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race the Human Race living in the 21st Century offering articles tackling developing spiritual principles, ecomonics, politics. Dialog and Analysis about today's topics and history. Freedom of expression challenges us to reach higher to fufill a broader purpose. "My people perish for lack of knowledge" Stay open to change and have the willingness to grow & evolve.
A private matter; Woman to Woman on a whole new level.Whatever happened Barbara, this is Shirley…….. Women who creep OPP syndrome
Conversation With the Samaritan Woman
John 4:7-244:7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me some water to drink.” 4:8 A Situation
4:13 Jesus replied, “Everyone who drinks some of this water will be thirsty again. 4:14 But whoever drinks some of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.” 4:15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” 4:16 He said to her, “Go call your husband and come back here.” 4:17 The woman replied, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “Right you are when you said, ‘I have no husband, 4:18 for you have had five husbands, and the man you are living with now is not your husband. This you said truthfully!” A Situation....
4:21 Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 4:22 You people worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. 4:23 But a time is coming – and now is here – when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers. 4:24 God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth
Many real women have had at least one indiscretion where she didn’t want to fall for or become somebody’s mistress, which often always results in a broken heart on all sides, and yes the family does suffer through the crisis. Yet as I was growing up the black women in my community handled these matters so indiscreetly that you still spoke with respect to an, Aunties, best girlfriend or Ms. Gotchaman from across the street whose always having lots of different guys around.. my childhood memories.. Another time I can remember another sister taking a wine bottle wrapped in her man’s boxer shorts and throwing it through the mistress patio door shattering the glass and then slashing tires…. He moved out it was over and only a few us knew what had happened loved her through the pain and humiliation. The woman knew who did it but never could identify anything but the drawers..
I recall my mother demonstrating what kiss my ass meant using sign language to Ms. Gotchaman.. no words were ever spoken, so you mean from my childhood trauma of watching mother bend over pull her panties down and tell another woman kiss her ass she thought was sleeping with my father, which still brings me to tears in laughter at this very moment. She or I could have sued Ms. Gotchaman for $$$.. It would have paid for a nice college tuition at best.
No I’m not feeling that lawsuit the NBA player’s spouse is claiming against Gabrielle Union even if it does stink to all hell. Gabby was wrong but who are we to judge, he/she who is without sin please cast the first stone and let GOD be all of their judge, its painful but why draw more pain by making it a public shame.
Does anybody come out the winner, nope I don’t think so and the kids continue to be humiliated privately about a public scandal. Celebrities are human beings who also wake up with the same requirements except they have exposure to more tangible things.. Feelings and desires are usually human they suffer too. Chris Brown still struggling back from a very public private matter.
Where do we draw the line between what is for public consumption vs. private enlightenment; why do we enjoy consuming other folks misery; scripture points to the fact that we ought to pray when any of us suffers this level of public humiliation all parties need encouragement and for folks to stop acting like you never been a “tramp” once or flirted hard with somebody else’s man.
Personally, I’ve been on either side if you check out this chick flick “It’s Complicated that is the perfect analogy. A wife who becomes the ex-husband’s mistress; once scorned then karma allows her to experience hoe dum and she loves it! We’ve all shared a moment and if you’ve haven’t chances do go around. For some Agony&Ectasy that some painful growth betrayal, then forgiveness.
The experts in the law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught committing adultery. They made her stand in front of them 8:4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of adultery. 8:5 In the law Moses commanded us to stone to death such women. What then do you say?” 8:6 (Now they were asking this in an attempt to trap him, so that they could bring charges against him.) Jesus bent down and wrote on the ground with his finger. 8:7 when they persisted in asking him, he stood up straight and replied, “Whoever among you is guiltless may be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8:8 then he bent over again and wrote on the ground. 8:9 Now when they heard this, they began to drift away one at a time, starting with the older ones, until Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 8:10 Jesus stood up straight and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?” 8:11 She replied, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “I do not condemn you either. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”
God Bless and Show some love for yourself be considerate of others
The Power of A thought is defined many ways it could be inside your head or used as many words conjugated into asentence, a novel, or phrase.
Put into action burst creativity, an imagination is the Power of A thought. When a positive thought enters the mind it can bring a smile upon a face, even change an outlook on life to take on wings propelled into flight. A negative thought enters it can torment a person and boggle up the mind. Contort itself into a frown, then chain reacts into low self esteem, ages the face, it has many bad dreams. Causing fatal reprecussions to others which can take a life. Realize the power of A thought which come from the mouth as a weapon of mass destruction. If applied correctly has power to inspire massive amounts of joy and peace to fulfill our happiness. When the power of A thought becomes an idea enters into the mind broaden the scope to define since of purpose change lives, if acted upon has enough reach inspiring others to grow finding new directions. The power of a thought loudly spoken can become a permanent wound, will mame stunt the growth of an innocent child often festers discouragement as an adult who feels the sting for a lifetime. Never discount any idea as stupid thoughts hesistant to ask afraid to reach forth. Stupidity is the question that is hidden away stuck in our mind we abandoned never released a powerful thought. A Powerful thought brought forth put into action could manifest something a magnificant beauty to be admired that no eyes can resist. That God has given to each of us many fruitful gifts. To Deveolp and nurture but not be disregarded. A powerful thought makes you pay close attention will reveal it's purpose. These thoughts on your mind are waiting to be born. Giving you permission just a utterance nudging you along. It causes demons to trembal about the power you possess with just one thought they'll convince you to deny it's existance. Often disguised as a voice of resistance using outside influences to discourage you to give up and not pay any attention. Don't listen to those pessimistic put downs standing on two legs even the tiny voices whispering negative to you inside your brain. A thought has power to stifle your growth make you feel scared. Be willing to act upon it Be unafraid! Bodaciously step outside of your comfort zone find the Faith. Trust and believe in yourself just take a chance, but first of all Trust in GOD to guide your thinking take action making one footstep at a time. The Power of a Thought can help you soar way above it'll stretch you farther to your highest potential. Be secure knowing who you are, one whose truly blessed.
