impracticable for all concerned. Ms. Ellis' father, Rev. Nathaniel Ellis, a Church of God in Christ pastor, is reputed to have taught her to never admit guilt, when she is innocent of something. This is good advice in a vacuum. However, as ensuing events reflect, justice is a multifaceted gem. My plane may not be your plane, nor your facet my facet. It also shows the truth of Jesus' teaching to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. << Mark 12:17 >>
Jesus, too, was pragmatic at times.
Unto everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the sun. Eccl. 3:1.
Very Much Love,
Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
-----Original Message-----
From: Lmoorekc@aol.com
To: daryl89@sbcglobal.net; jehank@sbcglobal.net; Jorymetcalf@aol.com; ashenafi8660@att.net; LCole81937@aol.com
Sent: Fri, Nov 20, 2009 7:29 pm
Subject: Plea Bargained - Probably the best Outcome
Walmart defendant fate rests with jury
BY JIM SALTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
11/20/2009
Updated: 7:10 p.m.
KENNETT, Mo. -- With a jury still deliberating her fate, Heather Ellis made a surprise deal with prosecutors this evening that would spare her a possible felony conviction for a melee with police after a disturbance at a Walmart store here in 2007.
The family of Ellis, 24, who is black, had claimed she was the victim of discrimination by store employees and police, although defense lawyer Scott Rosenblum never made that claim during the three-day trial.
Ellis, a high school teacher who was raised in this Bootheel community but now lives in Lousiana, had previously rejected plea offers and insisted she would risk a felony conviction and possible prison sentence to make her point.
Under the terms worked out with special prosecutor Morley Swingle, she pleaded guilty of disturbing the peace and resisting arrest, both misdemeanors, in exchange for the dropping of felony charges of assaulting police.
She received a suspended imposition of sentence, which will clear her record if she successfully meets terms that include four days in county jail, one year of unsupervised probation and attendance of anger management classes.
The jury of 10 whites and two blacks was sent home after 2-1/2 hours of deliberations.
Officials claimed Ellis caused a disturbance in a dispute over who should be next in a checkout line, and that she kicked and punched police who first gave her an opportunity to just leave.
Loretta
Prayer is the most powerful method of communication.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
God's Grace is Universal
We, many Christians, would make Jesus exclusively our own, i.e., Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.(Acts 4:12).
Then, having eliminated all other possibilities, other than Jesus, certain of us further limit the characteristics of those who can or will be saved by Jesus, until no one will be, except the speaker. Grace defies ownership or entitlement by man, any man. It is the gift of God. Ephesians 6:8
King James Bible
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Jesus was not so doctrinaire, nor discriminating, as we would have him be. His disciples were. But, what did they know? When others were casting out devils in Jesus name who were not of them, Jesus said forbid them not for those who are not against us are for us. Luke 9:50--
King James Bible
And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.
Fortunately, Jesus said I have a flock not of this fold. In John 10:16, he said:
English Revised Version
And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd.
I do not mean to be disagreeable, but I have always taken pointed exception to those who would narrow the scope of God's grace, by constricting the fullness of his word. Even so, the contrary view is decidedly the majority view in Christendom. Mine is the decided minority.
Then, having eliminated all other possibilities, other than Jesus, certain of us further limit the characteristics of those who can or will be saved by Jesus, until no one will be, except the speaker. Grace defies ownership or entitlement by man, any man. It is the gift of God. Ephesians 6:8
King James Bible
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Jesus was not so doctrinaire, nor discriminating, as we would have him be. His disciples were. But, what did they know? When others were casting out devils in Jesus name who were not of them, Jesus said forbid them not for those who are not against us are for us. Luke 9:50--
King James Bible
And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.
Fortunately, Jesus said I have a flock not of this fold. In John 10:16, he said:
English Revised Version
And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd.
I do not mean to be disagreeable, but I have always taken pointed exception to those who would narrow the scope of God's grace, by constricting the fullness of his word. Even so, the contrary view is decidedly the majority view in Christendom. Mine is the decided minority.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Probing Questions for Psychiatrists
Dear Dr. Jerry Bobo and Dr. Nicodemus Watts--
I greatly enjoyed your probing psychiatric presentation on August 2, 2009, in San Diego, California, during the National Bar Association, which dealt with "Depression and the Black Lawyer."
I had indicated that I would write to you, rather than burden you with further questions. Hopefully, you've not completely forgotten me or our conversation.
During your seminar, I inquired whether either of you had read BLACK RAGE, by Grier and Cobb, black psychiatrists, or WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, or BLACK SKIN/WHITE MASKS by Franz Fanon, a black psychiatrist from Martinique.
I do not now recall your responses. My point was that multigenerational environmental racism affects our people deleteriously, (and epigenetically), I suspect, in every realm.
While writing this email, I was fortunate to run across a book, which further ties law and psychiatry together, by a California lawyer named Paul Harris. His vital book is entitled BLACK RAGE CONFRONTS THE LAW http://www.guerrillalaw.com/blackrage.html. Mr. Harris is a white law professor at New College in San Francisco. http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=9780814735923
Perhaps, his book may prove to be as valuable to you as it promises to be to me. I've already ordered it.
The real question I have for you is this: Is the "mind" in the brain or in the heart or some combination of the two or neither? I ask this, because I note that the word "brain" does not appear in the
Bible, while the word "heart" is fairly ubiquitous. Implicit in my question is whether there is necessarily antipathy between psychiatry and theology? Being an AME preacher, I'd like to know.
I am sharing this communication with Attorney Kamau King, President of the Men's Task Force, National Bar Association, whose prescience facilitated your presentation at our convention.
Respectfully,
Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
Kansas City, Missouri
I greatly enjoyed your probing psychiatric presentation on August 2, 2009, in San Diego, California, during the National Bar Association, which dealt with "Depression and the Black Lawyer."
I had indicated that I would write to you, rather than burden you with further questions. Hopefully, you've not completely forgotten me or our conversation.
During your seminar, I inquired whether either of you had read BLACK RAGE, by Grier and Cobb, black psychiatrists, or WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, or BLACK SKIN/WHITE MASKS by Franz Fanon, a black psychiatrist from Martinique.
I do not now recall your responses. My point was that multigenerational environmental racism affects our people deleteriously, (and epigenetically), I suspect, in every realm.
While writing this email, I was fortunate to run across a book, which further ties law and psychiatry together, by a California lawyer named Paul Harris. His vital book is entitled BLACK RAGE CONFRONTS THE LAW http://www.guerrillalaw.com/blackrage.html. Mr. Harris is a white law professor at New College in San Francisco. http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=9780814735923
Perhaps, his book may prove to be as valuable to you as it promises to be to me. I've already ordered it.
The real question I have for you is this: Is the "mind" in the brain or in the heart or some combination of the two or neither? I ask this, because I note that the word "brain" does not appear in the
Bible, while the word "heart" is fairly ubiquitous. Implicit in my question is whether there is necessarily antipathy between psychiatry and theology? Being an AME preacher, I'd like to know.
I am sharing this communication with Attorney Kamau King, President of the Men's Task Force, National Bar Association, whose prescience facilitated your presentation at our convention.
Respectfully,
Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
Kansas City, Missouri
Sunday, November 8, 2009
REVIVED LAWYER’S CREED
REVIVED LAWYER’S CREED
Isaiah 33:22 (New International Version)
22 For the LORD is our judge,
the LORD is our lawgiver,
the LORD is our king;
it is he who will save us.
(GOD IS SUPERIOR TO ARTICLE 1, 2, OR 3 OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION)
Psalm 19 (New International Version)
Psalm 19
7 The law of the LORD is perfect,
reviving the soul.
The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
8 The precepts of the LORD are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the LORD are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
9 The fear of the LORD is pure,
enduring forever.
The ordinances of the LORD are sure
and altogether righteous.
10 They are more precious than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
than honey from the comb.
11 By them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
Psalm 1 (New International Version)
Psalm 1
BOOK I : Psalms 1-41
1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
Psalm 119 (English Standard Version)
Psalm 119
Your Word Is a Lamp to My Feet
Gimel
17(W) Deal bountifully with your servant,
(X) that I may live and keep your word.18Open my eyes, that I may behold
wondrous things out of your law.19I am(Y) a sojourner on the earth;
(Z) hide not your commandments from me!20My soul is consumed with(AA) longing
for your rules[d] at all times.21You rebuke(AB) the insolent,(AC) accursed ones,
who(AD) wander from your commandments.22Take away from me(AE) scorn and contempt,
(AF) for I have kept your testimonies.23Even though(AG) princes sit plotting against me,
your servant will(AH) meditate on your statutes.24Your testimonies are my(AI) delight;
they are my(AJ) counselors.
Daleth
25(AK) My soul clings to the dust;
(AL) give me life(AM) according to your word!26When(AN) I told of my ways, you answered me;
(AO) teach me your statutes!27(AP) Make me understand the way of your precepts,
and I will(AQ) meditate on your wondrous works.28(AR) My soul melts away for sorrow;
strengthen me according to your word!29Put false ways far from me
and graciously(AS) teach me your law!30I have chosen the way of faithfulness;
I(AT) set your rules before me.31I cling to your testimonies, O LORD;
(AU) let me not be put to shame!32I will run in the way of your commandments
when you(AV) enlarge my heart![e]
He
33(AW) Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes;
and I will keep it(AX) to the end.[f]34(AY) Give me understanding, that I may keep your law
and observe it with my whole heart.35(AZ) Lead me in the path of your commandments,
for I(BA) delight in it.36(BB) Incline my heart to your testimonies,
and not to(BC) selfish gain!37(BD) Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things;
and(BE) give me life in your ways.38(BF) Confirm to your servant your promise,
(BG) that you may be feared.39Turn away the(BH) reproach that I dread,
for your rules are good.40Behold, I(BI) long for your precepts;
(BJ) in your righteousness give me life!
Waw
41Let your(BK) steadfast love come to me, O LORD,
your salvation(BL) according to your promise;42then(BM) shall I have an answer for him(BN) who taunts me,
for I trust in your word.43And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth,
for my(BO) hope is in your rules.44I will keep your law continually,
forever and ever,45and I shall walk(BP) in a wide place,
for I have(BQ) sought your precepts.46I will also speak of your testimonies(BR) before kings
and shall not be put to shame,47for I(BS) find my delight in your commandments,
which I love.48I will(BT) lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love,
and I will(BU) meditate on your statutes.
Proverbs 9 (English Standard Version)
Proverbs 9
The Way of Wisdom
7Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse,
and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury.8(R) Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you;
(S) reprove a wise man, and he will love you.9Give instruction[b] to a wise man, and he will be(T) still wiser;
teach a righteous man, and he will(U) increase in learning.10(V) The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
and(W) the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.11For by me(X) your days will be multiplied,
and years will be added to your life.12(Y) If you are wise, you are wise for yourself;
if you scoff, you alone will bear it.
Habakkuk 3:17-19 (King James Version)
17Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls:
18Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.
19The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.
Isaiah 33:22 (New International Version)
22 For the LORD is our judge,
the LORD is our lawgiver,
the LORD is our king;
it is he who will save us.
(GOD IS SUPERIOR TO ARTICLE 1, 2, OR 3 OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION)
Psalm 19 (New International Version)
Psalm 19
7 The law of the LORD is perfect,
reviving the soul.
The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
8 The precepts of the LORD are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the LORD are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
9 The fear of the LORD is pure,
enduring forever.
The ordinances of the LORD are sure
and altogether righteous.
10 They are more precious than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
than honey from the comb.
11 By them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
Psalm 1 (New International Version)
Psalm 1
BOOK I : Psalms 1-41
1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
Psalm 119 (English Standard Version)
Psalm 119
Your Word Is a Lamp to My Feet
Gimel
17(W) Deal bountifully with your servant,
(X) that I may live and keep your word.18Open my eyes, that I may behold
wondrous things out of your law.19I am(Y) a sojourner on the earth;
(Z) hide not your commandments from me!20My soul is consumed with(AA) longing
for your rules[d] at all times.21You rebuke(AB) the insolent,(AC) accursed ones,
who(AD) wander from your commandments.22Take away from me(AE) scorn and contempt,
(AF) for I have kept your testimonies.23Even though(AG) princes sit plotting against me,
your servant will(AH) meditate on your statutes.24Your testimonies are my(AI) delight;
they are my(AJ) counselors.
Daleth
25(AK) My soul clings to the dust;
(AL) give me life(AM) according to your word!26When(AN) I told of my ways, you answered me;
(AO) teach me your statutes!27(AP) Make me understand the way of your precepts,
and I will(AQ) meditate on your wondrous works.28(AR) My soul melts away for sorrow;
strengthen me according to your word!29Put false ways far from me
and graciously(AS) teach me your law!30I have chosen the way of faithfulness;
I(AT) set your rules before me.31I cling to your testimonies, O LORD;
(AU) let me not be put to shame!32I will run in the way of your commandments
when you(AV) enlarge my heart![e]
He
33(AW) Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes;
and I will keep it(AX) to the end.[f]34(AY) Give me understanding, that I may keep your law
and observe it with my whole heart.35(AZ) Lead me in the path of your commandments,
for I(BA) delight in it.36(BB) Incline my heart to your testimonies,
and not to(BC) selfish gain!37(BD) Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things;
and(BE) give me life in your ways.38(BF) Confirm to your servant your promise,
(BG) that you may be feared.39Turn away the(BH) reproach that I dread,
for your rules are good.40Behold, I(BI) long for your precepts;
(BJ) in your righteousness give me life!
