QUEEN OF SHEBA AND SON

Certain single mothers in black America had began referring to themselves as fathers and mothers on Father's Day. I had been put off by this practice. I deemed it untrue and, in fact, rather pernicious, ill-considered, even dangerous. Imagine my surprise, then, when I read that the Queen of Sheba had said precisely that to her son by Solomon in the Kebra Nagast (The Glory of Kings), the Ethiopian holy book. The passage reads : "And the child grew and she called his name Bayna-Lehkem, which means 'son of the wise man.' When the child reached the age of twelve years he went to the Queen his mother and said unto her: 'O Queen, make known to me who is my father.' And the Queen spoke to him angrily, wishing to frighten him so that he might not desire to go to his father saying: 'Why dost thou ask me about thy father? I am thy father and thy mother; seek not to know any more.' And the boy went from her presence, and sat down. A second time and a third time he asked her, and he implored her to tell him. One day however she told him, saying : 'His country is far away, and the road is very difficult; wouldst thou not rather be here? ' The youth Bayna-Lehkem was handsome; his whole body and his members , and the bearing of his shoulders resembled those of King Solomon, his father; and his eyes, his legs, and his whole posture resembled those of Solomon the King. "When he was twenty-two he was skilled in the art of war and horsemanship , in the hunting and trapping of wild beasts, and in every thing that young men desire to learn. And he said unto the Queen: 'I will go and look upon the face of my father, and I will come back here by the will of God, the Lord of Israel.'" P.34, "The Queen Brings Forth Her Son, Bayna-Lehkem, " KEBRA NAGAST(1995), translated and edited by Miguel F. Brooks

GEOMETRY-PHILOSOPHY

Geometry is graphically codified philosophy.

AFRICAN ROOTS AMERICAN LABOR

African Roots of American Labor It is worthy of remembrance that Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of Hispaniola in 1492 for Spain was made in quest of the East Indies. His landing in the West Indies, not in the East Indies, not only results in the ultra decimation of Arawak Indians, who, then, inhabited Hispaniola (Island of Haiti and Dominican Republic), but set off a demand for slave labor to mine for gold and silver in the "New World." The slave labor issue was settled early on when Spain's monarchs, Isabell and Ferdinand approved the colonial importation of the far more stable and robust Africans to do the heavy labor that destroyed the Arawaks and other "Indians." This royal decree had been elicited by a priest , Bartholomew Las Casas on humanitarian grounds in 1503, a mere 8 years after Columbus' find. Spain became fabulously wealthy by the ruthless conquest of Maya, Inca, other Indian civilizations in the 1500s. Her wealth excited the envy of others, Portugal and England. The Roman Catholic Church's Pope in 1493 had drawn a line of demarcation around the globe, adjusted by treaty in 1494, giving lands to the east to Portugal and the west to Spain, the two principal international, conquering, trading , Catholic proselytizing, seafaring active nations of Western Europe. Portugal got Brazil, east of the line, Spain got all else west of the line. But a line is just a line, even if it was drawn by a Catholic Pope, whose papal sovereignty was now lacking unanimity by some Western European nations, given Martin Luther's 1517 iconic "95 Theses" at Wittenberg. Moreover American colonies were entrepôts of the privileged, royal and rich merchants and adventurers with licenses and investment from them. Therefore slave laborers were needed to work, mine, exploit, hold the land from equally avaricious fellow Western European explorers, traders, colonies, conquerors, proselytizers, who were solicitous of the New World 's wealth also. England's Queen Elizabeth, notably, authorized her privateers to pirate, to prey upon Spanish treasure ships and Portuguese treasure ships to divert their riches to her own nation. After a historic battle of 1588, when smaller elusive English vessels out-shot, out-maneuvered Spain's ponderous Armada, a new master of the sea and trade was born. English pirate licenses known as "letters marque and reprisals" were incorporated into the current constitution of England's most wildly successful colony, United States of America, in Article I, Section 8. It was at her Jamestown, Virginia, colony that was saved from starvation by Angolan slaves recaptured from Portuguese slavers by English pirates in 1619. Those Angolan slaves of 1619 laid the foundation for millions more of Africa's finest , hardiest specimens of manhood and womanhood , who were also in Article I of the United States Constitution at Section 2. We proudly symbolize the root of American labor, free, slave, labor, unrequited, unappreciated in 2019.

