Van Jones tells the most important Prince story

On CNN, Van Jones tells the truth about Prince's life, which is that Prince was a generous soul. He says this is the most important story to remember about the man other than Prince was a genius musician.

I knew some of what Jones said about what Prince as philanthropist. I remembered his alignment with Yes, We Code and his concern about and help for New Orleans, but much of this I did not know.

The next video is Jones's 2015 interview with USA Today in which he talked about Prince supporting Yes, We Code and that movement'ss first hackathon, which was held in New Orleans in 2014. Prince headlined the Essence Festival here that year. That concert was the last time I saw Prince perform live.

When Christians praise themselves for not rioting . . .

Dear fellow believers in Charleston, South Carolina, who are also black like me:

I thank God that you have praised Him through this trial. The loss of nine sisters and brothers is a tremendous burden for a church and family to bear. The recognition that racial hatred still breeds in your state and this nation is frightening, but as witnessed on national television, you have a strong faith.

From this tragedy Americans have shared the moving experience of grieving family members offering forgiveness to the killer. That obedient response is a testimony to these families' faith and the teaching they have received. Indeed, I think what we’ve witnessed through you in Charleston is an instance of how God may be glorified in suffering. And yet, I must caution you.

In Charleston, I have also observed on television a troubling response. A few black Christians speaking to reporters have patted themselves on the back for “not rioting.” I cannot help but think that they praise themselves in reference to the #BlackLivesMatter protests that have turned violent in the last year in places such as Ferguson, New York, and Baltimore. So, it sounds to me that what these black Christians in Charleston want the world to believe is that they are better people than those who have rioted since the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray.

Yes, it’s good that more violence did not the result grief and anger over the massacre at Emmanuel AME Church, but comparing the response of mature Christians to the reaction of young black people in Ferguson and young black people in Baltimore is not fair.

First, the comparison sounds similar to the Pharisee praying “I thank God that I am not like that sinner over there,” not that you are pharisees, but it does seem strange that you would praise yourselves and appear not to understand what has happened in the rest of the country. Second, in terms of protest, your situation in Charleston and what has happened elsewhere are not truly the same.

The shooter in Charleston was not a government representative, such as a police officer, and your police department did not behave as though nothing had happened (as Florida police did following Trayvon Martin’s death). Your police chief and mayor sprang into action to condemn the murders and find the perpetrator.

So, who would you have rioted against, the police department and mayor for doing their jobs? Or is Dylan Roof someone to riot against? Did you pay taxes for Dylan Roof to protect you? The white supremacist culture in general may seem like something to riot against to some people sometimes, but who riots against a wind?

It's understood that peaceful people prefer peaceful protest. Still, even Dr. King understood why oppressed people sometimes riot. Understanding rage and condoning its actions, of course, are not the same thing. Then there's the reality that Christian people who actually believe what Jesus taught tend not to become violent.

The question for you is this, Has your dignified response to these murders and the evil acts against you come by your own grace and power or by God's?

My heart goes out to you and the nation, but I hope none of you, including preachers, will use this tragedy to compare yourselves to other black people in pain in order to condemn them. I hope that you will not stand on the necks of other black people to lift yourselves in America’s eyes.

But I'm sure you will move forward in grace because you have the Humble Servant in your hearts. And nothing will separate us from His love.

Peace and Grace to you,
your sister, Nordette

Mophie's Black God in Superbowl Ad (Video)

At least one Twitter commenter noted, "Twitter is making a really big deal about God being black in the Mophie commercial, as if Bruce Almighty didn't happen over a decade ago."

Actually, I didn't see anyone on Twitter really upset about God being represented as a black man, but I'll take the tweeters word for it. Twitter is a digital sea of humanity, so whatever stupidity you hear of in the brick and mortar world, you'll see it on Twitter.

I remember when Bruce Almighty came out. News and talk shows discussed God's representation in it a bit, but only the dumbest people back then were alarmed that God (Morgan Freeman) was black in that movie. The same thing goes for Dogma, which came out four years before Bruce Almighty. In Dogma, God was a woman (Alanis Morisette).

Mophie, a company I knew nothing about until tonight, may have "the best Super Bowl ad," writes The Verge, and  Fast Company's talking about the ad, too, encouraging the Twitter crowd to flock to its site and see the mobile charger company's ad in widescreen. The company could definitely use the publicity because when I bought my adult children mobile chargers this Christmas, Mophie mobile chargers did not come up in my search or in reviews. I guess they will now.

