Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 As a person who grew up in the deep south in the 1950's-60's, I wrote a song about

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1977, by the grace of God I was able to record the song in a studio in Nashville.

Hear now the message of the song, which is about two great, historical leaders

From careyrowland.com . . . Mountaintop

        

Glass half-Full

the Word BigBang

Way, way back in time, before all this stuff was here, even back before the Big Bang, something very amazing happened.


I was wondering about our universal origin, so I took a chance on a Wikipedia entry about it. This is what I found:

“ The (Big Bang) model describes how the universe expanded from a very high-density and high-temperature state.”

Scientists and dreamers like me have, for many and many a year, puzzled about what that “very high-density and high-temperature state” might have been.
I was pondering this development. My irrational dreamer self was wrestling with Reason as I attempted to figure out what that very high-density pre-Bang substance might have been. Being the 20th-century educated baby boomer that I am, my mind stumbled into an idea that I must have discovered in a science classroom somewhere along the line. Therefore, E=mc² banged into my big (bigger than a chimpanzee’s) brain.
Energy = mass x the speed of light squared.
Which means something like: When a very small chunk of (mass) material stuff gets its atomic parts whirling around at a certain extremely high speed, and when that speed is zipping along at a rate of that same velocity multiplied by itself (faster than I can imagine), the whole baleewick crosses some kind of transformational threshold and suddenly that mass of nuclear stuff gets changed Presto Chango! into something fundamentally different— Energy!
Waves and waves of energy . . .
Energy. . . hmm. . . whataboudit . . . Now I do know that there are many different forms of energy. There’s kinetic energy, like a bat hitting a ball, which then suddenly propels that ball to an absolutely reverse direction from the direction in which the pitcher had pitched it. Pretty amazing thing for a batter to do, when you think about it.
Amazing. Lots of amazing in this universe. Moving right along. . . don't blink or you'll miss something.
And then there’s potential energy, like Mr, Newton’s apple, which was, naturally, connected to an apple tree until, all of a sudden, something gave way and the apple dropped to the ground, which provoked Mr. Newton to ask:
Say what?
Which translates from 17th-century English to: what the heck is going on here? Or, if you’re an out-of-the-box kind of thinker . . . what the hell is going on here?
Potential energy instantaneously being converted to kinetic energy! That's what.
Perhaps it’s a little microcosm of the Big Bang, but on an exponentially smaller scale. The apple does make, you know, a kind of thud when it hits the ground, and then it transforms into a treat for an itinerant traveler to partake thereof.
Meanwhile, back at the tranche,  back to the the case of the macrocosm, the, as it were,  Big Bang, which was hypothesized as high-density matter being converted suddenly into kinetic energy, and subsequently expanding outward . . . (as John Lennon sang back in the day) across the universe . . .
and then, along the way, settling into a reverse of the mass-to-energy scenario, back into the energy-to-mass state of being, which brought forth . . . mass, stuff . . .
a Universe, duh . . .
I can only wonder, well, it is what it is, or . . . or it is what it has a become, as a result of all that instantaneous transformation, which has been transforming itself over 14.5 billion years to ravel as what we call “the Cosmos," and everything therein.
14.5 billion years of unfolding Universe.
Wow!
Francis Collins’, in his book The Language of God, described the beginning of the phenom, this way:

“For the first million years after the Big Bang, the universe expanded, the temperature dropped, and nuclei and atoms began to form. Matter began to coalesce into galaxies under the force of gravity. It acquired rotational motion as it did so, ultimately resulting in the spiral shape of galaxies such as our own. Within those galaxies local collections of hydrogen and helium were drawn together, and their density and temperature rose. Ultimately nuclear fusion commenced.”

All of this posited data reverberates in my 21st-century brain, settling into my born-again spirit, and restates itself as an expanded statement of Moses’ ancient, pre-science explanation:

“Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light; God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.”

Makes sense to me. You?
 
Glass half-Full

What the Jews did

What the Jews did was establish about half of the narrative foundation of the Western World.

Their Old Testament, combined with the New, were received as Holy Scriptures  by the Church, which, after Constantine, dominated European cultural development for over a thousand years.

