First American Looters

December 16, 1773.  Sons of Liberty protested unfair taxes imposed by the British .gov in the Tea Act of 1773. Armed renegades, many of them disguised as indigenous natives,  destroyed an entire shipment of tea by dumping the tea kegs in Boston Harbor. 

As days turned into weeks, months and years, revolution-minded Colonials wrangled their upstart rage into a Revolution. 

227 years pass.

May 26, 2020.  Citizens of Minneapolis gathered in the dusk hours to protest the police asphyxiation of unarmed local resident, George Floyd. 

As news of the gentle giant’s death was reported nationally through mainstream and social media, widespread protests were rapidly organized in cities across the USA. Irate Americans, many of them masked as Covid-resisters, marched through streets all across the continent and beyond.

As days turned into weeks, a viral-video of Big Floyd’s  cop-inflicted murder propelled thousands of  Americans to become more and more infuriated. They marched in vehement protest against the obvious injustice of Officer Derek Chauvin’s smothering his gently-pleading victim. 

As protesters gathered across the nation, their  intentions became more difficult for police and other law enforcement personnel to identify. Joined by multiple interests groups and, in some cases, extremist instigators, protestors in some places descended into rioting and looting. Unpredictable crowds became unmanageable in some cities. 

Law enforcement officers across the nation faced very difficult decisions. Protecting private property and restoring law and order became no easy matter, no walk in the park, and certainly no walk in Lafayette Park. 

In the midst of nationwide mayhem, the chief executiive expressed adamant resolve to protect private property, while voicing no sympathy for the deceased citizen whose unjust death had sparked the protests. Our temporary chief executive  demonstrated no awareness of the injustice in that original offense—the murder of an innocent American.

Rather, he seemed preoccupied with using the news development to foment political division among his people in pursuance of his own obsession with power.

 Lines of ideological and political association became blurred in the fog of teargas and an insidious fog of class war.

As public law and order deteriorated, the President’s stubborn insensitivity silently implied his approval of police overreaction, as law enforcers were convincing themselves further and further that protection of private property would be their highest property.

“Don’t tread on me,” enraged American Colonials had said after the Tea Party ignited their wrath in 1773.

“Don’t tread on me,” enraged Americans are saying now, after one lethal-weapon knee  treading on George Floyd’s lifeless neck.

In American history, the upstarts who instigated the Boston Tea Party are lionized as heroes. 

They were mad about taxes, so they destroyed British property.

In our third century as a nation, enraged protesters have regrettably provoked some destructive overreaction.

They were mad about the murder of their brethren; then some property got destroyed along the way.

Will the judgements of history render our present dissidents as heroes?

Or will the dissidents of 2020 go down as rioting looters?

I tell you what. When I get to heaven, I’m going to ask those Boston TeaParty protesters what they think about it. 

Which is the greater offense to spark protest in a free society—Unfair Taxes by King, or Murder by Cop?

And just how pertinent is some lunatic-fringe  looting when compared to the ongoing crime. . . killing of American citizens ( George Floyd, Brionna Taylor, Ahmed Arbery, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray . . . Emmett Till, Dread Scott, 3/5ths of a person here, 3/5 of a person there . . .) killing by their own appointed protectors?

 

Glass half-Full

Big Floyd's Houston Launch

Fountain of Praise Church gathered in Houston today to send George  home to Jesus, because it was through this city—Third Ward and Cumi Homes and Jack Bates high school that George Floyd lived his formative years.
Here are a few thoughts and words brought forth along the way during his memorial service; these remembrances and truths become a small part of  the legacy of George Floyd. In today’s memorial service,  many like-minded Christian believers—inspired by these words, songs, praises— renew their resolve to partner with God in redeeming the world.
From Pastor Remus Wright:
“. . . when this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. . .”
Big Floyd is now re-united with his Creator, Savior.

George Floyd changed the world.
 “Let justice flow down like the waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
A warrior mindset in the mind of murderous cop killed George, when the officer’s mind should have rightfully been to perform his duty of protecting the people in that Minneapolis neighborhood where George was smothered, in eight minutes and forty-six seconds, under the knee of a bad cop.
But now, in the wake of his death, we wirtness and hear the worldwide celebration of George Floyd’s life.
“What good can come out of Nazareth?. . . What good can come out of Third Ward Houston?” someone said at the funeral today. . .
His little brother said George is going to change the world.
Yes, that has already happened, and continues to unfold and proliferate in an incredibly big way that nobody could have ever predicted.
The mayor of Houston pointed out that what men meant for evil God has used for good.
His family and friends said . . .



Big George was everybody’s shelter, a ghetto angel, gentle giant.
All students and graduates of Jack Bates high school love, admire and fondly remember Big George, a great athlete and friend.
Cyril spoke for all the Christian believers present  when he said To God be the Glory for Big Floyd’s incredible life.
God took a rejected stone and made it the cornerstone of a worldwide movement.
We need to be partnering with God to redeem the world.
George’s daughter said “My daddy changed the world.”
We see that happening now.