Back to God being black, I do not think of God as a physical being, but anyone who is troubled by the notion that God may be anything other than a white male needs to do a lot more soul searching. Perhaps the same people who are troubled that God may be black are also the ones who think every man with flowing, dark blond hair, a beard, and blue eyes looks just like Jesus, who was unlikely to have blonde hair or blue eyes.

For me, the ad caught my attention just for its stunning special effects. The final reveal of what was causing all the commotion on Earth made me laugh. Yeah, great ad.

Do you believe in coincidence or Godwinks?

I've had some pretty remarkable so-called "coincidences" in my life. About half of them I attribute to "Godwinks," those little clues in life that remind us not to rule out significance of the spiritual. But scientists, and I've known this for a long time, say coincidences are just that, coincidence. They are not "mystical but mathematical," chance following rules of probability.

Then psychologists join in and say humans tend to only pay attention to information that supports what they already believe. I agree with that up to a point. For instance, people who want to believe that in general a particular group is inferior or dangerous will ignore or rationalize away any evidence that contradicts that belief.

But what do scientists do with events and phenomena they can't explain? How do they explain people suddenly having insight into a situation they know nothing about? For instance, once I awakened from a dream in which I found a specific object that didn't belong to me but I needed to know about for my own safety. When I woke up, I left the bed and went straight to the place I'd seen in my dream and found the object.

A science-oriented friend of mine said, "That was your subconscious. You were aware of the object on some level and that's how you found it. He said this even though the object I found had been hidden inside a toilet tank, and I am one who rarely lifts the lid on a toilet tank. When I found the object that may have been only the second time in my life I'd ever seen the inside of a toilet tank. He, however, was determined to believe that there was nothing mystical about that moment. Was that a case of him ignoring information that challenged his ideology?

Or how is it that sometimes you have a very specific thought not to do a specific thing, and you listen to that thought, so you don't do whatever it is or go wherever you'd been headed. Then you find out later that the decision saved your life? If this happens to you more than once, it's hard to chalk it up to coincidence. (These expereinces probably don't count if you're a couch potato or afraid of most things.) Science, however, demands that you reject your own interpretation of your personal experiences and accept whatever it is science says is true at the moment.

Notice I say at the moment. All it takes is a study of how science has shaped racist propaganda and how scientists, after consuming the very propaganda science helped create, then go on to misinterpret the word around them and you'll see that science itself should also be given the side-eye sometimes.

Since scientists discuss the human tendency to cling to information that only supports what a human already believes, what beliefs do most scientists hold that influence how they interpret phenomena such as coincidence? I mean, they're human, too. What are the ideologies that propel scientists?

In general, I support science, proven facts, and numbers, but I do not automatically rule out "God" or the mystical. I make room in my life for the possibility of miracles. I have to because I am not a natural optimist. Life's difficulties have stripped me of idealism and my earlier leanings toward the romantic, I think.

And I don't care that some people I otherwise respect think that believing in the mystical and spiritual is for cowards who can't accept what athiests call "the fact that there is no God." It's impossible for a living person to know whether God exists, which is why belief in God requires faith. However, it's not unreasonable to say that old concepts of God, such as the image of a white man in a robe and long beard sitting somewhere in the sky is hard to swallow and highly improbable. On the other hand, theories in theoretical physics open the door to believing almost anything is possible in terms of alternate dimensions.

I recognize that it's a choice to believe in the spiritual just as it is a choice to accept a specific system of ethics, but as long as such beliefs are not putting me and my family's lives in jeopardy--for example causing me to refuse medical help or to not take action to solve problems or assume agency in my own life--how does it harm me?

Actually, when scientists and atheists ask us to reject belief in the unseen and ignore perceived patterns or that strange sense of presence we sometime feel (which can be explained by causes other than God), they are asking us to work against our own evolutionary survival instinct. That doesn't mean we should believe all kinds of superstition. It simply means that perhaps we should not, in our effort to prove how intellectually sophisticated we are, rule out the possibility that some aspects of the mystical may be valid. Until we fully understand everything about the human brain or disprove string theory with irrefutable evidence, those of us who prefer to believe in God are not as nutty as those who don't would have us think we are.