Waw
41Let your(BK) steadfast love come to me, O LORD,
your salvation(BL) according to your promise;42then(BM) shall I have an answer for him(BN) who taunts me,
for I trust in your word.43And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth,
for my(BO) hope is in your rules.44I will keep your law continually,
forever and ever,45and I shall walk(BP) in a wide place,
for I have(BQ) sought your precepts.46I will also speak of your testimonies(BR) before kings
and shall not be put to shame,47for I(BS) find my delight in your commandments,
which I love.48I will(BT) lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love,
and I will(BU) meditate on your statutes.
Proverbs 9 (English Standard Version)
Proverbs 9
The Way of Wisdom
7Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse,
and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury.8(R) Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you;
(S) reprove a wise man, and he will love you.9Give instruction[b] to a wise man, and he will be(T) still wiser;
teach a righteous man, and he will(U) increase in learning.10(V) The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
and(W) the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.11For by me(X) your days will be multiplied,
and years will be added to your life.12(Y) If you are wise, you are wise for yourself;
if you scoff, you alone will bear it.
Habakkuk 3:17-19 (King James Version)
17Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls:
18Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.
19The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
La Napa: The Gift of "Good Hair"
http://www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/leonard-pitts/story/1309381.html
This above-linked column by Leonard Pitts, LET'S GET SOMETHING STRAIGHT: YOUR HAIR DOESN'T HAVE TO BE, (11/3/2009) caused me to shriek with recognition and to weep with love.
He writes about black women. And their hair, and about Chris Rock's powerful movie, GOOD HAIR. Surely, good hair must be like "Pure wool." Dan. 7:9. http://nasb.scripturetext.com/daniel/7.htm
My wife and I attended the movie on Halloween night: trick or treat? Definitely a treat. I encourage you all to see it! It will righteously stimulate your follicles!
The last three paragraphs of his column rank with any hymn to love ever written to any woman by any man at any time or place. It hit me in my solar plexus, and made me sputter, because I know, recognize, love, and revere the beautiful women of which he writes: my wife, my mother, my sisters, my aunts, my cousins, my nieces, and my grandmothers.
We are the only people on the planet with nappy hair. We are also the progenitors of mankind and civilization. Our women, nappy hair and all, are the mothers of all humans. The Spanish have a word for "the gift," entitled "la Napa." So, nappy hair is a "gift" from God, just like its bearer "la Negro," another Spanish word, meaning "black", which comes from its Latin root, "Niger."
This above-linked column by Leonard Pitts, LET'S GET SOMETHING STRAIGHT: YOUR HAIR DOESN'T HAVE TO BE, (11/3/2009) caused me to shriek with recognition and to weep with love.
He writes about black women. And their hair, and about Chris Rock's powerful movie, GOOD HAIR. Surely, good hair must be like "Pure wool." Dan. 7:9. http://nasb.scripturetext.com/daniel/7.htm
My wife and I attended the movie on Halloween night: trick or treat? Definitely a treat. I encourage you all to see it! It will righteously stimulate your follicles!
The last three paragraphs of his column rank with any hymn to love ever written to any woman by any man at any time or place. It hit me in my solar plexus, and made me sputter, because I know, recognize, love, and revere the beautiful women of which he writes: my wife, my mother, my sisters, my aunts, my cousins, my nieces, and my grandmothers.
We are the only people on the planet with nappy hair. We are also the progenitors of mankind and civilization. Our women, nappy hair and all, are the mothers of all humans. The Spanish have a word for "the gift," entitled "la Napa." So, nappy hair is a "gift" from God, just like its bearer "la Negro," another Spanish word, meaning "black", which comes from its Latin root, "Niger."
Saturday, October 31, 2009
TOO HIGH FOR JESUS…COME DOWN!
TOO HIGH FOR JESUS…COME DOWN!
Sermon delivered November 1, 2009
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
At Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church
Rev. Clinton Stancil, Pastor
Advice comes in many forms. Some good, some not so good.
Some advice is solicited. Other advice is unsolicited.
Some advice we readily recognize, and appreciate. But, other advice we misinterpret and therefore reject, thinking we know better.
Sometimes, we are prepared to receive advice for the good it contains. At other times, we can’t receive it till years later.
Today, Church, we going to talk about advice. Heavenly advice.
We’ve all given advice, sometimes to a fault. Help me Holy Ghost! And we’ve all received advice, whether we asked for it or not.
In my day job, as a lawyer, people pay me to give advice. Praise God. Whether they follow it or not is up to them. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink!
The Holy Spirit, the Comforter, advises us continually, in a “still, small voice.” 1 Kings 19:12. It gives us advice 24/7, 365.
But many times, we choose not to hear; or, if we hear, we choose not to heed what we hear.
In our message today, we examine advice which our Savior Jesus Christ gives and how recipients treat that divine dispensation.
Today, Church, we examine the subject:
TOO HIGH FOR JESUS…COME DOWN!
Let us pray.
In Luke 19, we find the following:
1AND [Jesus] entered Jericho and was passing through it.
2And there was a man called Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector, and [he was] rich.
3And he was trying to see Jesus, which One He was, but he could not on account of the crowd, because he was small in stature.
4So he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass that way.
5And when Jesus reached the place, He looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.
6So he hurried and came down, and he received and welcomed Him joyfully.
7And when the people saw it, they all [a]muttered among themselves and indignantly complained, He has gone in to be the guest of and lodge with a man who is devoted to sin and preeminently a sinner.
8So then Zacchaeus stood up and solemnly declared to the Lord, See, Lord, the half of my goods I [now] give [by way of restoration] to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone out of anything, I [now] restore four times as much.(A)
9And Jesus said to him, Today is [[b]Messianic and spiritual] salvation come to [all the members of] this household, since Zacchaeus too is a [real spiritual] son of Abraham;
10For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.
In this account, we have a little short despised tax collector, named Zacchaeus, who desired to see Jesus. But the crowd was too big, for him to get close enough to see. So, he ran ahead, along “the way” he perceived Jesus would come, and climbed up a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus. When Jesus looked up into that tree, and saw Zacchaeus, Jesus said: “come down, Zacchaeus.” You too high. He said come down. I need to stay at your house.
Sometimes, church we too can get too high. Too full of ourselves, to self-important to come down. But, only when we come down, only when we humble ourselves, can we be of any value to our Savior, or mankind.
Zacchaeus came down, hurried down. Joyfully. This was too much to hope for. We went from climbing a tree just to be able to see Jesus, to having Jesus see him, and then call him by name. Then, to be able to host Jesus at his house: What a blessing!
Now, Zacchaeus was a rich man. As this example shows, there is nothing necessarily bad about rich people. Jesus looks beyond the artificiality of riches and sees the man behind the riches. Even the rich are capable of redemption through Christ Jesus, who is no respecter of persons.
On top of his riches, however, Zacchaeus was also a tax collector for the Roman overlords—a publican. These folks were hated and despised by the Jews. So Christ’s staying with Zacchaeus caused more than a few murmurs.
But, Zacchaeus told Jesus that he was a super-duper tither. He gave one-half of his goods to the poor, and if he had defrauded any man, he’d restored it four fold.
Jesus said today is salvation come to the household of Zacchaeus. Jesus said he came to seek and save the lost.
This hated and despised man was redeemed by Jesus.
When the bride groom comes, will you be ready church?
Will your house be in order? Will your lamp be found full of oil and will your wick be trimmed.
Will you open your door, when the bridge groom comes?
Will you be able to receive Jesus?
Will you be able to receive Jesus, Church?
Or will you be TOO HIGH FOR JESUS TO COME DOWN!
My Lord and My God!
Let me give you one other illustration from God’s word. Turn back one chapter to Luke 18:18-30, if you will. There, it is written:
18And a certain ruler asked Him, Good Teacher [You who are [m]essentially and perfectly [n]morally good], what shall I do to inherit eternal life [to partake of eternal salvation in the Messiah's kingdom]?
19Jesus said to him, Why do you call Me [[o]essentially and perfectly [p]morally] good? No one is [[q]essentially and perfectly [r]morally] good--except God only.
20You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not witness falsely, honor your father and your mother.(A)
21And he replied, All these I have kept from my youth.
22And when Jesus heard it, He said to him, One thing you still lack. Sell everything that you have and [s]divide [the money] among the poor, and you will have [rich] treasure in heaven; and come back [and] follow Me [become My disciple, join My party, and accompany Me].
23But when he heard this, he became distressed and very sorrowful, for he was rich--exceedingly so.
24Jesus, observing him, said, How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!
25For it is easier for a camel to enter through a needle's eye than [for] a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
26And those who heard it said, Then who can be saved?
27But He said, What is impossible with men is possible with God.(B)
28And Peter said, See, we have left our own [things--home, family, and business] and have followed You.
29And He said to them, I say to you truly, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God
30Who will not receive in return many times more in this world and, in the coming age, eternal life.
This account of the rich young ruler is a well known passage of scripture.
In it, we have another man who sought Jesus. Having lived an exemplary life, by obeying the commandments, he still wanted to know, what he must do to gain eternal life. Jesus told him to obey the commandments. The young man said, I’ve always done that. No murders, no adultery, no stealing, no lying. And he’d honored his father and his mother, and on top of that had treated his neighbors as he treated himself. A good man.
But Jesus hit him with a haymaker. Jesus said sell all that you have and give it to the poor. You will have treasure in heaven. Then, come and follow me.
The word says the young man went away sorrowfully.
Jesus then commented upon how difficult it was for rich men to enter the kingdom of heaven, comparable to a camel going through the eye of a needle. What that means is that people hold onto earthly things, rather than open their hearts to spiritual things. These are they who trust in riches, in things of this world, rather than the spirit.
Naturally, Peter, being Peter, interjected. Who then can be saved? We’ve left everything to follow you!
Jesus of course had a ready answer. There’s no question Jesus cannot answer, Church. Jesus pointed out that those who follow him shall receive on this earth many times more than they give up, and, as a bonus get eternal life. Eternal life is the lagniappe! That’s a Louisiana word meaning “bonus.”
So, you see church there is a present reward for those who follow Jesus. Who are not too high to come down, like the rich young ruler—who only heard half the story!
If he’d a stuck around. If he hadn’t been too high for Jesus, caught up in his own self-righteousness, he would have heard Jesus say, that whatever he gave up for the Kingdom of God, he’d have gotten back, many fold on this earth, AND, AND—THE BIG, also obtain eternal life.
Praise God for Jesus. Amen.
The rich young ruler was
TOO HIGH FOR JESUS TO COME DOWN!
In his case, he didn’t have to come out of a tree, he had to relinquish worldly possessions and trust Jesus if he wanted to obtain eternal life.
TOO HIGH FOR JESUS…COME DOWN!
“If religion was a thing that money could buy, the rich would live and the poor would die. I’m counting up the costs every day of my life.”
Thank You and God Bless you!
Sermon delivered November 1, 2009
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
At Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church
Rev. Clinton Stancil, Pastor
Advice comes in many forms. Some good, some not so good.
Some advice is solicited. Other advice is unsolicited.
Some advice we readily recognize, and appreciate. But, other advice we misinterpret and therefore reject, thinking we know better.
Sometimes, we are prepared to receive advice for the good it contains. At other times, we can’t receive it till years later.
Today, Church, we going to talk about advice. Heavenly advice.
We’ve all given advice, sometimes to a fault. Help me Holy Ghost! And we’ve all received advice, whether we asked for it or not.
In my day job, as a lawyer, people pay me to give advice. Praise God. Whether they follow it or not is up to them. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink!
The Holy Spirit, the Comforter, advises us continually, in a “still, small voice.” 1 Kings 19:12. It gives us advice 24/7, 365.
But many times, we choose not to hear; or, if we hear, we choose not to heed what we hear.
In our message today, we examine advice which our Savior Jesus Christ gives and how recipients treat that divine dispensation.
Today, Church, we examine the subject:
TOO HIGH FOR JESUS…COME DOWN!
Let us pray.
In Luke 19, we find the following:
1AND [Jesus] entered Jericho and was passing through it.
2And there was a man called Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector, and [he was] rich.
3And he was trying to see Jesus, which One He was, but he could not on account of the crowd, because he was small in stature.
4So he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass that way.
5And when Jesus reached the place, He looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.
6So he hurried and came down, and he received and welcomed Him joyfully.
7And when the people saw it, they all [a]muttered among themselves and indignantly complained, He has gone in to be the guest of and lodge with a man who is devoted to sin and preeminently a sinner.
8So then Zacchaeus stood up and solemnly declared to the Lord, See, Lord, the half of my goods I [now] give [by way of restoration] to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone out of anything, I [now] restore four times as much.(A)
9And Jesus said to him, Today is [[b]Messianic and spiritual] salvation come to [all the members of] this household, since Zacchaeus too is a [real spiritual] son of Abraham;
10For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.
