Friday, August 31, 2018

You Like That?!

Current Minnesota Vikings starter Kirk Cousins went through a crushing onslaught of fan and media criticism in addition to multiple votes of no-confidence from his former team’s ownership and front office in the form of franchise tags instead of having the ability to negotiate a new deal or an extension as is customary for most starting NFL quarterbacks. After one comeback win for the Washington Redskins in 2015, Cousins yelled, “You like that?!” to CSN Mid-Atlantic reporter Tarik El-Bashir lending the saying to become the team’s rallying cry for the remainder of the season.


It sounds like a good time until we find ourselves caught up in seeking the attention and becoming too craven to shy away from it.

How do we know this? 

By looking at our smartphones and acknowledging that we too, have become encapsulated by our social media accounts. People participate in challenges on YouTube and Snap to generate likes on Facebook and Instagram or more Twitter followers and reposts on Pinterest; I’m not above the fray here or even in this blog as I point out stuff that I have done and to an extent, am still doing. These posts aren’t just because I have steam to blow off or due to becoming an authority of some things as much as I genuinely enjoy the feedback and pats on the back for roughly seven hundred words from my mind and keystrokes to the rest of the world to read, parse, discuss, or dismiss.

This is akin to looking for love in all the wrong places. You like that?!

Jesus teaches us in Matthew 6 how to give Him praise – and it is not some superfluous prayer that references the 42-generational lineage of Christ and gets the church mothers swooning all over the front pews on Communion Sunday. In my own guilt from sounding like I wanted to be seen during devotional and praise service as opposed to giving an authentic conversation with the ensuing backslaps of a job well done, it sometimes feels like I indeed have missed the mark with the overly enunciated tongue thereby leading me to recognize that my own words in their own symbolism are slanted toward the approval of man in contrast to the true glorification of our Lord and Savior.

When you do it wrong, you end up like Maximus from Gladiator. ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?



How do I kill that internal rallying cry?

Writer John Piper had an idea, found in his book What Jesus Demands from the World. Self-denial and fixation of the self are essential, but O how easy it is to be made much of even my own self-denial! How shall this insidious motive of pleasure in being made much of be broken except through bending of my faculties to delight in the pleasures of making much of God! Christian Hedonism is the only solution. It is deeper in death to self. You must go deeper into the grave of the flesh to find the truly freeing stream of miracle water that ravishes you with the taste of God’s glory. Only in that speechless, all-satisfying admiration is the end of self. (What Jesus Demands, 136-137)

Only Jesus is the true Living Water and in Him, we shall never thirst. Only by centering ourselves into wanting Christ and the approval of God will our self-flagellation for human approval will be broken. The Spirit helps us in our weaknesses and enables us to do the impossible:  to say no to ungodliness and open our eyes to see the glory of God in the face of Christ. In this concept, we can influence more souls via our platform unlike by merely being a do-gooder.


It is only when we renounce our selfish desires and exalt Christ that we truly become free from condemnation (Romans 8:1), fully satisfied in Christ (Psalm 16:11) and free to yell, You like that?! sans consequence for the good of our neighbor and the glory of God.



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Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Taking Ls From Spiders


My wife is terrified of spiders to the extent that she inadvertently began the “Kiki Challenge” from the Drake video a couple of years ahead of time! If you’re not aware of it, this is when Drake gets out of the moving car and dances alongside it; NHTSA recently discouraged the practice for the obvious danger. We were returning home from a doctor’s appointment one morning in her car when a spider had found itself walking across the windshield looking for a way out. Seeing it, I had taken a swing at the spider from the passenger seat and missed leading for the insect to crawl from the driver’s side where I couldn’t end it. As she drove up the recently opened interstate ramp, my wife’s eyes got really big and she unlatched the seatbelt as her attempt to escape its clutches. Fortunately for both of us, she slowed the car down to a stop just off the far-right lane for me to execute the critter.  To many people, a harmless spider that happened to fall in thanks to an upward tilted moonroof was just a wayward creature; however, I was entrusted to eliminate the fear.

Did I yell ‘Westside’ after killing the spider? You better believe I did!


