Decisions! Decisions! Decisions!

How many times in life have we heard or used this phrase, "if I knew then what I know now!" If you haven't at some point you will, just live a little longer. Funny thing, if we can be honest we have used it a lot more than we would really wanna admit. We may have used this phrase as a result of anything- a decision we made that may not have turned out exactly the way we expected it to. Now the thing is when I say anything, I mean, anything. I can compile an endless list and we would find a few things that this statement applies to. Of a truth, we all at some point have done somethings that have had us asking ourselves the question over and over until we settle it, "just what was I thinking!" I don't know about you but I have had to. One may try to come up with some plausible answers that made sense at the time but looking back all you could do is just chide yourself for wearing that 'stupid' word written across your forehead. But here is the good thing about being in this uncomfortable space of regret, one has the option and opportunity to make amends. You do this by cleaning up the act totally through whatever process necessary and most times it requires forgiveness.

Forgiveness does not only involve other parties but it involves you getting to a place of 'gentleness' with your own self and admit what you've done, forgive yourself and then let it go. Something I have also learned is that it is easier to forgive others than forgive yourself' and some people may also think that this is not necessary but it is. The reason it is, is that you can't keep beating yourself up about something you cannot go back and undo. Once it has happened, it is a done deal. With some things there is just no undoing. So what do you do, drag around the unnecessary 'suitcase', absolutely not! One has to find a way to rid oneself of the weight and keep it moving. If you don't then other people can also be affected by the baggage that you are carrying around with you because there is always some form of residue that goes along with regrets. The other side of this is also denial of not having regrets and sadly this camouflage way of living affects people in adverse ways just because they can't even admit that they messed up or messed over.

Sometimes we make decisions that fortunately for us we can undo, some we can readdress, some we can work around, some we can change but there are some you just cannot go back on. Something else I have also learned through just life lessons is that life is a process. It is a process of learning and hence this particular phrase is continuous. How could I have gotten to learn and understand more about life if I didn't have to go through "stuff" myself. There are people who learn from the advice of others. Proverbs says it is wise to seek counsel when we make decisions but when you think about it, how many people really do this? Solomon the writer of Proverbs calls this person wise. So if we seek the advice of others before we make decisions we are wise. Another thing though I think, Solomon meant for us to ask people who we trust and people with just a modicum of common sense and not just people who haven't been through anything. There are also people who learn by watching other people's experiences. By watching the way they live, you can kinda take a page from their book and not make the same mistakes or take the bitter with the sweet, or use what may apply to your situation to the best of your ability.

With all that said one may believe that that is also easy to do. I honestly can say I used to be one of those people who, "I hear you, I see you but I'm gonna do what I want to do anyway." Then I will deal with the consequences if any. Based on this mindset one can drawn the conclusion that this must be the voice of a youthful renegade. Because when you get to be at a particular phase in life there are certain things you just can and cannot do, and not think about the consequences. I cannot image maturing through life's processes and still think the same way because we all have to know ourselves to a certain extent. I'm an all out person. I don't half-step when I'm doing anything so where is the middle ground to "when I'm bad, I'm very bad and when I'm good I'm very good?" There is a simple answer and I take my cue from this line of reasoning. Sometimes our decisions just does not affect only us but they affect those we love, and even those around us because we are all connected in some way. It's bad enough when the stuff we do have repercussions that cost us but it is even worst when the stuff we do cost other people even more. Like that person that decides to have that one last drink and had that accident, or kept that phone number when you should have ripped it up, or you said no when you should have said yes, or you took the job knowing the stress level just for the money, or you blew the money that could've paid a bill, or you opened up yourself for unnecessary drama when you should have just left well enough alone, or got that car when you know it was added pressure on the budget just because you had to have it or you befriended the wrong psycho or your soul mate did not turn out to be your baby daddy/mama, just left you with the baby, or works sucks and you quit, now you stay broke and on and on we can go......

