BEING NATURAL MEN AND WOMEN

Being Natural Men and Women As I read COMMON SENSE by Thomas Paine, I am struck by his frequent use of the term: 'natural.' Muhammad Ali, at 12 years old, began boxing lessons. He began training himself to fight, so that he could successfully retrieve his stolen bicycle from its thieves. That move was prudent and natural. Lou Raul's song about "A Natural Man," was a big hit, decades ago. Nature is the template for our own natural human conduct. That is why scientists study nature's many mysteries, to unravel its laws, to copy, to replicate, and apply them. That is as it should be. Mankind is composed of nature, subsisting on nature. Our natural lives are girded, are enshrined, by birth and death. Nature's chemical elements and properties comprise us. Its physical laws govern us. Its beauty inspires us. We are magnificent natural creations occupying our natural planet. We must always be natural. Appreciating proportionality is quite natural . Small children know "who's got the most" or the least. They born with an intuitive sense of just proportions, even before they study arithmetic or geometry. They are born with it, naturally, as they are born with a sense of rhythm; loving music, and the mathematics of which it consists, fractions & all! Nature is God's love of and laws to mankind, being mankind's teacher, being mankind's shelter, clothing, food, drink, being mankind's special generative means of Ascension, of transformation. Nature is our twin. Nature is not to be feared or to be run from; rather nature is for us to embrace as one. 

YOUR "KNOWLEDGE" OF TRUTH

YOUR "KNOWLEDGE" OF TRUTH Although a "Belief" in God may be somewhat critical, having one's own, very personal "Knowledge" of God is absolutely  essential . "Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make YOU free." John 8:32 . https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/…

THE GREATEST

Even our much acclaimed and indomitable 'greatest' of all time,' yet must succumb, in the fullness of time, to that which is eternally, infinitely "Greater," the divine maker-dispenser of all time, space, matter, energy, life, & grace. It has been truly said in the Quran, "Over all knowledge , there is One more Knowing." Inshallah! Sleep well Muhammad Ali!

MY VERY CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUHAMMAD ALI

MY VERY CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUHAMMAD ALI I first met Muhammad Ali in August 1974, after my first wedding, as he was exiting the office of Howard University PresidentJames Edward Cheek, which I was about to enter. On my arm was my beautiful bride. The encounter was so sudden and the personage so startling , that I just gasped, "Muhammad Ali!" He smiled. Looked at me, briefly, he then, shifted his gaze to my wife, who was laughing from ear to ear. As I introduced him to my wife, he smoothly floated like a butterfly, then kissed her cheek like a bee! She beamed in gratitude, broadly. Utterly outdone by such brazenly presumptuous behavior by Ali, I proceeded to throw up my dukes! He threw up his, and advanced at me. I then did the Ali Shuffle away! Great memory! My next encounter with the great Muhammad Ali occurred several years later in Chicago at a hotel, during my Mama's Family reunion . Once again, I was shocked to see him at the Lakeshore Hotel. I asked Mama (now deceased) what Ali was doing at our family reunion ? She then said that he was some to us kin. 'Kin?' Muhammad Ali? How was he kin to us, I asked? She then went through some rather prolix explanation that totally lost me, after the first cousin, whoever from wherever! Anyway, there he was, live and in the flesh in this photo with Mama, Margie Dean Coleman!

YOU ARE PROOF

JUST YOU!  There is but one of you. Just one ! Yet, there are trillions upon trillions upon trillions of pieces of just you, that interact, grow, and combine, incongruously, continuously, in rhythm within you and around you. These trillions upon trillions of tiny living pieces, too, make up, enable you. You and them are convivial. Each of those pieces of you were once alive, as you are now alive. They served a function and died. The story of you is the story of them. The same origin, same end. The story of you , just you, is the story of the cosmos times infinity. Rejoice in your singularly with God!

"DE SUN DO MOVE"

DE SUN DO MOVE ! "De Sun Do Move " is the title of an extremely remarkable sermon that was often preached by the Rev. John Jasper, a Baptist minister of Richmond, Virginia, a former slave. His sermon defied the prevailing notions of that era that the sun was stationary and did not move. But Wright wielded the word of God to prove to the skeptics of the 1880s onward, that the sun did move. His skeptics including some school teachers, some scientists and some philosophers, as well! Rev. Jasper served up this homily repeatedly to huge, diverse crowds of all races and classes: black and white, high and low, from every station of life. These thousands of hearers included incredulous scientists, distinguished authors, curious legislators, converted dockworkers, laughing laborers, and worshipping washerwomen. His message and his method were spectacular, say many reports. I can personally attest that "de sun do move," indeed! On this very morning, it has so moved in its annual course around my house in such a way that its diurnal rays now reflect off a picture frame, a room over, and land directly in my face ! That will get you up in the morning! In a few weeks, it will be gone away, again. But, while it's here, we might as well praise it together, knowing indisputably that 'De Sun Do Move!' The sermon is here. Please enjoy! http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/jasper.sun.do.move.html 

JEFFERSON COPIED FROM THOMAS PAINE

Reading Thomas Paine 's "Common Sense," published in 1776, I now see the textual source of President Thomas Jefferson 's jesuitical construct and use of the term "white" to describe Europeans in contrast with "black" to distinguish them from the African slaves, juridically, in his NOTES OF VIRGINIA : QUERY XIV, which was first published in 1785, 9 years after Thomas Paine . In February 1776, Paine wrote: "It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradations we surmount the force of local prejudice, as we enlarge our acquaintance with the world. A man born in any town in England divided into parishes, will naturally associate most with his fellow parishioners (because their interests in many cases will be common) and distinguish him by 'neighbor;' if he meet him but a few miles from home, he drops the narrow idea of a street and salutes him by the name of 'townsmen:' if he travel out of the country, and meet him in any other, he forgets the minor divisions of street or town, and calls him 'countryman' I.e., 'county-man;' but If in their foreign excursions they should associate in France or any other part of 'Europe,' their local remembrance would be enlarged into that of 'Englishmen.' And by a just parity of reasoning, all Europeans meeting in America, or any other quarter of the globe, are 'countrymen;' for England, Holland, Germany, or Sweden, when compared with the whole, stand in the same places on the larger scale, which the divisions of street, town, and county do on the smaller ones; distinctions too limited for continental minds ." P. 23 PAINE: WRITINGS (1955, 1984)