In Matthew 7, Jesus teaches that we should bring our needs to God, trusting Him with our requests. To illustrate this example, give verses 7-11 a read below:

7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you;
8 For every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?
11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

For loving parents, the answer is obvious. But Jesus answers anyway, challenging us to not lose faith in our Father’s generous goodness. I cannot imagine loving my daughter any more than the present moment yet Jesus assures me that even the best earthly parent’s love is eclipsed by God’s love for us.

Whether we pop trunk on spiders that made a wrong turn or find ourselves facing shutoff notices from the utility companies, we can rely on the Father for all of our needs.

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It's A Family Affair


With a lot of help from the family, we celebrated my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary last Sunday afternoon. I’ve texted those who showed up my gratitude for coming together on short notice since I was unsure of my own work schedule; as a result, I chose to limit the celebration to in-state relatives. You know, most people can reach Conway within three hours from almost any direction including my own forty-five drive from Bryant. If anyone took pictures, please feel free to share them in the comments section as I recollect moments from a few days (or decades) ago:

1.     God has definitely kept Dad and Mom together through thick and thin.
2.     Without them, I wouldn’t have turned out the way I am today (I was inside Mama’s tummy when they had gotten married back in ‘78).
3.     Next July will also mark them living in Friendship forty years in the little house (once white, now yellow) in the curve. For the first eighteen years, it was the only place I knew as home – and that 882 sq. ft. space contained more life lessons, memories, Star Trek marathons, etc. than many of you would ever know.
4.     Depending on the sport, Mom or Dad would serve as de facto referees in backyard basketball or football; when we were younger, they would get out in the driveway for foot races. No comment on who walked who down during the era of the elementary school track meets.
5.      Glad Alan threw down some burgers and green beans on the grill. Saline County knows about my work but my brother is not one to be slept on.
6.     When strapping down all equipment, it is best to put the loose stuff – including aluminum trays – in the vehicle: I now have to buy a aluminum table for my PK Classic grill.
7.     Huge shout out to Chastity for cooking most of the sides and picking up the drinks. Otherwise, we’d all be lined up at the garden hose drinking water if not fighting over pot liquor again.
8.     Reneging in spades is a felony punishable by banishment from the table.
9.     That being said, never trust Leah when she says “I got a couple” of books.
10.                        Peach cobbler and or Jaimie’s cheesecake could very well prevent wars – neither of which came from the box.
11.                        With hungry eyes in the living room and wife on the way back from the store, Deacon Armstrong had to pray to the point.
12.                        Speaking of #11, thanks to our Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church family of Benton for understanding the greater need to celebrate black love over another church anniversary. Our cookout was awesome – and we cooked the right amount of food for everyone!
13.                        For probably the same reason no one recognized the Dub Shack work truck (my Ram), it was strange seeing Uncle Kent pull up in something domestic.
14.                        I wish Ryan aka Boogie and Caeli had other kids to play with for more than an hour.
15.                        For once, Dad was catered to instead of running from pit to house. 
16.                        There was a sighting of Nacole! I tried to send some Dub Shack BBQ back with her but she was too stuffed to even try the product. However, we have an open invitation to seeing Tampa one of these days – and since Disney World in Orlando is roughly ninety minutes away, it could very well happen. After all, she is 1) the girl next door and 2) eleven weeks younger than me. Nevertheless, it was good seeing my childhood friend.
17.                        24 lbs. of pulled pork went away quickly!
18.                        BBQ Becky would’ve been sick seeing us.
19.                        The sleep fairy is still undefeated as evidenced by the people who fell asleep on the couch and in chairs.
20.                        Dad and Mom have been the crash pad for traveling family members – the ones from Kansas and even for a pair of UCA undergraduates.
21.                        From their union came my brother and me; now we have our own families to shepherd in addition to two grandchildren to adore in Aston and Caeli.
22.                        No one fought over the greens’ pot liquor this time.
23.                        You weren’t pitting them against one another as some children do (or try to) with their parents.
24.                        In all of her irreverence, aunt Ann is as blunt as ever.
25.                        Once again, relatives got lost in town; hey, this is par for the course when coming to Conway. Remember I got lost coming home for the class reunion last year and although it is easier to manage each trip, Exit 124 is still a new phenomenon.
26.                        The aforementioned exit also cuts my travel time from house to interstate down to 1 ½ miles:  the half-mile to Friendship Road, and the other mile to the house: Popeyes Chicken has officially become a special trip to town.
27.                        The family that prays and plays together stays together.
28.                        THOSE EPIC KICKBALL GAMES.
29.                        One downside of being in the same place for so long is seeing the gentrification of my ‘hood. In 1979, the roads were dirt; today, all is paved (has been since the 80s – Judge Carter made certain of that) and there is now a wedding chapel tucked away from what was once a dumping grounds. If the city tries to annex, then I’m done.
30.                        On their refrigerator is the same scripture that I now try to live by at home:  Joshua 24:15. If you don’t know it, read the italicized text. Choose ye this whom ye will serve but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