The Power of A thought.
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@Lovleeannwise 2016 all rights reserved** Black Poetry The Power of a Thought
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GOD Bless my Bishop this is what the LORD has called him to do. " For We worship AlmighT GOD in Spirith and in TRUTH!"
The Historic "Drum Major Instinct Speech" was delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, on 4 February 1968. MLKEC.
This morning I would like to use as a subject from which to preach: "The Drum Major Instinct." "The Drum Major Instinct." And our text for the morning is taken from a very familiar passage in the tenth chapter as recorded by Saint Mark. Beginning with the thirty-fifth verse of that chapter, we read these words: "And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came unto him saying, ‘Master, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire.’ And he said unto them, ‘What would ye that I should do for you?’ And they said unto him, ‘Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory.’ But Jesus said unto them, ‘Ye know not what ye ask: Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ And they said unto him, ‘We can.’ And Jesus said unto them, ‘Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of, and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized: but to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared.’"
And then Jesus goes on toward the end of that passage to say, "But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your servant: and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all."
The setting is clear. James and John are making a specific request of the master. They had dreamed, as most of the Hebrews dreamed, of a coming king of Israel who would set Jerusalem free and establish his kingdom on Mount Zion, and in righteousness rule the world. And they thought of Jesus as this kind of king. And they were thinking of that day when Jesus would reign supreme as this new king of Israel. And they were saying, "Now when you establish your kingdom, let one of us sit on the right hand and the other on the left hand of your throne."
Now very quickly, we would automatically condemn James and John, and we would say they were selfish. Why would they make such a selfish request? But before we condemn them too quickly, let us look calmly and honestly at ourselves, and we will discover that we too have those same basic desires for recognition, for importance. That same desire for attention, that same desire to be first. Of course, the other disciples got mad with James and John, and you could understand why, but we must understand that we have some of the same James and John qualities. And there is deep down within all of us an instinct. It's a kind of drum major instinct—a desire to be out front, a desire to lead the parade, a desire to be first. And it is something that runs the whole gamut of life.
And so before we condemn them, let us see that we all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade. Alfred Adler, the great psychoanalyst, contends that this is the dominant impulse. Sigmund Freud used to contend that sex was the dominant impulse, and Adler came with a new argument saying that this quest for recognition, this desire for attention, this desire for distinction is the basic impulse, the basic drive of human life, this drum major instinct.
And you know, we begin early to ask life to put us first. Our first cry as a baby was a bid for attention. And all through childhood the drum major impulse or instinct is a major obsession. Children ask life to grant them first place. They are a little bundle of ego. And they have innately the drum major impulse or the drum major instinct.
Now in adult life, we still have it, and we really never get by it. We like to do something good. And you know, we like to be praised for it. Now if you don't believe that, you just go on living life, and you will discover very soon that you like to be praised. Everybody likes it, as a matter of fact. And somehow this warm glow we feel when we are praised or when our name is in print is something of the vitamin A to our ego. Nobody is unhappy when they are praised, even if they know they don't deserve it and even if they don't believe it. The only unhappy people about praise is when that praise is going too much toward somebody else. (That’s right) But everybody likes to be praised because of this real drum major instinct.
Now the presence of the drum major instinct is why so many people are "joiners." You know, there are some people who just join everything. And it's really a quest for attention and recognition and importance. And they get names that give them that impression. So you get your groups, and they become the "Grand Patron," and the little fellow who is henpecked at home needs a chance to be the "Most Worthy of the Most Worthy" of something. It is the drum major impulse and longing that runs the gamut of human life. And so we see it everywhere, this quest for recognition. And we join things, overjoin really, that we think that we will find that recognition in.
Now the presence of this instinct explains why we are so often taken by advertisers. You know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. (Make it plain)
In order to be lovely to love you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume. And you know, before you know it, you're just buying that stuff. (Yes) That's the way the advertisers do it.
I got a letter the other day, and it was a new magazine coming out. And it opened up, "Dear Dr. King: As you know, you are on many mailing lists. And you are categorized as highly intelligent, progressive, a lover of the arts and the sciences, and I know you will want to read what I have to say." Of course I did. After you said all of that and explained me so exactly, of course I wanted to read it. [laughter]
But very seriously, it goes through life; the drum major instinct is real. (Yes) And you know what else it causes to happen? It often causes us to live above our means. (Make it plain) It's nothing but the drum major instinct. Do you ever see people buy cars that they can't even begin to buy in terms of their income? (Amen) [laughter] You've seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don't earn enough to have a good T-Model Ford. (Make it plain) But it feeds a repressed ego.
You know, economists tell us that your automobile should not cost more than half of your annual income. So if you make an income of five thousand dollars, your car shouldn't cost more than about twenty-five hundred. That's just good economics. And if it's a family of two, and both members of the family make ten thousand dollars, they would have to make out with one car. That would be good economics, although it's often inconvenient. But so often, haven't you seen people making five thousand dollars a year and driving a car that costs six thousand? And they wonder why their ends never meet. [laughter] That's a fact.
Now the economists also say that your house shouldn't cost—if you're buying a house, it shouldn't cost more than twice your income. That's based on the economy and how you would make ends meet. So, if you have an income of five thousand dollars, it's kind of difficult in this society. But say it's a family with an income of ten thousand dollars, the house shouldn't cost much more than twenty thousand. Well, I've seen folk making ten thousand dollars, living in a forty- and fifty-thousand-dollar house. And you know they just barely make it. They get a check every month somewhere, and they owe all of that out before it comes in. Never have anything to put away for rainy days.