Long about 1500 or so, the Protestant Reformation began the process of unshackling the chains of dogmatic error that the Catholic hierarchy had, over 1400 years, lapsed into. Then Reformation disruption of Papist hegemony broke ground for another new emphasis—the Renaissance. This humanist  arts movement unearthed the  quasi-dormant other half of the Western cultural narrative, the ancient Greeks, most notably Homer, Herodotus, Plato and Aristotle. On the coattails of the Greek philosophers, the Roman writers, most notably Cicero, Cato and Virgil later appended their contribution to the philosophical and governmental legacy of ancient Greece. It later became a bedrock of Western culture and government.

That ancient Greek heritage had initiated an idea called democracy, which was later amended to Republic by the Romans in their Empire.

Judeo-Christian Religion, Greek Democracy and Roman Republic became the religious, philosophical and governmental foundations upon which the Western World was established in Europe and beyond. 

In the early stages of Western history, during the period of the Roman Empire, along came a Roman general named Titus. In 70 a.c.e., he ran most of the Jews out of Israel, their homeland, and he sent his soldiers to Jerusalem to destroy the Jewish Temple, even though it had had been constructed by one of the Romans' own puppet kings, Herod.

Titus apparently thought it was a notable accomplishment that he had expelled most of the Jews out of their own ancient capital;  the Hebrews had previously managed to reclaim Jerusalem after the Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar had expelled them about 670 years earlier.

Titus’ Roman victory over the Jews was thought to be quite impressive by his successors. A few years after he died, his brother Domitian commissioned the Arch of Titus to be constructed in the main area of Rome. Among the conquests of Titus depicted in stone on the Arch, the plundering of Jerusalem is plain to see.

In this picture that I snapped, the Jewish Menorah can be plainly seen. To the victor goes the spoils, eh? The Roman big shots must have thought themselves something special after they ran those upstart Jews out of Jerusalem back in the day. The Jews were infamous among several historical empire-builders for being ungovernable.

One reason that Titus and Nebuchadnezzar and Antiochus and their ilk had so much trouble governing the Jews was because the people of Israel always insisted on being free.

This whole idea of freedom, around which Western culture revolves, originated largely with the Jews.

Long about 1400 or so years b.c.e., Moses rounded up the Jews and lead them out of the slavery that Egyptian pharoahs had inflicted on them.

This turned out to be a major event in world history.

Why? Because Moses and some of his people wrote a book about it. We know it as the book of Exodus. Along with the other books of the Torah/Pentateuch/Old Testament, it later became an international best-seller for many and many a year, many and many a century and several millenia of time.

What later became the Bible was passed down through the ages to many and many a person and group of persons to read and spark inspiration.

That spark of freedom that enabled the Jews to throw off the bondage of Pharoahic slavery—it has been an inspiration to many freedom-seeking people throughout history.

Case in point, within our lifetime. (All ye Boomers out there, hear ye, hear ye. . .)

Dr. Martin Luther KIng, Jr., on the night before he was assassinated, declared this message to his people in Memphis, and ultimately via audiotape to America, and to the world:

“I’ve been to the Mountaintop. . . I’ve seen the Promised Land . . .”

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

We can see that Dr. King was inspired by Moses. A long time ago, I wrote a song about it. Mountaintop

And we know from the Hebrew scriptures that Moses was inspired by God.

Now this may seem a little old-fashioned to you, a little bit religious. But this religious thing is much more than belief in God. It's not just out-of-style old hat. Faith also includes the idea of freedom. It also includes the idea of freedom of religion , freedom to believe what you need to believe, and freedom to act on what you believe to be true. It goes way back, way back . . .

Here’s another example from American history. A hundred and fifty years ago when black folks in this country were still enslaved . . . in a situation not unlike what the Jews had found themselves in ancient Egypt, one of those black former slaves, Harriet Tubman, started a secret society for the purpose of providing an escape for self-freed slaves who wanted to come up to the free states.

The name that was given to Harriet’s clandestine network was the Underground Railroad. Have you heard of it?

I’m here to tell you that the Underground Railroad has been transporting people from bondage to liberty for a very long time.

Last century,  freedom-seeking people did another version of it to smuggle the children of Israel  out of the Nazi Third Reich. Have you heard of it?

But know this: it’s still going on.

Underground Railroad Rides Again.

 And we can thank the Jews for that, because way, way back in the day . . . they started it; they started the freedom track that runs through human civilization.  The first one ran from Egypt to the Promised Land, and its been going, whenever needed, under the radar ever since.