I've taken the Paper.li plunge with Bell, Book, and Scandal

Having run an actual newspaper/magazine before, I was fascinated when I saw the first Paper.li paper tweeted to me on Twitter. I don't remember who tweeted me all those months ago, but before long it seemed that every other day someone sent a tweet directing me to his or her Paper.li paper.

Since I had already been thinking about narrowing my focus to books, publishing, entertainment, and politics, in that order, I began to toy with the idea of creating my own Paper.li paper that curated just those topics. Now, I've done it.

My paper is called Bell, Book, and Scandal, a play on the name of a movie I loved in my youth, Bell, Book, and Candle starring Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart.

The movie is about a witch (Novak) falling in love with a mortal (Stewart) after casting a spell on him to make him fall in love with her. She initially goes after him, however, because she doesn't like his fiance. The spell backfires, and as a result she falls in love and loses her magical powers. Her mind-reading cat plays a big role in the film. You can see how she uses him to cast her spell in the video below.

The movie's title may itself be a play on another use of the phrase. According to multiple sources, an obsolete ceremony for excommunication from the Roman Catholic church was also called "bell, book, and candle" because those three items were used during the the ritual. Phrases.org.uk says, "In the excommunication ceremony officials close the book, quench the candle and toll a bell, as for someone who had died. The phrase is old and first appears, in Old English, circa 1300." The entry adds that the phrase appears in Shakespeare's King John: "BASTARD: Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back, When gold and silver becks me to come on."

I've found a few articles on the excommunication ritual, which was done in secret, but here's an overly-dramatic video with graphics that explains it, albeit with sensational music.

While my paper, Bell, Book, and Scandal, may occasionally curate articles on paranormal activities and events (I live in New Orleans, so how can I resist?), it has nothing to do with witches or secret religious rituals. The bell in its name represents the Liberty Bell (politics),  the book, all things literary, and the scandal, arts and entertainment coverage that happens to favor ABC's Scandal. But I will also have my eye out for news of How to Get Away with Murder and science fiction and fantasy-oriented shows such as SyFy's Helix and HBO's Game of Thrones.

It's my hope that by narrowing my focus, I'll hunker down, read more books, and devote more time to creative writing.

Throw Back Thursday: Jill Scott's 'Shame,' Self-Mythology, and Genetics

I am feeling Jill Scott's song "Shame" today. I mean the lyrics and attitude of the song, which is absent of the emotion shame. In particular, I'm feeling the line, "And you don't even know my name." However, I'm not thinking of that line in its literal context.

I'm thinking about the implications of saying "you don't even know my name" figuratively, meaning that someone does not see who you really are because they've adopted a negative opinion based on whatever issues they brought to the table and refuse to see that's  not you but their negative construction of you. Some people see only what they want to see when they look at another person, and if they have a vested interest in seeing you as the "bad guy" or "the devil," then they will block themselves from seeing anything about you or your actions that contradicts their assessment.

I'm sure you've seen it work the other way when someone you know has been deeply in love with a man or woman who lacks integrity and uses them, but the one in love is blind to the beloved's faults. But back to names and character.

The prayer of Jabez from the Bible gives some spiritual insight on a name as character and destiny. The name Jabez means pain. Although his appearance in the Bible is brief, we do know that his mother gave him that name because she had a painful labor. In context of biblical culture, one's name carried one's nature, infusing the individual with how he or she would progress through life. But, as the story goes, Jabez prayed and asked God to change his course, to free him from going the way of his given name:

Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain." And God granted his request.

I believe that whether we consider ourselves religious or not, call ourselves Christian, Jewish, Muslim or of some other faith, we all struggle with change when we want to change ourselves, our life course. It takes courage and self-discipline to write new stories for ourselves and not live out the stories our family, friends, bosses, or society in general write for us, or even the gloomy tale (negative self-mythology) we may have subconsciously written for ourselves.

Sometimes while attempting to change we get hung up on ideological/philosophical vs. scientific theories on this topic, issues of free will vs. our hard wiring. Can humans actually change themselves?

Humans can transform ourselves. However, I doubt that I can change myself when I'm going through a deeper depression, which zaps me of hope. So, depression can be a stumbling block, even a mountain because in order to transform ourselves, our minds must be in a state that lets us at least imagine hope. Depressed people, however, are not always able to see even a sliver of light, so they can't walk toward it.

