Burkini fashion, Islam, Men, and Christianity.

Hijab style of a Turkish woman.

Iranian futball player !!!!

Burkina Fashion


Aheda Zanetti created the burkini for her niece, who wanted to play netball. Her young niece wore the hajib for modesty, as other Muslim girls and women did but that was not enough of a covering to be a respectable, and modest Muslim woman. The point of women's dress was to somehow lessen the attraction to the form of a woman's body. In its depth of understanding it is important to understand that this is a reverse way of men disciplining their spirits; but that subject we will set aside for further analysis, as well as the contradictions of Christian and Islamic values and the predator nature of Western man, and the Arab man.

The child's mother had to debate and reason with the family to get the girl's permission to play the game. This was in early 2004 in Australia, where Aheda searched for a reasonable outfit for a woman to wear to the beach, or to play sports in public, and not finding anything developed to wear by the fashion industry from this concept she created the burkini.

IN Aheda's story, she sent out questionnaires to the community to properly discern the attitudes about the outfit and following old tradition and instinctive inclinations listened to the family's thoughts and feelings on this new intervention between wanting to play and appear in public in the Western world modestly. She says, "It is about integration and acceptance and being equal and about not being judged." She knows the holy Qu'ran does not ask women to cover their face and that the Burqa is not in the holy text. But, being Muslim anywhere in the West is now dangerous because white citizens are terrified of things and consequences other people can be insensitive to, or resentful of because those paradigms believe not in the natural order, but the world as they perceive it.

After 9/11, many things changed in the Western world from the perspective of Americans, not about safety, but out of fear of historical consequences. France began making Muslim women remove their burkinis on their beaches. The police became more military and the military became more aggressive charged by an urge to go after an ill-defined enemy and blurred understanding of world histories to inform thought and behavior. Airline service became wooded, and climate in the air and airports became depressive and subdued as passengers, mule like, shuffled through long lines submitting to humiliating searches and enduring profiling; fearful of their usage of language.

The United States waged war in the Middle East saying they are fighting for freedom in America with a fractured economy, and torn apart in its soul they stomped around the globe threatening smaller governments to side with their agenda. Meanwhile, Muslims around the world were reevaluating their positions in their relations to American and European extremes. Prior to this event (9/11) the Arab world was careful about Western influence over their cultures. There was a lot of smug resentment from Americans of this trait, but it revealed how important Americans thought their thoughts and sensibilities were to them, and felt their ways should not be scrutinized by people in the Arab world.

It is important to understand these views of the world, and the way Americans thought of themselves prior to the successful attack against the U.S. in 2001, and know how our influence actually feels to people we dismiss, as beneath us. This is a quiet way of saying our arrogance is our diplomacy. Our estimation of Muslim women being modest in public repulsed Americans first prior to the 20th century, and terrified them in the 21st century! What we have are governing concepts at odds within Christians. If we are going to link Islam with sacred dress for women, we must analyze Western Christianity reacting to a historical past with the Arab world.


Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
April 13, 2017

Casual elegance implied by the smile, the style

Part II
modesty

Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman said she gives no heed to critics of her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit photo shoot -- it's something she expected.

"I knew people were going to say that I wasn't a good role model and all of this stuff," Raisman, who posed topless in the magazine, told Motto. "I did the issue because I love my body. I can express myself in any way that I want. But that doesn't give anyone the right to judge me. I think being a role model is about being a kind person."

"It really made me realize women do not have to be modest in order to be respected," Raisman added.

So deeply does the water pour into the pool. This young woman recites into the pool from what her predecessors stirred. It is not from a place of understanding the depths of contradictions steeped in fearful transactions white women's looks pay tribute to; it is from a sense of freedom based on hopeful assumptions of how things should be if men were impeccable of mind, spirit and emotions.

For the most part men are not trained to be impeccable.

Against this backdrop the young Olympian states a claim saying: "It really made me realize women do not have to be modest in order to be respected." The boast is naïve and it is ignorant, but applauded by young and older women living in a bubble crying because of, and straining against the tyranny of men, who prey upon their bodies and their souls. 

"Do you understand this?" I cry from within to countless women I have seen and interacted with over my decades. Many do. Many don't. What is promoted on television, as freedom of expression, is an irrationalness hard to focus upon knowing the history of religion, belief and white European and Arabian men in their histories! The next logical question is not apparent to an ignorant assumption about freedom. 

Freedom. "What is freedom in the context of this subject?" 

What it is not, is divorced from the spiritual responsibility of men to be engaged at young ages by their Wise Men, the Elders from a strong tradition of initiation. Freed men engage the resources of spiritual powers Western ideology rejects. Most are trapped in a culture unable to free itself from its pride in being divorced from archaic ideas and practices that believe in God, and understand the Sacred. What we are afraid of is the truth of who we are supposed to be inwardly. 

