Fingerprints of Love/ Persecution

If you are a DNA evidence technician you have to ask yourself what are the fingerprints of love? Is it a healed heart? A kind word? An honest, yet gentle answer?

And to love, does that make you weak, as some have implied when they said, "Jesus is strong, not weak."

By having to make that statement, it seems as if we have somehow missed the point of love, compassion, and strength.

Is a man weaker because he exercises restraint against a man he know he can injure in order to demonstrate compassion, or is he stronger because he obliterates his enemy in the name of justice?

The bible doesn't seem to give a definitive answer, but one scripture speaks to me, " I desire mercy and not sacrifice."

Mercy is the foundation of God's love.

Yet as a friend pointed out to me, love is one of the most abused words ever given breath. People beat people in the name of love. Kill in the name of love. Belittle in the name of love. Use the words when the heart is so far from it.

After all the ultimate form of love is God's grace, which can be defined as unmerited favor that looks beyond the fault and sees the need.

So when we love, we are required to demonstrate the same love to others as God demonstrated to us through grace. This is no easy thing.

There are some people in this world who will hate you because you love them. Today, I discovered that.

The more you love them, the worse they respond. They hate you worse for loving them than they would've hated you if you'd hated them. It is almost as if people expect hate. Hate has become synonymous with human nature.

It isn't really because they hate you. It is because they hate themselves.

And because they hate themselves they will only, naturally, hate you. Sometimes I wonder if people are so twisted inside and feel so unworthy of love if they will not hate the person who loves them.

I find it ironic that the bible said that God is love. Jesus was killed not because he attempted to usurp the world in a violent coup, but because he told the world that God loved them enough to forgive them. Jesus said that if people loved the father, they would love him.

But people hated Jesus. They hated him because he challenged their beliefs. They hated that he had power to heal the sick. They hated him because he wasn't rich. They hated him because they wanted to be him. They hated him because he hung with low class people. They hated his ideas.

And as the scripture says, "They hated me without cause."

In the last 12 hours of Jesus' life many people wondered what was the truth about this man, labeled a blasphemer, a rebel, and a monster. And what is truth? That is the question Pilate, a purely political bureaucrat ultimately asks.

Even Pilate said "I find no fault in this man."

Yet, the son of God himself hung on a cross bearing the sins of all humanity, and the abject object of the world's hatred out of pure love.

John 15:18-19 "if the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you..."

2000 years later People still mistake kindness for weakness. They will do everything in their power to tear you down in the name of God and goodness to justify the fact that they don't want to lose their power. They will mock you. They will treat you wrong. They will hurt you in the name of love.

It is hard to love people who don't want love. They want power. They want influence. They want what you have. But offer them love, and you earn their spite.

The saddest part of this is, the thing that will heal that ugly hole that seems to suck life out of everything they encounter is only filled by the thing they seek to destroy.

God's antidote for hate is more love. He commands us, not suggests to us that loving our enemies is the only way that we can show that we are His children. It is our spiritual fingerprint.

Why? If love in a hate filled world is so aching why on earth would a just God demand that we continue to give it in the face of the most awful consequences?

Maybe, just maybe there is something about love, that overcomes hate not in the reaction of the hater, but the action of the person of the lover. That's why people who believe in justice have problems with grace, and love. Love appears unjust, on a universal level because it is something that none of us earned from God, yet because it is the ultimate victor over hate, and the inner being of God himself, it is more just than justice.

There is no victory in hate. Ultimately hate dies. But love remains eternal.

From Hero to Zero -- Yet Another Reason I will Never Vote Clinton Again

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/bill-clinton-hi.html

I was once fascinated by Bill Clinton. His ability to move a crowd. His knack for making a compromise look like a win-win. His determination in the face of adversity. His ability to run as a moderate, and stand firm in it. His enigmatic charisma that seemed to either enamor or repel anyone he met.

In fact, until last year he was on my top ten list of individuals I'd like to meet and grab a cup of coffee with -- living or dead.

And then I got a taste of the real Bill Clinton. So far, the aftertaste is still sour. Today Russell Goldman reported the bitter truth:

"President Clinton told The View that had Obama chosen his wife instead of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden it would have been "the best politically," and that his wife would have likely taken the job though she didn't want it."

It's a very personal decision who should be vice president. I like Sen. Biden a lot. I think he was a good choice. [Hillary Clinton] would have been the best politically at least in the short run because of her enormous support in the country," he said.

