Open letter to my President.

Proverbs 31- Let them drink!
Years ago there would be a lynch mob or riots and now they sit and try to calm the situation drinking a beer. Let them drink, I say, let them drink. If a person must get to be a Harvard Prof or a President of the United States to discuss Race in America in this way. Let them drink and forget their poverty. Let them drink and forget that we have paid dearly for the rights to be accepted into this country as parts of the one nation. Let them drink and medicate the sorrow which would cause them to want to come to blows with this man and or his whole race, for the complete disrespect that a young cop can get away with dissing an illustrious servant of the people and racial instructor and his President. The fact that in his youth he has no conscience to beg forgiveness of God and of his nation for bringing shame to his race in disrespecting an elder of another race. As though his poor mother taught him no morals or respect. Let them drink. Let them drink because there will never be a white person in this nation who would believe that it is incorrect for a young officer of the law to treat a President and not humble himself because the President is his commander in chief and apologize just at the shame that he brings to himself by being there in such a conflict. Oh no! We agreed to disagree. Let them drink. God will judge the nations continued persuasion of the rule of partial human status of the Black man. Let them drink. The drink means, you better be grateful that we are all civilized now and we didn't catch yo' little but out in the woods in Africa somewhere. God has saved us from ourselves in that way. The drink means we have been there and looked in a little pipsqueeks eyes and seen the disdain for ourselves and our race, no matter our position and felt like hitting him, just for the attitude. We' gonna forget that dis., my boy. The drink means we are going to, not without a drink, let bygones be bygones but don't catch us drunk somewhere one day or we may forget our position in life and we may forget that we's in America now. And we may forget, so don't catch us someplace where the eyes of the camera ain't and the eyes of civility ain't. Don't forget that this is over a beer. We is drinking to get this civilized see, because you has just cut my brother in his masculinity in a public way and you ain't even sorry see. Let them drink. and forget their poverty that after all that we is still Black in America I gladly drink with you on that disparity, still woefully obvious in our society. Thank God that we are not still left to our own savage passions.

There is a very soul dangerous heresy

that scares me very much, bantered in Protestant circles. I think that it is more dangerous than the veneration of Mary. Had I known that the issue between Protestants and Catholics was on the matter of works, I would have stayed Catholic. Those Protestants who believe that they can do as they please and just say a "sinners prayer", after and be justified before God, must be deceived, I think. Presumptuous sin is never acceptable to God or covered by the blood of Jesus. The riches of the mercies of David, promised in Amos and confirmed in Acts and continued to today is the mercy that allows you to wish and to want not to sin and to be abhorrent of the sins that still cling. This is what the apostle meant by "shall we continue in sin that grace may abound, God forbid"! The apostle would never have stated, as some do, that living the justified life means doing as you please to your brother and claim that a "sinners prayer" or "confession" or any of the mystical, supposed coverings can cleanse you from the penalty. It is clear that, if Jesus is not praying for you in heaven, your soul is not saved. Both Judas and Peter did similar things, Jesus said Satan asked for you, but I am praying for you, to Peter. That is the only difference between the both. Presumptuous, perhaps, but prayed for by Jesus. This is an agonizing effort and if we are not willing to agonize to know that our sins are not the presumptuous kind, we are not yet his. If we are continually going to God as catholic or protestant to the "confessional" or the"sinners prayer" for cleansing, we are deceived.
Only the prayer of Jesus for us, in heaven, can save us from our sins. Nothing that I do can save my soul, Horatius Bonar...
Jesus said that Peter had the keys and in that sense (the sense that Jesus prayer and continual intersession for the believer in heaven) is the only salvation for anyone's soul. There are no magic pills to swallow or mystical incantations, effective enough to cleanse sin. No matter how effective they may seem in our emotions, they are dead. We put all of these memorized verses in our pockets to try to keep us from the sins that we commit, but, when we sin, if Christ is not praying for my soul in heaven, no amount of people praying for me on earth can save or deliver. Whether works come in conjunction with sanctification or after justification, it really doesn't well matter. Jesus is the only salvation for dead works. Works will follow the believer or faith is dead.

Finally...A Monopoly Game!

You guys know that I believe that the monopoly game is an essential prerequisite for leaving this household. If you can't see the importance of accumulation of provisions for your household and being a wise community designer, maybe, you are not my children:). I am joking. But I really do believe that. Especially because we have been poor most of our lives. If not, close to destitute and destitute. We must think about prevention of such things in the next generations.
Unscrupulous people could take advantage of your godly disciplines of tithing and giving to the Lord and will use your condition to manipulate you for their own profit. God will judge these people. You, take some time and think about how to be the lender and not the borrower. Take some time, this summer and think about how you can prevent some of the sad conditions that we have been in.
I have seen the righteous begging bread, perhaps David had not seen that. Even in scripture Jesus spoke about Lazarus who was, a godly beggar. God is not mocked by this, but it was Jesus who turned the tables on the money changers for allowing this fullscale ineptitude to continue in their midst and, in fact, being the cause of it. It was Jesus, who called attention to the faith of the widow. He had compassion on those who wanted to be pleasing to God and spent all of their substance for a sense of peace with God. He had salvation for Matthew, who was a repentant tax collector, but loving letting go of the rich young ruler, who couldn't see his sin. Hardness of heart, when there are the ineptitudes in the kingdom of God is God's business. Thank God for the grace to go through what we have endured and the blessing of merciful friends and family. You be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove!