Being Sacred is far removed from how we govern ourselves in this country. For that we pay heavy prices, and women and innocence are the first victims of what is profoundly ugly and evil within men divorced from the sacred processes into true masculinity. 

This is where I stop, and should not have come face to face with in this medium for the simple, and complex reason a father does not feed meat to an arm baby nursing on his mother's breasts. 


This takes us back to the young woman's words, "It really made me realize women do not have to be modest in order to be respected." 

What she is pointing out is unobvious. Men should be required to have the type of impeccability her statement requires to be supported in general society in sexy, or modest styles of dress. 


Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 
April 13, 2017

Aly Raisman's Sports Illustrated 2017 magazine pose.

Part III
declaration

When a man wants to undress a woman it is she who makes resistance difficult. Responsibility for decorum is the man's. It doesn't matter what she does. It is what we know to do and who we are in relation to the truth... - Gregory E, Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/13/17  

ELDER TALK: Jesus, Belief and Practice

Many have stood at this crossroad with these questions relying less on scholarship, and the probes into the mystical teachings of this walk, and more on other's thoughts on the subjects you raised.

Your first question: "Baptism. Does it mean the Holy Spirit comes into a person automatically?" Your second question suffers with the first question in a tangle of dogma from various sects in Protestantism: "I thought confessing Jesus, as one's Lord and Savior, meant one was born again?" The last question you ask has the embracing fragrance of innocence and honesty. "So how can you get baptized and not get the gift of the Spirit, that I flat out don't get because the Holy Ghost is a gift after all your sins have been washed away through the blood. I thought a gift is just what it is: a gift!"  

My first inclination is to suggest you begin your study, in the Bible, accepting that it is a long process delving into this subject matter. Because the question is fundamental to Christianity. The answers should be more than passable understanding of its progenitor religion, and that worldview needs to be learned to have depth as a follower of these teachings! It is important to have depth with substance, and breaking the tradition of glib answers to profound questions follow Paul's admonishment to "Study to show yourself approved..." and follow suit with your own spiritual practice!  

In easier language, there is a nest from which the answers to your questions flew away from! From animal sacrifices to the quest in the first century Church to rid itself of the vestiges of its Hebrew roots, to the horrible centuries of blood conquest/missionary work, to the 20th century revivals until now; the answers to your questions have been altered by histories of actions, politics, and the business of slave trade maintenance. So, your answers are easily assessable in the Bible, but do you really want to explore the fundamentals of your religious belief, or do you simply want to be sure of your salvation?  

To honor the questions, I am obligated to honor the teaching style of the Rabbi Jesus, who was initiated into his role, into manhood. He comes from not what passes today as a way into the kingdom of God, but from a tradition steeped in probes into the Unknown, with the tradition of study and introspection of their holy books and rituals interlinked with the development of the abstract and the intellect simultaneously!  - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 9/18/17 

Spiritual Practice: fasting

Fasting Is Prescribed in the Abrahamic Faiths <3 span="">

The Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions all enjoin fasting. Moses observed a fast of forty days at Mount Sinai at the time of the revelation of the Ten Commandments. (Exodus 24:18) Although less common now, it is Jewish tradition to fast when mourning or when in danger. Most practicing Jews still fast on the Day of Atonement and for the one-week commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem in 597 B.C. Jesus of Nazareth, peace be upon him, also fasted on the Day of Atonement and the forty days of Moses’ fast to ward off Satanic temptation.

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.” (Matthew 4:2)

Many Christians observe a forty-day pre-Easter fast, although now it includes abstention from only certain food items rather than all food and drink. Muslims fast the month of Ramadan and may, optionally, fast on most other days of the year.

The One God prescribes fasting for the faithful; and it has many benefits. Material pleasures can be generalised into food and drink, sexual pleasures, and vanity. Fasting requires abstaining from these, going against the natural instinct of Man to observe the commandment of God.This builds and strengthens a person's self-control, nearing them to their Creator. Other benefits of fasting include:

• Fasting instills patience, teaches self control and discipline.

• Fasting increases compassion for the less fortunate.

• Fasting builds focus on spirituality and deminishes focus on materialism.

• Fasting has many health benefits.

• Fasting can be atonement for sin and can earn great reward.

• Fasting is part of a strong spiritual and physical renewal plan.

• Fasting commemorates important sacred religious events.

The Muslim fast of the month of Ramadan is a continuation of the long history of fasting in the Abrahamic faiths. The self-improvement benefits of fasting make it an important means of improving one’s faith and practice of religion.