THOUSANDS OF YEARS

THOUSANDS OF YEARS For thousand of years before the Bible, Torah, Koran, Buddha, or any other, the ancient "Ethiopian" and "Egyptian" priest-sages had already conceived of God; worshiped God; mythologized God; ritualized God; anthropomorphized God; known God's immanence in nature, in man, in life; in astronomy; in themselves. They had invented reading, writing, paper, geometry, computing; they had built megalithic temples, obelisks, pyramids with exact mathematical precisions as attestations to God. Until the black man of the earth, the genetic descendants of the Ethiopian and Egyptian ancestors , knows God's origins, expressions, as being his own ancestors' and by extension, in himself, he cannot but help to be lost and turned out from the respect of the world due to his ignorance of himself relative to God. For from God the foundation of all flows: the structure of, spirit of, content of, hope, future of, all.

STARS

Our tales were written in the stars, in the earth, yours and mine, before we were born; indeed before earth was born. Praise God!

COMMUNICATIONS

COMMUNICATIONS Sunday, September 01, 2019 By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Communicating is more than speaking. It is more than writing or signaling. Babies communicate by smiling, laughing, crying, gesturing, eye contact. Fetuses communicate by kicking or by plaguing their mothers in myriad other ways. Animals communicate. Plants communicate. Microbial life communicates. Quantum physicists say that atoms, light years apart, precisely communicate. Doubtless, stars, planets, meteors, asteroids, comets also communicate. What then is the nature of these communications that are expressed, ideated, exchanged, by and between so many persons, places, and things, so effectually? Are these too mere “random chance” that elephants communicate sub-sonically for miles? Are whales “naturally selected” which communicate oceans apart? If it is true that “a little bird told me;” then, who or what, told the little bird? What language do we think in? or dream in ? Pray to God in when we moan? How is it our thoughts, our ideas, well-up? And from whence do they arise? Thoughts, too, are communications; they are inmost communications from God. #30

BLACK HOOLIGANISM

IN RE BLACK HOOLIGANISM Yesterday in two different contexts the scourge of African American , internecine gang warfare plaguing black people in 2019, was brought to the direct forefront of my mind. The first was a passionate 2007 video by Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam on Facebook, wherein he rhetorically ripped them apart before an appreciative, large, predominantly Muslim, audience. The second was an article in USA TODAY about the 400 years' of African Americans' arrival in America at Jamestown, Virginia, upon slaveships pirated by English privateers from Portuguese slavers on the high seas. These slaves were born free in what is now Angola. Angola was part of the Congo, historically; formerly a vast region of high civilization that was beaten down in stages over the years by Portuguese treaties, treachery, transgressions, that in due course allowed cannibalistic, uncivilized African tribes to subdue Angola, as agents for Portugal and to enslave thousands of Angolans . These captive Angolans, who were surely headed to Brazil, Portugal's American possession, by Papal treaty with Spain, were, in turn, recaptured by English pirates. From these twice-captured Angolan slaves came those of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. There, 20 or so of them were traded in exchange for food in August, according to a letter of John Rolfe, Pocahontas' widow. Ironically these Angolan slaves' agricultural knowledge, skills, and adeptness saved Jamestown, itself, from additional winter starvation, woefully experienced since its 1607 founding, and laid the economic foundations for the United States in the cultivation of tobacco and corn. But back to the proliferation of black gangs devastating black communities, urban and rural, in 2019, from and after 1968, the year of Dr. King's apotheosis. From then, these spiritually abased persons' fratricidal conduct has defied easy solutions; else Dr. King's own efforts in Chicago in 1966-1967, would have been successful. King had moved his entire family to the housing projects, only to flee back to Atlanta, as his own children became "sullen." A solution may be to cut off the supply of oxygen ( new recruits) from the ranks of fellow ghetto dwellers of these gangs, by infusing food for the body, light for the mind and hope for the spirit into young boys and girls, regularly, to lure them away, righteously, spiritually from incarceration doom, or the cemetery ( taking innocent lives with them ) by instilling love, truth, camaraderie, corrective history, skills, jobs, in them, they, in each other, parents, siblings cousins, other relatives to fight back, naturally, in some security. Meanwhile others may pursue their own hopeful efforts on political or economic levels. "Each one teach one." Is a '60s mantra, maxim that can work person to person, family to family, church to church . That's all I know to do beside teach, pray, applaud any progress, be it ever so humble to defeat the savage black hoodlums, gangs, criminals, killers.