transparency

This has been the most riveting semester I’ve had along my educational journey. From the people’s shoes I’ve tightened around my feet through the turning of pages, to the ringing of the second verse of Lift Every Voice And Sing, I’ve felt branded (like livestock) with the burden of digesting the red pill.

Education is not limited to formal education. I would even go so far to say that the most important educational time for a student is independent study, just like the most important time as a Believer is quality time connecting with the Creator. We are all students in life, no one person has everything perfect. Dr. Paul Tillich once said, “I am incomplete from the top of my head to the soles of my feet, but I am pieces of the Master so they call me a Masterpiece.” Though we fall short, we must continue to study, learn from the wise, speak for the voiceless, feed the hungry and aid the scarred (metaphorically). Our job is not to get enough training and skills to do a job. Our job is to create/find our purposes for the collective upmost purpose of pushing the greater common good forward. Not the same, not stagnant. This involves gathering information beyond the confines of mass media. Do you really think you the U.S. would tell you everything there is to know about every issue? Especially when it comes to race, class, gender, economics, war, health, and policy?

One of my favorite sermons by the late Rev. Dr. King Jr. is The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life. He illustrates that in order for our lives to be complete, we must have length (“inward concern for one’s own welfare”), breath (“outward concern for the welfare of others”), and height (“the upward reach for God”). “When you get all the three of these together, the lamb will lie down with the lion.”

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burden is heavy, body is weak

pray The Essence of God will seep

into people we’ll never see

thy child to once be free

forever burning, my hands quiver

forever frozen, my tongue shivers

forever afraid, yet we linger

thy child to once be free

running wet, alas new birth

anticipating new heaven and earth

book, bible, blessing and curse

thy child to once be free