LET US BE LIKE LILIES IN SPRING

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Deep in us there is a bulb that longs for the end of the season of dormancy. That bulb contains, and is the symbol of all our potential.  It is the promise of everything we might be. We can  reasonably characterize it as the essential life force in us, waiting for the right time to lend itself again to our regeneration. That bulb longs for the right conditions to arrive so that it may burst forth and become the dynamic presence that will make a difference in the circumstances in and around which it has been buried.

In its dormant state that bulb embodies our dreams. It is the symbol of our longing for a season, for that time, when it can become the thing that it is… essentially. It dreams of rising up from the underground of its slumber, and declaring its presence in the world. It soaks up the nourishment of the Earth. It wants to bask in the warmth and luster of the Sun. It desires to drink of the Rain’s abundance to its satisfaction. It waits, patiently, to demonstrate the benefits it has accrued from the ground which is its womb, and to which it knows it must eventually return. It wants to replicate itself, so that the earth will be a witness to its innate fecundity.

During the seasons of its dormancy it may have been cared for… or not. It may have been covered with weeds that some see as hiding and suffocating its existence; but which it knows as having served their purpose nonetheless. It may have been trampled underfoot by the careless and/or the unknowing among us. It has had to endure the obscurity that things unnoticed must. It may have even succumbed to its own existential exhaustion, not giving up - but recognizing the need to just rest. 

In an effort to make sense of all its experiences while in a state of apparent non-proliferation; it found itself agreeing with and embracing that oft repeated chorus of wisdom from  Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. The contemplative moment to which we are called in this passage fosters the cultivation of balance in our interpretation of the yin and yang inherent in the events that demand our physical, emotional, and spiritual energies in the course of our lives. That balance is essential to our growth and development as wise souls. It is what informs the difference between those who endure and those who fall apart when confronted by the dynamic oppositeness that is ever present in our experience as beings in time and space.

“To every thing there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time of war, and a time of peace”.  

A time to be… and a time to be dormant. 

This wise ecclesiast impresses on us the functional significance of being mindful of the times of our lives. We should pay attention, lest we become exhausted by our own lack of perspective, and miss the opportunities to become what we long to be… even that which we essentially are. 

And so when we have given our all and find ourselves empty… When we have been trodden underfoot and otherwise stepped upon… When we have been dissed, and thoroughly discouraged… When the weeds and thorns all around us have subjected us to their constant assault and left us to tend to the wounds of an abrasively unforgiving culture… When we come to the end of our tethers, having been roped in and become exhausted by the struggles with our vanity and our lack of discretion… . Let us, even then, remember that these seasons too - will come to an end.

Like lilies in Spring we discover the essential us as a bulb waiting for its season to burst forth; casting off the redundant obscurity of a season of dormancy, so that we may become all that we are… again. We find ourselves now looking forward with a profound longing in our spiritual selves to making our presence known and felt in a world gone bleak through our falls, and our follies, and the persistent grayness of the winters of our discontent. 

Well... it is Spring again! It is the season of rising up and breaking through! It is that time when we must cast off the ignominy of lives gone dormant for reasons that are too many to list, and too uncomfortable to regurgitate. 

Let us declare a resounding “No!” to the naysayers. Let us issue a timely rebuke to those who would insist on being uncaring, or ignorant, or oppressive, or any combination of these iniquitous ways of being and behaving. Let us rise above our own sense of being unworthy, and assume with all our energies the task of redefining ourselves in terms of our ability to become more than we have been.

Like lilies we all share a certain vulnerability. But, as we are reminded by the preacher, it is ok to bloom even for just one season, if that is all we can muster the energy to accomplish in the course of our lives. That being so, let us not allow our finiteness to prevent us from rising up and sharing our essentialness with those around us in the world in which we find ourselves. Indeed, let us live into our existential duty to help lift the spirits of those who await our coming again.

… . And, let us do this with the timely offering of something so exquisitely beautiful, so exhilaratingly awakening, and so life-inspiring, that the world can’t help but notice… and be revitalized. 

BLACK… MYSTORY - “OUT OF THE HUTS OF HISTORY’S SHAME”

 

A few years ago I sat with my wife in an audience at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia, as the late Congressman John Lewis gave the Convocation Address to the thousands of incoming students and their families and friends gathered there to mark the start of their careers as college students. The Congressman is a great example of someone who refused to live in the mold prescribed by the prevailing socio-historical circumstances into which he was born. He had to overcome much in his own experience…  And he did. 

