I woke up this morning and it was raining. And I said to myself, “Well, it’s about time.” Forecasters had been predicting this storm for most of the week, but no storm appeared. Instead there was sunshine and clear skies. And I quietly cursed under my breath because, for me, a storm has a special significance. You see, in sunshine and clear skies, people tend to wander out. Tend to drop by and interrupt your day. Tend to expect you to show up here and let’s go there and let’s do this or that. In sunshine and clear skies, people expect things of you and want things from you. But, in a storm, when the weather is bad outside, the newspeople tell you to stay home. People are much less likely to come ringing your bell or to expect you to show up or go here or do that. A storm provides the perfect excuse to do what you wanted to do all along—go back to bed. Huddle indoors. Be still, be quiet.

As someone who works from home, I can tell you, a storm allows me to get things done. Sunshine and clear skies distract me, remind me of errands I need to run or people I need to see. But a storm closes the world around me for awhile, quiets my neighbor’s incessantly-barking dog and shrouds my home with darkness. And it is during those times that I can hear God. That I can feel His presence. That I can get things done.

Sunshine and clear skies present their own inspiration, as I wander out into the hiking trails and the hills and see God’s glory painted across the sky. Storms, on the other hand, bring God’s glory to me, as I can see both His righteousness and His fearsome power, my house shaking, pelted with hail and wind. Sunshine and clear skies remind me of God’s love. Storms remind me of His righteousness.

Sunshine presents opportunity. A storm, on the other hand, gives us time. Nobody expects us to be on time during a storm. No one blames us for not rushing across town during a storm. The clock stops ticking, and I suddenly find myself available to myself and to God because a storm is passing over. I can relax. The clock slows its ticking. All the noise and business of the day suddenly stops as everything seeks shelter.

Lastly, storms remind me that trouble, like thunder, is the product of objects in motion. Thunder is only for a while, and then it moves on. Storms build my faith in the simple belief of trouble moving on. And that I should not become so fixated on the trouble that I miss the opportunity trouble brings.

So, thank You, Father of mercy, for my storm, For the peace that storm brings me.

Now, if You don’t mind, I’m going back to bed.

posted by priest on February 13, 2010 10:32 PM | Permalink

This ain't the sixties. White folk can't march around hollering "nigger" while we cower. It amazes me how the right wing doesn't get that. Sooner or later, somebody is going to get hurt. When the first shots are fired, they won’t be aimed at the president. They'll be aimed at some kid. Some black kid, some Latino kid, wandering through a park where these nutwing Tea Baggers are standing around hollering. The first acts of violence won’t have anything to do with politics or healthcare reform or taxes. It’ll be some black kid giving these racists the finger. Some homeless guy asking for a handout. The shot will ring out. And that will be the war.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele, the Republican Party's most prominent African American official, has issued a press release criticizing former President Jimmy Carter for arguing that much of the opposition that President Obama is facing is due to race.

"President Carter is flat out wrong. This isn't about race. It is about policy. This is a pathetic distraction by Democrats to shift attention away from the president's wildly unpopular government-run health care plan that the American people simply oppose. Injecting race into the debate over critical issues facing American families doesn't create jobs, reform our health care system or reduce the growing deficit. It only divides Americans rather than uniting us to find solutions to challenges facing our nation...

As I wrote several months ago, being a black man willing to criticize President Obama is a real growth industry. Steele, who has been under fire from his own party for being, essentially, impotent and incompetent, has a vested interest in pleasing the wingnut crowd. But his unnecessarily bellicose and rabid new release only further undermines his standing, as he insults a president who himself has coolly played down the race issue. All of this posturing, on both the president and Mr. Steel's part, is for the benefit of white folk, as no black man, woman or child in America believes even a single word of Steele's statement, and recognizes the president's initiative as more political than substantive. Mr. Steele is a man headed for political oblivion and he knows it. The minute Barack Obama is no longer in the Oval Office, the GOP, who regularly eat their young anyway, will show him the door faster than he could ever imagine. I'm not quite sure what career track Mr.. Steele believes he is on, but he's being used--and knowingly so--by racists. At the end of that usefulness, he will have no friends and no future. I can't imagine what his play is, here.