In this account, we have a little short despised tax collector, named Zacchaeus, who desired to see Jesus. But the crowd was too big, for him to get close enough to see. So, he ran ahead, along “the way” he perceived Jesus would come, and climbed up a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus. When Jesus looked up into that tree, and saw Zacchaeus, Jesus said: “come down, Zacchaeus.” You too high. He said come down. I need to stay at your house.
Sometimes, church we too can get too high. Too full of ourselves, to self-important to come down. But, only when we come down, only when we humble ourselves, can we be of any value to our Savior, or mankind.
Zacchaeus came down, hurried down. Joyfully. This was too much to hope for. We went from climbing a tree just to be able to see Jesus, to having Jesus see him, and then call him by name. Then, to be able to host Jesus at his house: What a blessing!
Now, Zacchaeus was a rich man. As this example shows, there is nothing necessarily bad about rich people. Jesus looks beyond the artificiality of riches and sees the man behind the riches. Even the rich are capable of redemption through Christ Jesus, who is no respecter of persons.
On top of his riches, however, Zacchaeus was also a tax collector for the Roman overlords—a publican. These folks were hated and despised by the Jews. So Christ’s staying with Zacchaeus caused more than a few murmurs.
But, Zacchaeus told Jesus that he was a super-duper tither. He gave one-half of his goods to the poor, and if he had defrauded any man, he’d restored it four fold.
Jesus said today is salvation come to the household of Zacchaeus. Jesus said he came to seek and save the lost.
This hated and despised man was redeemed by Jesus.
When the bride groom comes, will you be ready church?
Will your house be in order? Will your lamp be found full of oil and will your wick be trimmed.
Will you open your door, when the bridge groom comes?
Will you be able to receive Jesus?
Will you be able to receive Jesus, Church?
Or will you be TOO HIGH FOR JESUS TO COME DOWN!
My Lord and My God!
Let me give you one other illustration from God’s word. Turn back one chapter to Luke 18:18-30, if you will. There, it is written:
18And a certain ruler asked Him, Good Teacher [You who are [m]essentially and perfectly [n]morally good], what shall I do to inherit eternal life [to partake of eternal salvation in the Messiah's kingdom]?
19Jesus said to him, Why do you call Me [[o]essentially and perfectly [p]morally] good? No one is [[q]essentially and perfectly [r]morally] good--except God only.
20You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not witness falsely, honor your father and your mother.(A)
21And he replied, All these I have kept from my youth.
22And when Jesus heard it, He said to him, One thing you still lack. Sell everything that you have and [s]divide [the money] among the poor, and you will have [rich] treasure in heaven; and come back [and] follow Me [become My disciple, join My party, and accompany Me].
23But when he heard this, he became distressed and very sorrowful, for he was rich--exceedingly so.
24Jesus, observing him, said, How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!
25For it is easier for a camel to enter through a needle's eye than [for] a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
26And those who heard it said, Then who can be saved?
27But He said, What is impossible with men is possible with God.(B)
28And Peter said, See, we have left our own [things--home, family, and business] and have followed You.
29And He said to them, I say to you truly, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God
30Who will not receive in return many times more in this world and, in the coming age, eternal life.
This account of the rich young ruler is a well known passage of scripture.
In it, we have another man who sought Jesus. Having lived an exemplary life, by obeying the commandments, he still wanted to know, what he must do to gain eternal life. Jesus told him to obey the commandments. The young man said, I’ve always done that. No murders, no adultery, no stealing, no lying. And he’d honored his father and his mother, and on top of that had treated his neighbors as he treated himself. A good man.
But Jesus hit him with a haymaker. Jesus said sell all that you have and give it to the poor. You will have treasure in heaven. Then, come and follow me.
The word says the young man went away sorrowfully.
Jesus then commented upon how difficult it was for rich men to enter the kingdom of heaven, comparable to a camel going through the eye of a needle. What that means is that people hold onto earthly things, rather than open their hearts to spiritual things. These are they who trust in riches, in things of this world, rather than the spirit.
Naturally, Peter, being Peter, interjected. Who then can be saved? We’ve left everything to follow you!
Jesus of course had a ready answer. There’s no question Jesus cannot answer, Church. Jesus pointed out that those who follow him shall receive on this earth many times more than they give up, and, as a bonus get eternal life. Eternal life is the lagniappe! That’s a Louisiana word meaning “bonus.”
So, you see church there is a present reward for those who follow Jesus. Who are not too high to come down, like the rich young ruler—who only heard half the story!
If he’d a stuck around. If he hadn’t been too high for Jesus, caught up in his own self-righteousness, he would have heard Jesus say, that whatever he gave up for the Kingdom of God, he’d have gotten back, many fold on this earth, AND, AND—THE BIG, also obtain eternal life.
Praise God for Jesus. Amen.
The rich young ruler was
TOO HIGH FOR JESUS TO COME DOWN!
In his case, he didn’t have to come out of a tree, he had to relinquish worldly possessions and trust Jesus if he wanted to obtain eternal life.
TOO HIGH FOR JESUS…COME DOWN!
“If religion was a thing that money could buy, the rich would live and the poor would die. I’m counting up the costs every day of my life.”
Thank You and God Bless you!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
“JUDGE NOT THAT YOU BE NOT JUDGED”
“JUDGE NOT THAT YOU BE NOT JUDGED”
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Delivered at Gilbert A.M.E. Church
Kansas City, Missouri
Rev. Brenda Smith, Pastor
Bible study is a wonderful thing. A good thing. A wholesome thing. A necessary thing.
Our discussion today arises from a wonderful Bible study held right here in this church, under the auspices of your fine pastor, my sister-beloved, Rev. Brenda Smith, which I attended several weeks ago.
In that Bible study, we covered the 38th chapter of Genesis. That account involved Judah and his daughter-in-law, Tamar. Who all was here for that Bible study? Raise you hands. Thank you.
If you didn’t raise your hand, you missed it. But, fortunately, today we’ll address it again, in Jesus’ name.
Let us pray.
In Matthew 7: 1-5, we find these words--
1Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Our subject today is “JUDGE NOT THAT YOU BE NOT JUDGED.”
You know, self-righteousness can be a dangerous thing. A lot of times you can get caught up, swallowed up, in your own righteousness. You can find yourself in your own trick bag.
In Proverbs 11: 5-6, we find--
5The righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way: but the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness.
6The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them: but transgressors shall be taken in their own naughtiness.
“JUDGE NOT THAT YOU BE NOT JUDGED.”
Turn with me, now, to Genesis 38:1-26
1And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.
2And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite, whose name was Shuah; and he took her, and went in unto her.
3And she conceived, and bare a son; and he called his name Er.
4And she conceived again, and bare a son; and she called his name Onan.
5And she yet again conceived, and bare a son; and called his name Shelah: and he was at Chezib, when she bare him.
6And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, whose name was Tamar.
7And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him.
8And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.
9And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.
10And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also.
11Then said Judah to Tamar his daughter in law, Remain a widow at thy father's house, till Shelah my son be grown: for he said, Lest peradventure he die also, as his brethren did. And Tamar went and dwelt in her father's house.
12And in process of time the daughter of Shuah Judah's wife died; and Judah was comforted, and went up unto his sheepshearers to Timnath, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite.
13And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father in law goeth up to Timnath to shear his sheep.
14And she put her widow's garments off from her, and covered her with a vail, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is by the way to Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given unto him to wife.
15When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered her face.
16And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not that she was his daughter in law.) And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou mayest come in unto me?
17And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it?
18And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave it her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him.
19And she arose, and went away, and laid by her vail from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood.
20And Judah sent the kid by the hand of his friend the Adullamite, to receive his pledge from the woman's hand: but he found her not.
21Then he asked the men of that place, saying, Where is the harlot, that was openly by the way side? And they said, There was no harlot in this place.
22And he returned to Judah, and said, I cannot find her; and also the men of the place said, that there was no harlot in this place.
23And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be shamed: behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her.
24And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.
25When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff.
26And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more.
(Talk to them directly for explanation of Judah’s hypocrisy and how he ended up judging his daughter in law and getting caught up himself in his own snare.)
Now, let’s look at another example of hypocrisy. This familiar passage of scriptures comes from John 8:
1But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" 6They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." 8Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
11"No one, sir," she said.
"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."
Notice, the eldest led the way, in sneaking away, for they, themselves were guilty of sin. They were convicted by their own conscience.
The word is true, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23. So, before you point your finger, remember, you’ve got three pointing back at you, and a thumb pointed toward heaven.
“JUDGE NOT THAT YOU BE NOT JUDGED”
Romans 2:21-24
21Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?
22Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?
23Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God?
24For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.
People talk about the waywardness of our youth, how do you think they got that way…pull from “young boy”: Poppa’s on the slip and momma’s on the slide, young black boys facing homicide. The adults are the ones who should lead the way, by word, by deed, by night. By day. That they have failed is evident. That inspired this poetic lament!
“JUDGE NOT THAT YOU BE NOT JUDGED.”
Thank you and God bless you! Amen.
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Delivered at Gilbert A.M.E. Church
Kansas City, Missouri
Rev. Brenda Smith, Pastor
Bible study is a wonderful thing. A good thing. A wholesome thing. A necessary thing.
Our discussion today arises from a wonderful Bible study held right here in this church, under the auspices of your fine pastor, my sister-beloved, Rev. Brenda Smith, which I attended several weeks ago.
In that Bible study, we covered the 38th chapter of Genesis. That account involved Judah and his daughter-in-law, Tamar. Who all was here for that Bible study? Raise you hands. Thank you.
If you didn’t raise your hand, you missed it. But, fortunately, today we’ll address it again, in Jesus’ name.
Let us pray.
In Matthew 7: 1-5, we find these words--
1Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Our subject today is “JUDGE NOT THAT YOU BE NOT JUDGED.”
You know, self-righteousness can be a dangerous thing. A lot of times you can get caught up, swallowed up, in your own righteousness. You can find yourself in your own trick bag.
In Proverbs 11: 5-6, we find--
5The righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way: but the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness.
6The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them: but transgressors shall be taken in their own naughtiness.
“JUDGE NOT THAT YOU BE NOT JUDGED.”
Turn with me, now, to Genesis 38:1-26
1And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.
2And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite, whose name was Shuah; and he took her, and went in unto her.
3And she conceived, and bare a son; and he called his name Er.
4And she conceived again, and bare a son; and she called his name Onan.
5And she yet again conceived, and bare a son; and called his name Shelah: and he was at Chezib, when she bare him.
6And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, whose name was Tamar.
7And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him.
8And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.
9And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.
10And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also.
11Then said Judah to Tamar his daughter in law, Remain a widow at thy father's house, till Shelah my son be grown: for he said, Lest peradventure he die also, as his brethren did. And Tamar went and dwelt in her father's house.
12And in process of time the daughter of Shuah Judah's wife died; and Judah was comforted, and went up unto his sheepshearers to Timnath, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite.
13And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father in law goeth up to Timnath to shear his sheep.
14And she put her widow's garments off from her, and covered her with a vail, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is by the way to Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given unto him to wife.
15When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered her face.
16And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not that she was his daughter in law.) And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou mayest come in unto me?
17And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it?
18And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave it her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him.
19And she arose, and went away, and laid by her vail from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood.
20And Judah sent the kid by the hand of his friend the Adullamite, to receive his pledge from the woman's hand: but he found her not.
21Then he asked the men of that place, saying, Where is the harlot, that was openly by the way side? And they said, There was no harlot in this place.
22And he returned to Judah, and said, I cannot find her; and also the men of the place said, that there was no harlot in this place.
23And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be shamed: behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her.
24And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.
25When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff.
26And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more.
(Talk to them directly for explanation of Judah’s hypocrisy and how he ended up judging his daughter in law and getting caught up himself in his own snare.)
Now, let’s look at another example of hypocrisy. This familiar passage of scriptures comes from John 8:
1But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" 6They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." 8Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
11"No one, sir," she said.
"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."
Notice, the eldest led the way, in sneaking away, for they, themselves were guilty of sin. They were convicted by their own conscience.
The word is true, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23. So, before you point your finger, remember, you’ve got three pointing back at you, and a thumb pointed toward heaven.
“JUDGE NOT THAT YOU BE NOT JUDGED”
Romans 2:21-24
21Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?
22Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?
23Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God?
24For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.
People talk about the waywardness of our youth, how do you think they got that way…pull from “young boy”: Poppa’s on the slip and momma’s on the slide, young black boys facing homicide. The adults are the ones who should lead the way, by word, by deed, by night. By day. That they have failed is evident. That inspired this poetic lament!
“JUDGE NOT THAT YOU BE NOT JUDGED.”
Thank you and God bless you! Amen.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
THE SPIDER WEB AND THE LASER BEAM
THE SPIDER WEB AND THE LASER BEAM
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
A laser beam lives at the base of my garage door. So does a spider.
