Vindicate me

Vindication is on my mind today.  I have found that people who want to know or people who need to know are the worst people to have around you.  They ask too many questions.  They cross lines.  They lay outside the boundary of good, healthy relationships and they lie.  When they don't know or when they can't find out, they invent an alternative truth that is plausible to them.  It makes sense even if it is unproven.  It keeps them in the know.  Now, what do you do when the grapevine is stronger than God.  When a lie quickly becomes a truth or when an assumption becomes law.  Now, you have to have someone come in and set the record straight. God said, that he would set every crooked place straight.  When God gets done, the mouth of the nay-sayer will be slapped shut.  Every word that rose up against me in judgement, I will condemn.  I will see it with my own eyes.  No weapon formed against me shall prosper.  That means, all that labor will be in vain. 
Vindicate me

Leaven

Today, my thoughts drifted to leaven.  All my life, I have told to honor men in authority, especially the church.  I can remember going to church and the lights were out because the pastor was taking his own sweet time.  I remember going to church with pastors who had illegitimate children running around the neighborhood and no one said a word.  You know, when it works, it works.  When a Pastor is on his game, the church is a reflection of that.  When he is a charlatan, the church is a reflection of that.  If I was the devil, the perfect place to hide leaven is in leadership.  No one will say anything.  Everyone will look the wrong way.  People will defend it and even encourage it.  Regardless of it, the folks will "Amen" him and give him an offering.  The problem is that leaven you allow has every right to saturate the whole lump.  "Piss po ghetto churches" come from somewhere.  Often times, I hear the blame being placed on the sheep.  Sheep are culled for disease and wellness.  Who culls the pastor.  No one.  God can, but even when he does, the sheep will follow the pastor regardless.  A troubled sheep becomes dinner.  A troubled pastor becomes a troubled sheepfold.

Oh to Marry a King

1 Samuel 8 entails what a king would require of the people.  The Shulamite woman, being a regular female, would have been prepared to be the wife of an ordinary man.  If she married the King, none of those skills would be relevant.  I was in a women's meeting and some of the women there shared the most useless knowledge I had ever heard.  They related the 21st century woman to a woman who can bake bread and make quilts.  In other words, you will marry men who will require you to learn to cook from scratch and make your own clothes.  What about marrying a King?  What will the 21st century woman do if she marries a man who does not need her to prepare him meals or wash his clothes?  What if he already exist in a place where all of his needs are met.  The Shulamite woman had a chance to be wooed by the King who had all his needs met or the shepherd boy who was living paycheck to paycheck.  All my life, I have been told that the only man I was going to marry would be a man living from paycheck to paycheck.  A man who was truly preoccupied with fulfilling his own needs .  He did not have time to fulfill the needs of anyone else.  The Shulamite woman must have understood one thing.  The only reason why the King wanted her is because he loved her.  There was no impediment to his love like money, or occupation or family.  He was the King.  Some say that love that comes without money is pure love.  I disagree.  That love can very well be attached to the fact that financially you are needed for an upgrade.  The love of a King is not dependent on you being able to do anything for them.  The Shulamite was not the daughter of some great king so there was no political advantage.  She had no money.  Her family was not great and her father was dead.  The only thing that attracted him to the Shulamite woman was her beauty.  Her beauty is the one thing she diminished.  She said she was black because her brothers made her keeper of the vineyard.  Nothing in her registered that the King loved her anyway.  That is the love of a King

