WHAT'S HAPPENED TO US?
What happened to us all? Nobody has any standards anymore. Did we ever? Surely we did. Somewhere along the line we slipped, like our pants from our waistline. Slipped out of consciousness into an abyss of incoherence, incompetence, and incompleteness. Some will disagree, and argue that I should speak for myself. I am in fact speaking for myself, but their response is the reason I’m also speaking for them. For those of us assured of where we’re going, I would only ask where have we been? How did we get here?
Intriguing is the parallel between the lapses in our judgment, and the lapse in generations. This clearly accounts for our lack; lack of motivation, lack of understanding, lack of progress. It’s our parents’ fault to some degree. They weren’t there. Not for us, and that’s the reason why we’re here; just here, going nowhere but where we are currently. Even those that were present didn’t present us the tools of cultivation culminating in our success as well rounded, even tempered , intelligent and successful individuals. What happened to them? How is it that the flame of the torch to be passed on from Stokely and Malcolm burned out? At what point did the movement of our civil rights in a forward direction stall? Did our grands and great-grands become so complacent with their accomplishments in the decades to follow that they lost sight of the fact that it would take more than a few decades marked by the height of our civil unrest to reverse the damage and advance the progress stifled by hundreds of years of imposed inferiority? Did they lose themselves so much in the joy and fun of the music of the subsequent decades that they allowed its’distraction from progress to go unnoticed? Music always has been the devil’s realm, so it’s entirely possible that more brothers were asking for action between the sheets than those who echoed Marvin in asking what’s going on. But the flame still burned, no? Sure, until the 80s it seemed when the crack epidemic burned the remainder of both the flame, and our giants and heroes out. It was then that papa truly became a rolling stone. Thank you Mr. Reagan.
So the pattern of regression continued. The blind lead the blind. And with that as our starting point, now only the mind leads the mind. But the mind doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. Clinging to adages of old, submersed in our own air of ignorance today we reply that what we don’t know won’t hurt us. More aptly put, it’s killing us that we don’t know what we should, and at some point in the current generation, the blame for that rests squarely on our shoulders. The information is out there, more readily available and easily accessible than ever before. Our heroes accomplished so much with so little, yet despite our increased media and technological advancements, today we accomplish so little with so much. We do have a black president, but for me that new hope masks a personal fear that we will again rest on our ‘accomplishment’, instead of using it as a springboard to further our progression. At what point do we decide not to perpetuate the negative cycles of our community existence? We are doing their work for them. It once was necessary to lie to us, cheat us, beat us if need be. Now, we blind ourselves with bling, kick ourselves in the ass with implants and injections, and worry more about what’s on our feet than what we feed our spirit. The internal is always more important than the external. We have to cherish that, be mindful of it, and spend our energy living to empower it. God lives there, on the inside. I can’t believe He wants this for us. I don’t want this for us. We didn’t always want this for ourselves. What happened to us?
Growing Pains
Yesterday I was a wretched child. Today I have chosen to link my transition into adulthood with my ascension to my Father’s throne. For so long, I have not known my Father. My mind thought I did, and it allowed me to be comfortable, dare I say complacent? I dare, because I dared to be complacent with my relationship with my Father. As with all relationships, and things of great substance and sustenance, it takes work to cultivate and expand the possibilities therein. I have been guilty of not tilling the grounds of my spirit and my relationship with God. What has become is a barren desert of ignorance that has plunged me further into wretchedness.
I’ve always regarded myself as extremely spiritual, withstanding religious. I’ve always thought, “There’s something different about me. I’m special.” I grew to understand that what I feel is an anointing from God. But understanding without the exercise of it, or the continued pursuit of it is futile. I’ve committed to exercising in the gym of life plenty of times, but as with other empty resolutions, my resolve to keep going remains no longer than January does. As a result, I’ve only ever caught glimpses of my Father and my potential in Him. My wretchedness has become very effective at further hiding Him from me, more than He has willed Himself to be hidden. Even wretchedness has a conscience though, and every so often it will acknowledge it’s inferiority to that which it aims to harbor me from. Had I cultivated my relationship with God more, I would know enough to ask Him to reveal my wretchedness so that it could be laid bare before Him and the remedy laid before me. Because I have neglected the tools of my field, I’ve forced myself to acknowledge my wretchedness only as it acknowledges itself.
Though the scales of this serpent are slippery, I have managed to grasp it, so that I may take it to my Father to identify it. As a child, looking to gain the grace of my Father’s acceptance, I hoped that this was pleasing in His sight. As an adolescent hoping to gain the inheritance of my Father’s house, I recognized that it will take more than this gesture to show my preparedness. I have learned that the serpents will always find their way to the grounds, and my Father will protect me from them for as long as He deems it necessary. Eventually He will allow them to bite me either for the lesson in the pain, or as punishment for ignoring Him. I have been bitten, and the venom is of both. In fact I have been bitten enough that my body is covered with scars of the bites. Scars of wretchedness I call them.
But I have made myself a glutton for punishment for entirely too long. Humbled, I return to the gym of life. I am undeterrable in my resolve to strengthen the muscles of my spirit, and to tone my relationship with God through the exercises of prayer and submission to His will. As a child I often knew what the right thing to do was, but hadn’t yet developed the fortitude to do it. As an adolescent, I came to understand my ways as a child, and I saw that my lack of fortitude was because I was lacking in God, but I was not ready to put childish things away. As a man, reborn into adulthood, I am now prepared, by the grace of my Father, to accept the challenges and blessings of my inheritance. I will live my entire life today. When the tomorrow comes I will die and ascend to my open seat next to Him on the throne of my Father.