It will never be shut down.

 

Glass half-Full 

MLK

Martin Luther King Jr, like any other man or woman ever born under the sun, had his faults. But he was a great American leader. His example and sacrificial life inspires us all to act in love, non-violence, and good works.

Dr. King's love and caring for his fellow-man was carved out of his faithful dedication to the message of peace and atonement as laid out by Jesus Christ. His vision for the freedom of all men and women was clarified and communicated in the revelatory legacy of Moses.

Glass half-Full

The Fall of Man--Past or Future?

This world is a mess, isn't it? It's a screwed-up place. How in the hell did it get this way? Who's responsible for this mess?

Among my people, the Christians, we generally attribute this world's fallen condition to a collusion between the devil and a couple of homo sapiens named Adam and Eve. We read in our sacred book a story of how this presently messed-up arrangement of things originated in a place called the garden of Eden where the devil, shapeshifting as a serpent, tricked Eve and Adam into eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, whatever that is.

That book, the Book of Genesis, was written by Moses.

Moses' impact on mankind has been huge. His writings have had more influence on human belief and behavior than just anybody else I can think of. His best-seller, the first five books of the Bible, is still more widely-read than any other written work. Moses' ancient influence has outdone all the masters of modern storytelling, even heavyweights such as Shakespeare, Melville, Twain, Dickens, Hemingway, Tolkien, Crichton, Grisham, Rowling and even Stephen King.

But Moses' chief contender these days for the role of Primary Explanator of the human condition is an Arabian prophet who has been around for 14 centuries: Mohammed. All around the world the advocates for Mohammed are giving Moses a run for his money. We shall see how this turns out.

As for me and my house--my money is on Moses. More importantly, my faith is in Jesus Christ. But I have to tell you--I think Moses was really onto something.

He, and his predecessor Abraham, had latched onto some pretty potent stuff. That is to say, some real truth. As for the Arabian, we shall see how all that plays out. Seems to me his deal is quite legalistic and compulsory, instead of being, say, benevolent and full of grace.

Consider Moses and his legacy.

His writings, and the writings of those who followed in his revelation, eventually became what we call the Judaeo-Christian heritage, generally associated with the Western World. When Mohammed came along, about 620 C.E., he sought to place himself into that Abrahamic/Mosaic stream of revelation. And as I said before, we shall see how that all works out. As for me and my house, I'm not into the Mohammedan thing, but the Mohammedans can do what they want. You go your way and I'll go mine, okay?

Getting back to my original question of how or why the world got to be such a screwed-up place, I would have to direct you to an appraisal of some recent human history. About a hundred years ago, the whole damn world started to blow up with powerful new technologies that had been applied to human conflict. World War I was no walk in the park, and World War II wasn't either. In fact, both of those conflagrations were pretty horrendous blow-ups that caused, in an historically unprecedented way, a lot of damage and pain and strife among the peoples of the world.

I mean, looking back on it. The whole damn 20th-century--and even up to now in the 21st--is shown to be powerful evidence that the human race is fallen, depraved, or, as they say in the Red states, screwed-up, or as they say in the Blue states, dysfunctional. Something is wrong with us. Human history proves it.

So, as I pointed out above, Moses was correct in his assessment when he brought forth the story about the Fall of Man.

Now Moses was a Jew and that has gotten him into trouble.

The modern historical nemesis of Moses and all the Jewish people was a bestial man from Austria named Adolf Hitler. History has shown that Hitler's diabolical hatred of the Jews, and probably his hatred of all the rest us who don't measure up to his Aryan bullshit standards, turned the whole world upside down with war and destruction for a period of about five years, back in the 1940's.

Hitler had spent his youth in artistic pursuits. He fancied himself an artist. During that first 20th-century decade before World War I, he had tried to break into the art world and become a recognized artist. While living in Vienna and trying to promote his art, he encountered some Jewish critics who did not appreciate his work. This became a big problem for Hitler. He acted out his inner resentment against them in such an extremely phobic way that his hatred for Jews became an obsession. One thing led to another, and, you know the rest of the story.

The point I am making is that Hitler blamed all the world's trouble and dysfunction on the Jews. And he damn-near destroyed the civilized world just to prove his point.

Look what happened as a result--another world war, millions of people dead. In some ways, it is still going on, although the names and the faces have changed.