All in all, what a grand time indeed! It’s not every day couples make it to forty years of marriage, so giving Dad and Mom their flowers while they can smell them is the least we can do. Thanks to everyone who came out for the cookout!


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Thursday, June 14, 2018

Postscript to the Dad Chronicles


Throughout the past three years or so of Caeli’s life, many of you have reached out to me at one point or another saying how much they enjoyed reading the Dad Chronicles and for some of you, I saw a bit of disappointment in your faces when I told you I was closing the series permanently last November. Those of you who did keep up with the three of us caught a much deeper insight into our lives than I normally would have divulged, and for that reason alone it was time to end the procession; it didn’t exactly help that I was emotionally worn out from sharing the story time and time again. Was it the anticipation from providing updates every Monday for those precarious five-and-a-half months in the NICU that did it for me, or the best way I could channel my thoughts and feelings through that season?

For the past sixteen months or so, I’ve done less blogging and more living; for that, I am eternally grateful to my immediate family specifically Chastity and Caeli for letting me hang out around them as much as I have in the past year.

I know I told our family friends Will and Misty that I was going to stop writing last year when we were in Helena for the opening of the Freeman Playground, and aside from the last obligatory Prematurity Awareness Day post from November 17, it has been easy enough to leave well enough alone. I still send pictures to a handful of the remaining inner circle throughout the year but that is pretty much it.



Wonder Woman is my inspiration to build a legacy. In addition to being remembered as a good dude and better Daddy, I hope to leave Caeli something tangible that she can see and successfully own in a world that seemingly values people less and less. She knows every day is a GREAT day for barbecue, and so should the rest of you. 

But seriously…I’ve been working on my small business venture that hopefully one day soon replaces my Rineco (now Heritage) income and gives me something I haven’t had since 2003:  a daytime role that puts me at home at night. Currently, Dub Shack BBQ is strictly a catering- and box lunches- type of outfit; I’m just not prepared for a storefront at this time yet each time I’ve taken off from work this year has made my eventual return to the graveyard shift more difficult. Then there is the church and all its obligations; congregants kind of like seeing me regularly even if my work schedule isn’t exactly conducive to having a real participatory role in growth and of course, changing the culture to a more inclusive, Christ-driven and -centered one via divorcing ourselves from the multigenerational pettiness passed down from one to the following a la the Israelites in Moses’s day. In the year since my ordination, there are times when I do feel like I am more of do-gooder than a do-GREATER; combine that with the fluffernutter (the former New Englander in me just came out. Oops) and I’ve had periods of doubt and quietly wondering if entering the diaconate was the right call. More of that in a future post.

We’ll still fight as advocates for premature babies and the developmental schools they need to reach their full potential. After all that our daughter has endured in addition to the friends she’s made, leaving for big school – Collegeville Elementary – in a few years is going to require a serious readjustment on my part. What is certain at this point in my life is that I will NOT return to the classroom in a fulltime, certified capacity because I don’t want to ever want to feel the hopelessness of career burnout again. That I had worked so hard to become in my words ‘a damn good English teacher and molder of minds’ to chunk the deuces toward my undergraduate labor with impunity perhaps showed me that my own happiness should’ve superseded paying the bills once my cushion was comfortable enough for a good night’s sleep instead of thinking I could save the world and sidestep district politics.

All in all, and sorry for the misdirected rants, thank you for reading the Dad Chronicles over the years and keeping up with AD&AD. In the future, there may be a podcast (Aaron, Rickey or Lauren, I’m looking at one of you although anyone with a decent setup who wants to chew the fat online would suffice). Editing days tend to really suck from a blogger’s perspective and somehow, I’m sadistic enough to welcome the challenge of lending my voice and opinions to a different medium.