The laser beam is dormant until I activate the electronic garage door
opener. The spider, meanwhile, does what it does, quite indifferent to
me, my electronic garage door opener, or my latent laser beam.
This arachnid blithely spins its web, spreads its net, in search of food
at my garage door’s base--apparently oblivious to all else.
In spreading it net, however, its arachnid membrane occasionally
bisects the path of my laser beam. There’s no intent involved here,
and, as far as I can discern, no obvious harm to the spider’s spindle nor
to the laser’s beam. The spider’s web and the laser’s beam seem to
coexist placidly and peacefully. Harmoniously. All is well.
All is well, that is, until I attempt to lower my garage door after
exiting, on certain random occasions. Sometimes, my garage door
will not shut. That is to say, it won’t go all the way down. It descends
to the level of the laser beam and then goes back up. Whenever I
depress the electronic garage door opener to close the garage door, on
those occasions, it won’t go down. It goes back up, no matter the
number of attempts I make to override the problem.
The first several times this happened, I had to get out of my car and
investigate. “Dear, dear, what could the matter be?” I wondered.
Unable to readily ascertain the source of the problem, and impatient
to depart, I called the garage door repair folks for help. Their answer
surprised me. Among other things, dust could impair the head of the
laser beam‘s light, or even spider web strands, they explained. They
suggested that I clean the laser head with a soft towel. I did, and the
door closed, thankfully. But that was not the end of my dilemma.
How, I marveled, can a spider web impair the path of a laser beam?
Yes, I had read of birds, especially Canadian geese, being the bane of
jet engines. Witness the miracle on the Hudson River with American
Airlines’ Captain Chesley Sullenberger, after birds were sucked into
his passenger plane’s engines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesley_Sullenberger
Geese, at least, are flesh and bone and blood--in short, mass, and
one messy mass, at that, once emulsified by turbine engines!
But, how a single, diaphanous strand of a spider’s silky web can impair
something as cutting edge as laser light, baffles me?
Lasers “have been widely regarded as one of the most influential
technological achievements of the 20th century… A laser (light
amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) is a device which
uses a quantum mechanical effect, stimulated emission, to generate a
coherent beam of light from a lasing medium of controlled purity,
size, and shape.” http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Laser
Spiders, after all, are lowly creatures, whose antiquity certainly
antedates our own, by four hundred of million years, some say.
http://www.australianmuseum.net.au/Spider-Origins
What possible affinity, then, can lasers have with spiders. And what
affection for them? The internet discloses that spiders have an
irresistible “thing” for lasers. Spiders, in fact, appear to lust after laser
light, following and chasing laser pointers all about, as these you-tube
clips demonstrate. The spiders are most persistent, indeed, downright
incessant. But why?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrARj57-3yM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q3bgMaD8bA&feature=related
Adding to this quixotic serendipity, one application of laser beam is
even nick-named “spider:”
“We report a new version of spectral phase interferometry for direct
electric field reconstruction (SPIDER) requiring only a single phaseshaped
laser beam. A narrowband probe pulse is selected out of a
broadband ultrafast laser pulse by a phase pulse-shaping technique
and mixed with the original broadband pulse to generate a secondharmonic
generation (SHG) signal.”
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ol/abstract.cfm?uri=ol-33-13-1404
There is certainly some kind of “harmonic generation signal” between
lasers and spiders and my garage door. Lest you think I’m just a poor
housekeeper (or garage-keeper) with a profusion of spiders, Proverbs
30:28 provides: “The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in
kings’ palaces.”
If, upon inspection, you also discover that a spider’s strand has
randomly obstructed your laser beam’s path, marvel at the
harmonious merger of the 400 million year legacy of the humble
arachnid, with the recent invention of the laser beam, and rejoice that
you, too, are blessed to witness and to participate in such a wonderful,
awe-inspiring pageantry, at the humble base of your garage door.
#30
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
A laser beam lives at the base of my garage door. So does a spider.
The laser beam is dormant until I activate the electronic garage door
opener. The spider, meanwhile, does what it does, quite indifferent to
me, my electronic garage door opener, or my latent laser beam.
This arachnid blithely spins its web, spreads its net, in search of food
at my garage door’s base--apparently oblivious to all else.
In spreading it net, however, its arachnid membrane occasionally
bisects the path of my laser beam. There’s no intent involved here,
and, as far as I can discern, no obvious harm to the spider’s spindle nor
to the laser’s beam. The spider’s web and the laser’s beam seem to
coexist placidly and peacefully. Harmoniously. All is well.
All is well, that is, until I attempt to lower my garage door after
exiting, on certain random occasions. Sometimes, my garage door
will not shut. That is to say, it won’t go all the way down. It descends
to the level of the laser beam and then goes back up. Whenever I
depress the electronic garage door opener to close the garage door, on
those occasions, it won’t go down. It goes back up, no matter the
number of attempts I make to override the problem.
The first several times this happened, I had to get out of my car and
investigate. “Dear, dear, what could the matter be?” I wondered.
Unable to readily ascertain the source of the problem, and impatient
to depart, I called the garage door repair folks for help. Their answer
surprised me. Among other things, dust could impair the head of the
laser beam‘s light, or even spider web strands, they explained. They
suggested that I clean the laser head with a soft towel. I did, and the
door closed, thankfully. But that was not the end of my dilemma.
How, I marveled, can a spider web impair the path of a laser beam?
Yes, I had read of birds, especially Canadian geese, being the bane of
jet engines. Witness the miracle on the Hudson River with American
Airlines’ Captain Chesley Sullenberger, after birds were sucked into
his passenger plane’s engines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesley_Sullenberger
Geese, at least, are flesh and bone and blood--in short, mass, and
one messy mass, at that, once emulsified by turbine engines!
But, how a single, diaphanous strand of a spider’s silky web can impair
something as cutting edge as laser light, baffles me?
Lasers “have been widely regarded as one of the most influential
technological achievements of the 20th century… A laser (light
amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) is a device which
uses a quantum mechanical effect, stimulated emission, to generate a
coherent beam of light from a lasing medium of controlled purity,
size, and shape.” http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Laser
Spiders, after all, are lowly creatures, whose antiquity certainly
antedates our own, by four hundred of million years, some say.
http://www.australianmuseum.net.au/Spider-Origins
What possible affinity, then, can lasers have with spiders. And what
affection for them? The internet discloses that spiders have an
irresistible “thing” for lasers. Spiders, in fact, appear to lust after laser
light, following and chasing laser pointers all about, as these you-tube
clips demonstrate. The spiders are most persistent, indeed, downright
incessant. But why?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrARj57-3yM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q3bgMaD8bA&feature=related
Adding to this quixotic serendipity, one application of laser beam is
even nick-named “spider:”
“We report a new version of spectral phase interferometry for direct
electric field reconstruction (SPIDER) requiring only a single phaseshaped
laser beam. A narrowband probe pulse is selected out of a
broadband ultrafast laser pulse by a phase pulse-shaping technique
and mixed with the original broadband pulse to generate a secondharmonic
generation (SHG) signal.”
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ol/abstract.cfm?uri=ol-33-13-1404
There is certainly some kind of “harmonic generation signal” between
lasers and spiders and my garage door. Lest you think I’m just a poor
housekeeper (or garage-keeper) with a profusion of spiders, Proverbs
30:28 provides: “The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in
kings’ palaces.”
If, upon inspection, you also discover that a spider’s strand has
randomly obstructed your laser beam’s path, marvel at the
harmonious merger of the 400 million year legacy of the humble
arachnid, with the recent invention of the laser beam, and rejoice that
you, too, are blessed to witness and to participate in such a wonderful,
awe-inspiring pageantry, at the humble base of your garage door.
#30
Saturday, October 10, 2009
DIRT BETWEEN THEIR TOES
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
DIRT BETWEEN THEIR TOES
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
Back in Howard Law School in the 1970’s, I remember opining that the best way to reform the younger generation of black youth was to make it possible for them to get some “dirt between their toes.”
By that I meant to expose them to rural life, and to get them out of the cities, away from viral influences which distort their development, which undermine their values, and which alienate them from nature, from God and from themselves.
At that time, I did not have any scientific evidence, only personal experience, and anecdotal testimony, to support this assertion.
Now, in a study published in the journal, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 35, No. 10, 1315-1329 (2009), http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/35/10/1315, my latent intuitions have been confirmed. In four studies involving 370 people, those immersed in nature were more “prosocial.”
“Antisocial,” as opposed to “prosocial” is what threatens to overwhelm them, now. Crass materialism promoted through media and society combine with low self-esteem, poverty, and hooliganism to mold them. “Hooliganism,” by the way, comes from a family of Irish people who lived in South London’s slums in the 19th century, named “Hooligan,” who were notorious thieves, thugs, and street fighters, who ran in gangs. One writer states of them:
The home of the Hooligan is, as I have implied, within a stone's throw of Lambeth Walk. Law breakers exist in other quarters of London: Drury Lane will furnish forth a small army of pick-pockets, Soho breeds parasites, and the basher of toffs flourishes in the Kingsland Road. But in and about Lambeth Walk we have a colony, compact and easily handled, of sturdy young villains, who start with a grievance against society, and are determined to get their own back. That is their own phrase, their own view. Life has little to give them but what they take. Honest work, if it can be obtained, will bring in but a few shillings a week; and what is that compared to the glorious possibility of nicking a red 'un? http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications7/hooligan-02.htm
The September 27, 2009, beating death of Derrion Albert, a sophomore honor roll student at Christian Fenger Academy High School, in Chicago, Illinois, by rival gangs of young, black hooligans underscores and illustrates the point.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/27/beating-death-of-derrien_n_301319.html
Such a loss! Such a waste! Such a tragedy!
While rustication, country-living, rural life is not necessarily a panacea for current ills, Henry David Thoreau, the author of Walden’s Pond was right. People exposed to nature are enriched by the experience. http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden00.html.
Dr. George Washington Carver’s whole life was lent to the proof of the axiom that nature is a reflection of the divine. He often stated “"I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting system, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.” http://www.facebook.com/pages/George-Washington-Carver/60725680708. The inventor of the science of chemurgy also stated, "I never have to grope for methods. The method is revealed at the moment I am inspired to create something new…without God to draw aside the curtain, I would be helpless."
Job 12:7-10 is also instructive: “But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.”
John Calhoun’s famous National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) experiments with rats in the 1950’s suggest, and have been broadly interpreted to mean, that density is a variable in human pathology. http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/pdf/FACTSPDF/2308Ramadams.pdf. But, density alone is not the answer. Poverty, inequality, identity crises, and a breakdown in community value transmission stratagems all play a part in an individual’s decisions.
Sometimes, an individual’s decisions are made for him by others or by circumstances beyond an individual’s control. The child soldiers in Africa are very much akin to the “Sistah soldiers” (and brothers) of certain youthful Africans in America. A similar format for remediation may likewise be in order. http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/pdf/FACTSPDF/2308Ramadams.pdf.
“Dirt between their toes,” then advocates and encourages a return to nature and an appreciation of nature as a spiritual healing modality http://journeyofhearts.org/healing/nature2.html, for every one, especially for urban African American youth.
More broadly, however, this essay, “Dirt between their toes,” encourages the communion with not only nature, but with the God behind, and the creator of, nature and us, from whom estrangement and isolation is the fomenter of all calamities and the greatest of all tragedies, individually and collectively.
#30
DIRT BETWEEN THEIR TOES
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
Back in Howard Law School in the 1970’s, I remember opining that the best way to reform the younger generation of black youth was to make it possible for them to get some “dirt between their toes.”
By that I meant to expose them to rural life, and to get them out of the cities, away from viral influences which distort their development, which undermine their values, and which alienate them from nature, from God and from themselves.
At that time, I did not have any scientific evidence, only personal experience, and anecdotal testimony, to support this assertion.
Now, in a study published in the journal, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 35, No. 10, 1315-1329 (2009), http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/35/10/1315, my latent intuitions have been confirmed. In four studies involving 370 people, those immersed in nature were more “prosocial.”
“Antisocial,” as opposed to “prosocial” is what threatens to overwhelm them, now. Crass materialism promoted through media and society combine with low self-esteem, poverty, and hooliganism to mold them. “Hooliganism,” by the way, comes from a family of Irish people who lived in South London’s slums in the 19th century, named “Hooligan,” who were notorious thieves, thugs, and street fighters, who ran in gangs. One writer states of them:
The home of the Hooligan is, as I have implied, within a stone's throw of Lambeth Walk. Law breakers exist in other quarters of London: Drury Lane will furnish forth a small army of pick-pockets, Soho breeds parasites, and the basher of toffs flourishes in the Kingsland Road. But in and about Lambeth Walk we have a colony, compact and easily handled, of sturdy young villains, who start with a grievance against society, and are determined to get their own back. That is their own phrase, their own view. Life has little to give them but what they take. Honest work, if it can be obtained, will bring in but a few shillings a week; and what is that compared to the glorious possibility of nicking a red 'un? http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications7/hooligan-02.htm
The September 27, 2009, beating death of Derrion Albert, a sophomore honor roll student at Christian Fenger Academy High School, in Chicago, Illinois, by rival gangs of young, black hooligans underscores and illustrates the point.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/27/beating-death-of-derrien_n_301319.html
Such a loss! Such a waste! Such a tragedy!