The following is an excerpt from the biography published on his website:

“He was born the son of sharecroppers on February 21, 1940, outside of Troy, Alabama.  He grew up on his family’s farm and attended segregated public schools in Pike County, Alabama.  As a young boy, he was inspired by the activism surrounding the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which he heard on radio broadcasts.  In those pivotal moments, he made a decision to become a part of the Civil Rights Movement. Ever since then, he has remained at the vanguard of progressive social movements and the human rights struggle in the United States.

As a student at Fisk University, John Lewis organized sit-in demonstrations at segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee.  In 1961, he volunteered to participate in the Freedom Rides, which challenged segregation at interstate bus terminals across the South. Lewis risked his life on those Rides many times by simply sitting in seats reserved for white patrons.  He was also beaten severely by angry mobs and arrested by police for challenging the injustice of Jim Crow segregation in the South.”

I listened, overwhelmed by a substantial empathy, and I observed the rapt attention being paid to this man by an audience currently reflective of the American demographic landscape. His resounding message: “Never give up! Never give in!” 

And as I sat there in that audience listening to Congressman Lewis, the words of Dr Maya Angelou came to mind :

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”

Dr. Maya Angelou… A woman who “phenomenally” refused to be defined by adverse circumstances, the scars of which she carried in her own being. Even now she “rises” … and she lifts us with her to new heights of consciousness and being! I hear her wonderfully commanding and beautifully distinct voice in my head constantly. She speaks with a powerful eloquence that stirs in us a mixture of memory and emotion that cannot be ignored.

 

“Out of the huts of history’s shame … I rise!

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain … I rise!

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear … I rise!

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear … I rise!

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise! I rise! I rise!”

 

Leaving behind days and nights and months and years and decades and centuries of terror and fear … we rise.  There is a life-proliferating quality to the work of Dr. Maya Angelou. Her literary offerings and the emotions they elicit plant themselves in our consciousness almost effortlessly, and they thrive there as if they have always been there… though at times unnoticed. 

In an act of cultural and spiritual intimacy Maya Angelou draws us to a most sacred place on our life-journey; and in this place we experience a mating of ideas and ideals that leave us pregnant with the expectation of something greater for ourselves and the other selves connected to us. Her creative genius reaches deep within us and calls forth the memory of our sacred obligation to “be fruitful and multiply”. Hers is a call echoing from the Eden of our very beginnings. It is a call to new dreams, and new hopes, and a new vitality. She encourages us to revise and refine and redefine who we are and who we would be. In that respect Maya Angelou joins the Martin Luther Kings, the Mandelas, the Marleys, and all the other revolutionary voices in engendering the ongoing work of renewal among us.

Let us listen… And may those words become flesh and live in and through us. We are the dream and the hope of our ancestors.

LOGOS

Thought… Like an unbroken thoroughbred

Gallops the range… of mind

Eluding every attempt at capture

And domestication…

Poetry… Roaming untamed…

Free…unroped…unnamed

Fulfilled…

Embracing the wind of its being

And the raw power

Of its inspiration…

Leaving in its trail

Words… Like these

[From … In My Element - The Author]]

WOUNDED IN MY SLEEP

Had a fight in my sleep

With two cats out of hell

The most fiendish felines

Leviathan could expel

In their eyes was wickedness

From an infernal blaze

That they were bent on my harm I could tell…

One sunk its tooth deep in my right hand

The other kept circling

For an advantageous stand

And I knew real courage

My spirit grew stout

So I grabbed my attacker

And broke the strength of its mouth…

The end of this story

Is not for the squeamish

It was bloody and gory

But this was not my dream wish

I ripped its head and body apart

And saw the bad blood

That poured from its heart…

I woke up this morning

With a stinging in my hand

That was so real

I’m trying to understand 

How it could be that the event in my sleep

Could leave a wound so invisibly deep…

And did I kill that second cat…?

Excuse me 

As I return to that dream

And make sure my task

Is finished in its extreme

When this battle is done

There must be no threat

Whenever I lay my head down

To enjoy my due rest 

From - Of Paradise Despised... And Lives That Bought Into A Lie

By - Roy Alexander Graham

https://books.apple.com/us/book/of-paradise-despised/id574445446

This material may be protected by copyright.

MYTHS RECONSIDERED

 

The uncritical mind often becomes confused in its consideration of what truth is. This confusion proceeds from a preoccupation with faulty assumptions about reality. If we begin with the wrong assumptions, we proceed to ask the wrong questions, and logically arrive at answers informed by our assumptions.

Such a mind approaches an event and begins its evaluation by asking, “Did it happen?”. The assumption being, if we cannot place that event in a specific time and a specific place, then its truthfulness is to be challenged. When we equate truth to facts, not only do we overburden the facts; we shortchange the truth.