So as we go on this journey of life, it is really a learning stage. Things we used to do at certain phases of life we have to be able to maneuver through with a lot "more hindsight makes us all genius experience." Sometimes this phase may catch us off guard, or way too late into the situation and we cannot do damage control. But whether we take other people's advice or we learn from their mistakes, we have to be levelheaded in the way we can live life, picking up life lessons in every way we can. We never stop learning until we're dead but one thing is certain we can use the phrase less and less or just for the good things in the learning curve called life.
Many Blessings

The Value of a Human Life

Life in this day and age seem to be loosing its value more and more as days go by. It kinda makes you wonder how can life that is precious mean so little to some people. Lou Rawls back in the day sang a song that said, "what's the matter with the world, has the world gone mad, ain't nothing wrong with the world, it's just the people that's in it." It couldn't be any truer a statement. God created this world a paradise. All we have to do is reflect on the beautiful world around us to concur with this fact. I believe in the creation story as the way the world was formed. I choose to believe that account than that of Darwin's theory of evolution. The thing that people tend to forget is that a theory is speculation based on a "trying to understand." When Darwin was trying to understand, verify or even challenge creation, he got a whole ton of people going along with him on this ride. He proposes to explain what he believes to be so based on a scientific method that he used to find proof of the existence of God. However the Genesis account of the creation story is stemmed in a simple belief, not just some complicated scientific, philosophical theory of trying to prove something that the human mind cannot comprehend anyway. It is as simple as that.

The webnetweb.Princeton.edu defines a theory as such, " well substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world or an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of hypothesis; a tentative insight into the natural world, a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena." So based on this explanation of the meaning of theory, it just goes to show that Darwin cannot explain away how God created the heavens and the earth and everything in it. He can explain what he believes or think but the essence of life and God's creation he cannot explain. God created life, from the beginning and I believe it. I rather believe that than accept the fact that I evolved from a darn monkey. I was created in the image and likeness of God who is a Spirit being. But saying that I do believe in the evolution of people. By this I mean people evolving and progressing into becoming better human beings at who and what they really are. I have evolved into a better person. Motherhood did that for me. The person that I was many years ago is not the same person I am today. So we are all evolving or at least we should.

Life is about change and being better. Having said all that, it still seems that life is valueless. When I heard about the young couple that were gunned down in Jersey City after coming from their engagement party by some teens who just wanted to know what it feels like to kill somebody, it just makes you wonder. At this point Darwin's theory cannot explain to me why this happened. But being a created being I understand how this could happen even though I cannot understand why it happened. There is a quote in the bible that said, "the heart is desperately wicked, who can know it." Only a wicked heart could do something like that. It wasn't about the car they jacked or they wouldn't have killed the victims. It was the fact that these teens did not know the value of a human life. Sadly they didn't even know the value of their own lives.

So how do we live in a world with so much evil? One thing I'd say is not live in fear but live right, love everyday and live with purpose. It was said that this young couple were people who did just that. Even though there are no real answers to these questions, we can only say some of the things that help us cope, statements such as, " the good die young," "they were too good for this world," or "they were just angels in the midst of us." Whilst we live amongst evil we have to find ourselves living in a conscious state of mind knowing that it is "appointed unto man once to die......" It isn't so much about living life everyday as if it's our last because that is burdensome. Just live everyday trying to do the right things: making amends with people, find that long lost friend, forgive somebody you need to release, let go of unnecessary baggage, live light by not taking everything seriously if it's not meant to be, take a vacation, have fun with the people you love, detox your spirit and choose to rid yourself or bad vibes and bad blood, and stay connected with God. We don't have all the answers and we never will so the prayer of St Francis of Assisi is a great mantra to live by, "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."
Much love and blessings

God is not into religion!!!

Recently I started reading the Gospels refreshing my memory about the life and teachings of Christ. Every time I read about the life of Jesus I see more and more how He was a real person. Religion however has brought this distorted view of how it is supposed to be; manmade synthetic ideologies that cause more confusion than ever, raised more doubts and leaves unanswered questions. Religion posed a threat to the simplicity of the gospel then and it still does to this day. People cannot get pass the fact that God is after “real relationships” with people and He doesn’t care about our doctrinal philosophies that is really rooted in man’s opinion and interpretation of the Bible. The Bible is such a vast and multi-faceted book that so many doctrines can spin out of it; hence the many and varied denominations. The denominations do cause divisiveness and detract from the purpose of the God/man relationship.

The fact of the matter is however that there is one Higher Power, whatever we want to think of Him as. He has been given so many names, maybe because he refers to Himself as the I AM in the Old Testament Scriptures; which has been interpreted as He can be whatever you want Him to be. But either ways, He is a living breathing being that resonates in all of mankind. As a matter of fact every time we breathe, we breathe His breath. For those of us who believe in the Genesis account of creation, saw that God created man in His own image and likeness from the earth, which by the way is brown. When He breathed into man, man became alive. Thus when someone dies their breath which is their spirit- an extension of God’s spirit ceases in their body. Their existence is no more. That spirit then returns to its original Creator until it’s time when He brings mankind face to face with the question of life’s fulfillment of purpose.