One person expressed this hope: Racism did not start in our lifetime, but racism can end in our lifetime.
That's what I call faith like a mustard seed.
“All things happen for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose.”
Nakita Foxx and Houston Ensemble sang: “We offer Praise.”
Rev. Al Sharpton urged all believers to put on the armor of God to fight against principalities and powers in high places. . . to resist wickedness in high places.
We still have a lot of work to do to get this racist mess straightened out.

Seismic reformational life-changing work has been launched in the wake of big George’s life, in the name of Jesus Christ.
Make straight a way in the wilderness— a path of righteousness for our Lord.



Many thanks to TVstation  KHOU-11 of Houston, broadcasting this memorial send-off so that we could experience its power and historic thrust in other parts of the USA and the world.

Glass half-Full

The Killing of George Floyd

No criminal was he.
but rather, the victim of one,
as on the video we see.

No violent man was he.
but rather, a disciple of
the Prince of Peace he be.

No vagrant was he.
but rather a tireless worker
for the Lord in eternity.



As the slain blood of Abel
cried out to the ground
up to the Lord a sound

So now does George’s breath
cry out to the atmosphere
for God, and us, to hear:

“I can’t breathe,’
cried he
as the killer
pinned George down
to the ground.
Now Big George’s breath cries out
from the ground,
a righteous sound!
On the net it’s found
around the world, all ‘round.

“A life well done, my faithful one,”
the Lord says to George
as Big George went home
never more to roam.

As for the one who pinned him down,
the writing’s on the wall
to be seen by all
all the world around.

Mene
Mene Tekel
Upharsin
Peres

In Mene appolis,
in Mene appolis
You forced him,
Derek.

The writing’s on the wall
to be seen by all:
“I can’t breathe!”
As America seethes.

King of Soul

zombie time

About 2700 years ago, some obscure blogger posted this, although my translation is a little bit off:



He was despised and forsaken, a man of sorrows, living with the worst of all human feelings--he was, like, the guy you look away from while passing in the street.
We didn’t like him.
But somehow he carried the terrible weight of our pathetic existence; this God-forsaken wanderer was afflicted with the worst fate that any humans have ever inflicted on their-fellow-man.
As it turned out, we discriminated against him, pushed him down as if he were the lowest of the low. Even so, he didn’t raise a big stink about the maltreatment that was inflicted on him. He didn’t whine about the injustice that he ended up getting.
He got screwed-over like the worst of the worst, even though he had done nothing to deserve such a judgement.

I mean, he never hurt anybody, never raised his hand against any person; he was no bully. In fact, he told the truth about everything everywhere he went. He was known for it. In fact, that’s what got him into such deep shit. He was a truth-teller . . . didn’t sugarcoat anything.
He was, like, a good guy. Looking back on the whole damn torrent of events, it doesn’t make any sense. The events of that terrible time just escalated far beyond any reasonable justification for what they did to him.
I mean, if there’s a God in this universe, he just, like, didn’t care at all about the devolution of events that, like, seemed to conspired against this man.
His fate was cast with the common criminals, but some rich guy showed up to deal with the corpse.



Go figure. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense to me. Sometime I wonder if anybody in this life ever gets what they deserve. The one-percenters get to set themselves up all high and mighty, while homeless folk just get shoved into the dead-end corners underneath freeways, and dumpster-diving and hitting people up for handouts on the street.
But this guy didn’t do any of that. I don’t think he even had a place to crash at night, although he was one of the smartest people I ever heard railing on the street about this God-forsaken planet that we’re trashing worser and worser every day that goes by.
Now that they’ve disposed of him, no tellin’ what’s gonna happen next.



 I mean, it’s like zombie time, but we can’t even go see a dam movie any more. No more Saturday night at the movies for us. Who’d’ve thought you couldn’t even catch a flick on a Saturday night? What the hell is the world coming to? All the worst stuff is going viral, while the best are clueless. Who knew?

King of Soul

What Joe said . . .

Ponder what he said, long ago. This lesson pertains to forgiveness, and other truths . . . destiny, injustice, endurance, faith and human nature.

“Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Please come closer to me.’ And they came closer. And he said, ‘I am your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.’ “
“ ‘Now do not be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, but God sent me before you to preserve life.’
“ ‘For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting.’
“ ‘God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to keep you alive by a great deliverance.’
“ ‘Now, therefore, it was not you who sent me here, but God . . .’ “

For more about Joseph and his brothers, read Genesis 37-48.
Also, consider Peterson’s lecture on this subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7V8eZ1BLiI

King of Soul

Never Again

From chapter 8 of Glass half-Full, we find Hilda, a restaurant-owner, telling some friends about an experience she had in Germany.

"Hitler and his thugs tried to take advantage of the situation; they launched a coup d'etat, called a putsch in German. But it failed, and they ended up getting arrested. The event has been named the beer hall putsch of 1923. Well, I was reading about these police officers who were killed by the Nazis that night. And I was reading in my guide book some information about the incident. I kept hearing this beautiful music, really spirited music. We walked in the direction of the music. We turned a corner...and there they were, five musicians playing five instruments: clarinet, violin, accordion, cello, a drummer. I could tell they were Jewish right away. I considered their courage: to stand there at the Odeonsplatz where the Nazis had made their first move to try and take over the world, and declare, with their music, that Jewish people, along with their music, were alive and well in the 21st century. They inspired me. We must have listened to them for an hour...the Bridge Ensemble."

