The Dean’s Blog

Take a look at or read Wednesday’s comments by Attorney General Eric Holder.  Reading newspapers and listening to the news stations, I know that the nation’s AG ticked off a lot of people when, in his prepared remarks, he said, “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.”

Many folks were amped that the Attorney General of the United States called us cowards.  Is it possible for us to be cowards when Americans appear to have leaped to a few significant moments, including the appointment of a Black person as Attorney General? What causes the anger over this comment? And, the tougher question – is Eric Holder right?

It’s worth watching, listening to, or reading Attorney General Holders complete remarks. It’s also worth it to continue a discussion.

Peace.

This month, the Nation designated a s a time to celebrate the 200th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's birth. Last weekend, I spent time re-reading a few of Lincoln's speeches -- what a treat and what an inspiration!  Even the current President gives shout outs to Abraham Lincoln.  Obama has brought President Lincoln alive as a personal role model and as someone we should try to incorporate into our world as an example for the wisdom of living our own lives. Many people want to "touch the good Mr. Lincoln because, on many level, he provided samples to the great remix and noisy conversations about the meaning of  America.

As I read Lincoln, I am often directed to Frederick Douglass -- another serious contributor to the American remix.  He appears as an advisor to President Lincoln and as someone Lincoln called a friend.  As you know, Douglass was a former slave who fought for the end to slavery and for the equal rights of  former slaves and women.  I'm a firm believer that a Barack Obama Presidency could not have existed without the work of Lincoln and Douglass. I'm pleases that we still acknowledge their legacies.

What impresses me is that both of these men were largely self-educated. They came from nothing and did great work throughout their short lives -- they inspire us today. These were also individuals who did great work with words.  Take a moment to read Lincoln and Douglass. You'll want to give them a shout out, too.

Love inspires; love conquers; love takes us higher; love is our power; love is a natural instinct – what I am?  Whatever love is, I am one of those people who refuses to believe that it is out of our control and that it is a matter of fate.  There is plenty of it to go around and we can use it with purpose and in ways that we haven’t imagined.  We can understanding it, learn from it, and teach it.

Let’s talk about love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream kind of way – a bit of musing with plenty of discussion.  What’s your experience with love? How do you see it?

Feel love, give more to others (six words that could be a tweet or text story of love).  Fitting into the text and tweet age, Smith Magazine encourages you to create a Valentine in six words.  Before this Friday’s Coffee & Conversation take a moment to write your six-word love note.  If you can, post it.

Let’s also make a mixtape.  Come with your love song playlist.

See you tomorrow from 3-5 in the Howard Thurman Center to share coffee, stories, songs, and to talk about love.

Peace.

(Photo by Kalman Zabarsky)

At the end of the week, like so many others, I will fall into the tradition of thinking about love and the people I love.  So, amidst the planning for dinners, gatherings, candy deliveries, and sweet words, I thought I'd get my love note out early.  Instead of tagging you with 25 things about me, here are my quick reflections during this season of love.

I encourage you to read of love lost and love found in the Washington Post Magazine.  Last Sunday, the Post put out a Valentine's Fiction issue -- I love it and hope you will too.

I need to re-read Love's Labour's Lost - this is a great week to start.  I love the classics -- Shakespeare's Sonnet 116:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

(Image from the Push My Hat Back weblog)

Seems out of place, but I also like to revisit great socail game-changers and their thoughts about how love has real power and can change us and the world.  One of my favorite points of discussion from Mohandas Gandhi:

Fear and love are contradictory terms. Love is reckless in giving away, oblivious as to what it gets in return. Love wrestles with the world as with the self and ultimately gains mastery over all other feelings. My daily experience, as of those who are working with me, is that every problem lends itself to solution if we are determined to make the law of truth and non-violence the law of life. For truth and non-violence are, to me, faces of the same coin. The law of love will work, just as the law of gravitation will work, whether we accept it or not. Just as a scientist will work wonders out of various applications of the law of nature, even so a man who applies the law of love with scientific precision can work greater wonders.

Finally, take a listen to Al Green's L.O.V.E. I hope love and peace are with you this week and forever.

Here's a nice piece and a guest post from my man, Dominick Reuter:

Thanks Dom.  Thanks Coach. Thanks Team. All the best.

Peace