God is Spirit. He is not a blond blue eye figment of anybody’s stretch of imagination. No one has ever seen God. Actually no one can look on the face of God and still live. If anybody said they have seen God, the truth is definitely not in them. No one can see Spirit. The only expression of God’s spirit is in the people whom He created to represent Him in the earth. The essence of the life is really about the expression of love, the same message Jesus came to earth with- love one another. His message is really wrapped up in the way we treat each other. The devil’s deception is that it is about religion. God doesn’t care if you are a Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Anglican, Existentialist, Buddhist, Deist, Atheist, Naturalist etc; He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care how well learned we are either. The Pharisees were some of the most learned men and teachers of the law; the reason they and Jesus couldn’t get along was because they were so full of it. They were filled with so much information that it rendered them powerless to the truth.

God is relevant to everybody and anybody. His way of living is quite practical. It is based in that simple action called love. But love on the other hand is not the easiest thing to do as we all know. It is easy to love those who are close to us and to love those who love us back. But to love under any other conditions is just too difficult. The funny thing is that we were not taught that it was just that simple. Love changes us to being better people, whether it is the philio, the Eros or the agape, it changes us. But God’s love is founded in the agape- the unconditional love. God can relate to us on our level. As one of my teenage son’s put on his Face book page for his religious beliefs that “Jesus is my Homeboy.” For him that is relatable and I very much doubt that God is offended. As a teenager He has to see God as one of his homies so that He can relate to Him. Seeing Him as a force in the sky may not make one lick of sense to a teenager. So God gives us the opportunity to relate to Him through our personalities. Who knows us better than He does? The only thing is that He requires a simple process that we use inevitably every single moment of our lives. It is called faith. We have to use faith as long as we live. Every morning we roll out of bed, we place our feet on the floor and we expect them to hold us up- that’s faith. When I get in the shower, I turn on the faucet and I expect water to come out; that’s faith. When I turn my keys in the ignition of my car I expect the engine to come alive. Of course I’m not gonna doubt. The only time I have questions is if the car doesn’t start then something is wrong. So we exercise faith whether we want to or not, thus faith in a God we cannot see to guide our lives every day is an asset to our lives more than a liability. People are dropping around us like flies and some people are living like “they got it like that!” But God is a difference maker, when you have to face the day you know He will protect you by faith, He protects your family and if something should happen, because of the relationship you have with Him, He has your back. You just have to keep exercising faith.

It is not about church, it was never about church. God said He will build his church. But so many countless people/pastors/priests/bishops/elders/deacons/evangelists/prophets etc have tried to do God’s job for Him. That’s why so many people don’t want to have anything to do with church. People adopt this air of self righteousness that they make God seem so irrelevant. Jesus hung out with prostitutes and sinners and drunkard, and He was God in the flesh, not just a prophet as many prefer to believe. It appeases their conscience to believe that than to believe He is the sinless Son of God, who can really be our ‘homeboy.’ It is just as simple as that, anything else complicates the issue. I don’t question my radar detection when it’s blaring as I am driving along. It tells me ‘Five O’ is around somewhere and I need to get off the gas just a little. I don’t question the object, so how dare I question the Creator and His ways of doing what He does. He reserves the right to acknowledge me and I have to accept that with the same process of faith. With just one tap He can cut off my oxygen. He can have me outta here before you can say, what? So it really is about relationship, the more we get to know God He makes Himself more real to us. We cannot experience this through religion.

Forty two years after Dr King's death!

April 4^th yesterday was forty two years after an assassin’s bullet took the life of Dr Martin Luther King in Memphis, Tennessee. It is quite prolific that this year his death coincides with the season called Easter, Resurrection Sunday to be exact. Sometimes we tend to get so caught up in our own little world that we forget some of our fundamental traditions as a people. We were listening to the radio in the car and were reminded of the significance of the day. Immediately, our very own African American history buff, my soon to be sixteen year old son brought us up to speed on something so important that we had forgotten about. It is really heartfelt to see my children taking such a vested interest in their history. A love, I believe that was sparked from their kindergarten years. I remember spending so many hours at the local library with my sons reading many books about famous African Americans and their journeys. I too learned a lot from spending time with them and feeding their appetite to know about their history which sorta fed mine. This is one of the things my children love to do and this child in particular can quote dates, events and names as if it’s nothing. I recall once we were on a flight to Florida and he was seating beside a white college student, and being the precocious six year old that he was at the time, he just struck up a conversation with her that simply started with, “did you know?. This young lady was so impressed because she learned quite a few things from him on that ninety minute flight from Newark to Miami. She was so impressed that she wrote him a note saying how much she impacted him. I still have the note to this day. I use it to remind him every so often when he slacks off in school because he wants to “dummy down” himself just to fit in with his friends. (As a sidebar, being smart these days is losing its perks. Children are afraid to be smart. It is called “acting white” or geeky or nerdy and this crosses over every race.)