Pursue Me

Some relationships are not compatible neither are they equal and that is just the way God planned it.  Lately, I have been thinking about the Songs of Solomon.  The Songs of Solomon are a musical of sorts about love and finding love.  There is no mention of God in the book despite pious Christians trying to place him there.  It is a simple story of a King in love with a Shulamite woman while she is hopelessly in love with a shepherd boy.  Today, I thought about the beginning of the story.  It seems that she is chasing the shepherd boy who is being a shepherd boy.  His occupation is that of wandering from pasture to pasture with his flock.  His companions are those whom he works with, with the exception of this Shulamite woman.  She complains that she has to wander to find him like a prostitute.  He  responds with flattery, but never addresses the wandering.  I don't know why human beings settle for trying to impress someone who is not as impressed with you as it seems.  His aloofness is seen in other places in the Canticles.  He grows serious to come and get her after she is taken into the Kings harem.  The art of love is the art of pursuit.  That pursuit is on the part of the male.  The woman has the art of refusal.  In today's time, the woman is pursuing and the man is waiting to see just what you would do to get him.  I believe that a woman who will do anything for a man will also do anything to keep a man.  As hard as she had to work to get him will be the level of work she will have to do to keep him.  It sets up the kind of relationship where you will always be giving more than you can take.  When the man pursues, he is a natural hunter and there is reward in getting the woman he wanted.  He does not mind hunting because he has the nature to do so.  My first lesson from this book is one of balance.  If you are a woman, allow yourself to be pursued.  If you are a man, get busy.  Don't allow the woman to become a gift horse.  You should be a gift to her and not the other way around.  She should be your prize and not your sugar mama.  In this age, many men are raised by single women in the black community and therefore, they are used to sucking off of women for their daily needs.  It is foreign to them that they are going to have to provide for their families.  I avoid these men because I have raised other folks children and it wasn't as glamorous as the church folk will tell you it was.  I want to be pursued.  I deserve to be pursued and I will be pursued.

Your sheaves bowed to mine

I have always heard this downright lie that God blessed Joseph because he wanted Joseph to bless his people.  What a sweet democratic dream.  God would place you in a position for the soul reason of you reaching in your pocket and giving it away.  Nice, but off.  When I read about Joseph's dream, which was the start of all of this, I see that the dream said nothing about him helping his brothers.  As a matter of fact, the dream said that he would rule over his brothers.  Out of this rulership would come the grain in the famine.  Joseph was not the salvation of his family, he was the salvation of Egypt.  It was in him saving Egypt that his family was included.  Joseph's mission in life was bigger than his family.  It is stupid to think that God lifted your family members so you can have someone to pay your rent.  Pay your own rent.  Stand on your own two feet.  God's purpose in my life is bigger than my family.  I was called to the world.  I like how his brothers had to submit to his rulership in order to get the blessing of Joseph.  You will not take my money and despise my authority.  You will not ask for my hand and refuse to come under my hand.  I will not help someone I cannot chasten anymore.

Not Equal and Not Fair

Ghetto theology always ends up looking like democratic rhetoric.  Everybody needs a hand.  Everybody needs the same rights.  Everybody needs a chicken.  I hate it.  All this talk about an even playing field when no one ever ask the all important question.  Who made the playing field uneven in the first place.  All over the bible, I see God handing out gifts severally as he will. He gives ten then five and then one.  I don't see where he is bound by this false rule of equality that says he must give everyone the same thing.  If this is true, than is it not God who made the playing field uneven.  Why should we then kick against the pricks.  God chose one nation of people.  God favored one tribe to be priest.  God chose one tribe to send the Messiah.  God is not equal.  Then I hear that God has to be fair.  What he does for one he must do for all.  God saved the Israelites.  God drowned Pharaoh.  God is not fair.  Now, I don't have a problem with God not being fair or equal.  It is his divine wisdom that understands and knows what we can handle and how we profit from his gifts.  He is all knowing.  He knows where he will gain and he knows where his time will be wasted.  Everything good comes from him and was made by him therefore, we must not be thieves, speaking over things we do not own.  The earth is the Lords and the fullness thereof.  His ownership gives him the divine right to do just as he pleases without apology or explanation.  We may not like it, but God is not bound to be equal or fair.  The best way to live is with your eyes on your own talent.

Push the Snooze button

Sometimes, I have dreams.  Sweet dreams.  Dreams so sweet that I don't want to wake up and smell the coffee.  In my dreams, I am in love and he is everything that God showed me he would be.  He is accomplished, proven and stable.  He is truly a great man in his greatness.   I awake and plunge into a sea of familial failures who have nothing to show for their lives but a bunch of abandoned children and good women who did not deserve what they got.  This is the gold at the end of the rainbow?  I'd rather stay asleep and dream.  I know that sounds funny, but hopelessness sets in when I look out the window and see most of the available black men unavailable.  I can't drift into hopelessness.  If the only way I can keep hope from being deferred is to dream, then I will dream.