I don’t know how to feel half-heartedly
how to passion
sparsely
how to love raindrops at a time.
I don’t know how to half
shine.
So I apologize.
I am sorry if my sun
burned your skin.
If I came in too hot
or if I am sometimes too cold
a forest of ice
and long blades of frozen grass
bowing under the weight
of bitter winds.
A breath of vapor
purple lips
and chattering teeth.
I promise you that this heart of stone
is really just flesh
learning to beat one pulse at a time
just don’t ask me to half
shine.
I don’t know how to feel half-heartedly
I cannot promise not to love you
dangerously
for I am all
or nothing.
I’ve learned that caring about what other people think of me is an unnecessary burden that I do not have to carry. People will see you how they want to see you. If they think you are a bad person they will only see bad. If they think you are a good person, they will only see good (no matter how deep they have to search for the light.) You can let people walk all over you and there are still some who will say that you are not flat enough. So, you may as well be authentically and unapologetically you because, in the words of Najawa Zebian, “those mountains you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.”
Listen to ‘You Will Lose People’ now on Soundcloud and be sure to subscribe for notification of new episodes.
The trial is the mask triumph wears until we are ready to receive what has always been ours. We live in a world where faith has lost its meaning, its vigor, its gloss. Woe to those who walk the Earth when faith has lost its shine. Who are we when faith has lost its power? Dare us to believe that something we cannot see is still ours. I dare you to believe that what you cannot see is still yours. What you cannot taste is still flavor. What you cannot hear is still music. We are far too busy chasing opportunities that aren’t ours to chase, forcing connections and misunderstanding the link between pain and growth. So we miscarry our blessings because of the labor pains. Too caught up in disappointment and heartache to endure the struggle long enough to find the strength. Too physical to see the spiritual. Too impatient to wait for what has not yet come. Too anxious to see that everything we are trying to be we already are and that everything we need, is already ours.
Thanks so much Sally for the update! Guys, be sure to stop by Sally’s place for books updated from Alexis Rose, Sue Coletta, Barb Taub, K. D. Dowdall and myself.
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It’s been a minute but I am back with another PBS Blog Podcast. Today we are talking about the language of love. The language you use when you speak about yourself is what is eventually manifested in your life.
I AM a PUBLISHER. I WILL publish books. I CAN publish books. I MUST publish books.
I AM paying this bill. I WILL pay this bill. I CAN pay this bill. I MUST pay this bill.
See how powerful these statements are as compared to: I want to publish books, I wish I could publish books….? Sounds kinda weak now right? Right.
When we start to infuse this kind of language into our lives we take back control of how we feel.
Listen to Language of Love now on Soundcloud and don’t forget to subscribe for notification of new episodes.
Welcome back to Black History Fun Facts where I am still not finished with my original article (lol), but I got you covered.
Now, we are familiar with Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and many of the writers and musicians of The Harlem Renaissance Movement. What we are not always familiar with are the painters, photographers, and sculptors. That is why when I find someone great, I like to highlight them.
Before we go on, take a moment and dig into your purse, wallet or coin jar (or coin purse….I know some of ya’ll still have them!) Wherever you keep your change, pick out a dime.
In the 1920s, Selma Burke became one of the African American women of the Harlem Renaissance through her relationship with the writer Claude McKay. The two shared a Manhattan apartment but McKay was mean, destroying her work when he didn’t like it, and the relationship was a strange one. Nonetheless, it was through Claude that Burke got introduced to the Harlem community. She studied under another black woman sculptor of the movement, Augusta Savage.
Selma Burke in her studio, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0100403.
An educator, Burke later taught at the Harlem Community Art Center and founded the Selma Burke Art School in New York City and the Selma Burke Art Center in Pittsburgh. (This makes her one of my heroes since I do want to start my own school one day.) Burke is most famous for her 1944 sculpture of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which was the model for his image on the dime, though she never received credit for it. Only now are people starting to recognize that she was the inspiration behind the image.
Burke’s sculpting of the image came about as part of a contest, where she wrote the White House stating that she could not sculpt the image from a photo alone. The White House responded and granted her a sitting with the president. The credit for the plaque was given to U.S. Mint Chief Engraver John Sinnock but it was Burke who created the original design. Burke also sculpted Booker T. Washington and later, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Burke made sculpture by shaping white clay from her parents’ farm as a child. After being educated at what is now Winston-Salem State University and trained as a nurse at St. Agnes Hospital Nursing School in Raleigh, Burke moved to New York City to work as a private nurse.
“Selma Burke was born on December 31, 1900, in Mooresville, North Carolina, the seventh of 10 children of Neil and Mary Colfield Burke. Her father was an AME Church Minister who worked on the railroads for additional income. As a child, she attended a one-room segregated schoolhouse and often played with the riverbed clay found near her home. She would later describe the feeling of squeezing the clay through her fingers as the first encounter with sculpture, saying “It was there in 1907 that I discovered me.” – Wikipedia
After completing a Masters of Fine Arts at Columbia University in 1941, Burke began to teach art, first at the Harlem Community Art Center and later at schools she founded in New York and Pittsburgh.
Burke’s last monumental work, a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Marshall Park in Charlotte, was completed in 1980. Selma Burke died in 1995 in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
The PBS Blog 