“And men who fast and women who fast…God has prepared for them forgiveness and a vast reward.” ( Holy Qur’an 33:35)

Broken by LAW

Murderous woman.

"The deepest fear a woman can conjure within a man is her being absorbed into killing..."

~ Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

Feb. 12, 2017.

Death certainly stalks women scared inside of marriages and relationships with men violent in their nature who feel dominance is based upon the subjection of his woman to his will. In the aftermath of her breaking point his death is his design. The law doesn't see it that way because laws meant to protect men's proclivity towards violence against women needs to be protected by law so that by chance if a law maker finds himself in such a predicament facing jail time for beating his woman he has an escape route. Biblical laws, the laws within the Torah, and the Qur'an protect men's inability to have restraint. It is this simple. My studies have shown me nothing to contradict this finding.

When Death stalks it finds a way to reverse roles. The beatings a woman receives from a man is a beating from men. In her defense is her endurance, and the breaking point when she can take no more and kills the man. It happens in a variety of ways. For several reasons there are women who get away with murder. As much as it is wrong it is right.

Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Feb. 13, 2017

the Spirit behind White men killing White people

The lynching of Garfield Burley and Curtis Brown. October 8, 1902, Newbern, Tennessee

"...lynched by a mob of 500 persons... Criminal Court Judge Maiden pleaded that the law be allowed to deal with the case, saying the negroes would be placed on trial tomorrow. The mob would not listen..." - Exhibit 53 & pg184, Without Sanctuary / Lynching Photography in America 

There is a spirit behind the massacres of whites by white men in this century and the last. I have not heard of white talking heads commenting on this spirit. Their skirting around this tells its own stories and bottles up anger and knowing in people of the darker hue. We dark folks know the whites to be killers unable to repent, or stop killing. Centuries of surviving with high casualty losses is the story of each generation of our survivors. I am one such survivor in my family line.

We all have our stories, and our history bears the red of the murders, the tens of thousands since the end of the Civil War because of white American's inability to accept the humanity and the achievements of Black people! Here is the spirit again enshrined in jealousy with no trace of remorse that keeps finding ways to express itself in a culture governed by acceptance of this spirit. In the present white men killing church goers, and mall shoppers and throwing rocks over overpasses is a norm today's apologists love to speak of in tones of false advertisement of mental instability. It is a spirit! We know it, whites act like it isn't there until they need it to kill again... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 11/7/17

FEAR within white folks!

Runa Lucienne simply lovely in a simple summer dress. 2016.

Muaaz Qureshi, whom I assume is Muslim said in response to the bikini clad body of former Playboy bunny, Runa Luisemme: “Woman is a delicate creature with strong emotions who has been created by the Almighty ALLAH (God) to shoulder responsibility for educating society and moving toward perfection. ALLAH (God) created woman as symbol of His own beauty and to give solace to her partner and her family.”

The insight, the words are so close to the Bible! Are Islam and Christianity the same, or linked? If so, why do Americans not know this and behave as if there is no history between the U.S. and the radical extremists in the Middle East? Is there a base fear Europeans, and white Americans share they don't respond to truthfully, or are they ignorant of pasts, or beyond their past in their imaginations? - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories [6/25/17] 

Look in Deep.

Train tracks by Julia Ten Eyck.

"How can someone hold themselves in the world as a Christian if they believe Jesus is the only way? The answer to that question is a trail backwards to the churches of Europe. It is a riddle that often leaves Christians without the respect they think they deserve." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/20/17

THINK about IT!

Contemplative white women are coming into a fashion of sorts as the social tides of conservatism and religion across the globe target their gains for returns back to the containment areas of history familiar to Arabs and Europeans. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories Jan. 11, 2017

a Sacred Woman is Still

sacred poise 

Well, there is a spiritual law at work. When any of us project into the universe our intentions those words are a declaration and a challenge. The universe will test every utterance and challenge the integrity and strength of one's intent. It is the way the invisible comes into matter. That is the core of the Adamic story between Eve and Adam in that order. We are mysterious forces in nature and the universe. Small we may be, but our word and our spirit can reach beyond the scope of our presence into the timeless quality of will, intent and integrity into the Beyond, the Unknowable Unknown!

Detractors are not so much haters as they are spoilers and deeply despondent. They haven't formed their alliances with the higher powers within or outside of their being. For them it is comfortable to be fearful in their mind's eye. It is their illusion, and it is their painful illusions that teaches our will and assertions. Our job and immediate concern is to make right choices!

