Before Black was beautiful

In this land where color matters
where monies control ones worth and toil
a lost child, nude and photogenic
wandered about looking for himself.

Being a man before his private hairs budded
some phase of him having been abandoned
he quizzed the mirrors reflecting race,
faces of people more acceptable than his
not locked in a thousand jails-terms repeated
not a cache of bones cast aside as trash.

Who'd understand his psychotic frustrations
his fingering of figments and fragments of youth
the brown of him both burden and curse?

Dark feelings of rejection flavored this presence;
what's vulnerable guided his search for home.
Living in anger stoked flames, consuming peace;
the scorched spot in his heart being love cremated.

Calloused and ill, he longed for freedom.
His tears never freed his burdened self
a mannequin controlled by a ventriloquist's fist.

But look!
A sliver of light brightens up his face.
His brown flesh shivers neath a milky smile
for someone said his skin is lovely.
Thought he half-believes they're addressing him
his body shimmers with a sense of worth.



*The meaning of the Incarnation...is simply that we do not have to attain union with God.  Humanity does not have to climb to the  infinite and become God, because, out of love, the infinite God descends to the finite and becomes  human.  Despite humanity's refusal of God, despite our pride, our fear, our helpless and hopeless involvement in the vicious circle of sin, God's nature unalterably remains love-the agape which consists in giving oneself wholly and without reservation to the beloved.  Therefore the eternal Word, the Logos, becomes flesh, making our nature his nature; he assumes our limitations, suffers our pains and dies our death.  More than this, he bears the burden of our sins: that is, he remains in union with us even though we crucify him and spit on him; he continues to dwell within us and to offer, or sacrifice,our lives to God even though we commit every imaginable form of depravity.  In short, God has wedded Itself to humanity, has united Its divine essence with our inmost being "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health" for all eternity, even though we elect to be damned.

If I ascend up into heaven, you are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there also.

All that remains for us to do is to say, "Yes-Amen" to this this tremendous fact, and this is still within the power of our fallen nature.  Our motive for saying it, however perverted by pride and fear, makes not the least difference, because the fact is the fact: we have been given union with God whether we like it or not, want it or not, know it or not.  Our flesh has become God's flesh, and we cannot jump out of our own skins. And once we realize the futility of our pride, that we can neither ascend to God nor, by reason of pride, prevent God's descent to us, the proud core of our of egoism is simply dissolved-overwhelmed by God's love.
-Alan Watts



*The more you protest against life, the more bogged down you get in it.  That's a truism.  The problem is how to leave the earth behind, rise up and go further.
-Ilya Kabakov