Wisdom teaches us that the truth is often larger and more encompassing than a particular set of facts. The tendency of the uncritical mind is to limit truth to the boundaries of one’s particular experience. In doing so we end up with dogma. Historically, dogma has been used to serve the purposes of those who would negate the validity of those perspectives that derive from the experience of others. Herein is to be found the raison d’etre of so many tragic conflicts.

Instead of beginning our quest for truth by asking whether or not an event actually occurred, we might more wisely consider the accuracy of its depiction of the human condition. As an example, when we analyze the Edenic account of what we have come to refer to as “ original sin,” instead of preoccupying ourselves with questions about the “apple” or the “serpent,” we may more usefully contemplate the reality of temptation and beguilement in our experience. Is the story truthful? Yes… In the sense that it represents the experience of temptation and beguilement as real features of the human experience. Is it factual? In the context of the validity of these experiences… the question and its answers are of no consequence.

Seriously considered, in the unraveling of the dilemmas we must account for in the course of our humanity, myths serves us more completely than facts. This is so because a myth takes the truth out of the rut of a particular life experience and re- presents it as a feature universal reality. A contentious point, I will admit, to those who would rule the world with the prescriptions of their dogma. But “truth” was always “offensive.”

Myth is truth that is larger than fact, and story telling is still a safe craft. Well, that is what the ancients keep telling me… And I have come to trust their Wisdom ☮️

SUCCUBUS

 

                                                  Demon Succubus - Google Royalty Free Stock Images

Thou wicked bitch

Of Satan’s stable

Thou stinking witch

Of yonder fable

That cast a spell

Upon my ass

When once I fell

Into thy grasp

And knew the trapping of your pleasure

As an open gate to my undoing

************************

Fall now thou hen from hell

Into the pit thou made’st for me

Yes fall and burn thou slave of evil

Singe the feathers of thy wings

That I may fly from thee tonight

And be restored to youthful might

That I so treasured before thee

When no bitch ruled over me

Fall now thou unfeathered farce… into thy heated hole 

And burn…

From - Of Scattered Seed and Broken Souls

Roy Alexander Graham

https://books.apple.com/us/book/of-scattered-seed-and-broken-souls/id574443144

This material may be protected by copyright.

Talking ‘bout My Freedom … People Freedom and Liberty!!

 

” We refuse to be
What you wanted us to be;
We are what we are:
That’s the way…it’s going to be… You don’t know!
You can’t educate I
For no equal opportunity:
Talkin’ ’bout my freedom,
People freedom and liberty!
Yeah, we’ve been trodding on the winepress much too long:
Rebel, rebel!
Yes, we’ve been trodding on the winepress much too long:
Rebel, rebel! “  - Robert Nesta Marley

 

A Crisis of International Proportions

It rained today… In the place where I am now writing this piece the grass all around is a brownish green. It has been reported that the rainfall deficit for the last month is just under four inches. It started raining overnight, and the system that is bringing this well-needed relief will continue its presence for the next few days… And so, around here, there is renewed hope for everything that grows, the grass included. We all enjoy the sunny days of Summer, but no one wants a protracted drought under the influence of which things wilt…and die. It has been a long hot summer, and one in which the themes of wilting and dying have predominated in the experience of many.

All over the Globe that we share we are witnessing what seems to many to be an interminable drought of reasonableness and compassion. The season of wilting and dying is expressed in the suffering, displacement, and killing of many.Thousands of men, women, and children, have had their lives shattered as a result of heated conflicts that seem to have no end in sight. The need for showers of hope to green again the scarred landscape of war-torn countries is acute. This is the reality in Palestine and the other places where the just aspirations of human beings are violently suppressed.

All over the world people displaced by these conflicts are on the move daily in desperate search of a place where they can again hope for some stability for self and kin. Their collective desperation is exacerbated by a drought of workable ideas among those who lead. This desperation is worsened by a drought of moral rectitude on the part of those who see war as the only solution. Combined with a drought of economic opportunity in the circumstances created by strife, multitudes come to believe they have no choice but to succumb to their role as victims.

 

Tyrants and Warlords

There are no easy answers, much as we would like there to be. Digging into the anatomy of conflict is an exercise in exploring the uncomfortable underground of the human psyche. The motivations of the primary actors in the tragic dramas of death and destruction are at times perplexing, as perplexing as the contradictions in the human psyche itself. What moves us to act out our abrasiveness in the tragic ways that we do? At what point in the experience of being human do we settle for the idea that it is ok that “the good suffer with the bad”? Where in the dark recesses of our consciousness do we build an existential monument to the idea that it is acceptable to blow up women and children? What kind of person chews on the roasted limb of some creature while he wallows in the blood of innocents? What kind of human being virtualizes rape, and murder, and the conscienceless exploitation of those who can’t or won’t defend themselves? What kind of human-being “brands” another, marking him or her for ruthless exploitation? At some point, as individuals and as societies, we must face these questions with the force of a civilized morality. We must face them with a view to effectively resolve the many contradictions in our ways of seeing things.