But now the problem is, it is the drum major instinct. And you know, you see people over and over again with the drum major instinct taking them over. And they just live their lives trying to outdo the Joneses. (Amen) They got to get this coat because this particular coat is a little better and a little better-looking than Mary's coat. And I got to drive this car because it's something about this car that makes my car a little better than my neighbor's car. (Amen) I know a man who used to live in a thirty-five-thousand-dollar house. And other people started building thirty-five-thousand-dollar houses, so he built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house. And then somebody else built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house, and he built a hundred-thousand-dollar house. And I don't know where he's going to end up if he's going to live his life trying to keep up with the Joneses.
There comes a time that the drum major instinct can become destructive. (Make it plain) And that's where I want to move now. I want to move to the point of saying that if this instinct is not harnessed, it becomes a very dangerous, pernicious instinct. For instance, if it isn’t harnessed, it causes one's personality to become distorted. I guess that's the most damaging aspect of it: what it does to the personality. If it isn't harnessed, you will end up day in and day out trying to deal with your ego problem by boasting. Have you ever heard people that—you know, and I'm sure you've met them—that really become sickening because they just sit up all the time talking about themselves. (Amen) And they just boast and boast and boast, and that's the person who has not harnessed the drum major instinct.
And then it does other things to the personality. It causes you to lie about who you know sometimes. (Amen, Make it plain) There are some people who are influence peddlers. And in their attempt to deal with the drum major instinct, they have to try to identify with the so-called big-name people. (Yeah, Make it plain) And if you're not careful, they will make you think they know somebody that they don't really know. (Amen) They know them well, they sip tea with them, and they this-and-that. That happens to people.
And the other thing is that it causes one to engage ultimately in activities that are merely used to get attention. Criminologists tell us that some people are driven to crime because of this drum major instinct. They don't feel that they are getting enough attention through the normal channels of social behavior, and so they turn to anti-social behavior in order to get attention, in order to feel important. (Yeah) And so they get that gun, and before they know it they robbed a bank in a quest for recognition, in a quest for importance.
And then the final great tragedy of the distorted personality is the fact that when one fails to harness this instinct, (Glory to God) he ends up trying to push others down in order to push himself up. (Amen) And whenever you do that, you engage in some of the most vicious activities. You will spread evil, vicious, lying gossip on people, because you are trying to pull them down in order to push yourself up. (Make it plain) And the great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct.
Now the other problem is, when you don't harness the drum major instinct—this uncontrolled aspect of it—is that it leads to snobbish exclusivism. It leads to snobbish exclusivism. (Make it plain) And you know, this is the danger of social clubs and fraternities—I'm in a fraternity; I'm in two or three—for sororities and all of these, I'm not talking against them. I'm saying it's the danger. The danger is that they can become forces of classism and exclusivism where somehow you get a degree of satisfaction because you are in something exclusive. And that's fulfilling something, you know—that I'm in this fraternity, and it's the best fraternity in the world, and everybody can't get in this fraternity. So it ends up, you know, a very exclusive kind of thing.
And you know, that can happen with the church; I know churches get in that bind sometimes. (Amen, Make it plain) I've been to churches, you know, and they say, "We have so many doctors, and so many school teachers, and so many lawyers, and so many businessmen in our church." And that's fine, because doctors need to go to church, and lawyers, and businessmen, teachers—they ought to be in church. But they say that—even the preacher sometimes will go all through that—they say that as if the other people don't count. (Amen)
And the church is the one place where a doctor ought to forget that he's a doctor. The church is the one place where a Ph.D. ought to forget that he's a Ph.D. (Yes) The church is the one place that the school teacher ought to forget the degree she has behind her name. The church is the one place where the lawyer ought to forget that he's a lawyer. And any church that violates the "whosoever will, let him come" doctrine is a dead, cold church, (Yes) and nothing but a little social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.
When the church is true to its nature, (Whoo) it says, "Whosoever will, let him come." (Yes) And it does not supposed to satisfy the perverted uses of the drum major instinct. It's the one place where everybody should be the same, standing before a common master and savior. (Yes, sir) And a recognition grows out of this—that all men are brothers because they are children (Yes) of a common father.
The drum major instinct can lead to exclusivism in one's thinking and can lead one to feel that because he has some training, he's a little better than that person who doesn't have it. Or because he has some economic security, that he's a little better than that person who doesn't have it. And that's the uncontrolled, perverted use of the drum major instinct.
Now the other thing is, that it leads to tragic—and we've seen it happen so often—tragic race prejudice. Many who have written about this problem—Lillian Smith used to say it beautifully in some of her books. And she would say it to the point of getting men and women to see the source of the problem. Do you know that a lot of the race problem grows out of the drum major instinct? A need that some people have to feel superior. A need that some people have to feel that they are first, and to feel that their white skin ordained them to be first. (Make it plain, today, ‘cause I’m against it, so help me God) And they have said over and over again in ways that we see with our own eyes. In fact, not too long ago, a man down in Mississippi said that God was a charter member of the White Citizens Council.
And so God being the charter member means that everybody who's in that has a kind of divinity, a kind of superiority. And think of what has happened in history as a result of this perverted use of the drum major instinct. It has led to the most tragic prejudice, the most tragic expressions of man's inhumanity to man.
The other day I was saying, I always try to do a little converting when I'm in jail. And when we were in jail in Birmingham the other day, the white wardens and all enjoyed coming around the cell to talk about the race problem. And they were showing us where we were so wrong demonstrating. And they were showing us where segregation was so right. And they were showing us where intermarriage was so wrong. So I would get to preaching, and we would get to talking—calmly, because they wanted to talk about it. And then we got down one day to the point—that was the second or third day—to talk about where they lived, and how much they were earning.
And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, "Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. [laughter] You're just as poor as Negroes." And I said, "You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. (Yes) And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And you're so poor you can't send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march."
