BP Oil Spill – A Crude Awakening from Baron & Budd, P.C. on Vimeo.

I am one of those women who have watched most, if not all, of the “Sex and the City” episodes. I have seen the first movie, and half of the second. I guess I watch for the sake of entertainment, but to be honest, there is nothing remotely familiar to any aspect of my life and anyone I know for that matter. If art immitates life, or if life immitates art, the art must be one of those abstract masterpieces that causes the onlooker to respond, “I don’t get it.” For one, these women are apart of my mother’s cohort (as far as age). Even though they have illicit sexual encounters, I can’t recall an episode or conversation about HIV/AIDs – but then again, that is a black and latino problem. And, contrary to popular belief, Carry dresses like a 1920 night walker, bohemian edition. Carry is a journalist, freelance at that, but manages to keep a lavish apartment (minus roommates) in downtown Manhattan, and support an expensive shoe addiction. The biggest life concern in Samanath’s world is not to stretch her woman hole out beyond repair, to get gential warts, or even to catch a new and improved wall-street fashioned STD, but merely to loose her outta control drive to have intercourse with anyone with a bulge between their thighs. I’m surprised that Maranda’s husband does not wear panties. Charlotte is probably the most normal to me (says the traditionalist). However, I hang my head down in shame by her over-the-top attempts to keep up her picture perfect image.

I got most of my reality fill from “Girlfriends”. Although the show was produced by a white man (who I believe may be gay), the situations and dialogue was surprisingly nostalgic. How did Kelsy Grammer know that this black woman loaths man boobs; or that my circle of friends believe that the first thing a man should have in a new house is a bed. Of course they had relationship and sex conversations – from Joan’s 3 month rule, to Lynn’s free love religion. But the writers included real life situations, like Joan making the difficult decision to end an engagement with the man of her dreams because he didn’t want children, Lynn’s identity issues with being mixed-race and adopted, and Joan’s decision to give up her career as a lawyer to follow her heart. Not only did the show provide familiar stories, but they had something that most television shows don’t have – black women that are leading characters. Unfortunately, like most good things (especially those that are black), it came to an unexpected end.

So Sex and the City is the type of entertainment that many young adult, working women turn to. Sad but true.

To be honest, the only aspect of Sex and the City that I can get down with is the theme music.

The question of the hour.

If I posed this question to many, most would choose the later.

But the irony is that most people don’t know what religion really is. How many people have actually read a spiritual text in it’s entirety or actually studied many different passages, and came to their own understanding of the verses, outside of another’s interpretation. How many people can really define what faith, love, truth and righteousness really are based on the definitions contained in the text of any spiritual book. Contrary to popular belief, I have met very few religious people in my life.

I didn’t really realize how much patience and effort it took to learn about God from studying a religious text until I started law school. In undergrad, I was allowed to read a few chapters in a book, jot down notes, and then to spit back the material, almost verbatim. The closer my words were to the author’s writings, the better my grades. As I was sure that this method of study would work for law school, I was sorely embarrassed my first week of classes when the teacher asked the class questions about the reading, but the answers were no where to be found nestled between the pages of our massive text books. Frustrated, I went to one of my professors to talk about my failing methods. My professor explained to me that I must read the text critically – formulate questions and rational counter-arguments. In this way, I was able to internalize the information in a way that was personal to me. I was able to talk about the material through the lens of my own experiences and look at the facts from different angles.

I began to read the bible in this same way. I began to write questions in the margins: what was the writer trying to convey by including this piece of information? Why was Jacob blessed even though he deceived his father Isaac? What is a birthright and why does it go to the oldest son – what do the duties and responsibilities of the oldest son entail?

Someone told me that spirituality is your own personal path to God. Basically, through your own experiences, void of any outside guidance from wise men and women or any spiritual text, you search within yourself to find the truth. I find this way much harder. Imagine someone tell a child that about life – you don’t need your parents, who have come before you and who know what’s best (most of the time), to help protect and guide you with their wisdom; just search within your pure childlike self and you will find your way in life – be free to roam. Or in school, a teacher telling his/her class that they don’t need textbooks, just need to sit very quietly and search within themselves for the answers. I’m not an advocate for the mind numbing tactics that poor parenting or a failing school system provides – but I am just illustrating the difficulties of trying to navigate through life without some foundation and guidance built up by those that came before us. And that is what spiritual texts are – love letters to the future generation from those of ancient time to give us guidance and understanding about our spiritual and physical existence on this earth.