Is it possible you suffer from a depressive disorder and it's interfering with your ability to move forward? You can check your symptoms here. Shove aside your pride, too, if that's what causes you to resist getting help. And if you realize that you are depressed and you have been for weeks or more, then you may need to take anti-depressants to pull through. Take them if you need them.

Whether you're depressed or not, I also recommend this book:  The Power of Habit. It's fascinating and inspiring.

I'd love to evolve into my best self and get to the place of confidence Jill Scott represents in her jubilant song, "Shame." Wouldn't you? But I also believe genetics play a role in how long we maintain a jubilant a state or urge ourselves into it. Yep, I believe there's a happy gene, even the one that influences how we fare in relationships. But I believe as well that we can fake out our brain's genetics, which is why I appreciate this TedTalk by Jane McGonigal: The game that can give you 10 extrayears of life.


And I know for a fact that music changes mood, which is why I was on the early train for Pharrell's hit song, "Happy." But isn't it unrealistic to think that our goal is to be perpetually happy? While I've used the word "happy" throughout this post, my goal is to be content and self-actualized. I may not reach that all my goals before I die, but I must continue my effort, the process of trying.

What about you? Have you been aware of those moments in your life when you need to change but have resisted that change or been afraid that you can't change at all?

For Valentine's Day: A Lovely Love by Gwendolyn Brooks

A Lovely Love by Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000).

Unusual for me, but I decided to participate in the Poetry Foundation's Audio Poems for Valentine's Day promotion, and I've embedded my reading in this blog post. The poem I've chosen is also unusual as love poems go. "A Lovely Love" by Gwendolyn Brooks is similar to Shakespeare's "My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun." Just as Shakespeare wrote of a love who did not fit the stereotype of a physically beautiful love (a woman with cherry lips and flowing hair), Brooks writes of a love born in far less than idyllic environment. You'll find no garden or starry night there, no Star of Bethlehem or royalty attending either as appeared at the birth of Jesus, the perfect symbol of love for many.

I saw the Poetry Foundation article encouraging people to record love poems and felt compelled to do so. Valentine's Day, however, is not a holiday I get into. I didn't even pay close attention to it when I was married. Perhaps I didn't want to be disappointed if my former husband forgot about it and didn't acknowledge me.

Furthermore, in elementary school, Valentine's Day was a horrible day for me because there were some people who used the day not to say I love you, but to make sure I knew they didn't like me or others they deemed outcasts. If you've experienced, that then you know what I mean--the popular girl comes in with cards for a select few and makes a production of handing them out, which then makes those who didn't get one obviously rejected. I was never allowed to do that. My mother made me give cards to everyone, and she probably did that because she was an elementary school teacher and had noticed the nasty gestures at her own school.

In fact, I think my mother's spirit may be the reason I recorded a poem for the Poetry Foundation on SoundCloud. She loved Gwendolyn Brooks, and Valentine's Day is her birthday. She passed way in 2008, and I miss her.

If you'd like the the text for "A Lovely Love," here it is at this link.

A Meditation on Achieving Human Cooperation

Supreme Consciousness,

Open our hearts to accept the one called “other”

who seems so unlike those we prefer

to call sister or brother.

Open our eyes to see

the illusions of social hierarchy.

Help us overcome the smaller mind

that divides and conquers humankind.

© 2013 Nordette N. Adams

Time for the good cry, another moment of healing

I don't know what overtook me today, but for the first time in maybe 30 years, I heard Aretha Franklin's "All the King's Horses," which I've posted above, and started crying. My first thought is that I needed to cry because I've been holding so much in over the last year (family deaths, health concerns, a variety of fears).

Once in my life I was known for crying often--sobbing because someone hurt my feelings or rejected me, weeping at sad movies, and sniffling over Hallmark commercials. I learned that I had to toughen up and stop that or nothing would ever get done. Plus many people that I have known think crying is a sign that the weepy one is a manipulator. Really, that was not the case when it came to me.

I know it was not the case because my mother used to say that people use the behavior that gets them the results they want, but no one ever gave me anything because I cried. I have not been the kind of woman that people rush to assist, and much of my crying after a certain age, I did alone because I didn't want a lecture from anyone telling me not to be so sensitive.

But, Lord, this old Aretha tune got to me.

I cannot lie, the song made me think of the unraveling of my marriage, even though I know divorce (a type of death) was the right thing for me. The song hurled me back to when I was a teen listening to it on my stereo, having no idea that someday in the future, the feelings in the song would be mine.