Now that's a fact. That the poor white has been put into this position, where through blindness and prejudice, (Make it plain) he is forced to support his oppressors. And the only thing he has going for him is the false feeling that he’s superior because his skin is white—and can't hardly eat and make his ends meet week in and week out. (Amen)
And not only does this thing go into the racial struggle, it goes into the struggle between nations. And I would submit to you this morning that what is wrong in the world today is that the nations of the world are engaged in a bitter, colossal contest for supremacy. And if something doesn't happen to stop this trend, I'm sorely afraid that we won't be here to talk about Jesus Christ and about God and about brotherhood too many more years. (Yeah) If somebody doesn't bring an end to this suicidal thrust that we see in the world today, none of us are going to be around, because somebody's going to make the mistake through our senseless blunderings of dropping a nuclear bomb somewhere. And then another one is going to drop. And don't let anybody fool you, this can happen within a matter of seconds. (Amen) They have twenty-megaton bombs in Russia right now that can destroy a city as big as New York in three seconds, with everybody wiped away, and every building. And we can do the same thing to Russia and China.
But this is why we are drifting. And we are drifting there because nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. "I must be first." "I must be supreme." "Our nation must rule the world." (Preach it) And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I'm going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken.
God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now. (Preach it, preach it) God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.
But God has a way of even putting nations in their place. (Amen) The God that I worship has a way of saying, "Don't play with me." (Yes) He has a way of saying, as the God of the Old Testament used to say to the Hebrews, "Don’t play with me, Israel. Don't play with me, Babylon. (Yes) Be still and know that I'm God. And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power." (Yes) And that can happen to America. (Yes) Every now and then I go back and read Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And when I come and look at America, I say to myself, the parallels are frightening. And we have perverted the drum major instinct.
But let me rush on to my conclusion, because I want you to see what Jesus was really saying. What was the answer that Jesus gave these men? It's very interesting. One would have thought that Jesus would have condemned them. One would have thought that Jesus would have said, "You are out of your place. You are selfish. Why would you raise such a question?"
But that isn't what Jesus did; he did something altogether different. He said in substance, "Oh, I see, you want to be first. You want to be great. You want to be important. You want to be significant. Well, you ought to be. If you're going to be my disciple, you must be." But he reordered priorities. And he said, "Yes, don't give up this instinct. It's a good instinct if you use it right. (Yes) It's a good instinct if you don't distort it and pervert it. Don't give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love. (Amen) I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity. That is what I want you to do."
And he transformed the situation by giving a new definition of greatness. And you know how he said it? He said, "Now brethren, I can't give you greatness. And really, I can't make you first." This is what Jesus said to James and John. "You must earn it. True greatness comes not by favoritism, but by fitness. And the right hand and the left are not mine to give, they belong to those who are prepared." (Amen)
And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. (Amen) That's a new definition of greatness.
And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, (Everybody) because everybody can serve. (Amen) You don't have to have a college degree to serve. (All right) You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. (Amen) You only need a heart full of grace, (Yes, sir, Amen) a soul generated by love. (Yes) And you can be that servant.
I know a man—and I just want to talk about him a minute, and maybe you will discover who I'm talking about as I go down the way (Yeah) because he was a great one. And he just went about serving. He was born in an obscure village, (Yes, sir) the child of a poor peasant woman. And then he grew up in still another obscure village, where he worked as a carpenter until he was thirty years old. (Amen) Then for three years, he just got on his feet, and he was an itinerant preacher. And he went about doing some things. He didn't have much. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. (Yes) He never owned a house. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never went two hundred miles from where he was born. He did none of the usual things that the world would associate with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.
He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. They called him a rabble-rouser. They called him a troublemaker. They said he was an agitator. (Glory to God) He practiced civil disobedience; he broke injunctions. And so he was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. And the irony of it all is that his friends turned him over to them. (Amen) One of his closest friends denied him. Another of his friends turned him over to his enemies. And while he was dying, the people who killed him gambled for his clothing, the only possession that he had in the world. (Lord help him) When he was dead he was buried in a borrowed tomb, through the pity of a friend.
Nineteen centuries have come and gone and today he stands as the most influential figure that ever entered human history. All of the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned put together (Yes) have not affected the life of man on this earth (Amen) as much as that one solitary life. His name may be a familiar one. (Jesus) But today I can hear them talking about him.
Every now and then somebody says, "He's King of Kings." (Yes) And again I can hear somebody saying, "He's Lord of Lords." Somewhere else I can hear somebody saying, "In Christ there is no East nor West." (Yes) And then they go on and talk about, "In Him there's no North and South, but one great Fellowship of Love throughout the whole wide world." He didn't have anything. (Amen) He just went around serving and doing good.
This morning, you can be on his right hand and his left hand if you serve. (Amen) It's the only way in.
Every now and then I guess we all think realistically (Yes, sir) about that day when we will be victimized with what is life's final common denominator—that something that we call death. We all think about it. And every now and then I think about my own death and I think about my own funeral. And I don't think of it in a morbid sense. And every now and then I ask myself,
"What is it that I would want said?" And I leave the word to you this morning.
If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. (Yes) And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. (Yes)
I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. (Yes)
I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.
I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. (Amen)
I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. (Yes)
And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. (Yes)
I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord)
I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. (Yes)
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes)
I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. (Yes) I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Amen)
And that's all I want to say.
"If I can help somebody as I pass along, If I can cheer somebody with a word or song, If I can show somebody he's traveling wrong, Then my living will not be in vain. If I can do my duty as a Christian ought, If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought, If I can spread the message as the master taught, Then my living will not be in vain."
Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right or your left side, (Yes) not for any selfish reason. I want to be on your right or your left side, not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition. But I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world.
Delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, on 4 February 1968. MLKEC.
courtesy of: http://www.blackwebportal.com/
Peace and GOD Bless Til next time "I'll meet you on the other side" @Lovleeannwise 2014 all rights reserved
Friday, Jun 28, 1968
LADY SOUL SINGING IT LIKE IT IS
HAS it got soul? Man, that's the question of the hour. If it has soul, then it's tough, beautiful, out of sight. It passes the test of with-itness. It has the authenticity of collard greens boiling on the stove, the sassy style of the boogaloo in a hip discotheque, the solidarity signified by "Soul Brother" scrawled on a ghetto storefront.
