Thoughts from the Macy's Day Parade

Teach us, Dear Lord to number our days…

LIve like you just came back from being 10 minutes late for the Judgment.

The only thing worse than being in the judgment on the wrong side, is Knowing that all these people followed you into this awful place apart from the mercy and grace…  I knew better than to not trust in Christ, but these simple ones were beguiled and beguiled by their simple minds following me.  My love for them and sympathy for their plight makes my anguish all the more stinging.

The rich man said, please send Lazarus ( the smallest and least of your people)  to tell my brothers, don’t follow me here.  That is the thought of the eldest brother, deceived by his own devices and knowledgable that he has impressed the simple ones to tow the line behind him into the eternal ditch.  That is not just a pothole to be avoided.

Every pothole in NY seems designed to remind you that one day you will be driving down the road and the pothole of hell will rise to meet you, unless you are attached to Christ.

You are late,  The devil taunts, as his design was this all along.  He hates us and wanted us to have and share in the bounty of his deserts.

You should have been here from the first flame, as I was.  You should have known what it was to taste every mournful moment of having lost my first estate of beauty and fame.  I was beautiful, I was most beautiful, but I couldn’t be humbled in my beauty and nothing about torment is beautiful.  Every wicked memory is ugly. Every grievous lick of the flames is hideous and my only comfort is that I am not alone in my anguish, says Satan.  But as a brother and as an elder, I am tormented that my leadership has brought down an entire city into the flames.

And then I awake,  What day is it?  It is December first and Christmas is upon us, not even Christmas day, yet.  I have time to prepare my soul for the merciful advent of the only and true soul changing Savior.  

I am granted a merciful reprieve?  I am granted another moment’s borrowed breath?  Can I use it wisely, this time?  Can I keep my own soul out of that horrible pit and can I lead my brothers alike?

“O Come all ye Faithful!”

It is more truly close to midnight that we want to know.  All of the potholes are coming together to engulf us in the flames of eternity, if we are not attached to life.

Full of faith, not in self.  That would be the choice of the fool.  O come all ye who are trusting and loving a merciful and ever-present help in this earth.  There is no price to be spared to free your soul from the chains of sin.  Link yourself inextricably to Christ and His Church that your soul will have no questions, in that day.  Tell your underlings.  Show them the true and living way.  Help the trust Him also.

If they follow me, they will also be deceived.  It isn’t my help that you need, when you are facing eternity and judgment.  I haven’t paid it all for you.  I haven’t tasted death to deliver you from the eternal anguish.  JESUS alone can and does break the chains of sin.  Hold together with God’s people to build a greater city of guidance into life!

“Joyful and Triumphant!”

Not a single laurel on the head of the victor, but a triumphant part of the victorious bride of Christ who in symphonic combination link together to enjoy the joy and the triumph over the world’s real enemy.  The world’s real enemy is Death, Hell and the Grave.  God has sent a wonderful baby to show us the holy.  We couldn’t even see it without his deliverance and sacrifice to stoop so very low to bring it to us!

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How was your day at work, mother?

Maliya said to me, Mrs. Jayne I hugged you every day this week, when I was at home.  I thought about you every day, she was saying.  I had a Grandma whose hug was so memorable that it came back to me after she had died.  If that is what she left me it is so much more important to me than the money that she scrupulously saved to give me.  I am far more grateful for the real inheritance of a memorable hug to pass on to the little ones in my care.  The knowledge that there is somebody in this world who loves you enough to give you the access to them. 

I have grown to love these children.  I assert that loving instruction is a brain development tool and that the only thing that separates our children from robots is the emotional element of the instruction of their minds and souls.  Keep hugging me remotely Maliya.  I am hugging you too!

I know you don't mind sharing your mother:})

Am I spoiled as a mother?

Spoiled Children in the South!

I wish I had a quarter for every time I hear a black woman call a child spoiled.

I was called spoiled.  Dr. Spock gave women a reason to call children spoiled in the old days.  I thought that was dead and gone.

How slavery has made us blind to the unity of a common purpose in the rearing of our children!  We spoiled many children as Nannys and Mammys and now we are reorienting our dominion to include our own children.  Can we teach our children to think of themselves as prized and precious as we have Massa’s?

I love the way we look at our children as needing to be humbled.  “She thinks too highly of herself.” “He needs to be knocked down a few pegs.”  Is that so?

I dare say, I think they need to be reminded that they are made in the image of God!  I think they need to be reminded that many of the physical parts of their bodies that they can’t get under control might be caused by ecological factors and not their gluttony.  You are beautiful and you are smart.  You can achieve and work for God’s glory.  You don’t have to follow the pack.  You can carve out your own path to follow.  You are a creator and a thinker and an amazing victor in your own spheres of activity.  You can go anywhere and do anything.

What would happen to us, if we reared our younguns to believe that?  What would our children do with a great self esteem?  What would God say about us in That Day if we gave them that heritage?

My head still hurts from coming against the mentality of the south from New York.  People still refer to people as them and us?  Heads are still bowed with the shame of having darker skin and nappy hair.  The way that we think about ourselves is laid bare so that we can deal with it and address it in our mothering and grandmothering.

God made me black!  God gave me this hair and I love God and what He made me.  My personhood is not my sin.  My mother loves me more than I know.  She had to take care of those children because she was keeping me alive.  She had to teach me to humble myself because she didn’t want to see me lynched.  It is a new day! 

Help me love myself, Mammy!  I want the mammy that raised the earlier generations of Americans to Mammy me!  I love her!  I love what she means to our country and to our heritage as Americans!