You never know how deep a wound is, even your own--sometimes especially not your own because stopping to investigate its depth would toss you into a pit of non-functioning. As the saying goes, "Don't pick at a scab," and so we learn not to contemplate the harder stuff of life: the pain and sorrow, the moments when we think perhaps life is meaningless and the silence that bounces back to us when we don't sense the presence of God or the Universe with us. Who wants to pick at a scab and watch new pus erupt?

Perhaps, as a person drawn to poetry, I can't help but think on such things. Perhaps it is part of my sometimes gloomy nature. I think now of Jericho Brown's opening lines of his poem "Again" from Please:

You are not as tired of the poem
As I am of the memory.
A returning toothache
On either side of the mouth.

The speaker of the poem is returning to a troubling childhood memory and is aware that others are weary with his worrying over the past.

Yes, some events mark us, and our thoughts return to them. However, we do not return to wallow in being wronged or in the guilt that we've wronged someone else, as someone seemed to suggest in a comment once on another post about divorce; we return to assess where we've been and where we're going and to try to make sense of our existence.

Ask anyone who's experienced a death or another deep loss, the brain returns and rehashes; it recirculates memories as the heart does blood, those memories that shape who we become. I think that while it's true we should not dwell too long with misery, it's equally true that if we ignore or fail to acknowledge that we still hear the echo of painful moments and wonder what they may have taught us or that we still sense sometimes the phantom of something that feels unresolved, then we run the risk of emotional clotting the same way we run the risk of getting blood clots if we ignore symptoms of physical circulation problems.

Healing takes for each person however long that it takes.

I didn't want to run from whatever it was I felt when I heard the song. I had to probe it at a deeper level, which is something that poetry also causes us to do, according to poet Julie Kane. And whoever wrote the "All the King's Horses" lyrics was also a poet (I think Aretha herself wrote the lyrics).

We sat on the wall of happiness
We sat on the wall of love
We sat on the wall of security
So high above

With his arms all around me
It was like a fairy tale
Two people so in love
Tell me how could it fail

The wall started shaking
I heard love cried out
Happiness is given away
Security is coming down

He fell, I fell
And all there is left to tell

Is all the king's horses
All the king's men
Couldn't put our two hearts
Together again


More lyrics: LyricsMode

And then, of course, there's the Queen of Soul singing. That had to make a difference.

The Real Thing About It: Peaceful Co-existence and More

I am still contemplating the capacity to love unconditionally. Here is my poem, not meant for literary magazines, but for all people in struggle for peaceful human co-existence: "The Real Thing About It."

It is a meditation.

"Give A Little Bit" Coca Cola Security Cameras Around The World (Touching Video w/Music)

Let's be thankful that in spite of wars, corruption, and violent crime, humans also do good things.

"Give a Little" bit, the song in the Coke commercial, was first recorded by Supertramp and written and composed by its co-founder Roger Hodgson. The commercial uses the version that Hodgson recorded with a children's choir.

Obama Believes Jesus Would Okay Raising Taxes on Rich?

President Barack Obama more than likely ticked off people on both the right and the left with his recent argument that raising taxes on the rich lines up with Jesus' teaching that "to whom much is given much shall be required." On the right there will be those angry because they believe (and are wrong) that Obama is not a Christian and so he has no right to quote Jesus Christ. On the left there will be those angry because they believe (and are wrong) that a sitting president should never mention religion. From a Christian/Spiritual perspective, I understood what the president was saying, and he was, after all, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast.

I understood what he was saying for a number of reasons but specifically because that quote from the Gospel of Luke has been on my mind recently. Last month I posted a video poem to YouTube with this description:

A short poetic expression addressing the need for introspection on poverty, wealth, and gratitude. In some ways this piece considers the spiritual saying that to whom much is given much will be required, and seems appropriate in this era of an increasing gap between the rich and the poor.

You may watch the video below.



So, before I even read the CNN article reporting that President Barack Obama reasoned that Jesus would be okay with taxing the wealthy at a higher rate, I had guessed from the headline, "Obama: Jesus would back my tax-the-rich policy," that the president had probably quoted Luke's Gospel:

Obama said that as a person who has been "extraordinarily blessed," he is willing to give up some of the tax breaks he enjoys because doing so makes economic, and religious sense. [...] "For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus' teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required," Obama said, quoting the Gospel of Luke.