But what is soul? "It's like electricity —we don't really know what it is," says Singer Ray Charles. "But it's a force that can light a room." The force radiates from a sense of selfhood, a sense of knowing where you've been and what it means. Soul is a way of life —but it is always the hard way. Its essence is ingrained in those who suffer and endure to laugh about it later. Soul is happening everywhere, in esthetics and anthropology, history and dietetics, haberdashery and politics—although Hubert Humphrey's recent declaration to college students that he was a "soul brother" was all wrong. Soul is letting others say you're a soul brother. Soul is not needing others to say it.
Where soul is really at today is pop music. It emanates from the rumble of gospel chords and the plaintive cry of the blues. It is compounded of raw emotion, pulsing rhythm and spare, earthy lyrics—all suffused with the sensual, somewhat melancholy vibrations of the Negro idiom. Always the Negro idiom. LeRoi Jones, the militant Negro playwright, says: "Soul music is music coming out of the black spirit." For decades, it only reverberated around the edges of white pop music, injecting its native accent here and there; now it has penetrated to the core, and its tone and beat are triumphant.
No Moon in June. Soul music is sincerity, a homely distillation of everybody's daily portion of pain and joy. "It pulls the cover off," explains Jim Stewart, a former banker and country fiddler who heads Memphis' soul-oriented Stax Records. "It's not the moon in June. It's life. Sometimes it's violence and sex. That's the way it is in this world. Sometimes there's animal in it; but let's face it, we've got a lot of animal in us." The difference between Tin Pan Alley and Soul is not hard to define. A conventional tunesmith might write: "You're still near, my darling, though we're apart/ I'll hold you always in my heart." The soul singer might put it: "Baby, since you split the scene the rent's come due/ Without you or your money it's hard, yeah, hard to be true."
In all its power, lyricism and ecstatic anguish, soul is a chunky, 5-ft. 5-in. girl of 26 named Aretha Franklin singing from the stage of a packed Philharmonic Hall in Manhattan. She leans her head back, forehead gleaming with perspiration, features twisted by her intensity, and her voice—plangent and supple—pierces the hall:
Oh baby, what you done to me . . .
You make me feel, you make me
feel, you make me feel like a
natural woman.
"Tell it like it is," her listeners exhort, on their feet, clapping and cheering. She goes into a "holiness shout"-a writhing dance derived from gospel services, all the while singing over the tumult. This is why her admirers call her Lady Soul.
Bearing Witness. Aretha's vocal technique is simple enough: a direct, natural style of delivery that ranges over a full four octaves, and the breath control to spin out long phrases that curl sinuously around the beat and dangle tantalizingly from blue notes. But what really accounts for her impact goes beyond technique: it is her fierce, gritty conviction. She flexes her rich, cutting voice like a whip; she lashes her listeners —in her words—"to the bone, for deepness." "Aretha's music makes you sweaty, gives you a chill, makes you want to stomp your feet," says Bobby Taylor, leader of a soul group called Bobby and the Vancouvers. More simply, a 19-year-old Chicago fan named Lorraine Williams explains: "If Aretha says it, then it's important."
She does not seem to be performing so much as bearing witness to a reality so simple and compelling that she could not possibly fake it. In her selection of songs, whether written by others or by herself, she unfailingly opts for those that frame her own view of life. "If a song's about something I've experienced or that could've happened to me, it's good," she says. "But if it's alien to me, I couldn't lend anything to it. Because that's what soul is about—just living and having to get along."
For Aretha, as for soul singers generally, "just living and having to get along" mostly involves love—seeking it, celebrating its fulfillment, and especially bemoaning its loss. Aretha pleads in Since You've Been Gone:
I'm cryin'! Take me back, consider me please;
If you walk in that door 1 can get up off my knees.
And in the earthy candor of the soul sound, love is inescapably, bluntly physical. In Respect, she wails:
I'm out to give you all of my money,
And all I'm askin' in return, Honey,
Is to give me my propers when you get home . . .
Yeah, baby, whip it to me when you get home.*
"That's what most of the soul songs are all about," says Negro Comedian Godfrey Cambridge. "Take Aretha's Dr. Feelgood:
Don't send me no doctor fillin me up with all of those pills;
Got me a man named Dr. Feelgood and, oh yeah,
That man takes care of all of my pains and my ills.
A woman works all day cooking and cleaning a house for white folks, then comes home and has to cook and clean for her man. Sex is the only thing she's got to look forward to, to set her up to face the next day."
Rats in the Basement. No amount of empathy from outside can give a singer the realism and believability that constitute soul. He has to have "been down the line," as Negroes say, and "paid his dues" in life. Aretha, in spite of her youth, has paid heavily. "I might be just 26, but I'm an old woman in disguise—26 goin' on 65," she says only half jokingly. "Trying to grow up is hurting, you know. You make mistakes. You try to learn from them, and when you don't it hurts even more. And I've been hurt—hurt bad."
Aretha grew up on the fringe of Detroit's Negro East Side in the same neighborhood with several singers-to-be —Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson and all of the Four Tops. The Franklin house was a big tree-shaded one with a tidy lawn, even though it did have cockroaches in the kitchen and rats in the basement. Yet the gamy life of the ghetto was only half a block away. Recalls Aretha's brother Cecil, 28: "The people that you saw who had any measure of success were the pimp and the hustler, the numbers man and the dope man. Aretha knew what they were all about without having to meet them personally." Her mother deserted the family when Aretha was six and died four years later, two shocks that deeply scarred the shy, withdrawn girl. "After her mama died," says Gospel Singer Mahalia Jackson, "the whole family wanted for love."