Now, the Biblical scripture that reads, "No weapon formed against you shall prosper." is a shield. It is a powerful shield defending one's soul and esteem from attacks. Not said, but implied is the completion of a warrior's effectiveness relying on offensive strategies. At this juncture of the teachings it is important to point out one of the innate problems of a Christian's focus and obsession with a Messiah. This obsession has the tendency to weaken one's powers by defending a faith and a belief mechanism. A warrior need need not primarily defend his God, or his essence because the warrior is the essence of the 'how' and the 'whys' of that discipline. A warrior's skills and purposes are misplaced defending his faith. He/she lives their life and the life force it creates generates its own offense and defense when necessary. Not understanding the depth of the warrior's main discipline has killed and injured millions in numerous wars for God over the centuries. The question to that state of being guides the student of religion and Self into the low echelon of soul sickness.

Let history speak to that story.! ~ Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 7.12.14

Glance into a Woman's Life 

SUNDAY Morning services.

Art world of Joy Mollnar titled this piece, Dancing On Sacred Ground

Color struck: America's White Jesus is a global export and false product

by Wesley Muhammad, PhD.


What color was Jesus? Most American Christians—Black and White—would dismiss this question as both irrelevant and unanswerable as the Gospels fail to give us a physical description. The irony is that most of these same Americans in their heart of hearts are pretty confident any way that they know what color Jesus was. They attend churches with images of a tall, long haired, full bearded White man depicted in stained glass windows or painted on walls, and they return home to the same depictions framed in their living room or illustrating their family Bibles.

Further compounding the irony is the fact that America actually has an obsession with the (presumed) color of Christ and has exported her White Americanized Savior around the world, as recently documented by Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey in their book, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (2012).

In fact, the world’s most popular and recognizable image of Christ is a distinctly 19th-20th century American creation. It is true that versions of the “White Christ” appear in European art as early as the 4th century of the Christian era, but these images coexisted with other, nonwhite representations throughout European history. The popularity of the cult of the Black Madonna and Black Christ throughout Europe is evidence of the fact that the European ‘White Christs’ never acquired the authority and authenticity that the White Christ now has globally. This Christ and his authority are American phenomena. As a predominantly Protestant nation Early America rejected the imaging of Christ that characterized European Catholicism.

By the mid-19th century, however, in response to American expansion, splintering during the Civil War and subsequent reconstructing, “Whiteness” took on a new significance and a newly- empowered “White Jesus” rose to prominence as the sanctifying symbol of a new national unity and power. As Blum and Harvey observe:

“By wrapping itself with the alleged form of Jesus, whiteness gave itself a holy face … With Jesus as white, Americans could feel that sacred whiteness stretched back in time thousands of years and forward in sacred space to heaven and the second coming … The white Jesus promised a white past, a white present, and a future of white glory.”

As America rose to superpower status in the 20th century she became the world’s leading producer and global exporter of White Jesus imagery through film, art, American business, and Christian missions, and has thereby defined the world’s view of the Son of God. This globally recognizable Jesus is a totally American product. Indeed, he is an American. Warner Sallman’s iconic image of Jesus called Head of Christ (1941) became the most widely reproduced piece of artwork in world history and its depiction the most recognizable face of Jesus in the world. By the 1990s it had been printed over 500 million times and achieved global iconic status. With smooth white skin, long, flowing blondish-brown hair, long beard and blue eyes, this Nordic Christ consciously disguised any hint of Jesus’s Semitic, oriental origin—and departed from the older European depictions. It both shaped and was shaped by emerging American ideas of whiteness. The beloved White Jesus of today’s world was Made in America.

What, then, did Jesus actually look like? Despite the absence of a detailed description of Jesus’s physical appearance in the Gospels (though John the Revelator saw the risen Christ apparently with wooly hair and black feet, Rev. 1:14-15), there are non-biblical evidences that actually allow us to visualize the Son of God from Nazareth.

Revelation 1:14-15 - King James Version (KJV)
14) His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
15) And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.

The first century Jewish writer Josephus (37-100 AD) penned the earliest non-biblical testimony of Jesus. He reportedly had access to official Roman records on which he based his information and in his work Halosis or the “Capture (of Jerusalem),” written around 72 A.D., Josephus discussed “the human form of Jesus and his wonderful works.” Unfortunately his texts have passed through Christian hands which altered them, removing offensive material. Fortunately, however, Biblical scholar Robert Eisler in a classic 1931 study of Josephus’ Testimony was able to reconstruct the unaltered testimony based on a newly-discovered Old Russian translation that preserved the original Greek text. According to Eisler’s reconstruction, the oldest non-Biblical description of Jesus read as follows:

“At that time also there appeared a certain man of magic power … if it be meet to call him a man, [whose name is Jesus], whom [certain] Greeks call a son of [a] God, but his disciples [call] the true prophet … he was a man of simple appearance, mature age, black-skinned (melagchrous), short growth, three cubits tall, hunchbacked, prognathous (lit. ‘with a long face’ [macroprosopos]), a long nose, eyebrows meeting above the nose … with scanty [curly] hair, but having a line in the middle of the head after the fashion of the Nazaraeans, with an undeveloped beard.”