Also, here is the quote straight from the transcript of the speech at WhiteHouse.gov:

And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone. And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense.

But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.” It mirrors the Islamic belief that those who’ve been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others.

Undoubtedly someone will say that Obama quoted that verse out of context. In that section of Luke, Chapter 12, King James Version (If you would prefer today's English, try the New English Translation), Jesus is speaking of the punishment of those who call themselves believers and who know and understand his teaching but do not follow it. He is saying that people who do not do the right thing because they don't know any better won't receive a harsh punishment like those who knew better but did not do better.

Can this concept of equitable consequences be applied to taxation? I think so. In essence, Jesus is saying people who have more of a good thing should do more and they will be expected to have done so—the privileged are held to a higher standard. Put another way, according to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus said God judges us and determines our consequences based on a sliding scale; have more, owe more. Given his comment at the prayer breakfast, President Obama seems to know that this concept applies to him as well. And we know people hold presidents to higher standards in everything than they do other Americans.

I could go on and talk about other passages in the New Testament that indicate Jesus and his apostles expected people to share and to help those who have less as well as parts in the Old Testament that indicate within Israel's theocracy helping the poor or extending one's material gain to the community was a requirement, but why go there? Bibles are easy to find in America. Most translations are free and online.

However, for those in the country who are not Christian or who do not come from a belief system that acknowledges the teachings of Jesus to have any significance or for those who don't believe in anything other than decency, perhaps, then the president will have to make a different logical appeal. From what I can see he has done that already; he's argued in the past for fairness.

On the matter of whether a president should mention religion at all in relation to policy, no way will there be agreement on that. Nevertheless, consider again that President Obama was speaking at a National Prayer Breakfast and not delivering the State of the Union address. Consequently, he located his ethos in that situation and identified with his audience as his life experience allowed (and possibly he let his words do the double duty of reminding some conservatives that he is not a Muslim).

Furthermore, consider that the president is not saying that he thinks the rich should pay more because the Bible says so. Such a position would mean a president was running the country based on his personal religious beliefs. No, he's saying that what he thinks Jesus said happens to line up with the concept that those who possess more wealth should pay more in taxes. In other words, that a policy happens to be in accordance with a religious saying is coincidental, and to make that clear, the president even used the verb coincides in his statement.

Here's an analogy. Jesus didn't believe it was right to stone women either. In America, we don't stone women. A president pointing out the coincidence that Jesus would agree with laws that prevent stoning is not the same as saying, "I am proposing anti-stoning laws because Jesus wants me to do so." Arguing that Jesus would agree with a certain proposal while speaking to folks at a prayer breakfast is simply an icing-on-the-cake argument delivered to an audience of non-atheists who are probably familiar with this common teaching in the Christian tradition.

So, the rhetorical stance the president is taking here is very different from the rhetorical stance of those who want to force people to follow the Bible or those who want to pass/enforce laws supposedly based on "Biblical principles" or any other religious book's principles even if the supposed principles violate the civil and human rights of citizens. Becoming POTUS does not mean one can never publicly acknowledge his/her belief in God or acknowledge that one sees a similarity between a governmental proposal and a religions teaching. A president is allowed to be religious, whether we like it or not. He or she just can't impose what s/he believes on the laws of the land if that belief conflicts with the Constitution.

So, what kind of taxation is equitable, what kind is fair under our Constitution? That's the question, and if the answer sounds similar to anything in any "holy" book, then that's something to ponder when you're feeling spiritual one day.

Silk and Flour (A Video Meditation)

Written in 2005, the poem "Silk and Flour" was originally entitled "Silk and Flowers," but while creating the video, I changed the title to one I had considered nearly seven years ago. I don't remember what incident inspired the poem. It may have been nothing but a muse in my head, but I feel like I had seen something in the news that caused me to think about the dark side of ego that reveals itself when we indulge in self-pity parties.

Sometimes we get bent out of shape over the most insignificant things and whine so much about what we don't have that we think we deserve that we forget how much more we have than others in the world, sometimes others in our same cities, sometimes people in our own families.

This video is also cross-posted at The Urban Mother's Book of Prayers.

NFL Star's Wife Dies of Lung Cancer One Month After Wedding

This story reminds me of Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw's movie, Love Story, but this story is true and the people are African-American.