Then came the CNN headlines on Sarah Palin," "People look at her, and they say, 'All those kids. Something that happens in everybody's family I'm glad she loves her daughter and she's not ashamed of her. Glad that girl's going around with her boyfriend. Glad they're going to get married,'" he (Clinton) said.

Which, I found nothing wrong with, except the article ends with him saying once again that Hillary would've been the best choice.

Is that the kind of "friend" that Obama or the dems need in this hot button political season? Someone who goes on television and basically says I like your VP choice, but no cigar? And then goes on to say, "But even though you were short sighted for not lobbying harder for Hillary to be your VP, she really didn't want it anyway."

For less astute voters this may seem like a benign statement. after all Clinton prased Obama in the same article he's quoted here. However, those of us in the know can see exactly what Clinton is doing. They are distancing themselves from Obama so if he fails, they are well positioned to reclaim the mantle of Washington leadership. Why else would you publicaly discredit the choice of Biden after claiming to support the ticket?

Now mind you, this is nothing against Hillary Clinton. I have my issues with her, but her husband's behavior far outweighs anything Senator Clinton has ever done.

In a close election as this one, I have seen first hand the Clinton hubris that the Republicans warned us of all those years ago. I chided myself for being so blinded in my own support for democratic ideals that I didn't see that Bill Clinton really does have a character issue-- but it isn't loyalty--- it is arrogance.

First he sabotaged his own wife's presidential ambition with his desire to be in the spotlight making amped up racially tinged political observations when quite frankly Bill, nobody asked you. Then he and Mrs. Clinton launch insidious arguments, in the name of sexism that the only reason Obama got the nomination was because he was a man. (And although the elephant is still in the room, ladies and gentleman Obama is a Black man.) Obama was painted a an inexperienced lofty young man who arrogantly decided to run against Hillary, a confident woman --who is also for the record, a junior senator.

That set the stage for Sarah Palin even being on the planet in this election year universe. Why else would John McCain or the republicans even think of picking someone who wasn't even on the short list, and obviously, had not been properly vetted?

Finally, in true Clintonion arrogance, Bill blames it all on somebody else. It is Obama's fault. Notice how carefully he chose his words. Hillary would have been "the best politically". He avoids saying she would have been the best period, because that would be bold, even for him. But the sneaky part of this is he is questioning Obama's political judgement by saying "politically". What does the average reader get from this. Obama made a bad political choice, and even if he tried to make the good choice, Hillary would be doing "him" a favor.


All this belies the real point: Bill Clinton started this war within the party on his own like a willful child robbed of his candy. The truth is nobody lost this election for Hillary but Bill Clinton. If he had been able to keep his personal life in order, the question of Clinton fatigue very may well have been settled in 2004. If at a time when most African-American voters hadn't made their mind up about Obama Clinton had layed off the rhetoric, Hillary would've rolled Obama under a bus back to Chicago.

With all that hot blame being served up, I would be remiss not to point out the true culprits: it was us. Us who claim to support democratic ideas but supported a man who believed he was above reproach. Bill Clinton is the same person he was in 1992, 2002, and 2008. Incredibly competitive to the point of negligence. Incredibly nasty when he doesn't get his way. And downright condescending.

The most scathing piece of today's news was I mean come on-- so the VP was beneath Hillary, however for the good of the country she would prove she was a team player? Even if that were true, why would you say something like that in public weeks before an election that impacts not only the people of this country but the world?

It is the single most selfish thing I have ever seen him do, and there are a lot of moments to replay prime time in that category.

Well, why ask why if you're Bill Clinton. Who but Bill Clinton in his wonderful way could be a democratic party leader and publicly support a republican without "supporting it?"After all these years of fighting the vast right wing conspiracy I am uncomfortable with how easily he's become part of the club.

At the risk of having any more unfortunate pig references made, this all feels very Orwellian. As George Orwell's Animal Farm demonstrates, we often become the thing we fight. "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. "

As an under 30 voter, I must admit, it does make me sad. I miss the era of Clinton magic. But I cannot walk away from what he has done. When I cannot tell the tactics of the Clintons from their rivals, and that gives me pause when voting for their policies.

So Bill, if you're reading, I'm sorry we will never have that cup of coffee, but I'm sure you understand. I walk away a little more jaded, but a lot stronger.

EDITORIAL: Black America: Promised Land Lost?

I wrote this a few years ago. Interesting, isn't it?


Tough love isn’t a bad thing. Tough without the love isn’t too good.