But let's learn from history. The problem is not with the Jews. The problem is with all of us.

As far as the present arrangement of things goes, in 2016, there have been some interesting developments.

Take the Climate-bangers, for instance. They met in Kyoto, then in several other major cities, most recently Copenhagen, Lima, and Paris.

They're working toward a worldwide implementation of their program to save the world by phasing out Carbon Emissions.

Good luck with that, Naomi.

Now some of their rhetoric is quite legalistic, even repressive. Sounds like it could even morph into a police-state kind of .gov program.

If they think they can correct this world by regulating everybody into enforced, low-carbon poverty, I have to say, respectfully, I beg to differ.

Over a hundred years ago, the Marxists were all hot and bothered with their new theory about what would straighten this mess out. They wanted to organize and equip the working people of the world to take control of the Means of Production--that is-- to take all the resource-converting industrial/financial/gov infrastructure away from the Capitalists and let the proletariat run the show and this would evolve into the golden era of human brotherhood and thereby true communism.

History has shown, however, through the bloody regimes of Stalin, Mao, Pol-Pot, Kim Jong-Un and other delusionary demagogues, that their theoretical Plan for our deliverance from oppressive Capitalism, while it looks credible on paper, does not actually work according to plan.

Why not? The problem is Fallen Man. We screw it up every time.

Nobody, not even God Him/Her self, will ever get all homo sapiens together on the same page working together to correct our messed-up world.

Now consider the problem of Climate Change. This is a lot like the old problem of Capitalist Exploitation.

The Climate-bangers' doctrine we see evolving among world-class Academics involves a strategy similar to the Marxist prescription that was supposed to render Capitalism obsolete. This new Regimen calls for Taking Control of the Means of Emission--which is, practically speaking, the same as the Means of Production. But this has not happened under the Communist banner and it will not happen under the Climate banner. It'll never happen.

Men are emitters--always have been, always will be. We are guilty of flatulence every day, in oh so many ways, whether through an exhaust pipe, a coal stack, or an anal expulsion.

Men are sinners--always have been, always will be. We are guilty of murder every day, in oh so many ways, whether through the gun, the bomb, or the polluted environment.

Word from the Tower is if we don't get a hold of this Carbon thing it will be the end of us.

So now the Climate-bangers have predicted an Apocalypse of Carbon destruction. It arises from Man's inability to get his shit together and properly disposed of, based on the 2% increase Plan, or even the 1 1/2% plan. Our goose is cooked. The train is about to derail. The jig is up and that's all she wrote. It's curtains for us, unless we can get everybody together on the same regs to curb our carbon flatulence.

But there is another Apocalypse scenario that is just as likely to happen, if you think about it. For many centuries, we Christians have read and taught from our scriptures, the last book of which describes an Apocalypse that befalls us as a result of our depravity. Now, in the 20th-century, we religious types who warn of a possibly impending Tribulation, which is a result of our human carbon emission sin-- we are thought to be on the lunatic fringe because we are seen as doomsayers.

So as it turns out--it's history's little joke on us-- we Bible-thumpers are not the only ones on the street with a Repent the End is Near sign.

But hey, we're all in this together. Come, let us reason together.

Just lighten up, and let's all try to get along here. I'll minimize my emissions if you'll minimize yours.

And by 'n by, we shall see how this all pans out. But be careful; try not to fall on your way out of this mess.



Smoke

"Death of a King", Tavis' book

If ever a man lived who actually wrestled the demons of his era, Dr. Martin Luther King was that man.

Tavis Smiley makes that point absolutely clear in his new book Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Final Year.

Dr. King's steadfast espousal of non-violence, having been firmly founded in his biblical faith, was a burden he bore with dignity his entire working life. What Dietrich Bonhoeffer had earlier called "the cost of discipleship" is a very high price for any Christian disciple to pay, especially one who accepts a mission on the front lines of a never-ending battle. The battle that Dr. King chose to fight--for dignity and wellness among his people, and indeed, among all people--was but one 1950's-'60's phase of very long war struggle against injustice and poverty. It is a righteous war that has extended back into the times of Old Testament prophets such as Amos, Moses and Isaiah.

While reading Tavis' account of Dr. King's last 365 days, I am convinced that the man stood forthrightly in the line of prophetic anointing that stretched back to those prophets of long ago, especially Amos, and including the Messiah himself, Jesus.