I discovered this true love story through a friend who shared it on Facebook via Clutch Magazine. LaKeasha Monique Rutledge-Draft and NFL free agent Chris Draft, the couple in a very moving weding video, were married on November 27, 2011, and one month later, December 27, Keasha died from lung cancer. ... As you can see in the wedding video produced by KRJ Productions, members of the bridal party wheeled the bride down the aisle, but she stood, walked, and took her vows sitting next to the groom. Later in the video you'll see her walk arm-in-arm with Chris down the aisle while a friend holds her oxygen tank. She also dances with her husband standing right behind her at the reception, and you can see the medical tube coming from her nose and circling around her cheeks.

Keasha was born in South Carolina and worked as a ... Read more at WritingJunkie.net.

What Do We Gain by Remembering Events like the 9/11 Attack, Hurricane Katrina, and Other Tragedies?

As I said on Twitter yesterday, "I was in New Jersey when [the] towers came down. I've written about it before. I don't know if I want to again just b/c of [this] 10 year anniversary." I grappled with whether or not to write anything about September 11 a decade later because it took me until 2004, a whole three years after September 11, 2001, to write anything at all about what I felt on that tragic day. For me, the words I wrote then, "Emotional Land Mines (Remembering 9/11)," still stand.

In the last paragraph of that piece, I said in that essay the following:

The seconds we take to reflect humanizes us, sensitizing us again to the incomprehensible, inoculating us against the incredulous so that we will not be a people at risk like those Santayana spoke of saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We are stronger because we remember.

I did not start watching any of the memorial specials and documentaries in honor of the 10th anniversary until last night, and as I watched, I meditated on why it's still important, a decade later, to commemorate something so horrific as well as other moments of tragedy that draw sorrow to the surface. I meditate on our need to recall catastrophe each year when the annual Hurricane Katrina ceremonies begin here in New Orleans.

Why humans memorialize death and tragedy is a question studied frequently in Anthropology. For instance, this month the journal Anthropology News has published an entire issue on memorials and memorialization about not only how and why we are remembering September 11 and the destruction of The Towers and the 3067 lives lost but also how people in other parts of the world memorialize tragic events in their nations' history. It's a human thing to remember how death visits our lives.

The bombing of The Towers gave us a host of psychic demons to wrestle, and as I look back now, I see that just when I, an American, began to come to terms in 2004 with what I felt and experienced on September 11, 2001--a world-changing event that preceded a personal life-changing event, my divorce, which nearly killed me--my life was shaken again less than one year later with the flooding of New Orleans, my hometown. I have family members who lost their homes, left the city, and still have not returned. I live in a house that carries the quirks of reconstruction--missing light switches, different color schemes, the absence of heirlooms and old black and white photos, and sometimes sounds that make the head turn with expectations of seeing a loved one who is no longer here.

A writer, who is not from New Orleans and not African-American but wonders whether the nation and media have gone overboard with the 10th Anniversary of 9/11, sent me an email a few days ago with a provocative question:

Do you share my slightly sick feeling that we are being manipulated into this orgy of national mourning for an event that yes, was horrible, but the body count--a no less horrible phrase--was nearly identical to that of Katrina, and that's not counting the diaspora that followed and / or those who died of stress-related maladies, including suicide, thereafter?

I will not put her on the spot by mentioning her by name, but she asks a valid question. She is further troubled by the near-absence of black faces in the media flashbacks, the expert interviews, and various documentaries. I confess that I have made similar observations watching the memorial programs, not the official program from today with the family members at Ground Zero, but the retrospectives and documentaries that were run before today's official ceremony aired; however, I don't want to analyze such matters of absence at the moment.

Observations about the media coverage notwithstanding, I will be sending an email to my fellow writer later in which I will say:

"I do not consider the two events, 9/11 or the flooding of New Orleans, comparable historic events in any way that should cause us to examine how much attention one event gets over another in terms of equity. Both memories throttle my soul because I am an American as well as a daughter of New Orleans. But I do think that 9/11 was a bigger event psychically for the nation as a whole. Our fear of terrorism following that attack sucked us into two wars that touched families coast to coast."

And then there is that word "attack." Hurricane Katrina was not an entity endowed with consciousness and so was not capable of intending to attack anyone or anything. Even if we address the manmade failure of the levee system, we cannot impart to that failure a human desire to destroy someone. I think being the victim of intentional violence, knowing that someone hates you enough to kill you and your family, carries with it a different set of emotions.