Am I checking in with my children, by checking my emails?

I checked her blogs, no news. I checked my emails, no news. As the old folks used to say, No news is good news.
Well, she came into my room. "Mother, I am not feeling well." I do all of the maternal rantings and ravings of the do's and don'ts and did you and didn't you and really inwardly, I am so happy that she still has some human need for me. I can't catch up with this cyber-conversant generation. Here I am and there I go, they seem to say. I can never seem to remember the passwords or my sitename or any of those things that get you into their confidence. So, I am ostracized from my grown daughter's life, for the most part. She does her jobs in the house and I do mine...until. Mommy, mommy, I feel sick! Don't call the doctor. Quick, quick,quick...A little sleep, a little vitamin C and lots of stroking from mommy and you know what? You feel better! That means that this was a minor thing. Whew!
I got to catch up on her life a little and she got some non-virtual relating.

Not just Interjections! Because Christians don't Swear, Down a break!

It might sound hypocritical, because I just said that God changed my identity, but God knows my frame and considers that I am dust.

I have found a place to let out my verbal expletives. Perhaps not curse words, but Solomon's cuss word was Vanity, vanity. I can't find the feeling in Vanity, vanity! I can't find the emotion. When I say words that come to my mind, they put me in the mental institution. So, I have to take out the garbage. Wow, people can talk without using expletives to describe things? This is a most unusual thing, to me. When we are coarse people, we sometimes learn and use coarse language. So, we must excuse ourselves from polite society to be alone and "cuss the dickens", so to speak. I am not suggesting this is something that you do, I am just recounting and perhaps confessing, some. Human beings have weaknesses and

Mea maxima culpa

. God knows who I am and if you are surprised at the stuff that comes out of you, you will not take the proper precautions against your sin. People is people, I always say. I take out the garbage and I say what I say and then I come in cheerful, having confessed to God my disgust at myself and my mess. He knows it! Now you knows it, too!

Not just, interjections!

Mary, Mary, Johanna, Rahab, Ruth...

Sometimes women, should be seen and not heard, I have learned. I watch and listen to the godly women and most of them pondered things in their hearts and you can tell that they are godly, not on account of what they said or didn't say, but because of their new identity in Christ.
I opened my mouth and inserted my foot, as usual, yesterday. Recounting something that was better left unsaid. I just imagined the kind of things that Rahab, the harlot must have said and did that was better left out of the accounts of the people of God. Caleb said, I need to have my family up in the mountains and God promised us a land up in the mountains because we make alot of noise. Thank God, He understands, even the redemption of the ungodly. To the utmost Jesus saves. If He didn't have a place for Rehab, in the kingdom of God, I would wonder if he had a place for me. Just, shut up and look pretty, Rehab. Everytime you open your mouth you show that you weren't raised among the people of God. God changes your identity and your mouth, he has to take time cleansing and clearing. You don't know what to say and what not to say. God gave Caleb an added measure of patience and distance from the others to cleanse the mouth of his rascal wife. Thank God that He has a portion of inheritance for the Rehabs and the Magdalenes who will go into a room of men and pull out an alabaster box and cry on the Lord's feet, because of love. It doesn't look wholesome to the people, but God sees the heart. God weaves these imperfections into His redemptive plan, for His glory.

Because I am Down a BREAK, I do so appreciate you're being mother's confidant, in so many things.

The mother in Proverbs 31 ran off at the mouth, concerned in her godliness with the future of her high son. She knew that designing women would make their way into his acquaintance with sordid motives.
I share reality with you. Whatever things are true...Though some may not be of the best report. I do appreciate how you bear with my recounting my missteps, at this point in my life. I often do wish now that I had prioritized the earthly and finances. Chosen the path of stuff to have to give to you, instead of spiritual discernment. People never pay for spiritual discernment as they do for other things. God is judge! He knows that whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap.
The fakeness of many a woman's blogs does not prepare you to be and to care for the real nitty gritty of life, like God's word does.
God is real and many people have this romantic pretense of God being this victorian hero in the sky. He is so far above that it makes me barf. I am afraid that you may be swept up with this move of the blogosphere. God is no respecter of persons and you are not a second class citizen in heaven because your skin is brown and you can never look like those pictures of godliness, advertised. God is holy and mighty and it is not unto us that the glory belongs. To us belongs shame of face and confusion, but to Him and to His name belongs the glory and the wisdom and the power. Says Daniel who was, himself, in a slaves condition. When we take it upon ourselves to commend ourselves, by ourselves, among ourselves, I do wonder, if we could possibly know the Lord of Glory: who resists the proud? God is invisible and the things that he does are unsung. Many a thing that is really God glorifying is unsung. Don't ever forget that, "where no oxen are the crib is clean, but much produce and help comes from the strength of the ox" paraphrased. It is not always the beautified, awe inspiring task that God looks at. To this one will I look, says the Lord, to him who has a broken and contrite heart and who trembles at my word.
Look at the confessions of stricken motherhood, what we say when we are confessing to God. Govern your life by those things. Look at the children of the godly women. The ones who look happy although, no one can see the pleasantness of the mother. You can see the faces and know the hearts of the children. See that your husband and children have a God glorifying wife and mother and not a grumbler, like your mother. Give God the glory in your successes and in your failures.