Y’all stay woke; I’m staying #CaeliStrong! 

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Friday, May 25, 2018

I Like Big (Pork) Butts and I Cannot Lie


A couple of years ago, I gave a mini-tutorial of Daddy’s Ribs and because I didn’t identify the secret spices, I am back for the tutorial for Boston butts and pork shoulders. You’re going to need to have plenty of downtime if a reliable citizen of the community who can manage temperature while you sleep is unavailable; most of time, I cook my butts and shoulders overnight as the rest of the world slumbers. Perhaps it’s a byproduct of working overnights for the past decade and I bet that has quite a bit to do with it, yet I’m also certain the proliferation of barbecue shows on TV and YouTube have had something to do with it.

But before I get into smoking pork butts and shoulders, this is the story of how I got into the barbecue business:  Several years ago, my girlfriend (now wife) and I moved in together and as new Saline County residents, we sampled a lot of restaurant food for the first few months. Her cousin recommended a barbecue joint in town which shall remain nameless because it seemed to have that Everyman appeal, so naturally we drove over one Saturday afternoon. To summarize the trip, I was less than impressed with what the locals called barbecue, and the racist treatment we received sure didn’t help my perception of the joint. To this day I don’t know how that joint stays open nor do I care if they ever turn a profit.



As I became a homeowner, my priorities shifted from dealing with mediocre barbecue to making my own great chow; over the course of the past four years, what seemed to simply be a hobby has migrated to a viable way toward providing a living and (potentially) being at home each night with my family. I haven’t quite figured out how or when to take that leap of faith, but it is in my prayers that becoming a small business owner affords me the time with them and a comfortable lifestyle. Just as athletes spend hours practicing shooting jump shots or public figures practice public speaking, I’ve had to work at becoming a pit master through hours of trial and error, new equipment and its idiosyncrasies, fire management (I don’t do gas or electric), and learning how to cook various meats. There are some things I haven’t tried yet such as alligator and mutton, and stuff that I wouldn’t get anywhere near like roadkill.

For today let’s focus on Boston butts and pork shoulders. If you recall reading Dad’s Stress Reliever from two years ago, I did walk you through how I cook ribs on my beloved Oklahoma Joe smoker. Here’s what you need to make comparable meat that everyone will love you for:

Dub Shack BBQ Pulled Pork
Yellow Mustard
Big 6 Dry Rub (I still won’t reveal the secret spices)
Applewood chunks
Mop Sauce
Apple juice or apple cider vinegar
½ can beer or soda of your choice
Honey
Hot Sauce
Barbecue sauce of your choice

First things first:  When you unwrap the meat from its packaging for the first time, please do not forget to wash off the meat of any phosphates or chemicals that helped keep its color in the store! It is also extremely important that the meat gets handled with clean hands because of food safety. In the restaurant or along the side of the road, gloves are expected; at home, our hands still need to be clean before handling food to prevent contamination.

Once meat is washed and patted dry, cover the butt up with yellow mustard. Trust me, you won’t be able to taste it; mustard serves as a binder for the Big 6 Rub or whatever you want to use on it. Be certain to cover every space on the meat for the mixture to stick – in this case, it will find its happy place and adapt to the meat. This is also how the bark – the dark outside pieces – is formed. [On pork shoulders, don’t worry about seasoning the fat cap; no one is going to eat it. You can use cooking spray on the cap but that is primarily for presentation purposes on the circuit. I know the ancestors made cracklin’ with their fat caps, but I just throw the inedible stuff away.] Once seasoned, let it sit at least one hour preferably 8-12 hours or overnight for the flavors to permeate into the meat.

Go outside and light your smokers!



Seriously, light your smokers.