This short, black-skinned, mature, hunchbacked Jesus with a unibrow, short curly hair and undeveloped beard bears no resemblance to the Jesus Christ taken for granted today by most of the Christian world: the tall, long haired, long bearded, white-skinned and blue eyed Son of God. Yet, this earliest textual record matches well the earliest iconographic evidence.

The earliest visual depiction of Jesus is a painting found in 1921 on a wall of the baptismal chamber of the house-church at Dura Europos, Syria and dated around 235 A.D. The Jesus that is “Healing the Paralytic Man” (Mark 2:1-12) is short and dark-skinned with a small curly afro - see below.
This description has now been supported by the new science of forensic anthropology. In 2002 British forensic scientists and Israeli archaeologists reconstructed what they believe is the most accurate image of Jesus based off of data obtained from the multi-disciplinary approach. In December 2002 Popular Science Magazine published a cover story on the findings which confirm that Jesus would have been short, around 5”1’, hair “short with tight curls,” a weather-beaten face “which would have made him appear older,” dark eyes and complexion: “he probably looked a great deal more like a dark-skinned Semite than Westerners are used to seeing,” they concluded. The textual, visual, and scientific evidence agrees, then: Jesus likely was a short, dark-skinned Semite with short curly hair and dark eyes.

Colossians 1:15 describes Christ as the “image of the unseen God” and in the Gospel of John (12:45; 14:9) Jesus declares that whoever sees him has seen God. What Jesus “looks like” then is not irrelevant as it is in some way a pointer to God Himself.

Dreaming

NicoleScherzinger in white

"At the same time as Jews were struggling with the traumatic consequences of their expulsion from Spain and Muslims were establishing their three great empires, the Christians in the West were embarking on a course that would take them far from the certainties and sanctities of the old world. This was an exciting period, but it was also disturbing. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Black Death had killed one-third of the population of Christendom, and countries of Europe had been ravaged by such interminable strife as the Hundred Years War between England and France and the internecine Italian wars. Europeans had endured the shock of the Ottoman conquest of Christian Byzantium in 1453, and the papal scandals of the Avignon Captivity and the Great Schism --when as many as three pontiffs had claimed to be the successor of St. Peter at the same time -- had caused many to lose faith in the institutional church. People felt obscurely afraid, and found that they could not be religious in the old way. Yet it was also a time of liberation and empowerment. The Iberian explorers had discovered a new world; the astronomers were opening up the heavens, and a new technical efficiency was giving Europeans greater control over their environment than any body had achieved before. Where the conservative spirit had taught men and women to remain within defined limits, the new culture of Western Christendom showed that it was possible to venture beyond the confines of the known world and not only to survive but to prosper. This would ultimately make the old mythological religion impossible, and it would seem that Western modernity was inherently hostile to faith..."


excerpt: The Battle For God by Karen Armstrong
(page 61)

strong water song of Lisa Marie Talavera,
Peruvian-American artist & model

The Perfect Woman, a Quest!

abstract art of a woman by

The Perfect Woman 

On a quest to discover the perfect woman I discovered she was many types. She varied the definition of perfection changing her proverbial stripes by altering her relationship with light and shadow while changing positions. For a period of my youth I looked for internal perfection in Jesus' name. Baffled by always being outside of the touch of attainability I doubted myself wondering if falling short of perfection, heaven would forever be out of reach until I realized nothing in nature made quests of this nature. Perfection was on its own, and it was moments of perfection that settled the quest, and the competitive nature of that kind of spirituality lost its appeal and endeavors for perfection no longer marred the magic, the beauty of simply being.

The Perfect Woman to look at isn't necessarily the perfect woman to be with. There were so many women. Thousands of them swirled around me each day. Some looked better than others. Other's spiritual powers were astounding, and memorable. Girl watching became a visual parade with a ceaseless capacity to charge and invigorate the spirit and inspire the creation of extraordinary music within my bodies of knowledge and knowing! Women's presence insured a grounding within me, and Black women were at the top of the list. I've seen from my dynamic youth forward into the present moment how and when the mystical resides within the very nature of women ranging from the crude and very rude to the evolved women whose bodies are beginning to take on the properties of light!

Beauty, over time, became a fascinating study of self.

- Gregory E. Woods, 

Keeper of Stories 9.5.14  

dark beautiful woman's seductive allure 3

Toni Braxton is a Black American singer.
Toni Gonzaga is a Filipina model. 