This excerpt from my 2007 novel describes an event in the life of a fictional character named Hilda. While writing the book, I chose the occurrence to make a point about what happens in the history of our human race when hate-based groups take up arms against other people.

However, the event described here, although presented as a fictional event in a story, is in reality something that actually happened.

It happened to me. I was "Hilda." My son and I were in Munich in 2002 when the music reached my ears while I was reading a plaque about the four German policemen who had been killed during the first Nazi uprising in 1923.

It was a meaningful event in my life, so I made the experience part of a long story story that I later published in 2007. Glass half-Full is a novel about some characters in the Washington DC area; they're pretty good people, but some bad things happen to them.

Bad things happen. 

When bad things happen on a large scale, nations go to war against each other and all hell breaks loose for a while. When all hell breaks loose on a major scale--a continental level of magnitude and intensity--that is called "World War."

We of mankind have had two of them. We hope that we never have another. Don't we?

In both world wars, our nation, the United States of America, intervened on behalf of our Allies. In both wars, our presence and strength in the fray made a big difference, and we were victorious in both holocausts.

Holocausts is a word I use in the context of that last sentence, meaning  life sacrifices, by fire: lives being snuffed out by fire, or by other destructive means. In our post-World War II experience, the Holocaust generally refers to the mass-murder of six million Jewish Europeans under the murderous regime of the Nazis, led by the demonic Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler.

Never again should there be a holocaust of such immensity. Our nation and our armed forces were a large part of extinguishing the fire of persecution that snuffed out the lives of millions of defenseless, innocent persons before and during the Second World War.

Now, when people refer to the proposition of making America "great again," this is--or should be--the meaning of the phrase, Make America Great Again.

That we have been, in times past, the defender of innocent people who are being slaughtered on a massive scale by hate-filled groups,--this is what made America great during World War II. And this is what, generally, does make America great in any present or future time. 

Great, yes, because we have--on a massive scale-- the resources and the collective will to serve as defenders of defenseless or innocent people anywhere in the world. 

Not because we appoint ourselves aggressors to impose our so-called American way of life on any other nation or people-group in this world. This is where we crossed the line, in my opinion, in Vietnam. What began as a war to defend the free people of South Vietnam against aggressive Viet Minh insurgents, degenerated instead, to become a war of aggression in which we raised a lot more hell and bloodletting than we could legitimately justify; in a quasi-primitive nation that had not yet progressed to a phase of development in which they could truly understand the difference between these two words: communism and capitalism.

And may that never happen again.

A year or two ago, I also wrote a sociological novel pertaining to our Vietnam ordeal, King of Soul.

Let us Americans never be the aggressors. We are defenders. What makes our nation great, if anything, is simply the massive scale of defense we are able to muster on behalf of free and innocent people, whether it's in Europe, Rwanda, the Middle East, or anywhere, including at home. May our great strength never corrupt us.

We are defenders not only in the military applications. We are-and should always be--defenders of the defenseless in matters of law. We are, according to our original founding codes, advocates for justice in all of our institutions: courts of law, legislative bodies, government agencies, immigration agencies, overseas aid, and administrative law from welfare to wall street. That is what makes America great. 

May we never stray from the preservation and extension of truth, justice, and yes, the American way.

And may we always be defenders of same.

Glass half-Full

What do you see?

Look at this.

What do you see?

Two lines crossing?

Yes.

Use your imagination. There's more to this symbol than meets the eye.

Maybe you see an X/Y axis where mathematical equations can be graphed in two-dimensional space.

Maybe you see a crossroads, a place where a traveler, perhaps you, would retain a straight path, or make a turn.

And we know there's the possibility that you see here a religious symbol.

Maybe you see organized religion fastened irretrievably to a stiff framework of dead tradition.

Think about this. This configuration has been used, at different times in history, as

an instrument of torture,

where one human being might be nailed, even unto death, by other human beings.

Or perhaps can you see, in the crossed paths of historical nations,

the desires of different people groups at cross-purposes with each other,

or the interests of different ethnicities at cross-purposes with each other,

or the dogmatic stubbornness of different religions crossing each other in warfare?

You may even see any possibility of World Peace nailed to this cross--

straightjacketed hopelessly to the hard reality that this world is a cruel, bellicose place.

Maybe you see any hope for true justice in this world bound repeatedly by the terrible deeds that men do.

Stretch you imagination. Canst thou discern Peace On Earth nailed to our inescapable propensity toward war?

Can you, perhaps, even see the hopes and dreams of fearful Syrian citizens nailed to a ubiquitous grid of war?

Or, the lives of black men and women that matter, strewn lifelessly across an intersection of corruption and injustice?

Maybe you can visualize, in the collective memory of our history, a cross burning in front of Great-great Grampa Tom's cabin.

Can you envision all the wasted time that Saeed Abedini spent in an Iranian prison fastened to a cross of injustice?

Can you imagine all the terrible deeds of mankind throughout history nailed to this cross?

There was a man crucified on it at one time. But he is not bound to that cross any more.

A couple of days after our sentence upon him was passed, and the execution complete, he was carried to to an intersection with eternal life.

