Sunday is Coming; Sunday Has Come by Ifeoluwa Olawole.

When I am afraid, worried, unsure, I like to think, Sunday is Coming.  I first learnt of this term after Hilary Clinton lost the election in 2016, in the email her pastor sent to her a day after she lost the elector. Let me explain. I think about how Jesus's disciples and friends must have felt the day (Friday) he passed away. The shame, the anger, the loneliness, the humiliation, the worry, the depth of the loss, the confusion. They had been following this man around for so long, proclaiming his royalty and sovereignty, proclaiming that he was King. Then, just like that he died, in what was a drawn out, humiliating, painful process. And apart from dealing with the loss of their leader and friend, they had to deal with the aftermath. In this kind of context, hope is lost. With this in mind, that day must have been a disaster.

Even though Jesus had told them beforehand that three days later all would be restored, in all the chaos they either forgot or just could not see a possibility of it.

If only they knew Sunday was coming. If only they knew life, redemption, joy, celebration were on the way,  then perhaps they would have gotten through Friday with just a little more peace. Because like he had said, indeed on Sunday he rose.

Amazing Grace
how sweet that sound
that saved a wretch like me
I was once lost
but now I am found
was blind...
but now... I see

Friday can literally be anything. Friday can be that depression that just would not leave you. It could be a cancer diagnosis. Friday could be job loss. Or, Friday, most notably, could be a deadly, highly infectious novel virus that we don't understand, but that has brought the world to its knees. Yet,

Sunday is Coming.

I like to take that approach towards life. The idea that though now it looks and feels bleak, laughter is coming. Joy is coming. Celebration is coming. Freedom is coming. And there is no better time to share this than now. So while it may be Friday now, Sunday is coming.

Sunday has come.

Please note that this is metaphorical, I don't know the exact day Jesus died but Friday represents whatever that exact day was, okay sweeeties? Okay. Let's continue. As the above email mentions, life is filled with so many Fridays. I am certain we can get through those Fridays if  we keep in mind that Sunday is on the way.

Some people noted there is no point to Easter because the Bible does not mention it or celebrate it or something. But the Bible also doesn't mention birthdays and wedding anniversaries, but we celebrate them anyway, so what really is your point?

Anyway, as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and the redemption it brought, it should empower us with hope and refocus our gaze on the fact that just as Sunday came for the disciples, Sunday is coming for us too.

I will leave you with this powerful rendition of Amazing Grace by Andrea Bocelli earlier today in Duomo di Milano.

Happy Easter, people!

Love,

I

My Ordeal with Capital One Bank.

Mr. Richard D. Fairbank, the Founder and CEO of Capital One Financial Corporation must hear this!

Having been a customer of Capital One Bank for several years, I never imagined a time would come when the bank in Delaware would suddenly suffer some form of amnesia in regard to my identity. My first “crime” in this matter is that I'm a Nigerian-American. The second one is that I dare to make some Nigerian-related transactions with my credit card. I tried to buy a flight ticket for my wife who is coming from Nigeria. And I tried to pay for a Nigerian passport with the card. Of course, both of these transactions were promptly declined. It has always been like this each time I try to make a transaction that relates to Nigeria. And I firmly believe that whatever negative experience the bank has had with some few unscrupulous Nigerians is not a license for them to harass or stereotype me or other innocent Nigerians. That was why, this time, I made a proactive call to the bank to inform them about the intended transactions in a bid to forestall the problem that is now at hand. Unknown to me though, it was the call that led to their “suspicion”. Yet, no one had the courtesy via a phone call or e-mail to alert me that my credit card account has been suspended because I intended to make payments for some Nigerian-related transactions.