The bombing of The Towers and the Pentagon on September 11 as well as learning through the crash of United 93 in Pennsylvania that a greater destruction was intended revealed to us Americans our vulnerability in this shrinking world. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, however, showed us our vulnerability inside this relatively young nation boasting of equality for all: the clash of race and class in creeping degrees of hostility and ugliness.

And yet, both incidents also showed us the breadth and depth of our compassion and generosity toward each other as Americans, as humans.

None of these thoughts, however, explains why we feel compelled to mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11 or why each year down here in Louisiana we continue to mark the day Katrina nearly destroyed New Orleans and its surrounding parishes. But an idea of why we do what we do comes to me now perhaps more clearly than it did when I wrote "Emotional Land Mines."

Perhaps the reason for our compulsion to mark dates of great tragedy and recall them with the laying of wreaths, the unveiling of memorials, with art and payers is the need to remember how we as a people almost died, how we collectively faced near physical and emotional destruction. When we single out these dates, we reflect, we pause and recall not only loss and death but also that we are still here, that we are survivors, and with that recognition comes a sense of empowerment: We can survive tragedy. Knowing that we survived, we are better able to walk through dark tunnels into the unknown and face that light in the distance that could be a brilliant future or the damning headlights of a speeding train. Either way, we go on.

In addition to locating my old essay, while going through my files, I discovered a poem that I also wrote in 2004 with which I end this post, satisfied that I have given the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 the attention it deserves.

And We Go On
by Nordette Adams

Monday, September 13, 2004

Whittle an "S" on our chest:
Supernation!
… Charging all lights a brigade,
eclipsing amber waves
of obfuscation.
Boots and cape, red,
white, and blue,
zealous to leap 110 stories
of visceral weeping
for glory and honor
of our due
justice.

Liberty, lift up your skirt!
Rinse blood from its hem into the Hudson.
O! What is the cleanser that brings closure
to our pain?


© Copyright September 2004 Nordette Adams

A Brand New Day

I will be moving this blog away from discussions of politics and race toward something less controversial, mythology perhaps. Something less personal, too, but what I do not know because existence is personal, is it not? Suddenly I am aware of the many reasons a woman should confine her own freedom of speech to the abstract or less threatening and yet even that decision is political. How will I go on?

The Social Media Diet

As I work at putting my life in order, which means doing the things I've always said I would do before my time runs out on this planet, I realize that I'm spending less time online. That's a good thing, but it's also a strange thing given how much time I've put into the Internet since 2002 and even earlier. I should probably elaborate, but I've got someplace to go right now and later it's exercise, thesis research on Marcus B. Christian, and more work on the novel. :-)

Dallas Willard on Nietzsche v. Jesus Christ

Nietzsche v. Jesus Christ from The Veritas Forum on Vimeo.

The video above features Dallas Willard lecturing at Stanford University in 2002 on objective versus subjective constructs. He is comparing and contrasting the teachings of Jesus Christ to those of Nietzsche. From a description from the video's sponsor, the Veritas Forum:

"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," Jesus said. "God is dead," claimed Nietzsche, thousands of years later. How can we make sense of these two prominent figures in intellectual history? Which really represents the path to the truth? Join Dr. Dallas Willard and explore two of history's most influential people in the world of ideas.

Willard is a Christian scholar and philosphy professor, per Wikipedia.

In one of my classes we're reviewing postmodernism, a set of ideas that's prompted scholars to reevaluate society's grand narratives and to question whether there is any one ojbective, eternal truth. When I came across this Nietsche v. Jesus Christ video, I thought it related to my studies, decided to listen and then decided to share with you.

Stefano Langone Sings Smokie Norful's "I Need You Now" on American Idol

Stefano Langone won me over a few weeks ago on American Idol when he sang Smokie Norful's "I Need You Now." And when I say "he sang it" that's an understatement. He slayed it! So, I wasn't surprised at all when he won a wild card slot. He committed to this Norful gospel song like he grew up in a black Baptist church. According to Idol's site, Stefano admires Stevie Wonder.

Jay Smooth on MLK's Letter from a Birmingham Jail

In the video below, Jay Smooth recites excerpts from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" on the topic of extremism. You can read Jay's post at Illdoctrine.com.



I listened and thought that we have Talk Like a Pirate day and Talk Like Shakespeare Day. Perhaps we should also have a Speak the Words of MLK Day.