While rustication, country-living, rural life is not necessarily a panacea for current ills, Henry David Thoreau, the author of Walden’s Pond was right. People exposed to nature are enriched by the experience. http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden00.html.
Dr. George Washington Carver’s whole life was lent to the proof of the axiom that nature is a reflection of the divine. He often stated “"I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting system, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.” http://www.facebook.com/pages/George-Washington-Carver/60725680708. The inventor of the science of chemurgy also stated, "I never have to grope for methods. The method is revealed at the moment I am inspired to create something new…without God to draw aside the curtain, I would be helpless."
Job 12:7-10 is also instructive: “But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.”
John Calhoun’s famous National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) experiments with rats in the 1950’s suggest, and have been broadly interpreted to mean, that density is a variable in human pathology. http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/pdf/FACTSPDF/2308Ramadams.pdf. But, density alone is not the answer. Poverty, inequality, identity crises, and a breakdown in community value transmission stratagems all play a part in an individual’s decisions.
Sometimes, an individual’s decisions are made for him by others or by circumstances beyond an individual’s control. The child soldiers in Africa are very much akin to the “Sistah soldiers” (and brothers) of certain youthful Africans in America. A similar format for remediation may likewise be in order. http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/pdf/FACTSPDF/2308Ramadams.pdf.
“Dirt between their toes,” then advocates and encourages a return to nature and an appreciation of nature as a spiritual healing modality http://journeyofhearts.org/healing/nature2.html, for every one, especially for urban African American youth.
More broadly, however, this essay, “Dirt between their toes,” encourages the communion with not only nature, but with the God behind, and the creator of, nature and us, from whom estrangement and isolation is the fomenter of all calamities and the greatest of all tragedies, individually and collectively.
#30
Thursday, September 24, 2009
IS "BLACK LAWYER" A MISNOMER?
IS “BLACK LAWYER” A MISNOMER
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
Given the white supremacist history of the United States of America, as embodied in its constitution, supreme court decisions, customs, and practices, the term “black lawyer,” came to symbolize, the oxymoronic paradox of certain oppressive and repressive objects of American law morphing into those who utilized that same law’s interstices and implements to aid in liberating themselves, and their nation, from its nadir of jurisprudential hypocrisy and state-sponsored or state-sanctioned domestic terrorism, against its former slaves and disfavored persons, into a vaunted modern day exemplar and purported purveyor of human rights, globally.
Black lawyers, historically, were central to this process of transformation. Are they yet such? Is the term “black lawyer” a misnomer? Are black lawyers still the “social engineers” envisioned by the late, great Charles Hamilton Houston, former Dean of the Howard University School of Law?
Or, has that era passed, with the implosion of the mythical doctrine of “separate but equal,” whose utter destruction was Houston’s crowning achievement, albeit posthumously, in the Brown v. Board of Education, et. al. decisions?
Is the war for equality over? Has “victory” been won?
Few and far between are the lawyers of African descent who represent individual civil rights plaintiffs on any level, federal or state, presently, in any kind of case. This is tough work, where the lawyer is unappreciated, if respected by the client, and frequently viewed with enmity by the courts. There are other forms of work, which are far more lucrative and far less stressful.
With the judicial and legislative victories arising from the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960’s, as a tumultuous tailwind, the nation sailed into the 1970’s and 1980’s on the force of yesteryear’s momentum. The goal now became full-fledged and unabashed assimilation into that American mainstream into which blacks had long sought admission.
Black lawyers successfully pursued professional options in so many realms of endeavor, as individuals, there is hardly a field where they are not to be found. Some black lawyers mutated to the point they were able to thrive during, and from, the Ronald Reagan years, well into the Bush years, when racial “quotas” were eliminated (assuming they ever really “existed”) and “Affirmative Action” was vilified and proscribed.
This brings us to the present day, in which the President of the United States, Barack Obama, as well as the Attorney General, Eric Holder, and First Lady, Michele Obama, are black lawyers, all inconceivable “firsts” just a few short years ago.
Latent in this analysis and in this transition has been the capacity of certain black lawyers to eliminate the adjective “black” and to simply be lawyers. For a few, however, “Black Lawyer” remained the proper name and noun. What is true for black lawyers has also been true for black people. Robert Johnson, Oprah Winfrey and many other wealthy persons in business and entertainment, even in the realm of religion, exemplify this capacity daily.
All civil rights are necessarily individual and personal. One cannot speak for another, neither should one suffer for the conduct of another, nor be rewarded for the work of another. Group-think, group-speak, group-act alternate between beneficial and detrimental, dependent upon prevailing circumstances. Right now, what appears to be most conducive to “the advancement of colored people” is self-assertion as individuals poised and prepared for productivity. Adjectives are by definition modifiers of nouns. “Expressio unius est exclusio alterius,” goes the Latin maxim, which means to state one thing is to exclude another. Why limit one’s self, when the goal as always been to free one’s self?
“Black” like “White” are states of mind, yes. But, more so, these social constructs were meant to predetermine and to manipulate conduct and decision making over and in one’s life. It is a form of mental programming, reinforced by the reward and retribution dichotomy imposed and enforced by law, custom, and heritable values. Both blacks and whites are and/or have been afflicted by its pervasive power. But, now its day has passed. Objective conditions have changed, so the myth cannot be maintained.
Stated directly, in the absence of a rubric known as “black law,” there cannot be black lawyers. In the absence of a rubric known as “white law,” there cannot be white lawyers. There can only be lawyers.
So, yes, “black lawyer” (and “white lawyer”) are misnomers. There are only lawyers, just like there is only law.
#30
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
Given the white supremacist history of the United States of America, as embodied in its constitution, supreme court decisions, customs, and practices, the term “black lawyer,” came to symbolize, the oxymoronic paradox of certain oppressive and repressive objects of American law morphing into those who utilized that same law’s interstices and implements to aid in liberating themselves, and their nation, from its nadir of jurisprudential hypocrisy and state-sponsored or state-sanctioned domestic terrorism, against its former slaves and disfavored persons, into a vaunted modern day exemplar and purported purveyor of human rights, globally.
Black lawyers, historically, were central to this process of transformation. Are they yet such? Is the term “black lawyer” a misnomer? Are black lawyers still the “social engineers” envisioned by the late, great Charles Hamilton Houston, former Dean of the Howard University School of Law?
Or, has that era passed, with the implosion of the mythical doctrine of “separate but equal,” whose utter destruction was Houston’s crowning achievement, albeit posthumously, in the Brown v. Board of Education, et. al. decisions?
Is the war for equality over? Has “victory” been won?
Few and far between are the lawyers of African descent who represent individual civil rights plaintiffs on any level, federal or state, presently, in any kind of case. This is tough work, where the lawyer is unappreciated, if respected by the client, and frequently viewed with enmity by the courts. There are other forms of work, which are far more lucrative and far less stressful.
With the judicial and legislative victories arising from the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960’s, as a tumultuous tailwind, the nation sailed into the 1970’s and 1980’s on the force of yesteryear’s momentum. The goal now became full-fledged and unabashed assimilation into that American mainstream into which blacks had long sought admission.
Black lawyers successfully pursued professional options in so many realms of endeavor, as individuals, there is hardly a field where they are not to be found. Some black lawyers mutated to the point they were able to thrive during, and from, the Ronald Reagan years, well into the Bush years, when racial “quotas” were eliminated (assuming they ever really “existed”) and “Affirmative Action” was vilified and proscribed.
This brings us to the present day, in which the President of the United States, Barack Obama, as well as the Attorney General, Eric Holder, and First Lady, Michele Obama, are black lawyers, all inconceivable “firsts” just a few short years ago.
Latent in this analysis and in this transition has been the capacity of certain black lawyers to eliminate the adjective “black” and to simply be lawyers. For a few, however, “Black Lawyer” remained the proper name and noun. What is true for black lawyers has also been true for black people. Robert Johnson, Oprah Winfrey and many other wealthy persons in business and entertainment, even in the realm of religion, exemplify this capacity daily.
All civil rights are necessarily individual and personal. One cannot speak for another, neither should one suffer for the conduct of another, nor be rewarded for the work of another. Group-think, group-speak, group-act alternate between beneficial and detrimental, dependent upon prevailing circumstances. Right now, what appears to be most conducive to “the advancement of colored people” is self-assertion as individuals poised and prepared for productivity. Adjectives are by definition modifiers of nouns. “Expressio unius est exclusio alterius,” goes the Latin maxim, which means to state one thing is to exclude another. Why limit one’s self, when the goal as always been to free one’s self?
“Black” like “White” are states of mind, yes. But, more so, these social constructs were meant to predetermine and to manipulate conduct and decision making over and in one’s life. It is a form of mental programming, reinforced by the reward and retribution dichotomy imposed and enforced by law, custom, and heritable values. Both blacks and whites are and/or have been afflicted by its pervasive power. But, now its day has passed. Objective conditions have changed, so the myth cannot be maintained.
Stated directly, in the absence of a rubric known as “black law,” there cannot be black lawyers. In the absence of a rubric known as “white law,” there cannot be white lawyers. There can only be lawyers.
So, yes, “black lawyer” (and “white lawyer”) are misnomers. There are only lawyers, just like there is only law.
#30
Saturday, August 29, 2009
The Inherent value of "whosoever"
Yesterday evening, during our R3 study group, among other things, we discussed and searched for the origin of the apparent disdain among "our" people for books, reading, and, indeed, learning or studying as prevailing values.
We attributed this, in part, to our transition to and acquisition of materialist values at every level of "our" society. We posited that knowledge and wisdom were essentially spiritual values, which have fallen into unspoken disfavor.
As we resolved to investigate the causes of this cataclysmic shift, and when, where and how it first began to manifest among us, we sensed, rightly I believe, that the answer to this question may also supply a solution to its harmful effects.
Such effects/affects include the usual litany of woes paraded before us in sociological studies, epidemiological forecasts, police blotters, and daily media reports. The true story, however, we came to recognize, during our discussion, is that similar forces and conditions produce different outcomes among neighbors, relatives, even siblings. As an instance of this, we looked at how certain uneducated parents emphasized the value of the acquisition of knowledge in the upbringing of their children, and how their children prospered in accordance with this emphasis. We also looked at its predictable parallel: Where education was not a value, and how this led to prison, deprivation, early death, exceptions notwithstanding. The marvel is that we are yet alive and see each other's faces, http://www.lyricstime.com/hymn-and-are-we-yet-alive-lyrics.html given our historic oppression. It did not kill us, so it made us stronger, whether we realize this or not. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_does_the_saying_'What_doesn't_kill_you_makes_you_stronger'_come_from
Frankly, we don't know our own strength.
"Exceptions" are the key. The exceptions are the "whosoever's" mentioned in the Bible. Because everything and everyone that God made was and is unique, and because God is no respecter of persons, I propose that we cast our net to "whosoever," rather than simply to "us." Who really is "us," anyway? Is not limiting our net to us limiting us?
"Our" people are so heavily invested in and bonded to others, especially "our" former oppressors, that separating "us" from "them" will be like separating "the wet from water, or the dry from sand," to quote Smokey Robinson. Better to let the "wheat and the tares" grow up together "until the harvest" when angels can distinguish them. Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43.
Our spiritual reach (knowledge and wisdom acquired from, and through, reading, writing and arithmetic) should spread to, and enrich, all in its wake, "whosoever" they may be. That is the very definition of "choosing the better part." Luke 10:42.
We attributed this, in part, to our transition to and acquisition of materialist values at every level of "our" society. We posited that knowledge and wisdom were essentially spiritual values, which have fallen into unspoken disfavor.
As we resolved to investigate the causes of this cataclysmic shift, and when, where and how it first began to manifest among us, we sensed, rightly I believe, that the answer to this question may also supply a solution to its harmful effects.
Such effects/affects include the usual litany of woes paraded before us in sociological studies, epidemiological forecasts, police blotters, and daily media reports. The true story, however, we came to recognize, during our discussion, is that similar forces and conditions produce different outcomes among neighbors, relatives, even siblings. As an instance of this, we looked at how certain uneducated parents emphasized the value of the acquisition of knowledge in the upbringing of their children, and how their children prospered in accordance with this emphasis. We also looked at its predictable parallel: Where education was not a value, and how this led to prison, deprivation, early death, exceptions notwithstanding. The marvel is that we are yet alive and see each other's faces, http://www.lyricstime.com/hymn-and-are-we-yet-alive-lyrics.html given our historic oppression. It did not kill us, so it made us stronger, whether we realize this or not. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_does_the_saying_'What_doesn't_kill_you_makes_you_stronger'_come_from
Frankly, we don't know our own strength.
"Exceptions" are the key. The exceptions are the "whosoever's" mentioned in the Bible. Because everything and everyone that God made was and is unique, and because God is no respecter of persons, I propose that we cast our net to "whosoever," rather than simply to "us." Who really is "us," anyway? Is not limiting our net to us limiting us?