I’ve taken a real liking to lump charcoal recently since it burns so cleanly and for this cook, I normally start out with a pyramid of the stuff with some hickory wood surrounding it and the most unlikely fire starter:  dryer lint. Light and wait for the coals to ash over before placing the meat on the smoker; for the analytical among us, watch your temperature gauges to determine when you want to begin your cook. On average, I’ll wait 45 minutes to an hour for coals and wood to ash over before adding Applewood chunks to the fire and positioning the meat onto the smoker. Because my first few hours’ cooks have had some wide disparities before the temperature settles, I’d start cooking at 275 degrees and keep an eye on the spikes. Large pieces of meat are meant to be cooked LOW and SLOW. You’re not getting this goodness in a few quick hours.

In the meantime, make your mop sauce to baste your pork. If it comes out dry, there isn’t enough barbecue sauce in the world that can fix that mistake. Everyone has a slight variation of how their mop is made if you can get the three components balanced in the cup/container/spritz bottle:  sweet, tangy, and with some semblance of heat. Mix it up to a consistency you can live with – the mop sauce helps keep your rub on the meat and accentuates that this is barbecue. I mop every 1 ½ hours because the last thing I want to do is lose that hard-earned smoke and steady temperature by opening my smoker more frequently. Doing so also means that the meat will tenderize itself over time. Also, you don’t have to worry about turning over pork of this magnitude since the fat cap is down on the grates rendering itself into extra-tasty food for everybody. In lieu of Miller Lite, I have used A&W or Dr. Pepper but that is just personal preference. With barbecue, make it your own.

I have a strange proclivity for overnight cooks thanks to the lunch crowds at my regular gig; if you’re fortunate enough to cook during the day, please start early in the morning. Meat isn’t done until it’s done, and I’d rather you not embarrass yourself with some fast-cooked unseasoned bloody excuse of pulled pork in front of a larger group.

The miracle of time: eight to ten hours have passed, and the backyard is littered with beer cans and tall tales. Oh yeah, and the smoker has been working around 250 but the job isn’t quite complete. Because I could use a nap, I’ll get a couple of sheets of aluminum foil to wrap the butts or shoulder assuming the bark is up to snuff. This is what the guys on the circuit call the “Texas crutch” which the meat maintains the hold of its juices as it is cooking wrapped. Feel free to pour the remainder of the mop sauce onto the meat – this is the reason why I don’t use store-bought sauces on my backyard meals. Once wrapped, find a way to maintain smoker temperature for the next four hours or until the internal temperature is about 200 degrees; it isn’t done until it’s done. Fortunately for us, we can tell Boston butts are ready when we can pull the bone out cleanly with no struggle; ditto for pork shoulders.


Once off the smoker and the clean bone is out of the butt, let it rest for fifteen minutes before pulling it apart and serving your guests!

Remember, every day is a GREAT day for barbecue! Get out there and share what you just learned.










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Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Grace


All of you have heard the saying “by the grace of God.” I’m not going into that aspect of those five little words that make such a huge impact in our daily lives – not just the ones where we fake it for one hour each Sunday morning and occasionally during the summer at Vacation Bible School, church camp (is that even a thing today?), revivals, or even the rare appearance made at prayer meeting and Bible study on Wednesday nights rather allow us to take an inventory of our own lives particularly in our own interactions real and virtual mediums such as our social media accounts and video games.

Grace is defined as 1)simple elegance or refinement of movement; and 2) in Christian belief, the free and unmerited favor from God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and bestowal of blessings. As it is also used as a verb, grace means do honor or credit to (something or someone) in one's presence.

When you leave the confines of home for the day, show grace.

For those of us who work from home and must interact remotely with our coworkers, supporters, trolls, and/or critics, show grace. 

Not everyone who stirs the pot is cognizant of their own deeds. Show grace anyway.

I know I’m a cusser, speed demon, occasional drinker, and some other things depending on the individual describing me, but I must stand up and be different. Someone has to be the proverbial adult in the room in a day when it is so easy to tweet insults or hide behind assumed names and profiles to make derogatory statements. As we live in a world which people tear us down left and right gleefully due to their own anxieties and stresses, we are required to rise above the mudslinging. Is it easy? Of course not; nothing worth doing is ever easy – and this includes following our dreams and callings while we share this rock for the allotted time we have.

Is someone being nasty toward you? Don’t stoop to their level.

Did you get cut off? Let them have the space; we’re likely going to be sitting in the same traffic jam. 

Is someone trying to start an argument? Instead of giving them a piece of their mind, give them a piece of grace.

