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Category Archives: Thursday posts
Homogenized language
Note that he found the backwoodsmen’s speech unintelligeable.
Originally posted 07/30/2106.
White-shaming
Why America Stays Stuck
In the future, I may ignore such expressions. For the record, someone’s actually said this in print.
On a CNN program not long ago, one white man, who proudly claimed his belief in white supremacy, had the audacity to say, “I wish we had picked our own cotton.”
So do we. African Americans, I mean. We wish you had picked your own cotton, nursed your own babies, tilled your own fields, built your own roads, and done the scut work in factories that made the Industrial Revolution the “success” that it was.
You didn’t, though. African Americans made this country with their hard labor, as slaves and later as individuals caught up and used in the Convict Leasing programs in this country. …
Appetites for darkness; befriending the shadow self.
Tuesday afternoon at the library, instead of doing anything on [church obligations], I spent time with several articles that could have been predicted to make me angry. I’ve forgotten specifics about them, and Net History from the library terminal isn’t available to me here. The deal is, I recognized an appetite for darkness; “The Itch.” Similarly yesterday, yesterday morning, once I realized I really had nothing to do that day, I became intensely angry and prone to look for ways to act out that anger; e.g. by finding more such articles to fume over. Went through some more of the same last night, albeit presence in the shower saw it all go away.
All this in the face of my goal of being perpetually happy and cheerful and an emanator of light and joy.
Continue reading Appetites for darkness; befriending the shadow self.
Petitions behind Jesse Williams’ BET speech
Stereotypes have basis in fact.
At Messiah Truth, someone remarked:
I think the whole issue of race is downright silly.
My response:
I think it’s a question of what feelings and judgments get attached to it.
Reducing our carbon footprint – by design
I don’t hold with those who want to blame global warming wholly on American industry and American cars. The slashing-burning of hundreds of square miles of Amazon rain forest each day, and the air pollution in Mexico City and Beijing, show the need for a global response.
There are two principal ways human beings can reduce greenhouse gases: (1) covering more land with green plants that will consume carbon dioxide from the air; and (2) reducing our carbon dioxide emissions.
Some simple considerations of architecture address both concerns.
A few brief notes about prayer
For us
A grassy lot inspires a vision of what can be when a community cares for itself.
When I take the bus to church in the morning, I normally get off at the closest stop, walk three blocks north and one block east. At the corner where I turn is a vacant lot. I don’t know who owns it. In months past, it has typically been heavily littered.
One morning not long ago, as I approached that lot, I saw that it had been cleaned. I saw this from fifty feet away. The way things are around here, that little bit of beauty nearly knocked me down. It took my breath away. It lifted my spirits.
A tiny bit of beauty can powerfully affect one’s mood. A mere glimpse of a pretty face can make one’s whole day.
I reflected: harmony is the essence of beauty, exemplified in the orderliness of the clean lot as contrasted with the chaos of its previous litter. I reflected on the relatednesses among light, love, harmony, order and prosperity, on the one hand; and darkness, strife, chaos and need, on the other. What does it take to begin to establish harmony? I concluded that perhaps love, or self-love, is the beginning of creation.
What if the whole community cared for itself as someone cared for that lot? Continue reading For us
The Homeless Blogger 