After they declined the transactions, I called the bank and for the first 30 minutes, I was given the run-around on the phone by the “Customer Service”. Finally, I was transferred to the “Fraud Unit”. And there, my ordeal escalated as I was made to feel like a criminal. In the process of “confirming my identity”, one guy said he wanted to first confirm my phone number. After putting me on hold for several minutes, he came back on the line to admit his daftness; he could not confirm my phone number because I was talking with him on the same phone! The matter soon assumed a worse dimension when one guy who introduced himself as “James” came on the line. James was practically and obviously having fun at my expense. He did everything verbally to ridicule and stereotype me under the pretext of “confirming my identity”. One moment, James was asking me about the type and color of my car and the addresses of all the houses I had lived in the past ten years. And the next moment, he was telling me, “…people like you go about with expired drivers’ license…”

Today is the twelfth day that my Capital One credit card has been suspended, all because I am a Nigerian-American!      

Xenophobic Attacks in South African: A Sad Lesson in Irony.

Right now, many Africans are victims of xenophobic attacks at the hands of their black South African hosts. The reasons adduced to these heinous crimes against humanity by the black South Africans are ignorant at best. One claim is that they are being deprived of good jobs by the African immigrants. If that doesn’t sound silly, another excuse is that many of the men among the African immigrants are getting married to South African women. And for these reasons, whatever they are worth, African immigrants are being hunted down like animals in Durban, Johannesburg and other cities in South Africa by the indigenous black people.

Like many Africans across the world, my heart aches at this very unfortunate irony playing out before our very eyes. Were these not the same black South Africans for which many of us Africans sacrificed financially, morally and physically? Back then in high school, every now and then, we would contribute money from our meager pocket money for onward transmission to the African National Congress (ANC) in the fight and struggles against the then apartheid regime.

Poor global community. People, the world over, may seem nonchalant at this strange form of genocide. But I guess, just like the rest of us Africans, they too must have been finding it as a most embarrassing incident. As it is now, only the African Union leaders can best handle this sad issue. In the meantime though, it’s high time someone reminded those ignorant black South Africans that without the rest of us Africans, they would still be wallowing in a modern-day form of abject slavery by now. And back then, didn’t they have a permanent sad expression plastered on their pathetic faces? Now, they are flexing some lazy muscles at the people that should have been honored as saviors. Nelson Mandela must be rolling uncomfortably in his grave.

Megabus: Travelers Beware!

If you must travel by a “Megabus” (operated by the Coach USA), try to first go through the following check-list:
Is the bus road-worthy?
Are the tires of the bus in good condition?
Are you prepared to wait in one spot forever in case the bus develops a mechanical fault?
If only my daughter had done the above, she would not have been subjected to the stressful and traumatic experience of yesterday.
The young lady had the misfortune of getting on a Megabus at Washington DC on her way to Delaware. Thirty minutes into the journey, the bus developed a fault and for several hours, the passengers were stranded on the highway as they waited “forever” for a mechanic to come fix the problem. In the meantime, the hapless passengers had no water to drink and no food to eat.
The most pathetic aspect of it all was that Megabus or CoachUSA had no contact address or phone number by which the passengers could reach the corporate office of the establishment. The company’s website itself only contained the various ways tickets could be booked and money paid. The customers’ reviews were however a major pointer to the quality of service offered by Megabus. Many of the reviews were absolutely negative with several horror stories
When my daughter finally arrived her destination (Delaware), she was about eight hours late!

FBI Investigates KKK Members That Killed Black Couples in 1946.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2955711/FBI-investigates-KKK-suspects-lynching-black-men-alive.html

Click on the above link to read the news story.

Once in a while, I meditate over what it must have been like for black people to live in the Jim Crow era of the United States. I especially wonder what kind of a harrowing experience every black person must have had in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and other evil, blood-dotted places. Those were places where being black meant having a death sentence hang over a person’s head for no reason other than having a wrong skin color. What a horrifying life!

On the other hand, I imagined what a privileged, “wonderful” life it must have been for white folks in those sad days. All a white person needed to feel superior to “all those blacks” was merely his or her skin color. Back then, it didn’t matter how smart, educated or great a black person was, he or she would still be considered inferior by the most stupid, derelict of all human species who merely happened to be created white.

