ACHIEVING SELF-RECOGNITION
Looking, yesterday, at the learned credentials of Tertullian, I was surprised to notice that they look a lot like mine, with law, rhetoric, literature. As I recall Origen 's credentials were like these too! As were Augustine of Hippo's also like ours. So too were Apostle Paul's.
Perhaps, as the late Rev. Sam Carpenter had looked at me and mused aloud back in the 1970s in Kansas City, Missouri, on Commerce Bank's escalator: "God might have reached down into Canton, Mississippi, to raise [me] up for work. You never know." He said that while moving right on.
In the same time frame, Rev. William Howard Clark, then President of the Kansas City Urban League, who later married me to my second wife, Lyla, said as he jocularly entered an elevator on Walnut Street, "What's happening , Governor!" I busted out laughing! We both laughed loudly, then I replied, "You've got it, Senator !"
Reflecting further back, Mama and Daddy had told me often as a boy, as well when I became a man, that some great unnamed Bishop in a rural Mississippi church revival had paused, while precessing out of the church , to say to her about me, when I was a babe in her arms, that I would be somebody, someday.
Mama's brother, Cyrus Arlander Moreland, my uncle, has said often in recent years that my name was to be made in the ministry of Jesus Christ, rather than in law practice.
"Big Unk" had unintentionally hurt me when he had said that. But I now recognize its worth, if not, as yet, its total truth. By the same token, I can now recognize the worth, if not the total truth, of Rev. Christopher Columbus Butler's sage excited utterance that I was a "philosopher!" Pastor Butler was then pastor of our Coleman family home church, St. Matthews C.M.E.Church in Meacham Park, Kirkwood, Missouri.
Philosophy, as it was presented to me in college my freshman year, I found to be repugnant, distasteful . Only now, as I read Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus , Tertullian, Origen, and more, unconstrained by others ' precepts or concepts, but freely, as informed by God, does its love and spiritually nutritious value over flow my soul and spread abroad to all.
Lest I seem now to have become too enamored of myself, let me share that earlier today I deeply experienced a dollop of humility!
I had posted on FB about Jesus being "African," because he was "born in Africa." A guy asked where in Africa Jesus was born? When I turned to the scriptures, I was surprised to see that he was born in Judea and carried into Egypt after his birth. Of course, I knew that from having read it many times! Perhaps , I heard Hosea 11:1 "Out of Egypt have I called my son."
Naturally, I apologized on FB and published a factual retraction based on scripture. It was then that these two angelic FB brothers swooped down to corroborate my first post about Jesus' Africanity, at two different sites or groups. One angel had used geology, tectonic plates with representative maps, to show that where Judea sits is in northeast Africa geologically . The other one used history, showing that Egypt had long lain claim to that Mediterranean region by trade, culture, conquest. I was gratified!
I have written this expiatory précis for myself. It happened to spill over unto you, most of whom may have already heard from God about the self-identity issues posed in here. If not, ask and it will be given unto you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened. Amen!

Tuesday, June 26, 2018
SELF-RECOGNITION
ACHIEVING SELF-RECOGNITION
Looking, yesterday, at the learned credentials of Tertullian, I was surprised to notice that they look a lot like mine, with law, rhetoric, literature. As I recall Origen 's credentials were like these too! As were Augustine of Hippo's also like ours. So too were Apostle Paul's.
Perhaps, as the late Rev. Sam Carpenter had looked at me and mused aloud back in the 1970s in Kansas City, Missouri, on Commerce Bank's escalator: "God might have reached down into Canton, Mississippi, to raise [me] up for work. You never know." He said that while moving right on.
In the same time frame, Rev. William Howard Clark, then President of the Kansas City Urban League, who later married me to my second wife, Lyla, said as he jocularly entered an elevator on Walnut Street, "What's happening , Governor!" I busted out laughing! We both laughed loudly, then I replied, "You've got it, Senator !"
Reflecting further back, Mama and Daddy had told me often as a boy, as well when I became a man, that some great unnamed Bishop in a rural Mississippi church revival had paused, while precessing out of the church , to say to her about me, when I was a babe in her arms, that I would be somebody, someday.
Mama's brother, Cyrus Arlander Moreland, my uncle, has said often in recent years that my name was to be made in the ministry of Jesus Christ, rather than in law practice.
"Big Unk" had unintentionally hurt me when he had said that. But I now recognize its worth, if not, as yet, its total truth. By the same token, I can now recognize the worth, if not the total truth, of Rev. Christopher Columbus Butler's sage excited utterance that I was a "philosopher!" Pastor Butler was then pastor of our Coleman family home church, St. Matthews C.M.E.Church in Meacham Park, Kirkwood, Missouri.
Philosophy, as it was presented to me in college my freshman year, I found to be repugnant, distasteful . Only now, as I read Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus , Tertullian, Origen, and more, unconstrained by others ' precepts or concepts, but freely, as informed by God, does its love and spiritually nutritious value over flow my soul and spread abroad to all.
Lest I seem now to have become too enamored of myself, let me share that earlier today I deeply experienced a dollop of humility!
I had posted on FB about Jesus being "African," because he was "born in Africa." A guy asked where in Africa Jesus was born? When I turned to the scriptures, I was surprised to see that he was born in Judea and carried into Egypt after his birth. Of course, I knew that from having read it many times! Perhaps , I heard Hosea 11:1 "Out of Egypt have I called my son."
Naturally, I apologized on FB and published a factual retraction based on scripture. It was then that these two angelic FB brothers swooped down to corroborate my first post about Jesus' Africanity, at two different sites or groups. One angel had used geology, tectonic plates with representative maps, to show that where Judea sits is in northeast Africa geologically . The other one used history, showing that Egypt had long lain claim to that Mediterranean region by trade, culture, conquest. I was gratified!
I have written this expiatory précis for myself. It happened to spill over unto you, most of whom may have already heard from God about the self-identity issues posed in here. If not, ask and it will be given unto you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened. Amen!