"Our" people are so heavily invested in and bonded to others, especially "our" former oppressors, that separating "us" from "them" will be like separating "the wet from water, or the dry from sand," to quote Smokey Robinson. Better to let the "wheat and the tares" grow up together "until the harvest" when angels can distinguish them. Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43.
Our spiritual reach (knowledge and wisdom acquired from, and through, reading, writing and arithmetic) should spread to, and enrich, all in its wake, "whosoever" they may be. That is the very definition of "choosing the better part." Luke 10:42.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Righteous But Imperfect
“RIGHTEOUS BUT IMPERFECT”
(tribute to Senator Edward Kennedy)
By Rev. Dr. Larry D. Coleman
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
2 Chronicles 25:1-2 reads as follows--
1: Amaziah was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jehoaddan of Jerusalem.
2: And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, but not with a perfect heart.
Let us pray.
Earlier this week, we witnessed the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. “We,” folks my age and older, knew him as “Teddy.” He was the baby brother of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, “Bobby.”
We watched the growth and maturation of Edward Kennedy. From a somewhat wild, impetuous, overshadowed and under-achieving scion of a rich and ambitious family, to a very wise and very principled and historic “Lion of the Senate.”
Many of us matured with him. Agonized with him. Triumphed with him. And, in the end, we suffered, courageously, with him through the brain cancer, which killed him, but which could not conquer him. Or his legacy.
“O Death where is your sting! O Grave where is your victory!" 1 Corinthians15:55
Sen. Kennedy was a righteous man. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1962, 1 year ahead of the death of one brother, John, and 6 years before the death of another brother, Bobby, he served in the Senate over almost 50 years. http://kennedy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Kennedy%20Accomplishments.pdf
Sen. Kennedy was also an imperfect man. This trait he shares with us all. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23
As our scriptural text from 2 Chronicles 25:2 reflects, however, one can be imperfect and still do that which is right in the sight of God! Senator Kennedy was such a man!
Would that we were all so blessed! Hallelujah and Amen!
(tribute to Senator Edward Kennedy)
By Rev. Dr. Larry D. Coleman
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
2 Chronicles 25:1-2 reads as follows--
1: Amaziah was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jehoaddan of Jerusalem.
2: And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, but not with a perfect heart.
Let us pray.
Earlier this week, we witnessed the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. “We,” folks my age and older, knew him as “Teddy.” He was the baby brother of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, “Bobby.”
We watched the growth and maturation of Edward Kennedy. From a somewhat wild, impetuous, overshadowed and under-achieving scion of a rich and ambitious family, to a very wise and very principled and historic “Lion of the Senate.”
Many of us matured with him. Agonized with him. Triumphed with him. And, in the end, we suffered, courageously, with him through the brain cancer, which killed him, but which could not conquer him. Or his legacy.
“O Death where is your sting! O Grave where is your victory!" 1 Corinthians15:55
Sen. Kennedy was a righteous man. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1962, 1 year ahead of the death of one brother, John, and 6 years before the death of another brother, Bobby, he served in the Senate over almost 50 years. http://kennedy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Kennedy%20Accomplishments.pdf
Sen. Kennedy was also an imperfect man. This trait he shares with us all. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23
As our scriptural text from 2 Chronicles 25:2 reflects, however, one can be imperfect and still do that which is right in the sight of God! Senator Kennedy was such a man!
Would that we were all so blessed! Hallelujah and Amen!
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Old School Styling Back in the Day
OLD SCHOOL “STYLING” BACK IN THE DAY
(St. Louis, Missouri adolescence recalled)
Back in the day, the brothers were clean.
That was part of the set, part of the scene.
The music was hot, the sisters were cold.
The lingo was hip, the spirit was bold.
The era was ‘60s, all about change.
Anything went, and nothing was strange.
Beep-beep, bang-bang, umgawah--Black Power.
Too cool to riot, we chilled in “The ‘Lou.”
While other cities burned, we jammed anew.
Doing the 2-step, the 3-step and the Bop.
The Deal, the Dog and the Slop.
Sure, Stokely came through on a blaze.
But there was also Jimi and his “Purple Haze.”
Malcolm had his moment, as did Dr. King.
But the crowds came out when James did his thing.
“Mama come here quick,
And bring your lickin’ stick! Owwww!”
Beep-beep, bang-bang, umgawah--Black Power.
After Steinberg skating and a White Castle treat
Came some Forest Park loving, real discreet.
There was the Rocking Mr. G and Bernie Hayes
There was the mighty Steve Byrd all ablaze.
“Black Radio” rocked all day and all night.
There were house parties galore, yet very few fights.
The pertinent question was the name of your school.
Your answer defined the depth of your “cool.”
Beep-beep, bang-bang, umgawah--Black Power.
Of course “cool” was relative in attribution.
But “jive” was categorical in its diminution.
One’s rhythm on the dance floor and even one’s walk
Could broadcast one’s status as quick as one’s talk.
Nuanced and complex was the social interplay
Among St. Louis’ black teenagers back in the day.
Looking back at the Arch some 40 years later
No adolescent experience could’ve been greater!
Beep-beep, bang-bang, umgawah--Black Power.
#30
(St. Louis, Missouri adolescence recalled)
Back in the day, the brothers were clean.
That was part of the set, part of the scene.
The music was hot, the sisters were cold.
The lingo was hip, the spirit was bold.
The era was ‘60s, all about change.
Anything went, and nothing was strange.
Beep-beep, bang-bang, umgawah--Black Power.
Too cool to riot, we chilled in “The ‘Lou.”
While other cities burned, we jammed anew.
Doing the 2-step, the 3-step and the Bop.
The Deal, the Dog and the Slop.
Sure, Stokely came through on a blaze.
But there was also Jimi and his “Purple Haze.”
Malcolm had his moment, as did Dr. King.
But the crowds came out when James did his thing.
“Mama come here quick,
And bring your lickin’ stick! Owwww!”
Beep-beep, bang-bang, umgawah--Black Power.
After Steinberg skating and a White Castle treat
Came some Forest Park loving, real discreet.
There was the Rocking Mr. G and Bernie Hayes
There was the mighty Steve Byrd all ablaze.
“Black Radio” rocked all day and all night.
There were house parties galore, yet very few fights.
The pertinent question was the name of your school.
Your answer defined the depth of your “cool.”
Beep-beep, bang-bang, umgawah--Black Power.
Of course “cool” was relative in attribution.
But “jive” was categorical in its diminution.
One’s rhythm on the dance floor and even one’s walk
Could broadcast one’s status as quick as one’s talk.
Nuanced and complex was the social interplay
Among St. Louis’ black teenagers back in the day.
Looking back at the Arch some 40 years later
No adolescent experience could’ve been greater!
Beep-beep, bang-bang, umgawah--Black Power.
#30
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Manifest Musicality and Much, Much More
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Manifest Musicality and Much, Much More
“Killer Joe”-- by Benny Golson
by Larry D. Coleman, Esq.
http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/193.html
Somehow we’ve come to
This sublime moment.
“We” being denizens of this
Earthen Globe.
“We” being those with
Ears to hear, if not eyes to
See. To hear, to hear, to hear, to hear:
“Killer Joe,” “Killer Joe,” Killer Joe.”
Langston Hughes once painted a
“Montage of a Dream Deferred,”
A love-song to our legacy of life, love
And laughter, in iconic “Harlem,” via the
Myriad ancient, dusky rivers we’ve known;
A testament to our spiritual transfiguration
And cultural transformation
Transmuted, now into universal motifs
With which the whole world rocks and riffs.
From deference to deliverance in:
the musicality of Benny Golson’s saxophone; or of
Errol Garner‘s piano. http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/160.html
Or Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington’s
Transportation “uptown” on the “A Train”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhK-zYfFsIY&NR=1
From deference to deliverance:
In the politics of Barack Obama.
In the virtuosity of Michael Jackson.
In the social gospel/prophesy of
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Montage,” being muted yet manifest melodies and
Rooted yet reified rhythms marking time and inspiring
Subliminally. Beckoning and becoming
In accordance with allegorical algorithms,
Amid dimensions both cosmic and cosmological.
“For where two or three are gathered together
In my name, I am there in the
Midst of them.” (Matt.18:20)
Black, white, mulatto: two or three.
Jesus in the midst who also had a
Flock, “which are not of this fold; them
Also I must bring, and they will
Hear my voice; and there will be
One flock and one shepherd.” John 10:16.
But, why the United States of America?
Why here? How here? How jazz?
How blues? How Gospel?
How Spirituals? Why here?
Boogie-Woogie? Rhythm and Blues?
Ragtime? How here? Why here?
Africa met Europe also in Brazil.
In Cuba. In Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and
Curacao; Europe met Africa in Venezuela,
In Panama, in Colombia, in Costa Rica,
In Haiti, in the Dominican Republic.
How here? Why here.
How hear? Langston of Joplin, Missouri?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyqwvC5s4n8
Or Scott Joplin of Sedalia, Missouri?
Or Coleman Hawkins of St, Joseph, Missouri?
Or Charlie Parker of Kansas City, Mo/Kan?
Or Miles Davis of East St. Louis, Ill/Mo?
Or Blind Lemon Jefferson of Warrensburg, Mo?
Reconciliation. Me, We, and Thee.
Our music leads, but our theology lags.
Truth held hostage, in catholic rags.
Here and there the light breaks through
Overwhelming oppression’s residue.
Slowly awakening we see: (Zech 4:1-14)
a candlestick of gold
With a bowl-- upon the top;
seven lamps with seven pipes,
And two olive trees full and ripe.
It’s no game of “Show and Tell.”
This word of the Lord to Zerubbabel.
“Not by might, nor by power,
But by my spirit,” said the lord of hosts.
Manifest Musicality to the Uttermost:
Killer Joe.
Manifest Musicality and Much, Much More
“Killer Joe”-- by Benny Golson
by Larry D. Coleman, Esq.
http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/193.html
Somehow we’ve come to
This sublime moment.
“We” being denizens of this
Earthen Globe.
“We” being those with
Ears to hear, if not eyes to
See. To hear, to hear, to hear, to hear:
“Killer Joe,” “Killer Joe,” Killer Joe.”
Langston Hughes once painted a
“Montage of a Dream Deferred,”
A love-song to our legacy of life, love
And laughter, in iconic “Harlem,” via the
Myriad ancient, dusky rivers we’ve known;
A testament to our spiritual transfiguration
And cultural transformation
Transmuted, now into universal motifs
With which the whole world rocks and riffs.
From deference to deliverance in:
the musicality of Benny Golson’s saxophone; or of
Errol Garner‘s piano. http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/160.html
Or Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington’s
Transportation “uptown” on the “A Train”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhK-zYfFsIY&NR=1
From deference to deliverance:
In the politics of Barack Obama.
In the virtuosity of Michael Jackson.
In the social gospel/prophesy of
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Montage,” being muted yet manifest melodies and
Rooted yet reified rhythms marking time and inspiring
Subliminally. Beckoning and becoming
In accordance with allegorical algorithms,
Amid dimensions both cosmic and cosmological.
“For where two or three are gathered together
In my name, I am there in the
Midst of them.” (Matt.18:20)
Black, white, mulatto: two or three.
Jesus in the midst who also had a
Flock, “which are not of this fold; them
Also I must bring, and they will
Hear my voice; and there will be
One flock and one shepherd.” John 10:16.
But, why the United States of America?
Why here? How here? How jazz?
How blues? How Gospel?
How Spirituals? Why here?
Boogie-Woogie? Rhythm and Blues?
Ragtime? How here? Why here?
Africa met Europe also in Brazil.
In Cuba. In Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and
Curacao; Europe met Africa in Venezuela,
In Panama, in Colombia, in Costa Rica,
In Haiti, in the Dominican Republic.
How here? Why here.
How hear? Langston of Joplin, Missouri?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyqwvC5s4n8
Or Scott Joplin of Sedalia, Missouri?
Or Coleman Hawkins of St, Joseph, Missouri?
Or Charlie Parker of Kansas City, Mo/Kan?
Or Miles Davis of East St. Louis, Ill/Mo?
Or Blind Lemon Jefferson of Warrensburg, Mo?
Reconciliation. Me, We, and Thee.
Our music leads, but our theology lags.
Truth held hostage, in catholic rags.
Here and there the light breaks through
Overwhelming oppression’s residue.
Slowly awakening we see: (Zech 4:1-14)
a candlestick of gold
With a bowl-- upon the top;
seven lamps with seven pipes,
And two olive trees full and ripe.
It’s no game of “Show and Tell.”
This word of the Lord to Zerubbabel.
“Not by might, nor by power,
But by my spirit,” said the lord of hosts.
Manifest Musicality to the Uttermost:
Killer Joe.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
1
Sunday, July 26, 2009
by Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
“ Power at work Within”
In Ephesians 3:20--21 (NIV), we find:
20Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,
according to his power that is at work within us,
21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever
and ever! Amen.
Of course, I was raised on King James--
In it, Ephesians 3:20--21 says:
20Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,
according to the power that worketh in us,
21Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without
end. Amen.