Aretha's father, the Rev. C. L. Franklin, was—and is—pastor of Detroit's 4,500-member New Bethel Baptist Church, where the preaching is so fiery that two white-uniformed nurses stand by to aid overwrought parishioners. Franklin commands up to $4,000 per appearance as a barnstorming evangelist, has recorded 70 steadily selling LPs of his sermons. He may not be a member of the Baptist Ministers Conference, but his Cadillac, diamond stickpins and $60 alligator shoes testify to an eminently successful pastorate. Just how successful is not altogether clear, although when he was convicted last year for failing to file federal tax returns, the Government had shown that his income between 1959 and 1962 was more than $76,000. Franklin paid a $25,000 fine. Now 51, he is a strapping, stentorious charmer who has never let his spiritual calling inhibit his fun-loving ways.
Through her father, Aretha became immersed in gospel music at home as well as in church. Such stars as Mahalia Jackson, Clara Ward and James Cleveland often came by the house for jam sessions, whooping and clapping, singing and playing all through the night while Aretha watched intently from a corner. Once, at a funeral for an aunt of Aretha's, Clara Ward was singing the gospel tune Peace in the Valley; in her fervor, she tore off her hat and flung it on the ground. "That," says Aretha, "was when I wanted to become a singer." Aretha had the spirit, all right; after her first solo in church at the age of twelve, excited parishioners crowded around her father, saying, "Oh, that child can sure enough sing."
Cutting Loose. Two years later, she was a featured performer with her father's gospel caravan, an evangelist show that crisscrossed the country by car (except for Franklin, who preferred to travel by plane). Though it ripened her vocal and professional skills, the experience of touring was in other ways a harsh initiation for Aretha. Says Cecil dryly: "Driving eight or ten hours trying to make a gig, and being hungry and passing restaurants all along the road, and having to go off the highway into some little city to find a place to eat because you're black—that had its effect." And the post-performance parties among older troupers in hotel rooms, where the liquor and sex were both plentiful—they had their effect too.
At 18, inspired by the example of former Gospel Singer Sam Cooke, Aretha decided to try the pop field. She started by auditioning for a New York manager named Jo King. "Aretha did everything wrong," recalls Mrs. King, "but it came out right. She had something—a concept of her own about music that needed no gimmickry. She was a completely honest musician." Groomed by Mrs. King, signed to a Columbia Records contract, Aretha began plying a sometimes seamy circuit of jazz and rhythm & blues clubs—with disheartening results. "I was afraid," she says. "I sang to the floor a lot." In the recording studio, she cut side after side with stereotyped pop arrangements —which sold indifferently. Deep down, she knew what was wrong with her repertory of standards, jazz tunes and novelties: "It wasn't really me."
Then 18 months ago she switched to Atlantic Records, which for two decades has specialized in bedrock rhythm & blues. Savvy Producer Jerry Wexler backed her with a funky Memphis rhythm section (which she ably joined on piano), and cut her loose to swing into the soul groove. Her first disk, I Never Loved a Man, sold a million copies. "It had looked for the longest time like I would never have a gold record," she says. "I wanted one so bad."
It was only the beginning. Aretha embarked on a remarkable year. She collected four more gold single records, sold a total of 1,200,000 albums, won two Grammy awards for record performances, and was cited by Billboard magazine as the top female vocalist of 1967. She toured Europe and was hailed in England as the new Bessie Smith—the first (1894-1937) of the great blues belters. Ray Charles called her "one of the greatest I've heard any time." Janis Joplin, 25, probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement, ranked her as "the best chick singer since Billie Holiday." Her troubles were over.
Wrestling Demons. Professionally, that is. Personally, she remains cloaked in a brooding sadness, all the more achingly impenetrable because she rarely talks about it—except when she sings. "I'm gonna make a gospel record," she told Mahalia Jackson not long ago, "and tell Jesus I cannot bear these burdens alone."
What one of these burdens might be came out last year when Aretha's husband, Ted White, roughed her up in public at Atlanta's Regency Hyatt House Hotel. It was not the first such incident. White, 37, a former dabbler in Detroit real estate and a street-corner wheeler-dealer, has come a long way since he married Aretha and took over the management of her career. Sighs Mahalia Jackson: "I don't think she's happy. Somebody else is making her sing the blues." But Aretha says nothing, and others can only speculate on the significance of her singing lyrics like these:
I don't know why I let you do these things to me;
My friends keep telling me that you ain't no good,
But oh, they don't know that I'd leave you if I could . . .
I ain't never loved a man the way that I love you.
Now that Aretha can afford to be in Detroit for up to two weeks out of a month, she retreats regularly to her twelve-room, $60,000 colonial house to be with her three sons (aged nine, eight and five) and wrestles with her private demons. She sleeps till afternoon, then mopes in front of the television set, chain-smoking Kools and snacking compulsively. She does bestir herself to cook—a pastime she enjoys and is good at—and occasionally likes to get away for some fishing. But most of her socializing is confined to the small circle of girlhood friends with whom, until a couple of years ago, she spent Wednesday nights skating at the Arcadia Roller Rink.
The only other breaks in her routine are visits to her father, her brother Cecil —now assistant pastor of the New Bethel Church—or sister Carolyn, 23, who leads Aretha's accompanying vocal trio and writes songs for her. Another sister, Erma, 29, is a pop singer living in New York City. Sometimes, with her family, she opens up enough to put on her W. C. Fields voice or do her imitation of Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula ("Goodt eeeeevnink, Mr. Renfieldt; I've been expectink you!"). But Cecil says: "For the last few years Aretha is simply not Aretha. You see flashes of her, and then she's back in her shell." Since, as a friend puts it, "Aretha comes alive only when she's singing," her only real solace is at the piano, working out a new song, going over a familiar gospel tune, or loosing her feelings in a mournful blues:
Oh listen to the blues, to the blues and what they're sayin' . . .
Oh they tell me, they tell me that life's just an empty scene,
Older than the oldest broken hearts, newer than the newest broken dreams.