Can you imagine eternal life on the other side of that deathly cross?

I can. I've been to the crossroads.



Glass half-Full

I wanna know what happen to Freddie Gray

Now I don't know but I been told

that we Americans got a right that we hold:

from unreasonable searches and seizures we are free,

'cause the 4th Amendment say that the way it should be.



Now we don't know what happen to Freddie Gray

but we know he didn't survive that day

when three cops from Baltimore PD

hauled him in on some charge that no one did see.



They said he had a switchblade that's illegal,

but State's attorney said he had a pocket knife, legal.

Without probable cause those cops hauled Freddie in,

but he didn't survive it; it seems like a sin.



Now I know its wrong that a riot later ensued

but that don't change the fact that Freddie was abused.

So I think it appropriate that somehow, some way:

the people of America need to know what happen to Freddie that day.



It was a medical examiner, you see,

who examined Freddie's fatal injury,

and called it not self-inflicted, but homicide.

So in a court of Law, the cops should be tried.



We need to know--it needs to be tried--

if Freddy's death was justified.

We need to know what happen to Freddie that day;

this can't be like Mike Brown's case where they never would say.



Glass half-Full

This just doesn't add up

Yeah, sure, Michael Brown broke a law.

Yeah, sure, he was resisting arrest;

yeah, sure, the officer of the law was doing his duty.

But in the end, a young man, unarmed, is dead
because he stole a pack of cigarillos and then walked impudently down the middle of the street.


Yeah, sure, Eric Garner broke a law.

Yeah, sure, he was resisting arrest;

yeah, sure, the officer of the law was doing his duty.

But in the end, a young man, unarmed, is dead

because he was selling cigarettes.


This just doesn't add up.

There is something wrong here.

And it appears to be, as we say in newspeak, systemic.

That is to say, there is something wrong with the system.


Yeah, sure, the Missouri grand jury that did not indict the officer

was a legally appointed body the purpose of which was to decide

whether there was a possibility that the arresting officer had violated the law

while attempting to protect himself and the public.


Yeah, sure, the New York grand jury that did not indict the officer

was a legally appointed body the purpose of which was to decide

whether there was a possibility that the arresting officer had violated the law

while attempting to protect himself and the public.


But we have two dead bodies because of damned minuscule cigarette violations. The deathful end doesn't justify the means. There's something wrong with this picture, and the public can smell it.


Why is the deadly outcome of these two cases so much bigger, and final, than the sum of their legal parts?

A young man commits a misdemeanor or two; then he's walking along and suddenly there's a cop in his face. That's to be expected; illegal actions have legal consequences. So the cop is doing his job. But hey, a few minutes later the petty criminal is dead.


Who issued the guilty verdict and death sentence? A court of law? A trial by jury? No. It doesn't add up.

There is something going on here, something being exposed, that needs to be dealt with.

Is it racism? True dat. Like sin, it is always there in us, sometimes under the surface, sometimes in full-blown atrocity. Wherever men go upon the earth, there is, was, will be tribe-against-tribe racism.

But racism is only part of this picture; the other part is a justice system with its priorities out of whack. That's what we the people are feeling now.

Why are so many people--black and white, conservative and liberal--disturbed about the fatal outcome of these incidents?

We have a serious disconnect between the street-imposed sentence (death) and the seriousness of the crime.

That "it doesn't add up" disconnect is wired into our media-driven minds. Although we do not know nearly as much as we think we do about news events, neither does a grand jury operating without cross-examination of witnesses.

In this fortnight's perceived events, it's almost as if the vast public outcry, as jerky and fickle and circumstantial as it is, produces a more appropriate assessment of the outcome than the traditional, evidence-based system for passing judgement.


Oh surely we do not know the facts of the case as well as the grand jury. But we do know this: two young, unarmed men who had not been sentenced to death are now dead. That's the bottom line.

It doesn't add up. The system, with or without grand jury, needs somehow to be fixed, so that the punitive sentence accurately reflects the seriousness of crime.

As if that could happen.

I don't know though. . . maybe it's always been this way. Maybe there is, in truth, no justice in this world.

And so folks yearn for something better. . . the Last Judgement of a Righteous God?

I'm not excusing injustice.

Just sayin'. That Last Judgement may be the only justice some of us will ever see.


Glass half-Full

Opportunity Lost in Ferguson

Officer Wilson will have no opportunity to be publicly exonerated.

I have been thinking about him, and the man he shot. Like many Americans, I have been wondering what exactly did happen on that fateful August night when Officer Wilson, in the line of dangerous duty, killed Mike Brown with a gun.

Based on media-driven hearsay, it sounds to me like the young policeman would have had a pretty solid defense of his actions while attempting to enforce the law. I think, as most other white folk probably do, he would have been found not guilty in a court of law.

But who am I to say? Nobody. I'm a thousand miles away, a merely curious news-seeker with no access to the facts.

Since there will be no trial, and hence no public discovery of what actually happened between Officer Wilson and Mike Brown, we will never know.

Now this tragic death becomes an open wound in our national conscience; it will not heal.

There will be no sworn testimony from Officer Wilson, nor from any witness, no questioning from a defense attorney, no cross-examination from a prosecutor.