God has given us power. We are born with power. A baby’s crying at
birth is powerful, and welcome. It shows everything is alright. That
baby’s cry stirs up all kinds of activity.. . For a lifetime.
Even insects have power. If an angry bee or a wasp were to get
loose up here in the pulpit, it would likely turn out the choir stand!
But, me and Rev. Stancil would stand tall. I’m sure!
Even microscopic and invisible viruses have power. Right now,
In fact, the whole world is wrestling with “H1N1”-- short-hand for
the “Swine Flu” pandemic that is quietly sweeping the world.
Power permeates the planet. Power permeates the universe.
Baby’s have it. Insects have it. Viruses have it. And You and I have
it. All power is from God. “All things come of thee Oh Lord..”
1 Chron.29:11-13, David celebrates as follows ---
11Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and
the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the
earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as
head above all. 12Both riches and honour come of thee, and thou
reignest over all; and in thine hand is power and might; and in thine
hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. 13Now
therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy glorious name.
“Power?” It is the ability to act or to produce an effect.
“ Power at work Within” is our theme.
Now, power can be patent or latent. Latent power is buried power.
Unused power. Like the servant who buried his one talent in a
handkerchief in a field, instead of taking it to the market place, and
getting a bigger yield for his master, who was away. He had power
represented by the talent, but he buried it out of fear that he
would lose it. He was therefore an unprofitable servant. Now, his
fellow servants who were given 2 talents and 5 talents, respectively,
were able to double the yield on their talents for their master.
They exercised patent power. So, when he returned, he rejoiced at
their diligence, their open and faithful use of the power he had
given them. As for the servant, who had buried his talent, his
power, the Lord took the one talent from him that he had and gave
it to the man with ten talents…There will be weeping and gnashing
of teeth. Both sets of servants had power. Both had potential. One
set chose to exercise, even in the absence of the master. The other
one got scared, and his hid power, his privilege out of fear.
Matthew 25:14-30 is where this scripture is found.
But, God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of
love, and of a sound mind. 2 Tim. 1:7
We live in an era of “success” merchants. Napolean Hill, Og
Mandino, Deepok Chopra, Tim Robbins, and many others, assure us
constantly that we can “conceive, believe, achieve” anything we
want in the realm of material riches. I do not condemn them. In
fact, I have read them, in whole or in part.
But, whenever you get through, God can do exceeding abundantly
above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh
in us. Above all that we ask or think or are capable of conceiving
God is able to do.
1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither
have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath
prepared for them that love him.”
We are living in the midst of proof. There are folks here who in
here right now, who remember and probably experienced
segregation, Jim Crow, lynchings, real police brutality. Yet, they
lived to see Jackie Robinson break baseball’s color barrier. They
were able to move south of 27th street. They saw the integration of
the armed forces. They lived to see Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the
implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights
Act of 1965. They lived to see Thurgood Marshall go to the Supreme
Court. They saw Malcolm X. They danced in the streets to Motown.
They marveled at Michael Jackson, Oprah Winfree, Gen. Colin
Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and now President Barack Obama. In fact,
I was living when Nelson Mandela went to jail and when he got out
and became the President of South Africa!
And God ain’t through. He’s still working through me and you.
So, don’t resist the power, church. “Don’t fight the feeling,” as
Geraldine would say! Who is Geraldine? She is Madea’s
grandmamma! She was created by comedian Flip Wilson, just like
Tyler Perry created “Madea.”
Scripture says, Romans 13:1-2--Let every soul be subject unto the
higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be
are ordained of God.
13:2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the
ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves
damnation.
Don’t resist the power in you. Don’t fight the feeling in you. There
is power in you clamoring to go to work, clamoring to be used.
That power is from God. All power is from God. Go with his flow,
God’s flow.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and
Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:8.
Continue to be witnesses for Christ Jesus, church. Continue to work the God-given power within
Thank and God bless you. Amen.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
by Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
“ Power at work Within”
In Ephesians 3:20--21 (NIV), we find:
20Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,
according to his power that is at work within us,
21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever
and ever! Amen.
Of course, I was raised on King James--
In it, Ephesians 3:20--21 says:
20Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,
according to the power that worketh in us,
21Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without
end. Amen.
God has given us power. We are born with power. A baby’s crying at
birth is powerful, and welcome. It shows everything is alright. That
baby’s cry stirs up all kinds of activity.. . For a lifetime.
Even insects have power. If an angry bee or a wasp were to get
loose up here in the pulpit, it would likely turn out the choir stand!
But, me and Rev. Stancil would stand tall. I’m sure!
Even microscopic and invisible viruses have power. Right now,
In fact, the whole world is wrestling with “H1N1”-- short-hand for
the “Swine Flu” pandemic that is quietly sweeping the world.
Power permeates the planet. Power permeates the universe.
Baby’s have it. Insects have it. Viruses have it. And You and I have
it. All power is from God. “All things come of thee Oh Lord..”
1 Chron.29:11-13, David celebrates as follows ---
11Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and
the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the
earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as
head above all. 12Both riches and honour come of thee, and thou
reignest over all; and in thine hand is power and might; and in thine
hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. 13Now
therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy glorious name.
“Power?” It is the ability to act or to produce an effect.
“ Power at work Within” is our theme.
Now, power can be patent or latent. Latent power is buried power.
Unused power. Like the servant who buried his one talent in a
handkerchief in a field, instead of taking it to the market place, and
getting a bigger yield for his master, who was away. He had power
represented by the talent, but he buried it out of fear that he
would lose it. He was therefore an unprofitable servant. Now, his
fellow servants who were given 2 talents and 5 talents, respectively,
were able to double the yield on their talents for their master.
They exercised patent power. So, when he returned, he rejoiced at
their diligence, their open and faithful use of the power he had
given them. As for the servant, who had buried his talent, his
power, the Lord took the one talent from him that he had and gave
it to the man with ten talents…There will be weeping and gnashing
of teeth. Both sets of servants had power. Both had potential. One
set chose to exercise, even in the absence of the master. The other
one got scared, and his hid power, his privilege out of fear.
Matthew 25:14-30 is where this scripture is found.
But, God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of
love, and of a sound mind. 2 Tim. 1:7
We live in an era of “success” merchants. Napolean Hill, Og
Mandino, Deepok Chopra, Tim Robbins, and many others, assure us
constantly that we can “conceive, believe, achieve” anything we
want in the realm of material riches. I do not condemn them. In
fact, I have read them, in whole or in part.
But, whenever you get through, God can do exceeding abundantly
above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh
in us. Above all that we ask or think or are capable of conceiving
God is able to do.
1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither
have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath
prepared for them that love him.”
We are living in the midst of proof. There are folks here who in
here right now, who remember and probably experienced
segregation, Jim Crow, lynchings, real police brutality. Yet, they
lived to see Jackie Robinson break baseball’s color barrier. They
were able to move south of 27th street. They saw the integration of
the armed forces. They lived to see Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the
implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights
Act of 1965. They lived to see Thurgood Marshall go to the Supreme
Court. They saw Malcolm X. They danced in the streets to Motown.
They marveled at Michael Jackson, Oprah Winfree, Gen. Colin
Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and now President Barack Obama. In fact,
I was living when Nelson Mandela went to jail and when he got out
and became the President of South Africa!
And God ain’t through. He’s still working through me and you.
So, don’t resist the power, church. “Don’t fight the feeling,” as
Geraldine would say! Who is Geraldine? She is Madea’s
grandmamma! She was created by comedian Flip Wilson, just like
Tyler Perry created “Madea.”
Scripture says, Romans 13:1-2--Let every soul be subject unto the
higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be
are ordained of God.
13:2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the
ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves
damnation.
Don’t resist the power in you. Don’t fight the feeling in you. There
is power in you clamoring to go to work, clamoring to be used.
That power is from God. All power is from God. Go with his flow,
God’s flow.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and
Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:8.
Continue to be witnesses for Christ Jesus, church. Continue to work the God-given power within
Thank and God bless you. Amen.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
EQUITY: THE DISFAVORED TWIN OF LAW?
1
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
“The Framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized the providence of
equity by writing in Article III, Section 2, Clause 1, that the "judicial
Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity."
http://legaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Equity.
Later, in the 11th Amendment, such broad judicial power was somewhat reined in:
“The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to
extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted
against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by
Citizens or subjects of any Foreign State.”
Viewing “law and equity” in tandem is deceptive. They are not flip
sides of the same coin, called “justice.” They are ancient, historic
antagonists, derived from different sources, serving different ends.
Put bluntly, “law” is man-made, while “equity” is divine amendment.
Law concerns statutes and case law. Equity asks what is morally
right. Law is callous justice. Equity is grace and mercy, applied.
The Old Testament explicates the distinction more fully. After
having defied and disobeyed God by causing the people of Israel
to be numbered, David, through his seer, Gad, is offered three
forms of punishment by God.
They are, “Three years’ famine; or three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the Lord, even the pestilence in the land, and the angel of the Lord
destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel.” David’s response to
Gad is classic: “I am in a great strait: let me fall now into the hand of
the Lord; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the
hand of man.” 1 Chron.21:12-13.
Though the tendency is to equate the doctrine of “equity” with the
Chancery Courts of England, as has already been demonstrated, “equity,” as a notion, is much older than England as a nation. “Equity,” arguably, prompted King John to capitulate to the nobility, in assigning to them certain rights under the Magna Charta in 1215 at Runnymede, as a check, albeit
tentative, against the untrammeled abuse of royal prerogatives.
“Equity” has biblical roots. And pre-biblical roots.
One of its earliest usages is found in Psalms 98:8-9, “Let the floods
clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for he
cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the
world, and the people with equity.”
At the outset of the book of Proverbs, we find “equity” also, viz.:
“The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; To know
wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; To
receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
to give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and
discretion.” (Prov.1:1-4)
“Equity’s” roots, in fact, predate, the Bible, disappearing into the
daunting mists of Ancient Egypt’s prehistory. “Ma’at,” a teleological
value system, appears to be where law and equity originated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law#cite_note-86.
“Ma’at” is the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law,
morality, and justice. Maat was also personified as a goddess
regulating the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the
deities, who set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of
creation. The earliest surviving records indicating Maat is the norm
for nature and society, in this world and the next, is recorded during
the Old Kingdom in pyramid texts (c. 2780-2250 BCE).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27at
All the great civil rights victories attained by such legends as
Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, James Nabrit,
Spotswood Robinson and others involved some form of equity, as
the remedy. No civil rights victory not involving equity comes to
mind. Neither am I aware of any civil rights case in which
monetary damages were either sought as a remedy or awarded.
Jack Greenberg, Esq., in his memoir, Crusaders in the Courts,
Legal Battles of the Civil Rights Movement, (Twelve Tables
Press: NY, 2004) states in the concluding chapter, “A Summation:
Victories and Defeats, Imagining The Future”: “The foregoing areas
[‘Ghetto areas…welfare cases…housing’] are within the domain of
what is often termed economic rights. Court action has been
notably unsuccessful in addressing what in large part is an issue of
economic distribution.” (p.553) The “issue of economic
distribution,” is the area wherein Mr. Greenberg, successor to
Thurgood Marshall as Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, concedes “defeat.”
Equity is defined as “fairness or equality.” As used herein, it is also
defined as “1 a: justice according to natural law or right; specif:
freedom from bias or favoritism…2 a: a system of law
originating in the English chancery and comprising a settled
and formal body of legal and procedural rules and doctrines
that supplement, aid, or override common and statute law and
are designed to protect rights and enforce duties fixed by
substantive law…” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary,
11th ed. 2003) p.423.
"In its broadest sense, equity is fairness. As a legal system, it is a body
of law that addresses concerns that fall outside the jurisdiction of
Common Law. Equity is also used to describe the money value of
property in excess of claims, liens, or mortgages on the property.
Equity in U.S. law can be traced to England, where it began as a
response to the rigid procedures of England's law courts. Through
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the judges in England's
courts developed the common law, a system of accepting and
deciding cases based on principles of law shaped and developed in
preceding cases. Pleading became quite intricate, and only certain
causes of action qualified for legal redress. Aggrieved citizens found
that otherwise valid complaints were being dismissed for failure to
comply with pleading technicalities. If a complaint was not dismissed,
relief was often denied based on little more than the lack of a
controlling statute or precedent.
Frustrated plaintiffs turned to the king, who referred these
extraordinary requests for relief to a royal court called the Chancery.
The Chancery was headed by a chancellor who possessed the power
to settle disputes and order relief according to his conscience. The
decisions of a chancellor were made without regard for the common
law, and they became the basis for the law of equity.