There are some among my Christian brethren who question Dr. King's authenticity in the high calling of the Christian gospel. Their objections gather around accusations that he was a troublemaker, an upstart, an adulterous sinner, all of which is probably true.

But this Christian agrees with Dr. King, and with our greatest Book, which teaches that we are all sinners.

We are all sinners on this bus, whether it's a bus to Montgomery, Birmingham, Atlanta, Washington, wherever. A bus to hell itself can be turned around by the power of a man's faith.

In the unique case of Dr. King--that one man's exemplary faith,even sin-tainted as it was-- was a rock upon which millions have clung for stability since those heady, raucous days of the 1960's.

Including the honky who writes this review.

In fact (and Tavis' book makes this absolutely clear) Dr. King's unyielding stand on Christian non-violence is the main attribute of that leader's fortitude that set him apart from most of his comrades during those cataclysmic days of 1967-68.

The preacher's insistence on non-violent civil disobedience instead of violent confrontation compelled him along a lonely course of isolation, with periods of self-doubt and blatant rejection on all fronts friend and foe.

Those other luminaries who labored with Dr. King during that time--Stokely, Rap, Adam Clayton, and many others, including men in his own SCLC camp, Jesse, Ralph, Stanley--those other movers and shakers, who marked Martin as an Uncle Tom whose relevance was being eclipsed by bloodier strategies-- wanted to leave the preacher in the dust.

Which he ultimately was, as we all will be, in the dust.

I haven't even finished reading Tavis' book yet. But I just had to let you know. . . there was a man--he lived during my lifetime-- whose

"radical love ethos at the heart of Christianity--is not to change with the times but, through the force of his constant conviction, to change the times."

Thank you, Dr. King. Your life has been, always will be, an inspiration to me. I look forward to hearing directly from you when we are all together as God's children, black and white, in that place he has prepared for us.

And also, from this white boy to you, Tavis Smiley: thank you for this timely illumination of Dr. King's work among us. In spite of all the turbid waters that have passed beneath the bridges of our times, we are still a divided nation. We could stand to revisit the vision of peace that was manifested, not so long ago, in the life and work of this one man's faithful legacy.

my song about him: Mountaintop

Glass half-Full

This World

There's something wrong with this world. Can't you feel it?

Something a little out of whack.

We detect that something is a little out of kilter, maybe a little rotten in Denmark, and Detroit, in Darjeeling, something amiss in Mississippi, Malaysia and Malawi, out of sync in Singapore, Sevastopol, and Sao Paulo, and probably in our own back yard.

Everywhere we look in the world we notice folks, including me and you, who are playing the game without a full deck, making mistakes, screwing up; we see them building cities and societies using resources that are one brick shy of a load, with a screw loose somewhere and trying to put things on the straight and narrow with instruments that are about half a bubble off level.

What's up with that?

Many moons ago, when men were crawling out of the caves and bushes, when women were roasting critters over fire and worshipping the sun and stars and rocks and trees and bulls and bitches, back in the mists of antiquity when humans hung together in packs and tribes, then in camps, cities and even empires-- along came a fellow who marched to a different drummer.

He managed to do--not that he was trying to do so-- what a lot of celebs these days spend their whole lives attempting--he made a name for himself. You've probably heard of him:

Abraham.

Scads of people throughout history claim kinship or faith with him. Why? What was it he did that was so important? Well, how about this--history, oral and written, records that he believed God.

Abraham had noticed that, as I mentioned above, something was wrong in this world. So he asked God if there was something he could do about it. God urged him to leave the old world that he had been born into, and emigrate to a new place. So Abraham accepted God's counsel; he picked up stakes and moved.

Since that time, a lot of people of have, you know, done something like that.

Abraham was an immigrant. He was hoping, I suppose, that he would not be turned back at some border somewhere.

He did manage, thank God, to get settled into a new place, and a lot of things happened after that. His young'uns came along--Isaac, Ismail, and so forth and so on.

By n' by, a certain strain of his descendant family tree got themselves stuck in a slavery situation.

Then another fellow, Moses, came along and sought God's counsel. He got the people organized and led them out of slavery. While his people were wandering around in the middle east trying to get it together, Moses inquired further of God, and so God gave him a revelation of what was to be done about the situation.