As citizens in a nation of laws, we will never know what evidence and testimony might have been called forth in our Officer's defense in a court of law.

But we need to know. As a nation at black and white crossroads, we do need to know what happened.

As a result of our failure to follow through with due process, the severe wound that has been opened up on our national corpus will not heal; it will fester until it boils up with infections of chronic misinformation, severe political manipulation, unresolved grief and destructive rage.

We have lost an opportunity. The United States of America will have no close-up examination of what routinely happens between a black shoplifter and a white cop on a dark night in a city that keeps no secrets.

The sad consequence of no indictment in Missouri is that police work in our cities will become more difficult, more dangerous, not less.

And Officer Wilson will have no opportunity for public exoneration from his hastily fatal decision on that dark Missouri night.

Show me some due process, and this could turn out differently for our people.



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

To Save the World

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing, end them. . .

This problem, described in archaic language by a Shakespearean prince, Hamlet, can be stated more simply this way:

Should we suffer, or should we fight?

Should we accept the world as it, or is it better to struggle against all the bad stuff?

Should we concede, or strive toward tikkun olam, the repairing of the world?

And even if we choose to oppose the (sea of) troubles in this life, can our resistance put an end to them? Can "opposing" those troubles actually defeat them?

If you or I can put an end to the injustice and or dysfunction of this world, then maybe we should get busy working toward that end. But if this quest--to resist the evil of this world-- is fruitless, a lost cause, then why bother? What difference does it make?

Maybe we just have to suffer through it.

That's what one religious founder, Jesus of Nazareth, did. He suffered through the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" that were flung upon him. He suffered all the way through torture and crucifixion until death itself overtook him.

For a few days.

But his boldly compassionate life included not only suffering and bearing the pain, it also included serious resistance against the powers that be. He was a man who took arms, spiritually, against a sea of troubles, by speaking publicly against the injustice that humans impose upon one another, and he used his hands proactively to heal people, and to release folks from suffering and oppression.

I think his life was quite unique in this respect: he actually, and very effectively, trod a middle path between these two choices--submission and resistance.

He was an example of bearing up under the burden of suffering, while simultaneously launching a campaign against what is wrong in this world of human striving that manifests as dogmatic religion and ineffective government.

Now we know from history that Jesus' struggle to live a meaningful life, a life that truly made a difference, was a failure.

Because, you know, he ended up dead and publicly humiliated and all that.

On the other hand, if you consider what all has been done in his name since he lived, it could be that the work of his life--the suffering and the active resistance--attests that his legacy is more perpetual than it may at first appear.

From the standpoint of world history, his story is everlasting. This persistent story of a savior who conquered death itself has transcended the world. He has won the world by overcoming the world's cynical resistance.

His was the greatest life ever lived. He opposed the slings and arrows by submitting to them. Thus he rendered them powerless against his sacred work. He overcame the world. Who else has done such a thing? and then lived to tell about it. You gotta believe.

This was accomplished, paradoxically, without actually "taking arms." He fired no gun, wielded no knife. Jesus' only sword was the one in his mouth. What an exceptional way to repair the hearts of men, as if that were possible!

While other religionists have resorted to the sword of conquest, here was a man whose only weapon for opposing the evils of mankind was the sword of the Spirit.

To be, or not to be (with Him). . . that is the question.

Glass half-Full

SFMuni bus #48

Yesterday I took the #48 SFMuni bus ride from the Mission district over Diamond Heights to the West Portal.

I ambled around a bit, wandered lonely as a cloud through a corner of Golden Gate Park, then strolled straight up Haight, past Ashbury to Masonic, then northward through the Panhandle to Fulton and by n by took a long jaunt back to mid-town and the San Francisco Opera house.

This morning, Pat and I hopped on the #48 and rode out to West Portal. Now we are kickin' around, having taken a trolley(modern version) over to catch a view of the Pacific, which we had seen earlier this year, but that was down the coast a bit, in Costa Rica.

I like the #48 bus. I was surprised to see it depicted in this mural, which we were viewing yesterday afternoon on Balmy alley in the Mission:



At the present moment, early Monday afternoon Sept. 29, 2014, I am sitting at a Starbucks preparing to send you this little digital communicado. You may see the skullish fellow in the painting. He is is typing away on a laptop, as I am at this moment, and probably hoping to connect cyber-cytizens of the world to some idea or story that will lead them to hell or heaven or somewhere in between. I hope the artist did not have this old white guy (me) in mind in that detail.

That cannot be me in the pic anyway, because I am not wearing a black robe. I'm wearing a Carolina blue shirt.

As for the excellent painting jpg'd here, I recommend you study it closely. It is very well done. But somehow I feel not entirely empathetic to its angstish message. On the other hand I can tell you that the painting itself is evidence that not all is well in this present arrangement of things: this truth I acknowledge.

As for the worldy injustice that is alluded to herein, I could write a book (yet to come.) It would be a long book, the fourth I have written, a labor of love, an opus, although others have probably done it better than I.

Nevertheless, If I may offer one brief advisement with which to leave you, it would be: read Matthew 5, 6,7. The message there is, I believe, even more powerful than, say, Marx, Mao or Che. And even more revolutionary than this painting, but not as colorful.