posted by priest on September 20, 2009 8:38 AM | Permalink

This man is a children's entertainer. No clowns, no balloons, no party hat. But, as sure as you're breathing, this man, the gangsta rapper who calls himself "The Game," is a children's entertainer. He knows it. his record label knows it. In fact, everybody seems to know it except you—the parent who stupidly puts money in this man's pocket, paying him to ruin the lives of your children. The record labels' public posture is this "gangsta" stuff is all adult entertainment. The industry has labeled its wares with big warning stickers to that effect, and stores aren't supposed to sell their product to minors. But there is no legally enforceable statute to prevent retailers from selling this stuff to whomever they want, and the primary consumers of this type of entertainment are teens and children. Fatherless children, I would imagine, are the most vulnerable to this mess because those kids are the most in need of role models. Risk is exciting. Breaking rules, and by extension laws, implies risk. Gangstas and bad boys are exciting. Half-dressed bad girls are titillating and appear to be popular in those videos. This prurient content promotes an attractive lifestyle to impressionable youth. White youth, perhaps living vicariously through black culture, are the primary consumers of this material, but the collateral damage is within minority communities. Blacks and Latinos may not, in fact, spend as much money on this stuff, but they absorb and emulate the culture, burning pirated copies and passing them along. It is life imitating art without much grounding in either, and with no real lessons in the consequences of negative behavior. Every time you pay that cable bill—whether you allow this stuff to be viewed in your house or not—you put money in this man's pocket. Cable and satellite companies may allow you to block certain content, but you are still paying for—and therefore financing—all of it. Even with a block on BET or MTV, those companies still receive royalty payments from the cable and satellite carriers, and that money flows on to finance the phony culture that is ultimately destroying the black family.

What you allow into your home reveals who you are.

posted by priest on September 13, 2009 6:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reaching new heights of unprecedented displays of disrespect for the office of the president, conservative bloggers and cable news personalities are urging parents to keep their children home from school in order to prevent their children from watching President Barack Obama's planned speech to school children Tuesday at noon (EDT). It shocks and degusts me how baldly racist, and that's what it is, racist, the political right has become and how dangerous they are making the world by openly fomenting sedition by refusing to recognize Barack Obama as the democratically elected president of the United States. Even at the height of the GOP's loathing for Bill Clinton, there was still a grudging respect for both Mr. Clinton and the office of the president. George Bush, whose presidency was inarguably a gross failure and whose policies bankrupted the nation and plunged us into war, was still respected, by liberals and even the African American community, as the president of the United States.

The conservative right's malicious and unprecedented hate campaign--a campaign of personal hatred against the man with indifference to the office--continues to heat up and go unchallenged by, well, anyone. It treads a very thin line between political protest and open sedition against the U.S. government, which can be charged as the crime of treason. The conservative right--often in lock-step with the religious right--continues to develop and deploy propaganda designed to engage this country's sad history of institutionalized racism to achieve a political goal: the removal of Barack Obama from office. These actions undermine the very principles this country was founded upon and risks unpredictable blowback as, once our political leaders make it acceptable for us to simply not recognize our duly elected chief executive (for not much other obvious reason than that he is black), it makes it that much easier for dissent to set in and harden, as we become selective in terms of which authority figures we choose to recognize in the future. By undermining the office of the president, and the entire electoral system, these people are literally undermining the future of our nation, which makes their tactics not only wrongheaded and ignorant, but an act of sedition against the United States of America.

I only wish someone had the political will to charge them with that crime.

posted by priest on September 7, 2009 10:24 AM | Permalink

In a relatively timely and remarkably respectful and mature two hours, the life of Michael Jackson was celebrated at Los Angeles' Staples Center among thousands of Jackson's fans, while being watched or downloaded around the globe by billions. The memorial, yanked off most major news servers the day after, is likely to arrive on DVD in short order as the rush to cash in n Jackson's death begins. While I found the memorial's emphasis on Jackson's artistic and social achievements to be appropriate, I winced at Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas)'s way-over-the-top canonizing of Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus' introduction of a proclamation in his honor. I agree Jackson is most certainly innocent until proven guilty, but Jackson was also black only selectively and when it seemed to suit his purpose or the moment. I guess it's appropriate to celebrate his genetic disposition, but the model of Jackson's life was a man trying to escape the very family who celebrated him last week, if not the African American race as a whole (based on the emerging evidence of genetic hoodwinking and more lying on Jackson's part about the paternity of his children). I absolutely celebrate this man who has so inspired me over the years, but I prefer to do so with my eyes open. The louder flat note of the ceremony: notorious attention-seeker and comical black sheep LaToya's insistence on wearing a hat nearly as big as the Staples Center itself.

posted by priest on July 9, 2009 11:04 AM | Permalink