What, my son? and What, son of my womb? and What, son of my vows?

Are we acting like children of God or children of the serpent.

The difference between the serpent children and the mother children. Serpents have no alliances. They do not travel in families. They concern themselves with the spoil for the consumption of their own bodies, not sharing.
I have never heard of a snake biting off a piece of something and giving it to his friend snake. It won't happen. Cutting things up and sharing,dividing among groups happens when we share.
The children of the women have an alliance; a cause that is bigger than self. First, they learn to concern themselves about mother and what mother has taught them. Next, they have family loyalties. Church and community loyalties, world concerns, bring up the rear. They are part of a team. What hurts the whole(in some way)they are concerned about.
When they pray, there are priorities and order to their concerns. God is weaving the new heaven and the new earth with the children of the women whose God is the Lord. When they are in their place there is consistency. When they are absent, there are holes. God has woven the holes into the pattern of the scheme of things, in His amazing grace. But, what we leave to our children, is the mass of discernable patterns of God's dealings, or the tangled web of undescernable lines to be combed out. Do we give them the equipment to untangle what we have tangled? Do we give them the comb to untangle what we have left untended?
As those beautiful spirograph patterns, the couple is the two circles in the hands of the angels, making family patterns, growing into community patterns, into country patterns , and ultimately, into world patterns.All of this is under God's eternal patterning. Each blessed interaction of the couple, either condenses the pattern or loosens its grip. We can stop the pattern at any point, refusing to dance together in the spirograph pattern, but we have to start again somewhere. We will get to that point in the pattern somewhere else along the struggle, if we live. These are the consistent echoes of God's mercy.
Obeying God, when he said, be fruitful, multiply. Rarely do people remind us that God said that. Don't be fruitful, don't multiply, it only gives us more mouths to feed, says the serpent. Obeying our first father Adam,who said to his wife "Mother life". "Don't mother life", says the world and the flesh and the devil. It will take all of your mind and your body and your strength.
The serpent sits under the birthing table seeking to eat your best conceptions. God gives us spiritual eyes to see enemies at each birth. It is more and more clear, until it is nearly a consuming passion to protect your children from that serpent. Mothering life and protecting your children from death is a passion, until God shows us the purposes for which we are here upon the earth. Building a team for God. A bunch of new spirograph patterns for the angels to adorn the sky with, for the glory of God.

Down A Break?

When I talk the children often look at me. That is down a break. I expect a return. Yes mother! I am insistent on that.
Now I have to go to the net and get all hot and bothered. I am not letting them win their serve. They are going to be down a break when this is over. I Hope.
Don't choke, don't fall asleep in the match or they will run all over you.
I have fallen asleep sometimes and woken up at like 4-2 or 4-1 and there we are I have to play catchup. Not in this game of parenting. There is absolutely no time for sleeping. I suppose I should have started playing like I was down a break at the beginning of the match. But I could not imagine that I was going to be down a break in the second half. Yet, here I am. Down a break!

The flat ball!

Direct confrontation, I affectionately refer to as the flat ball. There is no spin there are no ulterior motives... Most children start out in the area of Proverbs 31:1 What my son? This means you understand where I am coming from and I understand where you are coming from no back spin, no side spin, no trick shots.
I remember a ball that I saw, hit by Bobby Riggs, when playing against Billy Jean King and that ball went across the net and came right back over the net onto his side. That was the ultimate drop shot. I had a warped racquet in those days and worked everyday on that shot, trying to get a ball to do that. It never did. The closest I have ever gotten to that is to have the dropshot hit the tape on the net.
That is my picture of the second half of parenting, down a break. They have broken my serve, they have broken my reasoning, they have broken my confidence, they have broken my decisions, but they haven't broken my love. I guess that is all that's left if you lose and that is why love is so much a part of tennis. love-15, next point.

Entering the 2nd half of Parenting, Down a Break!

It is wonderful to feel all served up! Your shoulder is loose and ready on the first baby and you are serving, what you feel is the best in your life. Acing and ground strokes the best you've ever felt. Healthy eating, healthy walking and taking care of the essentials as much as you can. It is easy with a little one who doesn't question your authority.
Then you blink your eye and they are thirteen and they start to serve them up, against you. My children tried all of my buttons from the jump. The woman who had the serve and aced was now down a break in the teenage years with my children.
One at a time they come on the court and laugh at my serve when I think I am on my game, they laugh and they hit it back as if they are the pro and I am the amateur. Too, bad mommy. I am going to beat you. They look you in the eye, at the break in play. They say, I am going to beat you. Meaning, I will have my way and you will not tell me what to do or have your way in the house or in this family.
What to do when the tyranny of the masses over takes your senses and they are beating you, as they are wont to do?
Serve em up!