Filipina models 

ISIS and the U.S.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: If ISIS Represents Islam, Then The KKK Represents Christianity (VIDEO)

By Jameson Parker on February 17, 2015 3:07 pm            



It’s a distinguishing fact of human psychology that people hate to be stereotyped, but love stereotyping others.

In today’s context, the issue of whether or not the Islamic State, a group of radical extremists terrorizing the Middle East, can be considered “Muslim” is at the forefront of a debate that’s taking place across the world. In the United States, the conversation became even more heated after President Obama remarked that “ISIL is not ‘Islamic'” but a “terrorist organization, pure and simple.”

If taken literally, Obama’s claim is dubious. The Atlantic ran a cover story by Graeme Wood that essentially debunked the idea. Like it or not, Wood argued, ISIS is Islamic, in that they derive their ideology – however warped – from Islamic teachings.

The most-articulate spokesmen for that position are the Islamic State’s officials and supporters themselves. They refer derisively to “moderns.” In conversation, they insist that they will not—cannot—waver from governing precepts that were embedded in Islam by the Prophet Muhammad and his earliest followers. They often speak in codes and allusions that sound odd or old-fashioned to non-Muslims, but refer to specific traditions and texts of early Islam.

Members of ISIS certainly believe they are Muslim and acting in strict concordance with that ideology.

A more careful reading of Obama’s remarks, however, suggests that he wasn’t arguing that the members of ISIS aren’t Muslims (as conservative media attacked him for), but that when you think of Islam, you would be remiss to view it as symbolized in ISIS. They may be Muslims, but they are certainly no ambassadors for Islam – the faith that over 1 billion people on Earth worship.

Furthermore, ISIS has positioned itself as conquerors, targeting weak areas in wartorn countries and quickly seizing land. Their behavior is driven not just by Islam, but by the practical concerns of a nascent group trying to gain power. It’s no secret that much of what ISIS does is driven by monetary concerns. They seize oil refineries, poppy fields, banks vaults, and hostages in order to enrich themselves and increase their might. Ignoring that motivation means making a huge mistake.
Enter former basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, himself a Muslim, who made the point with a profound eloquence.

While speaking to MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Abdul-Jabbar said viewing ISIS as representing Islam would be like viewing the Ku Klux Klan as representing Christianity. Both groups derive their ideologies from religion, but neither can be said to make a claim for the vast majority of people within them.

“You can make parallels to things that have happened here in America. Like the Ku Klux Klan saying they are the Christian knights,” Abdul-Jabbar pointed out. “And they do not practice Christianity.”

In much the same way as ISIS, the KKK and other hate groups have always used religion as a way of justifying atrocities and hatred towards other groups.

“People use that as an excuse. It’s not an excuse, it’s no excuse and oppressing one group means that we have to look out, all groups have to get together to fight that type of oppression, because we all should be free.”

In this way, these hate groups have more in common than different. One need only to look at historical examples to find ample proof that Christian groups were capable of savagery that ISIS would recognize in their own. If people point to the fact that the KKK is (relatively) muted in recent decades, the thanks lies squarely with moderate people pushing society towards no longer tolerating the group’s terrorism. The KKK didn’t suddenly grow a sense of morality – they were aggressively suppressed by the people and the United States government until they were a non-factor.

Dismantling the KKK didn’t require the destruction of Christianity, but rather a shift from the virulently toxic form advocated by the hate group towards a more tolerant one. If ISIS is to be defeated, the goal has to be similar. Condemning all Muslims in an effort to cleanse the world of ISIS would be similarly unachievable, and ultimately foolish.

 

done in Jesus' name by murder ...

Dr. Sinclair Grey III – The Challenge For Clergy On Easter Sunday


You are correct in your article, Sinclair, about the origins of Easter and other days celebrated in Christendom. The fact of these origins is a study unto itself.

The High Holy days of the Celtic people adopted into Christianity were part of the compromise made by the European conquerors who as missionaries by bloodshed spread the gospel of Christ! Because the Celtic people were unable to be defeated in war the work of one man made the connections that led to the transformation of a people from their spiritual practices grounded in the exaltation of the Goddess to the patriarchal religion of Western Christianity that did not hold the value of women in high esteem, and unlike the ancient Celtics despise the Earth, our Mother.

It is too easy to  not know the history of one's belief system and it is also wrong to be ignorant of the why of one's religion. But, sadly most wait to be told and fed the remnants of the truth.

Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
March 27, 2016


 

To Judge Beauty

Mya Diamond in a red mini in a shoe store. 