As for the sick, cowardly members of the KKK, they could easily be placed on the same pedestal with the lunatics and animals in ISIS and other Islamic terrorists of the 21^st Century. Many of the KKK members must have died by now. Nevertheless, I wish it was possible to know the fates of their miserable souls while in transit in the Cosmic Plane. From the point of view of Metaphysics, one can only contemplate what horror, sadness and bundles of regrets that each of those rotten souls must be going through “ad infinitum”! And for those of them who would have since re-incarnated, it can never be anything less than hell on earth for them in one form or the other. At least, this is what the Law of Karma is all about.

Between the Lives of Eric Garner and a Cat.

This is surely not the best of times to be a cop, especially a white cop, in the United States of America. The whole nation is still reeling from the shock and the ensuing riots arising from the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed young black man, by a white cop in Ferguson. And now, this killing of Eric Garner, another unarmed black man in New York!

As a daily, heavily-armed law enforcement officer, the use of a deadly force will always be my last resort. One can therefore wonder why any cop will readily resort to the use of a deadly force at the slightest threat to their ego or feeling instead of life. By the way, whatever happens to the use of Tasers or cap stun? Must cops always go for the kill over every incident without first assessing the supposed threats? And, in the case of Eric Garner, when it became apparent that the hapless man was choking for breath, why did the cops not bother to apply a CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation)?

It was not long ago that a Brooklyn man was hunted down until he was arrested by the police for kicking a cat. The invectives and racist comments that were directed at the guy was extremely intense. In a bid to appease those people as they cried and condemned the man, the Brooklyn district attorney hurriedly proceeded with plans to prosecute the cat-kicking guy for animal cruelty. The message of that incident to the world at large was simply this: In the United States, the life of a cat is sacrosanct, something you don’t want to mess with.

Since that incident though, two black men and a 12-year-old black kid have been murdered in cold blood by police officers who did not exercise due diligence while performing their duties. Sadly, the affected cops have since been declared blameless by the grand juries set up to look into the two separate incidents. The cops and members of the two separate grand juries may be beating their chests proudly for jobs well-done. But unwittingly, they have sent a combined message to the outside world that: In God’s own country, the life of a black man is worthless, not even worth a dime when compared to the life of a cat.

http://youtu.be/g-xHqf1BVE4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10 Survival Tips for Young Black Folks in the United States.

In the wake of the ridiculous verdict of the St. Louis County grand jury on the cold-blooded shooting of Michael Brown, here are ten survival tips for young black folks to consider:

1. Stay away as far as possible from any city or town that has no favorable racial diversity in its law enforcement agency.


2. If you’re already stuck in such a city or town, avoid driving in the evening as much as possible.


3. Don’t go driving about with your car loaded with black friends. It’s a sure invitation to racial profiling at the hands of white cops.


4. If you get pulled over by a white cop, make sure to place your two hands calmly on the steering wheel as he or she approaches the car. And put a “zipper” on your lips!


5. When the cop asks for your driver’s license, registration and insurance, gently inform him or her when you’re about to reach for the required documents.


6. Make sure to say “Yes sir/ma’am” or “No sir/ma’am” to any question asked.


7. It’s DUMB to swear, curse or argue with anyone that has a gun. If you disagree with a cited violation or traffic ticket, keep your feeling to yourself. You can always go to court later to argue it out.


8. Please NOTE that cops are humans too. They have prejudices, frustrations, miserable lives and anger management issues just like other mortals.


9. Yes, this is a land of freedom and liberty. But if you rely on that slogan to confront an armed cop (legitimately or not) you may be doing so at your own peril.


10. And, lest I forget, there can never be any change in this God’s own country unless you and I make it a duty to always go VOTE at every election!

These are times that call for common sense. It’s better to appear stupid and be alive than to “show off” and end up six feet below!

Things to Do When You've Been Betrayed.

