"Only" is lonely and incomplete.
"Only" is best sparely used, since it conceals much more than it reveals.
Zealots of all kinds exploit it to preclude, to obscure, to discourage, or to pretermit another's quest for alternatives to their zealotry.
Multiplicity and variety are facts of life. "Only" stands lonely all by itself.
There are many roads that lead to Rome, and many ways to skin a cat.
There are many ways to prove a mathematical theorem or problem. There are alternative geometries, alternative calculi, alternative algebra, and alternative arithmetic.
There are alternative cosmologies, alternative philosophies and alternative religions.
There are alternative therapies, alternative remedies, alternative diagnoses, alternative medical modalities--ancient and modern.
Despite all of these alternatives, "only," yet lonely, retains its anomalous, preemptive preeminence in our English grammar, if no other's.
"Only" is lonely and incomplete, best sparely and rarely used.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
MEDITATION IN SCHOOL NOT PRAYER
Meditation before class solves the political difficulties of "prayer."
Prayer connotes religious faith. Meditation connotes self-cleansing.
When folks quarrel about prayer in school, they are really fighting a religious battle through their children.
Meditation or quiet contemplative reflection has the physiological and psychological benefits of prayer without its excess political baggage.
Political problem solved, also a religious quarrel quashed. Meditate!
Prayer connotes religious faith. Meditation connotes self-cleansing.
When folks quarrel about prayer in school, they are really fighting a religious battle through their children.
Meditation or quiet contemplative reflection has the physiological and psychological benefits of prayer without its excess political baggage.
Political problem solved, also a religious quarrel quashed. Meditate!
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
"CONCERNING LOVE"
"What a man knows as his birthright in his experience before God he must accept and confirm as his necessity in his relations with his fellows. It is in the presence of God that he feels he is being totally dealt with, that the words of the Psalmist find a resting place in his own heart: Thou hast 'not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities' (Psalm 103:10). The sins, bitterness, weakness, virtues, loves, and strengths are all gathered and transmuted by His love and His grace, and we become whole in His Presence. This is the miracle of religious experience--the sense of being totally dealt with, completely understood, and utterly cared for. This is what a man seeks with his fellows. This is why the way of reconciliation and the way of love finally are one way...
"But there are other ways by which love works its perfect work. There is a steady anxiety that surrounds man's experience of love. It may stab the spirit by calling forth a bitter, scathing self-judgment. The heights to which it calls may seem so high that all incentive is lost and the individual is stricken with utter hopelessness and despair. It may throw in relief old and forgotten weaknesses to which one has made the adjustment of acceptance--but which may now stir in their place to offer themselves as testimony of one's unworthiness and to challenge the love with their embarrassing reality. At such times one expects love to be dimmed, in the mistaken notion that it is ultimately based upon merit and worth.
"Behold the miracle! Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale by which its portion may be weighed or measured. It does not seek to balance giving and receiving. Love loves; this is its nature. This does not mean it is blind, naive, or pretentious, but rather that it holds the object securely in its grasp, calling all that it sees by its true name but surrounding all with a wisdom born of its passion and its understanding...
"The appearance of love may be used as a technique of social control or for the manipulation of other people while the manipulator himself has no sense of personal involvement. The ethic may become divorced from the spiritual and/or religious commitment out of which it comes, by which it is inspired. In other words, instead of being a moral imperative, it can become a moral pretension. The love ethic may become a love dogma or doctrine, to which the mind may make an intellectual adjustment and to which mere mental assent may be given. This may be one of the real perils when the ethic becomes incorporated in a system or in the organizational structure of an institution.
"The reason for this is not far to seek. Neither a man nor an institution can embrace an ethical imperative without either becoming more and more expressive of it in the common life or developing an increasing enmity to it. Here is the essential challenge of the modern world to the Christian Church."