Equity and the common law represented opposing values in the
English legal system. The common law was the creation of a judiciary
independent from the Crown. Common-law courts believed in the
strict interpretation of statutes and precedential cases.”
http://legaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Equity
Those “opposing values” between “common law” and “equity,” have
found a fertile climate in American jurisprudence. On July 21,
2009, in an appeal of an unemployment compensation case, in
Kansas City, Missouri, the Court of Appeals, decried the fact that
under the law, the state agency in charge lacked authority “to
consider issues of fairness.” Thus, the court affirmed a decision
authorizing the recoupment of $7280 in unemployment benefits to
the state by the unemployed worker, who did nothing wrong, but be
overpaid.
http://www.courts.mo.gov/page.asp?id=12087&search=Andrea
Harris v. Division Employment Security&dist=Opinions
Western&n=0
In effect, the Missouri Court of Appeals recoiled from the harshness
of its own opinion, and hinted to the legislature that by changing
the word “shall” to “may” it would enable equity in deserving
cases, such as that then under consideration.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
“The Framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized the providence of
equity by writing in Article III, Section 2, Clause 1, that the "judicial
Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity."
http://legaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Equity.
Later, in the 11th Amendment, such broad judicial power was somewhat reined in:
“The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to
extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted
against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by
Citizens or subjects of any Foreign State.”
Viewing “law and equity” in tandem is deceptive. They are not flip
sides of the same coin, called “justice.” They are ancient, historic
antagonists, derived from different sources, serving different ends.
Put bluntly, “law” is man-made, while “equity” is divine amendment.
Law concerns statutes and case law. Equity asks what is morally
right. Law is callous justice. Equity is grace and mercy, applied.
The Old Testament explicates the distinction more fully. After
having defied and disobeyed God by causing the people of Israel
to be numbered, David, through his seer, Gad, is offered three
forms of punishment by God.
They are, “Three years’ famine; or three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the Lord, even the pestilence in the land, and the angel of the Lord
destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel.” David’s response to
Gad is classic: “I am in a great strait: let me fall now into the hand of
the Lord; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the
hand of man.” 1 Chron.21:12-13.
Though the tendency is to equate the doctrine of “equity” with the
Chancery Courts of England, as has already been demonstrated, “equity,” as a notion, is much older than England as a nation. “Equity,” arguably, prompted King John to capitulate to the nobility, in assigning to them certain rights under the Magna Charta in 1215 at Runnymede, as a check, albeit
tentative, against the untrammeled abuse of royal prerogatives.
“Equity” has biblical roots. And pre-biblical roots.
One of its earliest usages is found in Psalms 98:8-9, “Let the floods
clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for he
cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the
world, and the people with equity.”
At the outset of the book of Proverbs, we find “equity” also, viz.:
“The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; To know
wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; To
receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
to give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and
discretion.” (Prov.1:1-4)
“Equity’s” roots, in fact, predate, the Bible, disappearing into the
daunting mists of Ancient Egypt’s prehistory. “Ma’at,” a teleological
value system, appears to be where law and equity originated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law#cite_note-86.
“Ma’at” is the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law,
morality, and justice. Maat was also personified as a goddess
regulating the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the
deities, who set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of
creation. The earliest surviving records indicating Maat is the norm
for nature and society, in this world and the next, is recorded during
the Old Kingdom in pyramid texts (c. 2780-2250 BCE).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27at
All the great civil rights victories attained by such legends as
Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, James Nabrit,
Spotswood Robinson and others involved some form of equity, as
the remedy. No civil rights victory not involving equity comes to
mind. Neither am I aware of any civil rights case in which
monetary damages were either sought as a remedy or awarded.
Jack Greenberg, Esq., in his memoir, Crusaders in the Courts,
Legal Battles of the Civil Rights Movement, (Twelve Tables
Press: NY, 2004) states in the concluding chapter, “A Summation:
Victories and Defeats, Imagining The Future”: “The foregoing areas
[‘Ghetto areas…welfare cases…housing’] are within the domain of
what is often termed economic rights. Court action has been
notably unsuccessful in addressing what in large part is an issue of
economic distribution.” (p.553) The “issue of economic
distribution,” is the area wherein Mr. Greenberg, successor to
Thurgood Marshall as Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, concedes “defeat.”
Equity is defined as “fairness or equality.” As used herein, it is also
defined as “1 a: justice according to natural law or right; specif:
freedom from bias or favoritism…2 a: a system of law
originating in the English chancery and comprising a settled
and formal body of legal and procedural rules and doctrines
that supplement, aid, or override common and statute law and
are designed to protect rights and enforce duties fixed by
substantive law…” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary,
11th ed. 2003) p.423.
"In its broadest sense, equity is fairness. As a legal system, it is a body
of law that addresses concerns that fall outside the jurisdiction of
Common Law. Equity is also used to describe the money value of
property in excess of claims, liens, or mortgages on the property.
Equity in U.S. law can be traced to England, where it began as a
response to the rigid procedures of England's law courts. Through
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the judges in England's
courts developed the common law, a system of accepting and
deciding cases based on principles of law shaped and developed in
preceding cases. Pleading became quite intricate, and only certain
causes of action qualified for legal redress. Aggrieved citizens found
that otherwise valid complaints were being dismissed for failure to
comply with pleading technicalities. If a complaint was not dismissed,
relief was often denied based on little more than the lack of a
controlling statute or precedent.
Frustrated plaintiffs turned to the king, who referred these
extraordinary requests for relief to a royal court called the Chancery.
The Chancery was headed by a chancellor who possessed the power
to settle disputes and order relief according to his conscience. The
decisions of a chancellor were made without regard for the common
law, and they became the basis for the law of equity.
Equity and the common law represented opposing values in the
English legal system. The common law was the creation of a judiciary
independent from the Crown. Common-law courts believed in the
strict interpretation of statutes and precedential cases.”
http://legaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Equity
Those “opposing values” between “common law” and “equity,” have
found a fertile climate in American jurisprudence. On July 21,
2009, in an appeal of an unemployment compensation case, in
Kansas City, Missouri, the Court of Appeals, decried the fact that
under the law, the state agency in charge lacked authority “to
consider issues of fairness.” Thus, the court affirmed a decision
authorizing the recoupment of $7280 in unemployment benefits to
the state by the unemployed worker, who did nothing wrong, but be
overpaid.
http://www.courts.mo.gov/page.asp?id=12087&search=Andrea
Harris v. Division Employment Security&dist=Opinions
Western&n=0
In effect, the Missouri Court of Appeals recoiled from the harshness
of its own opinion, and hinted to the legislature that by changing
the word “shall” to “may” it would enable equity in deserving
cases, such as that then under consideration.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
“AT THE TABLE”
May 7, 2009
By Rev. Dr. Larry D. Coleman
For a few remarkable years, a number of black
preachers and pastors, myself included, met for
communal breakfast and spiritual refreshment, every
week day morning at Niecie’s Restaurant near 60th
and Prospect, in Kansas City, Missouri.
We met “at the table,” roughly, over a ten-year
period from 1994 through 2004, under the faithful
and persistent leadership and example of Rev.
Emanuel Johnson, former pastor of Mount Vernon
Missionary Baptist Church, now deceased, and his
friend, Rev. Aaron Neal, Sr., former pastor of
Paradise Missionary Baptist Church in Kansas City
Kansas, also deceased.
Rev. Neal, himself newly arrived from
California, had invited me to the table shortly
after I was licensed to preach in the African
Methodist Episcopal Church, in 1994. Brand new to
the ministry, my zeal for the word was such that I
would carry a minimum of two different versions of
the Bible with me, among my legal papers, in my
“satchel,” as Rev. Johnson, an Arkansas native,
termed my brief case.
They called me “De lawyer,”
as I was, in fact, a sole practitioner, and also
the pastor of Brooks Chapel A.M.E. Church, in
Butler, Bates County, Missouri, simultaneously.
Other ministers who frequented the table,
during my tenure there, included Rev. Kenneth Ray
of Highland Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. Gregory
Washington of Good Samaritan Missionary Baptist
Church, the late Bishop Emmanuel Newton of the
Christian Tabernacle Church of God in Christ, the
late Bishop W.B. Henderson of the Trinity Temple
Church of God in Christ, the late Rev. O. Cordell
Moore of the Temple of Faith Missionary Baptist,
the late Rev. A.L. Johnson and his associate, Rev.
Carl Hatcher, both of Zion Grove Missionary Baptist
Church, Rev. Gregory Stevenson, Park Avenue
Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. Davenport, Pilgrim
Rest Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. F.J Jordan,
Gospel Tithing Baptist Church, Rev. Elijah Clark,
Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. Frank
Witherspoon, Freewill Baptist Church, along with
many, many others. Visiting ministers, revivalists,
and evangelists also enriched the table while in
town.
Camaraderie and commensality distinguished the
table. Laughter was always on the menu.
Sometimes, even Myra, and Renona, her sister,
two of Niecie’s no-nonsense waitresses, would chime
in with their acerbic wit, to keep “it” and
everybody “real” at the table.
Of course, the main preoccupation at the table
was Jesus Christ: him crucified and resurrected.
In this regard, I remember Rev. Johnson describing
how he had fashioned a sermon entitled “It Depends
on Whose Hands It’s In.”
Once, while driving to Omaha, Nebraska, up highway I-29-North, he happened
to see a billboard describing an insurance company
as “The Good Hands People.” That insight led the
preacher to proclaim that in his hands a piano was
just a noise-maker, but in the hands of a skilled
musician, it became a magnificent instrument.
Similarly, a scalpel in his hand was a murder
weapon, but in the hands of a skilled surgeon it
was a healing tool. Finally, 2 small fishes and 5
barley loaves, in his hands, was just lunch. But,
in the hands of Jesus--but, in the hands of Jesus!-
-that little lunch could feed over 5,000, with
twelve baskets of fragments left over. (Matt.14:13-
21) “It just depends on whose hands it’s in.”
At the table, there were no big “I’s” and
little “u’s.” There was brotherhood at the table.
There was hope at table. There was renewal at the
table. There was love at the table. Deliverance
at the table. Joy at the table. Provision at the
table. Holy Ghost at the table.
At the table, at the table, at the table!
By Rev. Dr. Larry D. Coleman
For a few remarkable years, a number of black
preachers and pastors, myself included, met for
communal breakfast and spiritual refreshment, every
week day morning at Niecie’s Restaurant near 60th
and Prospect, in Kansas City, Missouri.
We met “at the table,” roughly, over a ten-year
period from 1994 through 2004, under the faithful
and persistent leadership and example of Rev.
Emanuel Johnson, former pastor of Mount Vernon
Missionary Baptist Church, now deceased, and his
friend, Rev. Aaron Neal, Sr., former pastor of
Paradise Missionary Baptist Church in Kansas City
Kansas, also deceased.
Rev. Neal, himself newly arrived from
California, had invited me to the table shortly
after I was licensed to preach in the African
Methodist Episcopal Church, in 1994. Brand new to
the ministry, my zeal for the word was such that I
would carry a minimum of two different versions of
the Bible with me, among my legal papers, in my
“satchel,” as Rev. Johnson, an Arkansas native,
termed my brief case.
They called me “De lawyer,”
as I was, in fact, a sole practitioner, and also
the pastor of Brooks Chapel A.M.E. Church, in
Butler, Bates County, Missouri, simultaneously.
Other ministers who frequented the table,
during my tenure there, included Rev. Kenneth Ray
of Highland Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. Gregory
Washington of Good Samaritan Missionary Baptist
Church, the late Bishop Emmanuel Newton of the
Christian Tabernacle Church of God in Christ, the
late Bishop W.B. Henderson of the Trinity Temple
Church of God in Christ, the late Rev. O. Cordell
Moore of the Temple of Faith Missionary Baptist,
the late Rev. A.L. Johnson and his associate, Rev.
Carl Hatcher, both of Zion Grove Missionary Baptist
Church, Rev. Gregory Stevenson, Park Avenue
Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. Davenport, Pilgrim
Rest Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. F.J Jordan,
Gospel Tithing Baptist Church, Rev. Elijah Clark,
Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. Frank
Witherspoon, Freewill Baptist Church, along with
many, many others. Visiting ministers, revivalists,
and evangelists also enriched the table while in
town.
Camaraderie and commensality distinguished the
table. Laughter was always on the menu.
Sometimes, even Myra, and Renona, her sister,
two of Niecie’s no-nonsense waitresses, would chime
in with their acerbic wit, to keep “it” and
everybody “real” at the table.
Of course, the main preoccupation at the table
was Jesus Christ: him crucified and resurrected.
In this regard, I remember Rev. Johnson describing
how he had fashioned a sermon entitled “It Depends
on Whose Hands It’s In.”
Once, while driving to Omaha, Nebraska, up highway I-29-North, he happened
to see a billboard describing an insurance company
as “The Good Hands People.” That insight led the
preacher to proclaim that in his hands a piano was
just a noise-maker, but in the hands of a skilled
musician, it became a magnificent instrument.
Similarly, a scalpel in his hand was a murder
weapon, but in the hands of a skilled surgeon it
was a healing tool. Finally, 2 small fishes and 5
barley loaves, in his hands, was just lunch. But,
in the hands of Jesus--but, in the hands of Jesus!-
-that little lunch could feed over 5,000, with
twelve baskets of fragments left over. (Matt.14:13-
21) “It just depends on whose hands it’s in.”
At the table, there were no big “I’s” and
little “u’s.” There was brotherhood at the table.
There was hope at table. There was renewal at the
table. There was love at the table. Deliverance
at the table. Joy at the table. Provision at the
table. Holy Ghost at the table.
At the table, at the table, at the table!
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