In The Context Of The Courage In Which We All Forever Live

Strange Fruit

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” 
(Nelson Mandela)

“Like so many of you, I’m pained by these recent tragedies. And I’m exhausted by a heartbreak that never seems to stop. Right now it’s George, Breonna, and Ahmaud. Before that it was Eric, Sandra, and Michael. It just goes on, and on, and on. Race and racism is a reality that so many of us grow up learning to just deal with. But if we ever hope to move past it, it can’t just be on people of color to deal with it. It’s up to all of us—Black, white, everyone—no matter how well-meaning we think we might be, to do the honest, uncomfortable work of rooting it out. It starts with self-examination and listening to those whose lives are different from our own. It ends with justice, compassion, and empathy that manifests in our lives and on our streets. I pray we all have the strength for that journey, just as I pray for the souls and the families of those who were taken from us.” 
(Michelle Obama)

"... How many deaths will it take 'til he knows that too many people have died? ..." / Summer Solstice 2020 / The Parable of the Sower

Although the early morning sun is still visible from my porch, it won't be long before it will be hidden behind the dense grove of cottonwood trees to the northeast.  Summer solstice is not that far away.  On that day, the official sunrise will be at 5:07 a.m. and sunset at 9:19 p.m., but the first light and the last light are much earlier and much later than that.  When I get up at 4 a.m. on the morning of the Summer Solstice there will be light in the sky.  The birds will be awake.  Summer Solstice in the time of COVID-19.

My 18th birthday happened during the first few days of my freshman year, 1967, at University of California, Irvine, but I didn't tell anyone.  Someone found out, and an informal un-birthday party was arranged for me a week or so later.  All anyone knew about me was that I was an art major.  Someone went to the University Bookstore and bought a print of Vincent van Gogh's "The Sower" and wrapped it up as a birthday gift.  For the past 53 years, it's been on one wall or another wherever I have lived.  Recently I moved it to a place where it can be seen when I walk through my front doorway.  This morning when I looked at the print, the idea suddenly came to me to put one of my older mandalas where the sun is, in the spirit of collage.

Sometime in the 1980s, I made a collage along the same lines, combining another painting from Van Gogh's Sower series with a self-portrait by Rembrandt and "The Luncheon of the Boating Party," by Renoir.

When I Googled "the sower," I discovered this:

"... But the road to freedom is long, arduous and dangerous. "They run into this fire that they know they can't control and then an earthquake happens. Lauren makes a choice. She cannot control the earthquake or the fire. But she can control the path she and her people take."

Many thanks to 37paddington for introducing me to the writing of Octavia E. Butler.

For some time now, I've been saving a quote which just happens to affirm everything I hoped to say in this post.

"May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears."
(Nelson Mandela)

Christmas Eve meditation / There is Something, and everything is possible

"You undoubtedly know that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a progressive Christian and champion of civil rights and the social gospel. You may also know that he spoke out against the Vietnam War, harshly criticized U.S. foreign policy, and questioned the capitalist system that produced poverty. But do you know his theology?

Right up until Dr. King's assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had traveled to support striking sanitation workers, the civil right leader worked--not as a secular activist but as a Baptist minister--to awaken the conscience of a nation. What was the meaning of Jesus for Dr. King? Did he see Jesus as divine? How did he interpret the Bible?"

(from the Tikkun article ,"King's God:  The Unknown Faith of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.," by Robert James "Be" Scofield)

Transcript for the speech above:  A Christmas Sermon on Peace (1967)

Then I got to thinking about Mavis Staples and the Staple Singers' connection with the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King, Jr.:

And Bob Dylan and Santa Claus:

And the Sufi dancers at the end of this video that was released the same year by Bob Dylan:

And Nelson Mandela.

And Chief Seattle:

"Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors - the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of  our people."

And Rosa Parks:

"God has always given me the strength to say what is right ... I had the strength of God and my ancestors with me." (from The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks)

And I remember the words of an elderly Jewish woman who was a friend of mine, "I don't have to be a Christian in order to be moved by the life of Jesus."

I have no religious affiliation, and I am not Buddhist, atheist, agnostic.  I am among those who can relate to what an elderly atheist friend of mine said in her last years -- that she didn't believe in a traditional God, but that she did experience, in her heart, Something that had brought peace to her in the last 14 years of her life.

"... And to see you're really only very small / And life flows on within you and without you..."

(George Harrison, from "Within You Without You")

"... the possibility that there might be something significant in the little things around them."

(from A Winter Walk, by Tolbert McCarroll)

"Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible."

(From Going Home:  Jesus and Buddha as Brothers, by Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk)

Thinking about Nelson Mandela

Remembering Janis' 70th birthday today on Martin Luther King weekend / Musica universalis

Interesting how Janis Joplin's birthday and Martin Luther King weekend coincide.  I can picture Janis as a beautiful and wise 70-year-old woman, free of the drugs and alcohol that took her life and bright spirit from us in 1970.

I love hearing the young people singing their songs as well as the songs we first heard so long ago.

Martin Luther King would have been 84 on January 15.  I can picture him, too, a vital spiritual leader with so much life ahead of him and ten years younger than Nelson Mandela is today.



And then I came across this to complete my meditation for today.

Imaginary Brothers / No Easy Walk

In Broken Images
Robert Graves
24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985

He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

Thanks to wood s lot, July 26, 2011, for the poem by Robert Graves.

“You can see that ‘there is no easy walk to freedom anywhere,’ and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountain tops of our desires.” - Nelson Mandela, quoting Jawaharlal Nehru, from a presidential address to the ANC Transvaal Congress (also known as the “No Easy Walk to Freedom” speech) Transvaal, South Africa, Sept. 21, 1953.

("Self-Portrait with Imaginary Brothers," painted by am in the late 1980s)