Hollers & Blues. Negroes have been sifting their sorrows in songs like this for centuries. It started, says Mahalia Jackson, who is now 56, with "the groans and moans of the people in the cotton fields. Before it got the name of soul, men were sellin' watermelons and vegetables on a wagon drawn by a mule, hollerin' 'watermellllon!' with a cry in their voices. And the men on the railroad track layin' crossties—every time they hit the hammer it was with a sad feelin', but with a beat. And the Baptist preacher—he the one who had the soul—he give out the meter, a long and short meter, and the old mothers of the church would reply. This musical thing has been here since America been here. This is trial-and-tribulation music."
Out of the matrix of these Negro work songs, field hollers and spirituals of the 19th century sprang the first crude country blues. It was spread by bardic singers with guitars or harmonicas—beggars, itinerant farm laborers, members of jug bands and medicine or minstrel shows. Then, with the Negro migrations to Northern cities in the early decades of the 20th century, the blues gathered a more elaborate accompaniment around itself (sometimes a jazz group) and moved into theaters, dance halls and recording studios. This was the era of Bessie Smith's classic records. By the 1930s, a new style was forged around tenements, speakeasies and rent parties—a harsher, more nervous brand of blues that reflected the stress and tempo of urban living. This style mingled with the blaring jazz and blues that swept out of the Southwest during the swing era (Andy Kirk, Count Basic), and so the stage was set for the emergence, after World War II, of rhythm & blues.
All this began to change with such English rock 'n' roll groups as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Animals, who made a point of crediting their sources—not only R & B figures such as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, but also country and urban bluesmen such as John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker and B. B. King. "Until the Beatles exposed the origins," says Waters, "the white kids didn't know anything about the music. But now they've learned that it was in their backyard all the time."
Jubilation Shouts. Meanwhile, the rhythm-&-blues strain was picking up new momentum, while post-Beatle rock charged off on its own creative path. The man who gave R & B its fresh thrust was a blind, Georgia-born bard named Ray Charles, one of the most hauntingly effective and versatile Negro singers in the history of pop music.
Negroes had always rigorously main tained a distinction between gospel and blues—the sacred and profane—despite the affinity of their sounds. But Charles boldly brought them together, blending foot-stamping orgiastic jubilation shouts with the abrasive, existentialist irony of "devil songs." He even carried over the original gospel tunes and changed the words to fit the emotion. "Lord" became "you," or "baby," and it didn't matter if the bulk of the prayerful text remained the same. Thus Clara Ward's rousing old gospel song, This Little Light of Mine, became Charles's This Little Girl of Mine. (A wonderful indemnification!) Oldtimers who had once been forced to choose between the two genres were offended. "I know that's wrong," said Bluesman and former Preacher Big Bill Broonzy. "He should be singing in a church."
But Charles's innovation brought waves of gospel talent into the blues field, and at the same time offered blues performers a chance to employ the climactic cadences and mythic ritual of black evangelism. Some of his more ardent followers adopted stage mannerisms in which they appeared to be seized by God; they tore off their clothes, called for witnesses, collapsed and rose up again. The bespangled James Brown's whirling, convulsive performances have even been analyzed as enactments of the Crucifixion.
Most important, once Charles broke the barrier between gospel and blues, the way was open for a whole cluster of ingredients to converge around an R & B core and form the potent, musical mix now known as soul—among them, in Critic Albert Goldman's words, "a racial ragbag of Delta blues, hillbilly strumming, gutbucket jazz, boogie-woogie piano, pop lyricism and storefront shouting."
Chitlin Circuit. It was not long before the soul sound began to move directly into the white market of pop music, and its purveyors started outstripping their white imitators. Charles was the first to reach a mass white public, starting as far back as 1955 with his hit record, I Got a Woman. In more recent years, a string of others have come along behind him. Lou Rawls, for example, is a former gospel trouper who spices his blues songs with reminiscences of his boyhood in Chicago's South Side slums. He used to work only in the Negro nightclub "chitlin circuit." As for radio, Rawls says, "I never got played on the top 40 stations because they said I was too, uh—well, not too 'limited,' but too . . ." Black? "Yeah." Now Rawls's albums sell upwards of 200,000 copies from coast to coast and are played throughout the radio band. He has filled Manhattan's Carnegie Hall three times in concert appearances.
Before this started happening, soul music was recorded mostly by small, independent companies and shipped straight to the South's black belt and the North's big-city ghettos. Now the upsurge of nationwide soul-oriented firms is so strong that it has jostled the balance of power in the pop record industry. Manhattan-based Atlantic, with such singers as Aretha, Wilson Pickett and Sam & Dave, can now sell more records in a week (1,300,000) than it did in six months in 1950; now it ranks with the top singles producers in the business. Detroit's Motown Records, formed eight years ago by Berry Gordy Jr. with a $700 loan, last year grossed a soulful $30 million. Gordy's slick, carefully controlled "Motown sound" (noted for its rhythmic accent on all four beats of the bar instead of the usual R & B emphasis on alternating beats) has launched, among others, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, and Martha and the Vandellas.
Badge of Identity. By all the commercial yardsticks used in the trade, soul has arrived—and it has arrived in the hit parade as well as the "race market," in the suburbs as well as the ghettos, in the Midwestern campuses as well as Harlem's Apollo Theater.
By yardsticks used outside the trade, soul's arrival is even more significant. Since its tortuous evolution is so intertwined with Negro history and so expressive of Negro culture, Negroes naturally tend to value it as a sort of badge of black identity. "The abiding moods expressed in our most vital popular art form are not simply a matter of entertainment," says Negro Novelist Ralph Ellison. "They also tell us who and where we are."
Militant young Negroes put a more defiant slant on it. Explains Charles Keil, a white ethnomusicologist and the author of Urban Blues: "For a Negro to say 'B. B. King is my main man' is to say 'I take pride in who I am.' With this self-acceptance, a measure of unity is gained, and a demand is made upon white America: 'Accept us on our own terms.' " Yet when soul solidarity is founded on a fellowship of suffering, it may involve not a demand for white acceptance but an outright exclusion of whites, as Godfrey Cambridge makes clear. "Soul is getting kicked in the ass until you don't know what it's for," he says. "It's being broke and down and out, and people telling you you're no good. It's the language of the subculture; but you can't learn it, because no one can give you black lessons."