Live in grace.

Exude grace to others. If we spend less time trying to convince ourselves that we are right all of the time and more effort into putting effort into loving people as they are, then we won’t have time to shout from our hollow chambers for the captive audiences we are so familiar with about a love, connection, or commonality we think the other side lacks.

Why am I saying all of this? Because God gave me grace.

Grace to make it through the pay period when there are more days than dollars in my accounts.

Grace when my bosses throw away my transfer requests leaving me to remain in a role which I have peaked.

Grace to manage disparate relationships within the church – what a minefield – when the money is short and ethics are napping.

Grace that is overflowing to the point that I cannot help sharing it with others even if I do not say one mumbling word.

Navigating this life is tricky most days particularly if a digital footprint exists or we find ourselves in leadership positions that necessitate those gut calls. The one thing that stops all the animosity in its tracks is to NOT be a conductor of that train. Be the kindness in a crowd of complaints. Be the soft voice to an ear that spends its days only yelling. Be the safe place. This way, when people ask of your thoughts, they are more likely to deeply listen to your answer.

The next time someone asks you why you can withstand the face of vitriol so fiercely, tell them grace.

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50 Years After Martin


Plain and simple, the work isn’t done.

Not even close.

Whose fault is it that we haven’t collectively realized the Dream or made standing up for the truth and justice for all people instead of looking out for only ourselves?

Ours.

Look in the mirror and as we truthfully examine ourselves, we have become the beneficiaries of token progress such as celebrating the first to do this or the first to do that at the expenses of our associates who have sacrificed careers, friendships, reputations, wealth, and even lives to see the mountaintop. For many of us, we are but a generation or two removed from debilitating poverty and ingrained anti-black laws designated to maintain a specific caste system; 1968 wasn’t that long ago. I was born ten years after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and where I write these words, I am cognizant that he was 39 years old when he stepped into eternity thanks to that bullet at 6:01 pm.

Imagine me leaving this world with my three-year-old daughter to fend for herself due to someone’s sheer hatred of my black skin, clear thoughts, and booming voice in our subdivision as well as the nighttime grind. In addition to that, I’m honestly not quite ready to tell my wife goodbye for the last time yet. At 39 years of age, I am still a young man despite what the grey hairs in my beard and the patch on my head and my sometimes-creaking back from playing too much basketball and bad weightlifting practices may otherwise dictate.

We flout the great soundbites on all sides but aren’t doing much to advance the actual doctrine. Yes, I’m talking about all of us; conservatives conveniently invoke a few words from the “I Have a Dream” speech when they are accused of being racists as if that absolves them; black people yoke King’s image to further their own ambitions; and liberals use him to authenticate their politics. Even FCA had the gall of exploiting the man’s memory to sell a bunch of Ram trucks during the Super Bowl! Guess what, guys? We’re all doing it wrong. As Americans, our greatest sin aside from racism itself blatant, covert, and systemic is expecting a fairy-tale ending to some of the ugliest chapters of this country’s history without putting in the work to change the narrative. Many readers will attempt to assuage this by flowery language of a colorblind utopian society that begins within our hearts as they simultaneously miss the point when they rush to reflexively defend school choice or law enforcement or any of the multifaceted layers of bigotry unaddressed; where were they to denounce the current President and his dog whistles, or were they defending his words as “speaking his mind” as it implies their own desired words?
No matter your political slant, it's gonna take a lot more than a roll of paper towels to fix this mess

I’m telling you, it wasn’t that long ago. Keep in mind our parents attended largely segregated schools years after the Supreme Court struck down separate but equal – as evidenced in a tweet from last week, Gould (Ark.) Schools would not integrate because none of the white students would come over to Fields to learn with their black counterparts as someone in Raney v. Board of Education tried to cite state’s rights which the school choice debate presently has become. For each wall they’ve had to kick down, the powers-that-be have placed unseen barriers to maintain division through such dastardly policies as the War on Drugs and the use of code words to perpetuate a caste system without explicitly announcing intent – and the media is equally complicit in its failures of accountability. For example, what if I told you the original fight and rise of the Religious Right was not abortion rights but school desegregation? Notice how the establishment of private academies rocketed in the 1960s throughout the South was conservative citizens’ Eff You response to the government killing Jim Crow in his obvious status.