That situation being this world, which is about half screwed up, and what could the people do about it. They needed some laws and principles to get themselves straightened out and going in the right direction, so God gave them some instructions. Nowadays some folks call it Torah, others call it Pentateuch, or Bible. Some call it myth. I call it part of the Bible.

The short-term outcome of all that was, in the ensuing centuries, Moses' people founded a kingdom and ran it for a few hundred years; it was supposed to be based on righteousness and justice. But, over time, things did not work as planned, and the kingdom was overcome by others and it all fell apart.

A few centuries after that, but in the same place, Jesus came along.

Now the main deal with Jesus is his Resurrection, and our resurrection, which accompanies his if we are willing to go with him. Either you believe it, or you don't. As for me and my house, I do believe that he was was raised from being dead after being crucified to atone for all the bad stuff that makes this world, including me, wrong.

But of course that's not the end of it all.

A few more centuries rolled by. Mohammed came along and noticed the same thing that I alluded to above--there's something wrong with the world. He claimed to have a revelation from God of what's to be done to get this crooked ole world straightened out.

Now the thing about Mohammed is: although he was a genius in religion, politics, and military strategy, he was a mere human like you and me. And so all the carefully-crafted constructs of his legacy later degenerated into more of the same-old same-old dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest manipulations of selfish lecherous ego-driven men , like everything else in this damned world.

There is no fixing this world. The Jews have been trying to fix life for thousands of years. Now the Muslims are taking their shot at it. Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians, Shintos, God bless 'em all for trying, but none of it works for getting this earth and its people corrected. The world just continues to get worse and worse, and the stakes higher and higher, like carbon emitted and rising to entrap the atmosphere, while human compulsions descend lower and lower, like carbon emitted and accumulating in the tombs of our ancestors and ultimately in our own graves.

But each one of us faces death alone; the wicked world that hath confounded me, stumbled you, for lo these many years-- it does not die with us. It just keeps going on and on and on in all its incendiary dysfunction.

When it gets right down to it, each man, each woman, must decide what is to be done about his/her own life, and what role he/she will attempt within the revolving restrictions of the great mandala. As for me--I'm going with the one Creator who, allowing himself to be crucified at the hands of this world's dysfunction, has already conquered and surpassed the death that awaits us all.

my song about it

Smoke

Dust of the ground, Elements of the earth

In his best-selling book, the Torah, which was later expanded to become the Bible, Moses wrote that God formed man from the dust of the ground.

In his best-selling book, the Origin of Species, which was later expanded to become a basis for evolutionary science, Darwin posited that man descended through natural selection from the elements of the earth.

What's the difference between these two traditions?

Mainly, the difference is that word "God."

Either way you look at it, mankind has a pretty muddy past, and probably a muddled future. However, if you accept the inclusion of "God" in your cosmology, your chances of getting cleaned up are probably better.

Glass half-Full

The Two-edged Sword

In the annals of human history, the invention of the sword is surely a turning point; it's importance ranks right up at the top of the list, along with the first use of that most laudable invention of all, the wheel.

I suppose the first application of a sharpened implement was used by prehistoric humans for gathering and preparing food. But I'm sure it wasn't long before some irate or jealous neanderthal discovered its advantageous wielding for more nefarious purposes, such as murder or maiming.

If you're not into the neanderthal explanation, think of this bipolar principle of homo sapiens behavior in terms of Cain and Abel.

Love it or hate it, this sharp implement has been used for many millennia to advance the various purposes of our species, and its power has much to do with our ascendancy over the lesser species of the animal kingdom.

In human relations, the damned thing has been swung forever, by men, to inflict injury, pain, destruction, and death, on other men. On the other hand, the same weapon has long been applied by the nobler ones among us to defend the weak and the innocent against such atrocities, thus administering a thing that we call justice.

In the ascent of human ethics and society, "the sword" became, over time, something more than an implement or a weapon. It became an idea, a two-edged concept. On one edge of the sword is crime cruel atrocity; on the other is justice and defense.

Looking at history, we see undeniable evidence for the frequent use of both edges of "the sword", the good side and the bad.

It reflects the dual nature of Man. On one side we are rotten to the core; on the other we are redeemed, and noble.

The sword has been used for thousand of years to enforce and extend various religious movements and agendas.