Used in this way, the soul concept becomes a mystique, a glorification of Negritude in all its manifestations. The soul brother makes a point of emphasizing Negro inflections such as "yo" for "your," of abandoning slang words and phrases as soon as they reach universal currency, of eating foods such as chitlins, pig's feet and black-eyed peas, in mastering a loose, cocky way of walking down the street—in doing all the things that are closed off or alien to Whitey.
Blue-Eyed Soul. Does this mean that white musicians by definition don't have soul? A very few Negroes will concede that such white singers as Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee have it, and Aretha also nominates Frenchman Charles Aznavour. A few more will accept such blues-oriented whites as the Righteous Brothers, Paul Butterfield, and England's Stevie Winwood—largely because their sound is almost indistinguishable from Negro performers'. But for the most part, Negroes leave it up to whites to defend the idea of "blue-eyed soul," whether by the criterion of talent, experience or temperament. Janis Joplin argues it this way: "There's no patent on it. It's just feeling things. A housewife in Nebraska has soul, but she represses it, makes it conform to a lot of rules like marriage, or sugarcoats it."
If the earnest racial jockeying can be suspended, the question of who has soul actually becomes intriguing, if rather fanciful fun. The very elusiveness of the soul concept invites a freewheeling, parlor-game approach. Not long ago, in an eleven-page feature on the soul mystique, Esquire half seriously argued that there are only two kinds of people in the world: the haves and the havenots—soul-wise. Others have taken up the sport, which prompts the engaging notion that important personalities of history and legend can be classed in these terms (see box).
As for those to whom soul is anything but a parlor game, one thing is certain: the closer a Negro gets to a "white" sound nowadays, the less soulful he is considered to be, and the more he is regarded as having betrayed his heritage. Dionne Warwick singing Alfie? Impure! Diana Ross and the Supremes recording an album of Rodgers and Hart songs? Unacceptable! Yet many "deviations" may be solid professionalism, a matter of adapting to changing audiences. As Lou Rawls says, "Show business is so vast—why should I limit myself to any one aspect if I have the capabilities to do more?"
On the other hand, some soul singers are so deeply imbued with the enduring streams of blues and gospel, so consumed by those primal currents of racial experience and emotion, that they could never be anything but soulful. Aretha Franklin is one of them. No matter what she sings, Aretha will never go white, and that certainty is as gratifying to her white fans as to her Negro ones.
Going Home. The depth of Aretha's fidelity to her own heritage can be heard on an occasional Sunday night when she is in Detroit. Just as she did a dozen years ago, she goes to her father's services to sing a solo. She was there one recent evening, standing somewhat apart at first, a little dressy in mink-trimmed pink, preoccupied and somber. A drenching rain was falling outside, but 1,000 parishioners had shown up: Aretha was back.
She decided to sing the gospel song Precious Lord. The words, as the congregation knew them, were straightforward and simple:
Precious Lord, take my hand,
Lead me on, let me stand.
I get tired,
I get weak and worn.
Hear my cry,
Hear my call,
Hold my hand,
Lest I fall.
Take my hand,
Precious Lord,
Lead me on.
As the first mellow chords rippled from the organ and piano, Aretha stepped out of the robed choir that was massed on tiers behind the altar. Moving in front of a lectern, she closed her eyes and sang: "Precious Lord, take my hand ..." The congregation nodded or swayed gently in their seats. "Sing it!" they cried, clapping hands. "Amen, amen!" Her melodic lines curved out in steadily rising arcs as she let her spirit dictate variations on the lyrics, finally straining upward in pure soul:
Please! Please! Please! Hear my call, 'Cause I'm gonna need you to hold on to my hand,
And I'm gonna need my friends right now 'cause I might fall. . .
"All right!" answered the congregation. She was with them now. Her voice spiraled down to a breathy whisper, then broke into intense, halting phrases as she almost talked to the end:
You know what's happening . . . and it's bad times right now;
Just lead us, just lead us, lead us on—We've got to get home.
Afterward, spent and exalted, Lady Soul said something that nobody in the church that night needed to be told: "My heart is still there in gospel music. It never left."
* "Sock it to me," one of Aretha's variations on "whip it," is another in the long list of sexual terms from blues or jazz that have passed into respectable everyday language. Having come to prominence through such recordings as Aretha's and Mitch Ryder's, "Sock it to me" is now used in a neutral sense as a catch-phrase on TV's Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and is a common sight on bumper stickers and even political placards. Jazz (originally a copulative verb) and rock 'n' roll (from a blues lyric, "My baby rocks me with a steady roll") are other examples.
"My power today lies in compromise. I am not alone.
I offer and accept love, support, and happiness to connect with the pleasure and beauty of my hearts desire. There are two sides to everything and I don't always have to be right. I am empowered by expression and my gift is attraction." Life offers us a freedom to choose, have our own opinions. Set up and achieve our own goals, but none of these would benefit the individual without a spirit of humility. Being able to walk in another one's shoes, even when you've never traveled along the same paths. Realizing that you' are on the same journey "Consolidating the Best Of" Brilliance, or the Pain of Suffering. The challenge is can you TRUST someone' elses vision? Is the ultimate sacrifice. I have what it takes to achieve a successful journey Trusting GOD knows the way that I must take being able to rely on HIS Promises. I will only attract to myself those things akin to me, knowing who I am, trusting who I am, and humble enough to not have all the answers. Learning how to listen to others without envy, jealousy, or impatience. Finding common ground. Mutual Love and Respect. We Balance Each Other Out....
No Weapons Formed Against Me Shall Prosper
@Lovleeannwise 2011 all rights reserved#SHOWSOMELOVE edited repost - 20191205