P.184-186, For the Inward Journey, "Concerning Love," by Howard Thurman (1984)
"But there are other ways by which love works its perfect work. There is a steady anxiety that surrounds man's experience of love. It may stab the spirit by calling forth a bitter, scathing self-judgment. The heights to which it calls may seem so high that all incentive is lost and the individual is stricken with utter hopelessness and despair. It may throw in relief old and forgotten weaknesses to which one has made the adjustment of acceptance--but which may now stir in their place to offer themselves as testimony of one's unworthiness and to challenge the love with their embarrassing reality. At such times one expects love to be dimmed, in the mistaken notion that it is ultimately based upon merit and worth.
"Behold the miracle! Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale by which its portion may be weighed or measured. It does not seek to balance giving and receiving. Love loves; this is its nature. This does not mean it is blind, naive, or pretentious, but rather that it holds the object securely in its grasp, calling all that it sees by its true name but surrounding all with a wisdom born of its passion and its understanding...
"The appearance of love may be used as a technique of social control or for the manipulation of other people while the manipulator himself has no sense of personal involvement. The ethic may become divorced from the spiritual and/or religious commitment out of which it comes, by which it is inspired. In other words, instead of being a moral imperative, it can become a moral pretension. The love ethic may become a love dogma or doctrine, to which the mind may make an intellectual adjustment and to which mere mental assent may be given. This may be one of the real perils when the ethic becomes incorporated in a system or in the organizational structure of an institution.
"The reason for this is not far to seek. Neither a man nor an institution can embrace an ethical imperative without either becoming more and more expressive of it in the common life or developing an increasing enmity to it. Here is the essential challenge of the modern world to the Christian Church."
P.184-186, For the Inward Journey, "Concerning Love," by Howard Thurman (1984)
Monday, April 8, 2013
lex loci---law of the place
"States' rights", the lex loci of black oppression, enabled former Confederate states, who lost their war of secession and their right to maintain slavery, to resume their despicable disparate treatment of America's black citizens who were all then overwhelmingly Republican, as though they had won the Civil War. This hands-off-the-South policy enabled Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, to assume the Presidency in 1877, in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina, the instation of the lex loci, and the benign neglect of newly earned black constitutional and statutory rights. Samuel Tilden, the Democrat who "lost" that Presidential election due to this Congressionally-brokered post-"Reconstruction" compromise, thus emerges as the South's true hero, more so than any cavalier or general, who all were decisively defeated in battle by their former slaves, called "contrabands," and after 1863 called soldiers and sailors, who won the war and preserved the very "Union" which now turned its back on them in exchange for political and economic gain among traitorous, avaricious "whites" of the North and South, whose "lex loci" policies nullified the United States constitution, itself.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Black Americans are Americans. Period
President Obama literally spoke the truth when he said that he is not the President of black America, but of the United States of America.
Black America has never had a President, nor could it ever have such. It lacks a constitution, armed forces, banking system, economic system, educational system; in short, "black America" is not now, nor has it ever been, a sovereign nation.
Black Americans are Americans. Period.
Our prudent and intelligent forebears wisely rejected emigration initiatives to Liberia, to Haiti, or elsewhere, when offered by different U.S. Presidents, and by so-called Colonization societies.
More recently, we also tacitly rejected the largely rhetorical separatist initiatives of Marcus Garvey and of Elijah Muhammad. So, we are here! We are home! And we ain't going nowhere.
Black America has never had a President, nor could it ever have such. It lacks a constitution, armed forces, banking system, economic system, educational system; in short, "black America" is not now, nor has it ever been, a sovereign nation.
Black Americans are Americans. Period.
Our prudent and intelligent forebears wisely rejected emigration initiatives to Liberia, to Haiti, or elsewhere, when offered by different U.S. Presidents, and by so-called Colonization societies.
More recently, we also tacitly rejected the largely rhetorical separatist initiatives of Marcus Garvey and of Elijah Muhammad. So, we are here! We are home! And we ain't going nowhere.
more than conquerors
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Rom. 8:37
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