"The question of beauty in the context of religion often boils down to contempt and/or envy. In the book of Proverbs, I believe it is, the Word says, beauty is vain. From that point on Beauty has often found herself under scrutiny that is cruel and harsh. The dismissive tone of the words in that scripture rip the heart out of the glory women feel being beautiful. Thousands of tragedies have played out in women's lives misunderstanding themselves, and millions of women starved for validation have fallen into the arms of pimps and slavers. All of these things happen because of a basic struggle with worth within the context of religion. Narrowing the scope I am specifically talking about the Abrahamic offshoots." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 12.18.13

Mya Diamond in red mini dress washing her feet. 

Touched by her I AM: Michelle Obama



Michelle Obama walking smiling in red dress upon blue carpet.

MANHOOD TEACHING

King Solomon’s mother

"My God, in heaven! Michelle Obama is the epitome of the sacred teachings King Solomon's mother passed on to her son. Of all the women in his life his mother's words were the one's he is known for. The words he clung to in his life, and up to his death were his mother's words in his mouth continuing to shape him to the revelation of his Death! Isn't that something to consider?

In the deeper sessions with men sitting in Sacred Teaching Circles I have conducted the revelation of these deep insights into the Sacred Feminine we must all plunge into before our initiations the teachings of Solomon's mother must embed themselves within each man..." © Gregory E. Woods 10.17.12

a shared HISTORY IN PICTURES



1945 John W. Mosley took a photograph of 3 young people in Atlantic city in the Colored section, Chicken Bone beach.

Rima Fakih, Lebanese-American, Miss USA in 2010, astounded the country being authentic underscored the aversion & fear white Americans feel towards Arabs. Why this is is within the histories of the two worlds. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 12.8.15

 

a truth to TERROR

Rima Fakih would not survive the scrutiny of fundamentalists Muslims, or Christians. Unable to see character & integrity beyond exposed flesh doesn't mean exposure is wrong, just a state of being vulnerable. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 1.8.15



Rima Fakih, former Miss USA is Lebanese-American.

 

AGAPE, SLAVERY & INTELLIGENCE

Cletona Williams-AlstonAgape
Sept. 26, 2013
"Dear God, the poster read, ""I remember how my life used to be before I met You. Thank you for finding me!"

 
ONE

This poster stops me from walking away from it. I don't have that sense of being found by God. It was a matter of where my focus was that earmarked the troubled times of my life, but it didn't render void the presence of the Creator. I always had the sense of that presence.

I walked a lot in my dark times, and spent a great deal of time alone and deep in forests. I guess those two factors were or are states of being far removed from being in a city where it is easy to feel disconnected from the vital energies of life in a culture that is compelled to explain God. But, one's state of conscious awareness is his/her story, and many people have to invent a science to perceive the Creator. Perception is a source of fascination and a study of human nature if one is interested in how to understand others. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 9.28.13

TWO

"The way to feel good is to do good. The way to feel successful is to take the actions that bring about success. You cannot truly feel what you do not being truly alive. Be honest and authentic with yourself, with others, and with Life because anything less is just cheating yourself. Spend this day being a unique and enthusiastic expression of life’s goodness. See how much of a positive difference you can make, and experience what a genuine, positive feeling you get from doing so. Seek to add richness to the lives of others and be delighted at how much richness it brings into your own life. Do something good and useful just because it is the right thing to do, and discover how right it feels. Let go of the tiresome fight to gain advantage, and direct your energy toward appreciating and creating goodness. Move beyond the need to prove yourself and focus instead on improving all of life. Give more and more of your own unique goodness to those around you, to the world, and to Life. And feel the outstanding richness as it grows increasingly abundant for you." - Adekola Kevin Odukoya 9.24.13


THREE


Rose Marie Samuels, I know and agree that "True peace is not the absence of war; it is the presence of God."

I would venture further and add that the presence of God is cloak-like because that presence is a constant the way air is constant and breath is consistent with the vibrations of the living. Well, peace is the presence of an awareness within of how the outside presence of Creation and the Creator lives within and through the consistencies and the inconsistencies of our lives. It is a weave. It is the way the land, the Earth, our Mother vibrates within us. It is the way the words of our mouth mingle with vital energies of Creation. It is a creative process. It is a dance. It is Spider Woman. It is the weaving motion of a web connecting all parts of Creation within the soul of the body we live in. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 9.28.13


FOUR


"If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." Psalms 66:18

How true is that, or is it a misunderstanding of Hebrew? How could the Creator not hear his creation moaning under the weight of their wrong doings? If the ear of the Creator is dead to the 'bad heart' of someone there is no redemption. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 9.28.13


FIVE

"First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, ..." 1 Timothy 2:1-5


SIX


The direction found in Hebrews 13:17 "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you..." has spoken to contradicted lives, and been the bane of existence for countless souls over the centuries. To this day it has been a manipulative tool in the hands of craftspeople skilled in selling war to the nation.