Bill Cosby’s recent speech at Charles Drew Elementary School in Bayview Hunter’s Point could easily be summed up as, “Promised Land Lost.”

Perhaps less poetic than Milton, Cosby came under fire for his harsh analysis of poor Blacks in a controversial speech marking Brown vs. the Board of Education decision last May.

The San Francisco Chronicle printed Cosby’s recent comments blasting negligent Black parents who mourn troubled youngsters. “Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn’t know he had a pistol?,” Cosby asked, “And where is the father? You can’t keep saying that God will find a way. God is tired of you.”

There is a nugget of truth in Cosby’s argument. The future of Black America doesn’t rest in the hands of public institutions. Racism exists, yet we as a people cannot allow racism to prevent us from being who God created us to be. Unjust standard, but what’s the alternative?

Here’s another truth: Most Black people aren’t on drugs, derelict, destitute, in jail, or swiftly heading there---and those people resent the idea that victimization is second nature to Blacks. Cosby’s remarks struck gold with blue collars and buppies within the community resentful of an “underclass” that hasn’t arrived at the foot of the mountain, let alone the top; it also and endeared him to conservatives happier than hallelujah to cosign.

However well intentioned Cosby’s desire for parental responsibility, his indignant response can be likened to Moses in the Old Testament striking water from a rock and telling the unfaithful Israelites, “Hear now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?” This was the ultimate insult to God because Moses didn’t believe in the divine transformation. And he paid a hefty price—Moses, the man who spent the majority of his life devoted to God’s work was denied entrance to the promised land because didn’t acknowledge that it was bigger than himself.

A good friend taught me that responsibility means that what we do makes a difference. If accountability applies only to the poor, we’ve created a difference without distinction.
The sense of a common struggle is eroding among some in the Black middle class. We cannot drive our SUV’s to corporate jobs and go to our and step over the homeless on our way to our mega churches without remembering, “To whom much is given, much is required.” It defies the legacy of our grandparents who shared all they had, even when that was little.

Progressives may disagree with their politics, but haven’t conservatives (and Black nationalists) argued for years that the Black community needs people willing to do more than write a check? Cosby is among a privileged few with the ability to command diverse unilateral and national attention. The question begs to be asked--Wouldn’t it be powerful if we used our resources to transform our families instead of shaming them?

Waiting on the World to Change

Published in the Berkeley Daily Planet

Reader Commentaries:
Waiting on the World to Change
By Michelle Milam

Thursday August 28, 2008

I am thinking in moments. I was born nearly 10 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and nearly 16 years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. My baby sister is five years my junior, my best friend and “sister” is five years my senior. My young cousin was born in the 1990s, and my goddaughter was born in 2000. Many of the children I work with are two generations removed from the civil upheaval of the 1960s. I find it ironic that Barack Obama was born eight weeks after the world received that fateful news that shots struck the presidential motorcade in Dallas.

We are the face of the next generation of Americans who have been given the keys to an elusive and magical kingdom. What we do with it will determine the future not only for this country, but the world.

I am struck by the irony of a changing season and a constant hope. Via the Internet, I watched Sen. Kennedy graciously and proudly pass the torch at the DNC the other night. Nearly 40 years before me, on a black and white television, my mother watched as many of the great and influential change makers of her generation were gunned down. Young men of my father’s generation lived an unsure existence never knowing if they’d be drafted into war. Today many of our young men and women are not only fighting an enemy on a foreign soil, we are fighting a domestic enemy—one who looks like us, holding a handgun and ready to take aim.

My grandparents, only two generations from slavery, lived under Jim Crow. After coming to work in the shipyards of Richmond, they finally bought a home in El Cerrito after being told by a couple down the street, “Nobody will sell to a black family.” Today, many of our generation have moved home, since despite our education, in the face of foreclosure, a sour economy and high housing markets, the keys to the kingdom are under glass.

Is eight years of conservative rule enough?

Barack Obama seems to teeter precariously on a thin line between familiarity and risk, baiting the national conscious, hoping that Americas will vote it.

I agree with McCain and Clinton supporters; this election is not about political experience, something that would matter more in a typical business as usual election year. McCain and the Clinton-Bush dynasty have more than enough experience to roll Obama under a bus back to Chicago. But what do all those moments of experience mean if this moment demands something decidedly different?

What values does this generation believe in?

There is really only one question that needs to be answered, and that question is not whether Barack Obama is ready to lead.

Is America ready to change?

Be careful, if you breathe, you may miss the moment.

Michelle Milam is a Richmond resident.