Life is much easier when you don’t have to learn the hard way or reinvent the wheel. To me, I believe that deciding, in faith, to find and commune with God by using the wisdom and guidance that was recorded in spiritual texts by the prophets and wise men/women that came before us requires the time, diligence, and patience. Spirituality does not require this sort of life practice. Most confuse religion for something that men teach, or rather, stuff down the mind of the masses – no questions asked. But I know this is a lie; 1 John 4:1 says “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” and in Jeremiah 14:14, God spoke to the prophet saying, “The prophets are prophesying falsehood in My name. I have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them; they are prophesying to you a false vision, divination, futility and the deception of their own minds.” Most of the stereotypes of religion permeate the peoples minds and convince them that this is what religion is: the idea that one can be dunked into a tank of water and become a Christian is wrong – the idea that one can go to church and be a Christian is wrong. The idea that you can be born into a faith is contrary to what I believe through the teachings of the bible. Religious empires, like the Christian empire (through Catholicism, which means, “universal” – but that is another post for another day), Islam, and Judaism – these large scale efforts for dominion and total control over the way of life and thought of people, is wrong. It is written John 13:35 that “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

So to answer the question, I am religious. Everyday, I religiously strive to understand God and to understand who I am in his eyes. Studying, praying, loving, failing, hoping, sharing, obeying, questioning.

Philippians 3:12-14 says, (12) Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. (13) Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, (14) I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

1 Tim. 3:14-17: (14) But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, (15) and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. (16) All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, (17) so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

(this is actually Louis Farrakhan singing calypso)

Thomas Jefferson
“Commerce between Master and Slave,” 1782
Alex Barnett, “Words That Changed America: Great Speeches That Inspired, Challenged, Healed” (2003) pg. 44-45

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of his wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose rein to the worst of passions and thus nursed, educated and daily exercised in tyranny, can not but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.

The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execrations should the statesman be loaded who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part and the amor patriae of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labor for another: in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavors to the evanishment of the human race or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their industry is also destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him. This is so true that, of the proprietors of slaves, a very small proportion are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure, when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can not sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!

The Almighty has no attributes which can take side with us in such a contest. But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one’s mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way, I hope, preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation; and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.

Texas Yanks Thomas Jefferson From Teaching Standard – AOL News (March 12, 2010)

Widely regarded as one of the most important of all the founding fathers of the United States, Thomas Jefferson received a demotion of sorts Friday thanks to the Texas Board of Education.

The board voted to enact new teaching standards for history and social studies that will alter which material gets included in school textbooks. It decided to drop Jefferson from a world history section devoted to great political thinkers.

According to Texas Freedom Network, a group that opposes many of the changes put in place by the Board of Education, the original curriculum asked students to “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.”

That emphasis did not sit well with board member Cynthia Dunbar, who, during Friday’s meeting, explained the rationale for changing it. “The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Dunbar said.

The new standard, passed at the meeting in a 10-5 vote, now reads, “Explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.”

By dropping mention of revolution, and substituting figures such as Aquinas and Calvin for Jefferson, Texas Freedom Network argues, the board had chosen to embrace religious teachings over those of Jefferson, the man who coined the phrase “separation between church and state.”

According to USA Today, the board also voted to strike the word “democratic” from references to the U.S. form of government, replacing it with the term “constitutional republic.” Texas textbooks will contain references to “laws of nature and nature’s God” in passages that discuss major political ideas.

The board decided to use the words “free enterprise” when describing the U.S. economic system rather than words such as “capitalism,” “capitalist” and “free market,” which it deemed to have a negative connotation.

Serving 4.7 million students, Texas accounts for a large percentage of the textbook market, and the new standards may influence what is taught in the rest of the country.

Mos Def – “History” (ft. Talib Kweli) from Downtown Music on Vimeo.

Ramsey Lewis – Solar Wind LP (circa 1974)
Summer Breeze
Label: Columbia Records

Ramsey looks oh so cool on this cover though….when did cool die?

Kings of Convenience – Boat Behind from françois nemeta on Vimeo.

Tom Scott – Intimate Stranges LP (circa 1978)
Day and Nite Out Toegether: Getaway Day/Nite Creatures
Label: Sony Japan

Just in case you were hiding under a rock, here is a list of some albums that dropped yesterday:

“Distant Relatives,” Nas and Damian Marley
“Glee: The Music, Volume 3 Showstoppers,” “Glee” Cast
“Revolutions Per Minute,” Reflection Eternal
“Bom Tempo,” Sergio Mendes
“OJ Simpson,” Guilty Simpson
“Wait for Me Remixes,” Moby
“Voyage to India (Deluxe version of the old album),” India Arie
“Brothers,”Black Keys
“This Is Happening,” LCD Soundsystem
“The Jayhawks (aka The Bunkhouse Album),” Jayhawks
“The ArchAndroid,” Janelle Monáe
“Rarities 1,” Willie Nelson
“Songs of Emotional Healing,” Cece Winans
“Exhibit B: The Human Condition,” Exodus
“Reverse Thread,” Regina Carter