Not all villains roam around the earth as bloody brutes. Some indeed present themselves as “respectables” among us. They sit on the boards of giant corporations. They occupy the halls of our congresses and parliaments. They are the genteel-appearing bastions of industry that many idolize in ignorance. Instead of the cliched fatigues of brutes, they wear the teflon suits that appeal to the superficial sensibilities of many among the masses. But, by their deeds we know them. They deliberately reduce workers to chattel by refusing to pay a fair return for work done. They build their estates at the expense of the lives of impoverished workers. They bask in the glow of material “success” while the masses are left to scrounge for the “crumbs” that fall from their tables. In many instances they appear to keep their hands clean while they harvest the “blood diamonds” of an iniquitous underworld. They share one particular feature of the human experience with tyrants and warlords… Heartlessness. They don’t give a damn about anything or anyone except themselves and their brash ambitions.

 

The Clash of Antagonistic Ideals

We need to change the circumstances of our dehumanization. This change must begin with a more dynamic sense of our potentials as human beings. At some point it falls to each person to make a decision as to whether he or she will continue to permit the kind of victimization that robs one of one’s true humanity. This is the seminal moment in which every true revolution begins. It begins with the idealization of the notion that one can own and control the circumstances of one’s life. It begins with a rejection of victimhood.

The culture of oppression takes root with the imposition of ideas that limit the rights of the oppressed to a life characterized by the absence of the essential qualities of liberty. A life in which the pursuit of happiness is claimed as a human right. Thus liberation must begin with the rejection of ideas that limit one’s right to a life fulfilled. The clash of civilizations has its genesis in a clash of antagonistic human ideals… A clash of opposing aspirations. A revolution is inevitable when the hopes of a determined group breeds despair in another group which is equally determined to claim and live out their perceived potential. Every struggle begins as a clash of ideas competing for supremacy in the common experience of peoples. First the ideas… Then the fists.

The conscientization described in the preceding paragraph leads to the determination to get rid of the spiritual, cultural, and physical shackles that weigh down the dispossessed. It expresses itself in the determination to collectively work for the change necessary to live into the new reality of a life liberated. This new consciousness is powerfully articulated by Marley when he declares: “You can’t educate I For no equal opportunity: (Talkin’ ’bout my freedom) Talkin’ ’bout my freedom, People freedom (freedom) and liberty! Yeah, we’ve been trodding on the winepress much too long: Rebel, rebel!”. Marley, in the powerful anthem called “Redemption Song”, calls us to live into a revolutionary consciousness. He reminds us of the responsibility that we each have to personalize the work of redemption when he channels Marcus Mosiah Garvey: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds…”.

 

The Season of Rebellion Beckons

The Season of Rebellion comes. It is inevitable. The contradictions inherent in the perpetuation of hope and despair in our social and economic relationships demand to be resolved. The societal dysfunctions bred by this antagonism cannot be wished away.  That resolution of which I speak must necessarily lead to a better world in which the hopes of some do not breed despair in the lives of others. The prophetic vision of a more just society fuels the fires that burn in the hearts of displaced and dispossessed people everywhere. That vision is the tip of the burning spear that threatens the old status quo of the cultural and economic domination of the many by the few.

Those who have ears to hear can hear even now the voice of the prophet Amos as he declares: “… let Justice roll down like a river, and Righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” An economic culture in which CEO compensation increases over nine hundred fold while the average worker barely sees a five percent increase must be rehabilitated. A political culture that perpetuates the cult of vampires must be obliterated by the cultivation of enlightened self interest in all our economic relationships. We cannot continue to accommodate corporate greed while people are left to subsist on a less than livable wage. The militarization of the police to suppress the just rebellion of people against the brutality of law enforcement must end. The use of the police as enforcers for a parasitic political culture must cease. The injustices that find expression through racism, sexism, and genderism, must be exposed for what they are… Injustices.

The Season of Rebellion beckons us into a new, more liberated sense of ourselves. It calls us to be the definitive architects of our destinies. As architects we reject the world imposed on us. We claim with our every breath the responsibility to build something new with our own hands and hearts and minds… .  Something more in keeping with our own needs and aspirations. As the prime movers in the new, more hope-filled world we desire, we look forward to that more fertile earth in which we can realize a greater rootedness. And so we live in anticipation of the showers that will “water” our just aspirations. By the same token we rise up in affirmation of our own fecundity, and against every dried out idea that would suppress our innate abundance.