Glass Chimera

The way of the World

Just rip my heart out o me

will ya? Go ahead and

snuff out any hope of justice or

mercy in this world,

as we hear of hundreds clueless

passengers get shot down because

ukraine is bleeding thirty-eight thousand feet

below,

and hundreds more of Gazan kids get blown to

kingdom come,

while ISIS caliphators purge Christ

from Mosul. Just

rip my heart out will ya?

Once again just rip my

heart will ya while

the Innocents get nailed to crooked

damn cross

between power and purge,

between them that are bad and

them that are worse.

Makes me wanna curse

but I won't cuz it been done already

enough.

Just send in the

hearse

will ya?



Smoke

Jackson Mississippi 1962

In 1954, I was three years old. In that year, my parents moved from Louisiana to Jackson Mississippi. Our family of four, soon to be six souls, stayed in Jackson until I was in the sixth grade, 1962. Then we moved back to Louisiana.

All around us at that time the world was changing big time. I was, of course, clueless, being just a kid. Living in a humble, GI-bill enabled suburb, l and my whitey neighborhood playmates were quite insulated from the maelstrom of civil rights-fueled social change that was gathering momentum in Jackson and in the whole state of Mississippi and the South, and later the North.

I was in a Catholic school; it was nice enough, and I had some good friends there. Although the US Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, had established a legal path toward school desegregation in 1954, I never saw a black classmate until I was in junior high school in Baton Rouge a few years later.

My first impressions of black folk in Jackson came mostly through our maid, Aleen. She was a very nice lady. Many an afternoon, my sister and I would accompany my mother as she drove Aleen home from her day-job at our home. Aleen's home was what we would politely call the "other side of town," although it wasn't really in town, but seemed to me to be out in the country somewhere nearby. The vivid image in my child's mind was of a dirt road lined by houses that I later learned are called "shotgun shacks."

In 2011, Dreamworks released a movie about what was developing in Jackson at that time. You've probably seen it: The Help. It is an excellent film, based on the novel by Kathryn Stockett and it absolutely confirms all my juvenile impressions and memories of Jackson in the 1950s. But of course, as I said before, being a kid I had no idea of what was really going on behind all that docile southern comfort status quo.

Recently, I have decided to write a fictional historiography about growing up in the South during that time, and about how being a born-n-bred southerner interfaced with what the rest of our country was becoming. This novel, my fourth, is tentatively named King of Soul. (Preview: I am not "the King.") The book being written follows the novel Smoke, which I have just published.
I do a lot of historical research. Learning about history is what propels me as a writer. I turn the research into fiction that, I feel represents a certain time period or zeitgeist. Finally I am doing one now on the actual time and place of my growing up.
My daughter Katie, who nobly attempts to be my editor, tells me that my protagonist's depth suffers in the midst of all my fictionalized history. She is of course correct in this critique. Certainly I will learn the lesson of satisfactory protagonist development in this next project, instead of obsessing with making the history itself the main character.

To begin research I have picked up several books at the Belk library, Appalachian State University, here in Boone NC where I live, where Pat and I have raised our three grown young'uns. This researching will be my modus operandi. Before King of Soul is finished in a few years, I probably will have consulted with a hundred or more sources from that library, as well as our local Watauga County library.

The Kindle, and Wikipedia, and real historians posting online, and so forth are also major components of my publishing projects.

To get into the King of Soul, I am reading, among other things, Michael Vinson Williams' opus of history research, Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr, and also A Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC, by Cheryl Lynn Greenberg.

So, by doing, I am finally getting the back-story of what was really going on while I was growing up in Jackson Mississippi in the 1950s and Baton Rouge Louisiana in the 1960s.

I graduated from high school in 1969. What does that tell ya? Should be a fascinating period to reflect upon.

All of this to say: at the present moment I am here to share with you three of the most interesting historical facts I have learned in preparation to writing the fictional historiography.

1. From Williams' book on Medgar Evers: When Medgar returned to the USA after soldiering to defending our country and Europe in 1946, he had to "go to the back of the bus."! What kind of a welcome was that for a man who had survived D-Day and World War II in Europe? Mr. Evers went on to do very persistent, determined work in voter registrations in Mississippi in the '50s and '60s, and became a great leader in the civil rights movement before he was shot down in the dark of night by a white supremacist in his own front yard in Jackson in 1963. That was just a few months before they got Kennedy.

2. From Greenburg's book on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC): Through volunteering in the civil rights movement in the South, empathetic activists from other areas of the country learned how it's done. For instance: after working with the blacks down south, Mario Savio took his SNCC experience back to Berkeley, where he lead the Free Speech Movement that soon initiated protest against the Vietnam war. Also, after working with blacks down south, Tom Hayden returned to Michigan and authored, with his SDS comrades, the Port Huron Statement which was the beginning of Students for a Democratic Society.

3.What I am seeing now about the time period is this: As the civil rights movement gathered steam in the mid-'60s, a rift developed between the moderates (such as Medgar Evers, the NAACP, Dr. King, SCLC, John Lewis, Julian Bond, etc.) and the radicals (such as Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, SNCC, Panthers, Malcolm X, etc.) This parting of ways is similar to what happened among the anti-Fascists and also among the anti-Communists in Europe of the 1930s, a subject of my new novel, Smoke. The peaceful v. violent disagreement is also, I believe, indicative of protest movements generally, such as the two biggies: the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution. Probably the next revolution, too, whatever becomes of that.

