Yecheilyah

The Power of Purpose

“The obstacles you encounter rarely have a coherent purpose of their own. They are just there, inconvenient and troublesome to be sure, but with nothing of substance to sustain them.
You, on the other hand, have the extreme advantage of being able to choose and follow a definite purpose. By so doing, instead of randomly scattering your energy and efforts, you can sharply focus and powerfully concentrate all that energy, all those efforts in a consistent direction.
Soft, gentle raindrops falling over a wide area will always yield to the contours and obstructions of the landscape. Yet when those tiny drops of water are concentrated into a mighty river, they have the power to cut through any obstruction.
In the same way, when your thoughts, feelings and actions are centered around a clear and consistent purpose, nothing can hold you back. The random and disjointed exertions of circumstance are no match for a living and unwavering purpose.
The problems, the frustrations, the challenges and the difficult situations come and go. A steadfast, meaningful purpose will carry you successfully through them all.
Give your life a decided advantage over all the burdensome circumstances you encounter. Live each moment in the service of the highest and most positive purpose you can imagine.”

— Ralph Marston

Mankind is an Arrogant Creation

Mankind is an arrogant creation.
He walks proudly on both legs,
almost as if the wind carries him
His head is tilted toward the sky that he curses with his lips
But the clouds mock him
And the seas have admitted, he is foolish in his ways
He possess intellect, but his intelligence has seated him on the right side of fools
knowledge, wisdom, and understanding has slipped from his fingers; escaping his memory
He has no parachute to which to catch them, and he does not desire to
He is an arrogant creation, man is
Everything is thankful except him
He does not understand that what elevates the trees,
birds,
and even the wind is their willingness to bow in submission to love
to fill the vessel that is himself with compassion
to walk an orderly path
to wrap oneself outwardly and inwardly around it like a fetus in its mother’s womb
to bleed it’s law
and conform to the shape and the will of love
but he is greater in comparison
man is
And what compares to love?
He cannot count the number of hairs on his head
Measure the depth of the sea
And the width of the wind
Yet, he is greater than love?
Yes
It is clear
deception has robbed him of the truth…
because mankind is an arrogant creation

Guest Feature – A Modern Day Slave Plantation Exists, and It’s Thriving in the Heart of America – Part 1

This post is part of a 3 day Special Feature Post on ThePBSblog, located under our Articles and Guest Feature section. The author’s name is Laura Dimon. Laura graduated from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2013. She has been published in the Economist, the Atlantic, and the Daily Beast. I ran across her article on the Prison system and its striking similarity to the Slavery Plantation and thought I’d share it here. However, it is a lengthy article so I will be breaking it down into 3 separate post to give you room to process the information. I will also wait until after this series (Friday 10/17/14) before adding my own commentary, though you may comment after each segment as you wish.

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It was 1972. Thousands of American troops were battling communist forces in Vietnam. Nixon had won re-election by a landslide, but Watergate would soon usher in his demise. Space travel and technology were advancing rapidly.
Change was brewing across America, but one place stood still, frozen in time: Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as Angola. When Robert King arrived that year, he felt as though he’d stepped into the past.

Angola sits 50 miles northwest of Baton Rouge. It’s the largest maximum-security facility in the United States and one of the country’s most notorious prisons. In the book The Life and Legend of Leadbelly, the authors wrote, “Tough criminals allegedly broke down when they received a sentence to Angola. … None of them wanted to be sent to a prison where 1 of every 10 inmates annually received stab wounds and which routinely seethed with black-white confrontations.”

Angola’s expanse covers a vast 28 square miles — larger than the size of Manhattan. Tucked away in a bend of the Mississippi River, it’s surrounded by water and swamp on three sides. It’s an isolated penal village — the nearest town 30 miles away — and it’s the only penitentiary in the country where staff members live on site. Generation after generation grow up, live and die on Angola’s land.

