TRUTH

She requires but a few words to serve her…
For she is forthright and of an open face
And knows not the guile of those
Who are wise in their own conceit…
She needs not the defense of any worldly conspiracy…
For she is content with her own company…
She needs no propping up
Since hers is the only sure foundation
Built to withstand the assault of every fraudulent reason
And the most aggressive ravaging of time…
In her essence she celebrates no emotion…
She neither laughs nor cries…
But looks with a level eye
On every condition of the heart…
One might say she hopes…
The kind of hope that holds that all
May find real balance in this life…
And if we say she is “relative…”
We may be right…
In that we are all related to her…
And she is the origin and destiny of all our quests…
But…she is no closer to us…
Than we are to her…
And when we know her…
She sets us free…
And is that not our desire…

From:  “Of Scattered Seed and Broken Souls.” By Roy Alexander Graham ... Figtree Books
www.FigtreeEnterprises.com

Of Marx the Bogeyman, and Jesus the Savior

Let us be clear about the profound immorality of those who love to use Marx as the bogeyman in our time while they pay lip service to the life and work of a Nazarene named Jesus. Marx lived twice as long as Jesus and eventually died of pleurisy. While Marx was vilified by many for calling the workers of the world to unite, Jesus was murdered at age 33 for calling out the inequities of his day and those who perpetuated hem. We can theologically sanitize his murder all we want... He was NAILED to a rough wooden cross, which he was forced to carry on his back to the hill where he would be murdered, and allowed to hang on it till he was dead. His was the kind of fate that the theologian Bonhoeffer aptly described in his declaration that when God/Christ calls a man: "He bids him come and die." This for Bonhoeffer was "the cost of discipleship".

Those who have an interest in maintaining the status quo have never welcomed the voices that declare in favor of the poor and the disadvantaged. The silence of the Press in regard to the complicity of the rich in the downpression of the poor is the inevitable function of a system of patronage that is the raison d'être of the Press itself. Christianity as we know it is a reflection of the prevailing moral values in society. This being the case, prophetic voices are invariably isolated and targeted for elimination. The false equivalencies that we witness are nothing more than attempts to muddle the consciousness of those who are patrons of the daily discourse of charlatans "making a living". 

 Walter Rhett makes this observation about the obvious contradictions between the rhetoric of some of our political leaders and their political praxis:

"In South Carolina, 101 children died in the care of the state’s DSS in 2012; yet governor Nikki Haley opposes the Medicaid expansion in a state at the bottom of the national health matrix. Moral intelligence looks at what we do for others, what legacy we leave. It is time to look past budgets, the constitution, the ugly labels, the rising murders and madness, and point to the moral failings of a party that closed the very government the founders fought to establish; that passed laws to allow guns in church or to take the lives of neighbors and to say none of these were the original intent of the founders–and neither were special privileges for the rich."

And so the poor perish while political opportunists and their lackeys spook the people with their visions of the ghost of Marx. And for this "Jesus wept". 

The struggle continues...

Of Hate and Fear and Murder... And Civilization

What sickness is it that inflames a man's mind to the extent that he would praise Hitler? What is the source of the vain insanity that leads a person to the precipice of that bloody Hell where he sees his own survival only in terms of the annihilation of those he perceives as different? What is it that ails the racist, the white supremacist, the ethnic cleanser?

Look closely and see that whatever it is, is by no means empowering. Look closer and realize that the madness that drives the hater has its own self-destructive logic. The assumption of power that drives the victims of this existential asylum is just a delusion. Yes. Only a DELUSION. For it is not a sense of strength that drives the murderous inclinations of madmen, but a rather deep-seated sense of his own nonentity-ness. It is a neurosis... A wickedness that has its roots deep in the muck of a corrupted sense of "being". It is that vile reasoning that his existence is only validated in the destruction of those he perceives as the reason for his own sense of powerlessness.

Yes. IT IS FEAR THAT DRIVES HATE. The permission to murder that the hater gives himself is really just a function of his own perceived impotence. True power is ALWAYS expressed in the tendency to empower others. The fearful finds and rationalizes his impotence in the convenient projection of his existential dilemma onto those who are superficially or culturally separable. It is a deep-seated and essentially primitive instinct. Like chicken of one color in a dominant group, they seek to resolve the perceived threats to their survival and dominance through the subjugation, and ultimately the destruction of an identifiably "different" minority. That minority, in their estimation, must not be allowed to thrive since their expressed fecundity is a threat to the cultural cockiness of the hater. And so the threatened "chicken" feels he must de-feather that minority. It is not a far step between de-feathering a thriving bird and taking its life. And so the hater becomes a murderer.

The Achilles heel of the white supremacist ideology is a progressively civilized society in which moral consensus is backed by appropriate legal action. The hater ultimately depends on the inaction of society regarding his wickedness. He bets on the silence and/or complicity of a population that cowers in the face of uncivilized brute-force. A society and a world that agrees on progressively moral standards of Justice saw the demise of Adolf Hitler and his vile kind. That same impetus of Justice will inevitably be brought to bear against the moral and cultural deficiencies of the current and former "knights" of the KKK.... And it is the children of those they have victimized who will administer the prevailing codes of Justice against them.