Facebook, Who are you?

I have a Facebook account and I have been following something really strange.  It seems like not only does Facebook hook up people that you once knew, but it hooks up people who really don't know each other at all.  It's like a way to virtually expand your social circles when you really don't have social circles.  Most of the people on my page, I was doomed to never meet again in life.  Thanks to the wonderful world of Facebook, you get to see come in contact with people and begin something that in natural life was not possible.  Old lovers can see what old lovers are doing.  You can look at wedding pictures that you weren't invited to.  You can pry into the world of your friends, friends who have no idea who you are.  It prompts me to begin to think about the natural laws of society that we now, can traverse quite easily.  We can talk to people from other countries.  We can break down the barriers that once held us in our own fishbowls.  Sometimes, I think it's a wonderful world.  Other times, I think we are headed for shipwreck.

My Birthday

Two days ago, I turned 40.  It has been a time that I have been waiting for.  Since I was 29, I have been waiting for this day.  Twenty years ago, my mother passed at this age.  Though I no longer feel sadness at her passing, it did mark time for me.  I had trouble seeing life past the age of forty.  I would look at people who met that milestone and understand that it just was not going to happen for me.  I then began to rush to make some things happen so that when forty came, I would be fulfilled and happy.  Well, February 10, came and all was not complete.  My life, as it stood, was not done being lived.  I still had goals.  I still desire to move south.   I wanted to purchase my home in the country.  I wanted to live some portion of my life in Europe and I need to get to the Vatican.  I wanted to retire a millionaire and I wanted to fully establish my ministry, Diamonds and Pearls.  One day, I hoped to Pastor a church and affect the world one soul at a time.  One day, I would like my PHD.  I would like to spend some time in Mississippi and in South Carolina.  I had so much on my plate that still needed doing and forty was upon me.  Maybe God saved these things so that I could see that there was so much life yet to live and that maybe by his grace, I would get to live it.  It is almost time for me to attend my birthday breakfast.  Today will be a lovely day.

The Problem wasn't the White Man.

In my summation of the reason why poverty was such  a main feature of my childhood, I find that the spoken causes weren't really the causes at all.  If I state all the givens of race, gender and the trappings of both, I see an obstacle, but I would not call that the reason.  The reason was a compromised constitution and lack of God.  I will start with my birth.  My mother and father began a family before they were able to evaluate if they wanted a family.  It was no secret that they were fornicators who got caught in their sin by an unwanted and unplanned pregnancy.  Having sex too young ensures that the young will make stupid mistakes and could cause a life to come into this world that they are not ready to receive.  When that life came into being, my mother was in high school so she dropped out.  My father dropped out as well.  He went to the army during Vietnam because it was a guaranteed job for someone with no education.  My brother came first and then came me.  By the time they had me, we were in poverty due to another reason.  My parents grew up into the fact that they were not right for each other.  They should have never been married in the first place.  That is what happens when you put the cart before the horse.  Sometimes, the horse is pulling to be unhitched and sometimes the wagon gets broken in the process.  Divorce took a meager two income home and split that sucker into two insufficient parts.  We were back on aid.  My mother decided to go back to school at the shocking age of twenty six with two children.  That meant that we were living off of food stamps while she got her life together.  In the meanwhile, we starved.  After she obtained her license, she married a man fresh from jail with no education.  They fornicated and had two more children outside of wedlock.  They were two children neither could afford to have.  My father never paid a consistent dime in child support.  It did not surprise me that by the time I was ready for college, there was absolutely nothing to go to college with.  You can blame the white man, but the white man had nothing to do with my parents decisions.  They did that all on their own.  Sin is what made our lives miserable.  Bad decisions is what affected us.  We lived like paupers because of lifestyle.  In the African American community, seventy percent of our children are born out of wedlock.  I would love to see the percentage of those children born on systems of support like WIC, LINK and various other forms of support, who then go on and have children out of wedlock as well.  That is a the lifestyle that first impacts that child.  If the stat holds true that it is easier to have the second baby after the first one has come, than the first child is set up to spend years impoverished.  Thirty percent of African Americans do not marry.  That is high, but I understand why it is high when beginning a family without a husband is acceptable.  As I say, "Why buy the cow when the milk is free".  I became a christian to become a better person, so that I would not live out the common flaws of my race and gender.  I did not want children outside of marriage.  I did not want to be divorced neither did I want to fornicate.  In a culture where that is common, I seem uncommon.  I don't regret my decision.  I sleep real good at night even though most people would despise my position.  I am so glad that God saved me before I got a chance to sow seeds that it will take generations to uproot.  As for those who think that they can say a simple prayer and erase the stuff they have done, good luck.  Reaping and sowing happens even if you repent.  Now, I look at the lives of some of the people who indulged their every whim and I see this look in their eyes like, "Who do you think you are?".  They often try to make me feel like there will be no difference between me and them.  I beg to differ.

Dilemma of the Black Middle Class

Today, my mind is on the black middle class and how it is downplayed by it's own community.  Some things just die hard.  I grew up on public aid, but we were an impoverished island in the middle of a sea of successful people.  Most of my family was not like us.  A series of bad marriages and poor financial conditions set us up to live off the taxes of others.  I was determined to be better and that was not hard to do.  Like I said, my family has a lot of success in it.  My great grandfather was a wealthy farmer in South Carolina who made sure a good majority of his children went to college.  My grandfather went to the service and emerged a self-taught engineer at General Motors.  My mother was a Licensed Practical Nurse who was seeking her RN when she became too ill to work.  The fact that she married a drug addict with a third grade education meant that there was no way the family would keep it's head above water.  When I went to college, I was determined to live differently.  I attended the state university and achieved my Master's degree there.  I bought a small home and I managed to keep myself from walking, though I would walk before loosing my home.  After my years of attainment, I began to seek opportunities that I enjoyed outside of my prescribed environment.  I attended a predominantly white church with upwardly mobile people and that worked for me.  I did not see much of the African-American community at that time.  A few years later, I immersed myself back into the same culture I left as a child.  What I found was that an overemphasis on the poor created an environment where you were almost afraid to celebrate who you were because it was not accepted.  I have always had this issue with going back to systems that you came from.  When you go back and you have been God enlarged, you must be careful because God may enlarge you to the place where you no longer fit in the place where you were enlarged from.  God enlarged Israel so much that Egypt began to move it's hand against them because of fear that they would take over the city.  Being enlarged by God has left me feeling uncomfortable in my church, at the chicken shack or simply in the beauty salon.  This is why God enlarges you and your territory.  In the Bible, he enlarges you and your territory.  He creates the place to put all the stuff he gives you.  That stuff may be in a another neighborhood, or another church or another city, but he will not have you living in a fishbowl just because all the other fish live in a fishbowl.  In my closing of my thoughts on this, everyone should be in a place where who and what they are can be celebrated.  If it is not, than maybe you are in the wrong place.