When King, now 71, arrived at Angola, his first impression of it was that it resembled a slave plantation, he said. And it used to be just that. Its name is derived from the home country of the slaves who used to work the land. Today, the comparison remains sadly accurate: Inmates are disproportionately black. They’re forced into hard labor and monitored closely by armed white staff on horseback. There is a sex slave trade behind the bars and many black inmates are deprived of basic constitutional rights. King landed a tough lot in life: He was born black in Louisiana in 1942. In his 2008 book From the Bottom of the Heap, he wrote, “I was born in the U.S.A. Born black, born poor. Is it any wonder that I have spent most of my life in prison?” He went to Angola when he was 18 for a murder he did not commit and remained there for 31 years, 29 of which he spent in solitary confinement, before he was finally freed in 2001.

*Note: Image Credits: AP, Peter Puna, Robert King

There’s a Poem Somewhere

There’s a poem somewhere waiting to be heard.
There’s a child out there confused and afraid so he waits and she waits to be heard.
There’s a man out there who wants to know truth
but this world is so tempting that his dreams he’d rather pursue
there’s a poem out there somewhere that speaks to you.
There’s a student out there who refuses to sit still in class because he refuses to accept that his people are at the bottom of the social class,
he refuses to accept that his history goes no further than the days of slavery’s past
there’s a young lady out there whose virginity didn’t last.
Because see,
somewhere,
there’s a young woman who was taught that her materialistic was much more precious than her body so she sold her body,
for cash.
somewhere out there a young man’s innocence didn’t last…
Somewhere a young boy is told that it didn’t matter who he shared his love with
that it didn’t matter if he sexed ‘em young or old for the rest of his days…
there’s a young man out there who can’t understand why and how he’s got AIDS.

There’s a false prophet out there waiting to get paid.
There’s a couple out there who just can’t get along
there’s a father out there who can’t leave his home, the home occupied with bars for far too long.
There’s a mother out there who can’t sing her song,
her song of new life that has lingered in the air for far too long.
And a grandfather who can’t take depression for much too long and a…
there’s a…
poem somewhere…
out there……that sings these songs.
There’s a brother out there who’s tired of being alone.
There’s a sister out there in search for a home.
There’s a nation out there that just does not belong,
in this world.
But there’s a Power out there who hears these cries
and a Truth out there that squashed those lies
and there are many prophets, they too have cried.
Somewhere now,
somewhere……
somehow …..
somewhere here,
this poem right now
There’s someone out there who hears these songs…
and their poem is right now,
so to say somewhere……
I guess
I was wrong.

A Writer’s Art

“A writer – and, I believe, generally all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Twenty-Four Conversations with Borges: Interviews by Roberto Alifano 1981-1983

Perception

“See with your mind; feel with your heart.”

Save those Soap Scraps!

Yall know the feeling, you get down to those tiny pieces of soap you can no longer use and you throw them away. After all, they can become unsightly to the eyes after while, not enough to cover your body anyway right? Wrong! Save those soap scraps!

Today, we’re going to learn how to make new bars of soap from recycled soap scraps. It’s super easy and can save money on those rainy days (I suggest storing them away until you really need them). You will need:

Soap Scraps
Small Pan
Water
Olive Oil
Soap Mold
Knife

The first thing you’ll want to do is to start saving those tiny scraps in some kind of dish or container. Save them until you have at least enough to fill one cup.

When you’re ready, take your scraps and put them in the small pan, add water.

You’re going to let this soak for one complete day, stirring occasionally. Don’t panic when the soap melts down, that’s what it’s supposed to do.

After your soap has had its bath, bring the soap soup to a boil, watch and stir occasionally so that it does not burn.

When it comes to a boil remove from heat and stir in about a tablespoon of olive oil ( if there are any additional ingredients you want to add, such as food coloring or essential oil, do it now).

Pour this mixture into a greased (so it doesn’t stick) soap mold of choice, let harden. (If you’re using the soap mold pictured at the top, which I also happen to use, let it sit under a bowl or small pot for spills. I suggest securing a more secure soap mold otherwise. I intend to upgrade myself).

Cut into any size

Mine aren’t exactly pretty, but so far I have accumulated 4 bars of soap from our old soap scraps. I would have had more but I was just being lazy. Don’t sleep on this because you have it right now, but soap and toilet paper are key necessities people never seem to have available during emergency’s. While Water and Food are the most important, wouldn’t it be great to pull out a new bar of soap too? Even if you don’t need it, it can be useful to trade for what you do need. I think I have enough to make at least two more bars today. Six bars of soap without spending a dime, imagine that. 🙂

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