Easy it is to manipulate people's thinking and loyalties. It is easier when a person is not prone to study, or inclined towards introspective spirituality that challenges the notion of dominance and spreads out the tenets of one's faith on a white sheet of conscious awareness to 'see' what they actually believe, and is believable. This is the point in the craft of developing one's spirituality that stops many people from moving from belief to knowing.

During slavery times in the Americas this scripture subjugated millions of Africans forced into the Christian faith, and the millions of whites who benefited from slavery suffered as well. It did not work on people's indigenous to this land (Turtle Island) because Native peoples were connected to the land in all the ways the Euro-American was not connected within himself. Indians ran away and fought for the land where their ancestor's bones lay. Slavery and the legacy of the institution, and Western Christianity plays different roles in the mindset and the thinking of the grandchildren of ex-slaves and the generations of white Christians and non-Christians alike who benefit and suffer from slavery and its legacy.

Today's challenge is ethics and integrity. Many people in the work place wrestle with the implications of this scripture as it is applied to keeping their jobs, or doing things that will insure employment, but violates the tenets of their faith. Many a Christian in management has agonized around a company's tendencies to manipulate lives, and made decisions they justified by Hebrew 13:17 they knew to be wrong. In the judicial system and in the military industrial complex ethical conflicts many a Christian lay person wrestles with are between the crude nature of survival, and being a living testament of Jesus Christ. None of these challenges are easy, but leaving one's life to chance isn't either. - Gregory E. Woods, 9.28.13


SEVEN


There is an innocence about subjugating to authority that works for a child, and is cute. But, as adults we have spiritual responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to train and raise children. If subjugating their spirits, and limiting their freedom of spirit to teach them how to be powerless, and submissive to abusive leadership is a religious obligation that is foul. It is evil, and for a child terrifying transitioning from the magic they were born with into a victim, a subject of tyranny, if that is the government with authority over their lives.

Children come into the world with two things: innocence and the knowledge of who they are. This is their Sacred Dream. It is what many are taught to forget, or under value into extinction. That loss of self eventually can turn into soul loss and is the primary reason foreign nations are sending missionaries to work in the United States.

As Americans we live in enormous contradictions, and pulled away from our stances, and proclamations to the world as a global power it is clear what ails us. On another hand the experiences of Europeans stomping upon the 'New World' and killing millions of its inhabitants over the last few centuries has destroyed the promise of new life their God said would come their way should they follow his law. On the other side is the matter of subjugation which in the American lexicon is slavery, or bondage.

It is said that to understand freedom one needs to understand its denials. I don't know who told me that in my younger years, but that becomes an unexplored subject if Hebrews 13:17 is taken literally, or ignorantly.

- Gregory E. Woods 9.28.13


EIGHT

My litmus test to authority is not in my submission to authority because it is over me. My obedience is not blind. I respect and listen closely to the power of my relationship with my own death, the power of my Medicine, what the Creator has imbued me with, and what I know about how power(s) move and shift. My tribal lineage does not have the energy of the lamb. My power animal (and we are all born with one) is not weak. The lamb was foreign to the concept of adulthood and manhood of my People, and deep within my nature I am incapable and unwilling to shape shift my life force into the energy lines of the sheep. It is a fundamental condition, or state of being I was born with and into!

I wrestled against the notion of accepting the symbol of the lamb into me when I was a young man. With my parents as the backdrop of my intellectual and spiritual development it was a ludicrous notion and failed. The text of masculinity and femininity with a lamb's nature does not coincide with the wisdom of being a dominant force of Nature, a parent, a man in the deepest sense of the word, or a warrior. It is not how families are formed or held together. It is a survival skill under monarchies, and for a slave, but a free man? It most certainly was not part of the makeup of Jesus, or any of the patriarchs, or the judges of the ancient Hebrew people. Why, as a man, should I submit to the lamb as a model, teach it to my children, and blindly submit to a governing force that does not have the interests of the People in their heart?

We all saw how that worked out for us as a nation a few of days after 9/11 as our Congress forsook reasonable and intellectual discourse and submitted to the authority of a President, who a few days prior,  was subjected to severe ridicule because of his lack of intellectual, and diplomatic sophistication, and his profound naivety, and his open disdain of the acquisition of knowledge for knowledge's sake. Many Christians justified it with the submissive scripture of Hebrews 13:17 in mind. - Gregory E. Woods



MJ Lindo's Art




titled: "Unyieldingly Sacred" by MJ Lindo

 

"Profound simplicity within a simple story told and upon reflection revealed in a complex way easily understood is the essence of what is sacred." 

- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of the Sacred Medicine Wheels

9.28.13