As for me, the kid growing up in the '50s and '60s, well. . . shut my mouth, I'm a child of the South. But I'm a commencin' to write about it. Thank ye for your time.
Glass half-Full

Don't go ballistic like Cain did

I'm a meat-eater, but that's neither here nor there. Some people are not, and that's just fine. You do your thing and I'll do mine. People are different; each person has his/her own preferences. This diversity makes human life much more interesting and dramatic than it would be if we were all the same.

In that ancient great Book--the one that is holy and cherished by millions while it is disdained by others--a story is told about two brothers of long ago, Cain and Abel. Cain was growing crops in the ground; Abel was raising flocks of sheep.

Back in those days, men had not yet figured out how cool they were, so they looked to the supernatural realm for inspiration and faith. Many men and women of antiquity believed in offering a portion of their increase to God. It wasn't like today, when folks don't pay attention to such things because they are, you know, on their own.

One day, these two brothers were offering their sacrifices to God, but, as it turned out, with differing results.The book of Genesis reports that God had regard for Abel's sacrifice, but not for Cain's, whatever that means. The common interpretation of this is that God rejected Cain's offering, but received Abel's. If God did indeed reject Cain's sacrifice, the Bible provides no explanation of God's preference in this incident.

In Christian tradition, writ large and writ small, this event has been for a long time a matter of some study and speculation. Some have inferred that God was indicating a preference for meat instead of veggie or grain produce, or simply an acknowledgement that meat has more protein value as food for us humans. Or maybe God's apparent distinction was based not on the foods being offered, but on some difference between the two brothers themselves. Perhaps Cain had offered low quality goods, while Abel had reserved his best for God. Or it could be that Cain just had a bad attitude. We don't know.

What we can see in this story is that God's acknowledgement of one brother's offering was not the same as his regard for the other. That's about it.

Those of us who believe in God, and in the Mosaic revelation about God's attributes, can derive with surety only one lesson from this demonstrative story about God's preference: whatever God does, he does. Or, to put it the other way, whatever he doesn't do, he doesn't do. There is no need for him to justify his acceptances to us. Who are we to question the One who created all things?

And we have to live with that.

Christians and others who value the Genesis revelation have this awareness of the Almighty's sovereignty, which is absolute because God is the Creator who set all things in motion. Our conception if God is fundamentally different from our view of humans, whom we know to be fickle, inconsistent, generally unpredictable, contentious, and sometimes murderous.

The reality of God's sovereign will was not a lesson that Cain was ready to accept. He got upset about God's apparent rejection of his offering. So Cain killed his brother.

Is God guilty of some injustice here? Is God unjust because he did not receive both sacrifices as equal?

No.

Equality, as venerable as it is, is a human notion. According to our Declaration of American Independence, the God who created Nature also created men and women, and created them all equal. This means that we, as men and women who need to govern ourselves, must form institutions that regard all persons as equal if we want to work together toward societal justice.

Let's accept the human idea that all persons should be equal in the eyes of human law.

But we are individuals; that is important. Furthermore, equality of individual persons is a valuable truth for prioritizing our behaviors and institutions.

Once a baby is born, the wonderful dynamic of that person's unique circumstances--nature and nurture and all that--determines what that person is, who they become, and how the work of their hands and mind is received by others, or for that matter, by God.

But this does not mean everyone's input and output will be equal. In that sense, we are not equals. This inequality affords us a thoroughly fascinating human race, with a beneficial diversity of inputs and outputs, and hence a vast range of incomes and outcomes.

Let us make judicial provisions for equality of opportunity for each person. But equality of income and outcome is ultimately a matter that is determined by each person's use of the resources available to him/her.

If you have something to offer to God, or to the world, do not go ballistic if it is ignored or overlooked. Just find the lesson in that rejection; then go back and try again. You will have better results than if you, like Cain, get mad and kill someone.

As for Cain's fate after his crime, God spared him the death sentence, and allowed him to wander away to the land of Nod, east of Eden, where he took a wife. Perhaps her feminine influence, coupled with the Lord's chastisement, mellowed him out a bit.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, soon to be published