Don’t get me started on the coded language of lower taxes and great schools with small class sizes.

Fifty years after James Earl Ray murdered the greatest American, our moderate and liberal friends have implicitly reduced his life’s work toward racial justice to a charitable enterprise for a bunch of affluent do-gooders to pat themselves on the back regardless of how long they volunteer in community centers or pimp the less fortunate for the ‘gram, among other social media mediums. What this does is provide them a necessary illusion that preserves an innocence and insulates their conscience or soul from guilt or blame; does it allow them to see their own wrongs of saying some effed-up stuff or reciting the lyrics to Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” without any sense of policing their own language? This distorts the very idea of a democracy for all and minimizes the moral character of those who truly believe the lie.

Within our own churches and neighborhoods, a select group of black people find a reason to yoke themselves to King’s legacy to further their own personal ambitions. Instead of continuing the battles, we have become complacent with entry into schools, restaurants, and other businesses in the name of being able to gladly hand over all of our hard-earned paychecks to those who only see us as cash cows as they decline to hire and promote us; at church, we bicker over a few dollars that should be better served in Kingdom-building instead of salaries, extravagant buildings and Cadillacs, anniversary programs, and otherwise having a stranglehold on an overly reliable voting bloc that asks for nothing every four years except a benevolent appearance on the Sunday before Election Day. I honestly don’t recall seeing prosperity gospel anywhere in my Bible, but feel free to show me. Fifty years later, how many of us can admit that the black church has been the taillight rather than a headlight while her members struggle with bone-crushing poverty as we live in a check-to-check cycle that keeps us stagnant on the hamster wheel? Turning the other cheek to our oppressors places us in a position of weakness that my generation would gladly knock the taste out of someone’s mouth, and on the outside, we have become more encapsulated within our four walls missing out on the revolutionary edge Christianity has always possessed contrary to the softened cream cheese the American version has seemingly become. 

Considering the Black Lives Matter movement today and what the Black Panthers stood for (read the Ten Points), our moderate and liberal friends tend to miss the point with their largely monolithic roundtables and summits which may have a minority face to headline the event when they do not heed the cries from us. As for our conservative friends who have fingers plugged in their ears as they scream All Lives Matter, we get it:  All lives do matter. While you guys sound like broken record deflecting the man and the movement with “what about black-on-black crime?” queries and “pulling yourselves up by your own bootstraps” quotes of rugged independence and self-reliance when the government has been compliant with your own collective wealth as evidenced in the Homestead Act and the GI Bill, what would really be helpful is entering the conversation with an open mind and nixing your BS talking points as they really don’t help expand critical thinking to solve multifaceted adult problems. Even if the self-reliance part was true, then why was Black Wall Street in Tulsa burned down nearly a century ago? Where is the valid explanation for nightly terrorizing our communities as they became independently sufficient to not rely on racist store owners for basic sustenance? I’ll wait.

Equality is the endgame target although it hasn’t always been a shared goal for everyone:  We need to change that.

How?

I don’t have all the answers, yet I am willing to continue the conversation over my own Dub Shack BBQ and a couple of beers.

What we must become are spiritual troublemakers. Just as Jesus required us to walk by faith, King saw faith as a tool of change that makes the most hardened of us malleable enough to leave this rock better than we found it. Furthermore, God is not playing with the United States of America anymore; read Ezekiel 3:17-19 sometime this week to understand the consequences of destructive deeds. We see ourselves as God’s chosen people even more so than the Israelites from the Old Testament – my feelings of today’s Israelis are a completely different matter – however, we are traveling down the same road of self-flagellation they did from the forty years in the wilderness to being conquered by enemy nations to the inevitable silence in response to our national sins.

Fifty years ago, King paid the ultimate price with his life for bearing the burdens of the less fortunate and rising above to serve humanity. Since 1968, following up on that radical work has been miniscule at best as we have been more than happy with token outward progress and in some quarters, stilted interfaith services that on the outside show us all coming together while we remain just as divided as we were beforehand. We were called to do more but it takes breaking out of our own comfort zones and houses of privilege to make a real difference.

How would you like to be remembered, a drum major for change or a shepherd for complacency?
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