Very controversial in the ancient history of the Middle East is the use of the sword by Joshua and his Israeli tribes to subdue the Canaanites, on behalf of J'…h. Several thousand years later, Mohammed swept across the middle east crescent with his band of conquering Muslims, asserting righteousness with the sword in the name of Allah.

That little skirmish is still at center of all our international politics here on planet earth.

Jewish tradition proclaims that Moses gave us Law, so that men could live with each other having at least some semblance of societal order; since that strategy wasn't exactly working out as planned, Mohammed came along thousands of years later, to enforce the correction needed to establish righteousness upon the earth.

Neither of these has worked as effectively, to quell the belligerent manipulations of mankind, as their founders might have intended.

In the midst of these two sword-swinging religious traditions, and between them historically, there came Jesus, who grew up in a town called Nazareth, which is somewhere between Damascus and Jerusalem. This Jesus, whom I regard as Messiah, and deliverer of mankind from its evil nature, did not wield the sword, as Joshua and Mohammed had done. Instead, he laid the weapon thing down and preached peace and forgiveness, which is considered foolish and naive in this present arrangement of the world. But in the kingdom of God, which is our fortunate destiny as earth-dwellers, his good news receives more favorable reception.

When his right-hand-man, Peter, drew the sword in retaliation against the oppressive, arrestive Roman sword, Jesus instructed Peter to put the thing away. Their were higher principles at work in those events than the impetuous power of the sword could impose.

This Jesus is the one about whom I wrote a song in 1979, when the Iranian revolutionaries took our embassy and hostages in Teheran. About ten years ago, some friends of mine gathered in our hometown, Boone, North Carolina, USA, to help me in recording it. I hope you have a few minutes to give it a listen and consider the message therein.

http://www.micahrowland.com/carey/wevegotasong.mp3

Glass half-Full

Mountaintop

Mountaintop, a song

Well I walked out,
I walked out to Pisgah mountain.
Well ole Martin Luther King
he'd been up to the mountaintop
and I wanted to see what he had seen.
And ole Moses, oh
he'd been up to the mountaintop,
and I wanted to see what he had seen.
When I reached the top of Pisgah mountain,
what did I see?
I saw a promised land
just waiting for me
and waiting for all of ye.

Well I walked down from the mountain
and into the town.
Well ole Martin Luther King
he'd been to see the big man,
and I wanted to see what he had seen.
and ole Moses
he'd been to see the pharoah,
and I wanted to see what he had seen;

The promised land is what you make it to be.
Struggle,
struggle to unwind
your unconstant state of mind.
Just take a walk up the mountain, my friend,
and you will see:
what goes on down in that dirty old town
is bound to be.
So you can make up your mind, my friend,
and make it up good.
Are you looking for the promised land?
Or are you dying?
Are you dying
in a wasteland?
'cause I may be asking you now;
I may be asking you,
but some day, Lord yeah,
He's gonna ask you too
and what you going to say?
What you gon'na say when my Lord comes on that day?

Carey Rowland copyright 1978

from Relativity to Rock

As the big bang or whatever you want to call it manifested a universe through ever-widening time and space, Logos asserted, in the midst of diverging matter and energy, a creative force to countermand the default entropy. It was good.

So good, in fact, that Logos got excited and wanted to share the exuberance with someone. So Logos arranged a certain solar system so that it would fling out a planet upon which optimum conditions could evolve to produce sentient beings.

After those living entities had developed to an optimum condition, Logos breathed into one chosen specimen a new dimension called Spirit, which enabled the new species to communicate with Logos, which is why Logos referred to homo sapiens as being "in our image."

What that in our image attribute meant was: able to communicate with its creator. This was no small step for mankind.

One day many generations later an important turning point in the history of homo sapiens was reached. On a clear starry night, a certain very sensitive, intelligent man stepped out of his tent, looked up at the heavens and thought: This world, with its accompanying heavens and creatures, is quite impressive. I'd like to write a book about how it all happened, because my people have been wondering about its origins.

And Logos, reading his mind, replied: Good idea. I've been waiting for someone like you to come along. Sit down and start writing; I'll instruct you. I'll give you some material that will help the people understand what's going on in the universe, and will also help them to make a better life for themselves.

From our perspective several thousand years later, the man's opus was quite limited by his place and time. But he did a nice job of it, and managed to produce, with a little divine help, a best seller. You can still get a copy today.

His name was Moses.