MY WONDERFUL ROMANCE WITH READING

My wonderful romance with reading By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Sunday, August 19, 2012 I love to read. Reading educates, alerts, humors, encourages, inspires, instructs, warns, admonishes, and titillates, just to name a few of it potent properties. In my Webster Groves High School English, taught by Mr. Howard Derrickson, I wrote the following words, in response to an in-class assignment on Haiku, a Japanese poetry format. As he held up a picture of a boy, lying upon a hillside, reading a book, under a tree, I wrote: “Here I lay all day. Yet, the dusts of many distant lands cake my feet.” This 17-syllable “Haiku” assignment personified, then and now, my romance with reading. Reading, and its corollary, writing, was aesthetic and synesthetic, engaging other senses. The twain was also liberating, adventurous, empowering and emboldening! My mother gave me the first book that I can recall when I was 4. It was full of colorful pictures of reptiles and dinosaurs. I could not read it, of course. But, its imagery transported me to other places, times and climes. That I can remember it now, almost 60 years later, attests to its enduring, imaginative impact. In the second grade, I was permitted to check out my first book from our “bookmobile,” a motorized library that serviced James Milton Turner Elementary School in Meacham Park/Kirkwood, Missouri. That book was “Estevanico, Little Stephen” the 16th century Spanish conquistador/explorer, of African descent, who had first explored the southwestern region of the present-day United States of America , seeking the fabled cities of gold, the Seven Cities of Cibola. He never found them. Instead, he was found by some Indians who had tracked the crosses he left behind as markers, and murdered him and his entire party. Why I picked that one book, instead of another, speaks to my socialization and to my upbringing. I have never been ashamed of myself nor of my people. Neither, by reason thereof, was I ever intimidated by any book involving such subject matter, nor any other. The world, indeed, the universe-- along with all time, space, matter and force--was an open flower to be sniffed and inhaled deeply and frequently.

BLACKS' SELF-MAGNETISM

Black people in America often complain that whites who own mass media properties or the like "did not tell us" something about our own history or achievements; or that the powers that run the educational system "did not teach us" something; or that whites tried to "hide something from us." This is dependent-thinking, "child-like."--to paraphrase Carter G. Woodson and Malcolm X. White people in control owe a duty to themselves--solely--to maintain control; that means keeping us, and others, under their control, by every means necessary. Thus, empowering us in spirit or in truth is against their own self-interests. Fools these people are not. We are the fools to think they could ever do or be otherwise, as matters now stand. As used in the previous sentences, "they" means "principalities or rulers in high places." Start or step-up your reading, teaching, studying, building, saving, sharing, buying, and spending among yourselves; then, watch what happens. Those same whites who now "withhold" from you, will bring your heart's desire to you! Try it. Your own efforts' self-magnetism will draw them unto you!

sin

"Sin" is an incident of belief in man's free will...

THE GOLDEN RATIO

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio I AM INTRIGUED WITH THE GOLDEN RATIO, THOUGH I DO NOT QUITE GRASP IT.

PROVE ALL THINGS--1 Thessalonians 5:21

PROVE ALL THINGS; 1 THESS.5:21 Multiple proofs demonstrate that there are multiple means of attainment of a given result, and multiple means of validation of that result. "Euclid" proved everything, even the most basic precepts in his "ELEMENTS." The Bible insists on proofs and tests repeatedly. We are very unwise to waive proofs in anything.

MANDELA WAS ALSO A CHRISTIAN

http://www.gospelherald.com/articles/49832/20131205/nelson-mandela-biography-christian-values.htm YES. THIS CHRIST-LIKE MAN WAS A CHRISTIAN TOO, JUST LIKE SO MANY OTHER GREAT, AFRICAN-DESCENDED FREEDOM FIGHTERS. STRENGTHENED AND ASSURED THAT THE LATTER DAYS WOULD BE BETTER THAN THE FORMER DAYS; AND THAT GOOD WOULD WIN IN THE END!

TRIBUTE TO MADIBA MANDELA, STATESMAN, ICON, LAWYER, FATHER, HUSBAND, PRESIDENT, HERO!

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/12/05/nelson-mandela-obituary-south-africa-apartheid/2027237/ THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT. SLEEP WELL, MANDIBA! FREEDOM FIGHTER-LAWYER; ICONIC PRESIDENT OF AZANIA (SOUTH AFRICA)