There is an old song with the line, "Let's get it all out in the open." I keep hearing Bobby Blue Bland, but it could be Johnny Taylor. Any of ya'll know? Anyway,...I've gone from troubled to angry and just a little bit skeered ya'll. Can somebody please clarify for me just who the... we have become? Not just as black folks but as human beings. Just who was it, which god, that delivered the call to manifest hate, inequity and hypocrisy?

Ya'll do me a favor? If you have a mirror handy, please go get it. I want to ask you a couple of questions, and I want you to be able to look into your ownself eyes when you answer? Got your mirror? Good; thank you. Now, one more thing first, I want you to take a moment and visualize God - whoever/whatever that means to you. Hold on to your vision, intensify it; consume it and be consumed by it. Now, through the eyes of that image, let's take a look at our socio-political mindsets and behaviors.

There was a time, in most of our life times, when excellence was not only the standard but also the vision, when our children were loved, guided, nurtured and disciplined by every adult in their sphere. There was a time when we all earnestly prayed that the face of evil in no way resembled our own and cheered equally as earnestly win the victors', the heroes' did. My brothers, my sisters, America who have we become?

Yes America. We are America. She could never have obtained or maintained greatness sans our captive blood, sweat and tears. She could not have obtained dominance and respect with out our freely given ingenuity, intellect, loyalty and blood, sweat and tears. We struggled, fought, prayed and died for our part, our claim to the great American Dream and in scant 40 years have bought into, part and parcel, the great American nightmare.

Is this what Thurgood and Martin had envisioned or are they whirling like dervishes in their graves? Were/are integration and equality simply a license to assimilate the nature of fear, hate and self-serving/self-righteous elitism? Did Little Bobby and Fred did George, Jonathan and untold thousands give their passion and their future for our right to become the haters instead of the hated? Were their deaths simply the precursor to the demise of our communities and our culture(s)? Did their valiant combat win us but the spoils of fools? Did so many leaders give their last breath to our becoming blind and vicious sheep following the divide and conquer inequality their sacrifice was intended to destroy?

Are you still visualizing your personal conceptualization of God? Good let's break all the rules here and talk about that for a minute. Up front, I know little about Islam, so if God, as revealed by those scriptures is a god of hate, ya'll will have to let me know. Until then, I going to assume that God reveals God in the Koran as God reveals God in traditions I am more familiar with, as Love. The Bible says God is love; the Wiccan Reed says all with love. It is love that balances the human heart with an Egyptian feather, and love that both covers and protects against evil. It would be deceptive to say that love is unconditional. Though love never changes it demands continued and willing stretching and aching, falling and getting up, repenting and growing from any and all who would walk in fellowship. Take a look in that mirror.