The Ghost

That Occupying spirit face, it hauntifies my mind--
a smirky mask with painted smile upon its face of ghastly white.
Oh! what a ghostly site.
With black-lined clownish bizarrity
it mocks authority,
and conjures up signs of somethin happnin here;
what it is aint exactly clear.
Now the windmills of my mind crank out shadowy spectres from long ago:
the port huron statement and
four dead in ohio.
I see the ghost of My Lai massacre;
it stalks my g-generation like a smear--
blood on our hands from the tip of an agent-orange-spiked spear.
Out damned spot!
Have you come to splotch us again?
Out, I say, with the dire trespass of dow jones culpability
and exploding napalm fire like some howling banshee.
As puff the magic dragon who used to frolic in autumn mists
so our innocence has spiraled up in smoky days,
with unwelcome images from a Gulf of Tonkin haze.
Deja vu
I feel this wallstreet visitation is a spectre of impending trouble:
calling into question all the blood guilt ever known by man, double
and all the carnage ever splattered on to span
upon a waste and wanton land;
Who's responsible for this?
And my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars
shall bitterly begin
with these Occupying rebels
whose consensual zeal would snuff out the wallstreet conniption fit
of capitalism's big collateralized debt obligation zit,
as if the heart of depraved man could be improved upon a bit.
Oh shit!
This protest, in its collective sensibility,
is presumed more pristine
than corporate culpability,
with its globalized guile and leveraged guilt.
Does their urgent cry for egalité
cloak some fateful guillotine strategé?
A reign of terror from the tyrrany of the ninety-nine
to thrash out the fattened one-percent piggy kine?
Will this produce a future gulag or a forced labor camp,
a cultural revolution led by a raging tramp?
Who's responsible for this?
this fermenting mobbish contagion
transgression upon our convulsing nation.
It renders ashen white our neo-wallstreet mask
and calls us to blot out the bloody task
of human business.
Out! damned spot, we cry unto the whispering wind.
lay on us no more collateral damage to offend.
And ask not for whom that damned bell tolls;
now it peels again and again unto our restless souls.

Our ancestral refugees left ghoulish tales from long ago and far away
of the dachau and the auschwitz and the hitlerian birkenau.
And we hear ghastly tales from the so-called other side
of how they perished in stalin's gulag, and in the mao's "cultural revolution" millions died.
By their calculated rearrangements of the classified human chain,
they bound our bloody attempts to declassify into some ghoulish arbitrary game,
where the shedding of guilty blood, for the intent to make everything right
became an instant reply of human cruelty, sprinkled with bloody fright.

Now we the piggy capitalists, have we crossed that same damned line?
Have our reckless swapping one-percent cast unbearable load upon the ninety-nine?
Do you Occupyers now propose to judge their fatcat games
with social restructurings to expunge their selfish shames?
Good luck with that;
it'll be a cold day in hell
when we know for whom that bell
tolls.
Our capitalist souls?

Glass Chimera

Church was bombed, Birmingham 1963

We do not fathom the power of innocent blood crying out from the ground until years later. The grievous force of such injustice reverberates in the lives of those whose grief runs deeper than the evil that inflicted it.
Terrorism is counterproductive. A terrorist who inflicts, by the planting of bombs, violence and death on innocent victims might as well shoot himself, and his cause, in the foot. The extreme iniquity of such irresponsible acts serves ultimately to harden the resolve of surviving victims whose lives were affected by the atrocity.
I realized this today in a new way while listening to Amy Goodman interview Danny Glover on the radio, on Democracy Now.

They mentioned Angela Davis, and the fact that she had been raised in that volatile atmosphere of Birmingham in 1963, when local racists had set a bomb beneath the 16th Street Baptist Church. The bomb had killed four innocent children--little girls attending church.

Little did those reprobate terrorists know, but their irrational atrocity cut a deep slice of potently productive grief into the 9--year-old soul of nearby resident Condoleeza Rice, whose friend Denise McNair was killed in the bombing.
Our former Secretary of State of the US later had this to say about the tragic incident:
"I remember the bombing of that Sunday School at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. I did not see it happen, but I heard it happen, and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my father’s church. It is a sound that I will never forget, that will forever reverberate in my ears. That bomb took the lives of four young girls, including my friend and playmate, Denise McNair. The crime was calculated to suck the hope out of young lives, bury their aspirations. But those fears were not propelled forward, those terrorists failed."
– Condoleezza Rice, Commencement 2004, Vanderbilt University, May 13, 2004

I lifted that quote from Wikipedia.

Ms. Rice's richly productive life attests to the truth that the destructive efforts of KKK terrorists had not deterred a tender-hearted 9-year-old girl from rising to great achievements. In spite of the heavy deck of hate and discrimination stacked against her, Condi went on to overcome the evil that had killed her childhood playmate. Later, as a scholar, concert pianist, and Secretary of State of the United States of America, she disproved, convincingly, the errant prejudicial irrationale of her community's attackers.

Terrorism is counterproductive to the cause of the terrorist.

And unpredictable. Even as a bomb's deathly remains and its victims cannot be predicted before the explosion, neither can the effects of such bloody deep wounds on the heart of a community and its diverse members.
While young Condi was later motivated to excel mightily in scholarship and diplomacy, another former resident, Angela Davis, of that Birmingham neighborhood charted a very different course
to overcome the injustice of Jim Crow. Angela was ten years older than Condoleeza; she was studying in Paris when she recognized the names of young Birmingham victims in a newspaper. Her stringent understanding of that putrid white supremecist tide was propelling her toward radicalism, advocacy of violent resistance, and ultimately a life of eloquent speaking and teaching, the aim of which was to educate others about the evils of racism.

Angela and Condi were two very different women, with powerfully contrasting paths in this life. But as disparate as their two testimonies are, both lives are persuasive evidence that death-spewing terrorism is counterproductive to the cause of the terrorist.

But the cry of innocent blood is powerfully dynamic in the lives of the survivors, and just as unpredictable as the bomb itself.

Glass half-Full