So why is it important for our children to know history...and this is really for all races. The reason is that we have so much to learn from history. The history of Dr King is not just African American history, it is world history. His life, his legacy is one that the world is benefiting from to this very day. He dreamed a dream that he believed in, a dream that actually cost him his life. In an era when people like him had no voice, he became a voice, a voice that is still resounding through the ages. His “I have a dream speech” is one that is world renown and has been read by many generations since. This particular speech still holds the effect it had decades ago as it still does today. For all of us as a people have benefit from his legacy and those who walked the journey with him. I know it is not just him but also those ancestors before him. But Dr King was the man who took his dream to a level where no other had gone before him; a dream that I believe he was in heaven rejoicing on that night in November when the first African American President of the Free World was announced. Did this event marked the complete fulfillment of Dr King’s dream? I’d say no although there are people who believe it is. For me it is really simply, because an African American president in the White House doesn’t mean the dream is over. Dr King’s dream is constant, which means that it shouldn’t be allowed to die but be continuous. As long as there is different racial makeup in the world, we will never see eye to eye and usually quite sadly race always plays a part.

This eloquent clergyman and activist had his demands for a better America, one of equal rights for all people especially African Americans who didn’t have any rights back then so to speak. They couldn’t stop him and not even the bullet of James Earl Ray’s gun could stop the beautiful spirit of this man whose life has touched us all. So many of us have overcome hurdles as recipients of his legacy but we have subconsciously settled in the mindset that we have arrived. We are now “seated at the table of brotherhood,” and believe all is well. The public consciousness of Dr King’s dream is still here. It was bequeathed to us and it behooves us to not lose sight of his dream. He broke the glass ceiling so that we can follow. When President Obama took the oath to become America’s 44^th president, his presidency should have renewed our hope in the dream of Dr King. But even at this stage he is coming under so much fire because of who he is. We really can’t hide behind wanting to be politically correct by not calling things for what they are, because if Dr King was politically correct I think we would still be sitting at the back of the bus. The issue of race has always been a delicate one in this country and it still divides people. Although we can’t blame everything on race, sometimes it is too subtle that we don’t notice or even too obvious to be believable.

But I look around at this next generation and can assess that they have lost sight of “the dream.” Our children are under siege especially our young black men. Our athletes are being used and exposed as if they are still on the auction blocks. We are still at the mercy of the media. Almost all minority groups have been victimized by some form of media manhunt. Researchers have shown that our boys are more likely to be seen on the evening news in the role of a criminal or a perpetrator than any other group. Black on black crime is on the rise and who is going to help rid America of this stereotyping? We have to! Life is not just about the acquisition of material stuff which is a part of the American dream, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with acquiring the stuff. But when it becomes a mindset of “Lord bless me and my family and keep us safe from those people!” then we too have lost sight of what really matters. We all need this level of consciousness that should come from within us to keep the dream alive, where our consciousness of being our brothers’ keeper is revived. Dr King didn’t just fight the fight for himself, Coretta (RIP), Martin Jr, Yolanda (RIP), Bernice and Dexter; he did it for all of us. He was selfless in his actions that transcended through time.

Yes, we have evolved as a nation and as a people. Thankfully there are so many laws passed to protect our rights that would never take us back to the days of Jim Crow. Thank God, the literal lynching days are long behind us, the hoses, the dogs, the tarring and the whippings etc are things of the pass. But history has a way of repeating itself. We can go right back to the way it was, if we don’t protect what we already have and know. If you don’t believe me, look at the parallel between the Great Depression when the banks caused the stock market to crash and this present financial crisis. We got there the same way, the greed of the banking sector. Obviously the powers that be didn’t learn from that experience. We all can make a difference in our own little way if we can see ourselves as Dr King put it, as “all God’s children” and live accordingly, something this next generation need to buy into. If they can just know their value and their worth and their purpose for living in a world that the odds are stacked against, then we would have better families, better schools, better communities where people don’t have to live in fear, eventually a better world. I know it is easier said than done because it seems so simple………..