After being betrayed, most of us want two things, usually at the same time. We want to wound the person who hurt us—as deeply and as excruciatingly—as we've been wounded, and we want to rise above the situation and offer that person forgiveness. But neither of these tactics work. Wounding words tend to boomerang and make you feel as terrible as the person you wanted to hurt. Forgiveness, especially if halfhearted, tends to come off as condescension.

There are actions, though, that you can take to can heal yourself. Every hurt has its own story, and so does every healing. But we can say this: You can heal yourself when you've filled the hole left behind by a betrayal, and you can heal the other person when you sincerely drop the need for revenge.

Remember, the only betrayals that inflict damage are the ones where an intimate bond has been torn. Love makes you merge with another person, able to feel their emotions as keenly as you feel your own. If you have experienced such bonding, you know that it is a kind of higher reality—and when that bond is ripped apart, it's as if you've lost half of yourself. So how can you get out of torment and find yourself again?

1. Gain some detachment. Stand back and view yourself as if you were the helper, not the victim.


2.  Don't indulge in emotions you cannot afford. Don't act as if you’re feeling worse than you really are—or better.

3. Make a plan for emotional recovery. Look at where you hurt, feel wounded or see yourself as victimized, then set out to heal these areas. Don't rely simply on letting time do it for you.

4. Feel the hole inside and grieve over it—but promise yourself that you will fill it.

5. Seek a confidant who has survived the same betrayal and has come out on the other side.

6. Work toward a tomorrow that will be better than yesterday. Don't fixate on the past or what might have been.

7. Counter self-pity by being of service to someone else. Counter regret by seeking out activities that build your self-esteem.

Written by Deepak Chopra.

When a Laughter Became Very Costly.

What really is this world turning into? A few days ago in Gary, Indiana, a man returned home to discover that the place had been burglarized by some unknown burglar(s). Naturally, he felt violated by the incident. The man was said to be very upset and going on the street, knocking on doors of neighbors to inquire about possible identification of the perpetrators of the crime.

At that moment, a 13-year-old boy named Kobe Jones, who was sitting on a porch, reportedly burst into a raucous laughter as the victim of burglary went about yelling over his loss. And in a violent reaction to the boy’s laughter which he considered very disrespectful, the man reached for his gun and shot the boy nine times. The boy died instantly. The man has since been arrested.

The Dilemma of a Perfect Gentleman.

I have always believed in the wise words of sages.

I particularly treasure the admonition that a woman of virtue can consider herself, a precious jewel, that must not be given out to the swine of a man, lest he tramples his foot on her. Another word of wisdom is to never bother teaching a pig how to sing. The effort will be a waste of your time and the pig will end up getting angry.

What however happens where a "precious jewel" is handed to an appreciative gentleman who not only loves, adores and cherishes her but also gets over-protective, lest her great values be tarnished? I guess the sages of old would have expected only sheer gratitude from such a woman; except that in today’s world, there is tendency for the woman to react negatively rather than gratefully. And trying , under that circumstance, to explain the situation to an ungrateful woman can only get the man frustrated while the woman gets hassled.

The Song That Got Me in Trouble.

[embed]http://youtu.be/P47ZQtIHTqc[/embed]

This video reminds me of an incident in 1986. I was the Disc Jockey at a friend’s bachelor’s eve party. Everything was going smoothly more so, with many of the guests dancing so beautifully.

At one particular moment when the groom was ushered onto the dancing floor, some women rushed forward to dance with and encircle him to the song, “Ain't No Stopping Us Now” by McFadden & Whitehead.

At this stage, one woman left the circle to approach the groom for a one-on-one dance. She was the groom’s immediate ex-girlfriend. Earlier, the groom and some of us were really surprised that the woman could summon the courage to attend the party, especially since their break-up was very bitter.

As the D.J., I had already arranged some albums on the dual turn-table for my convenience. So, as the current track was rounding up, I released the next album on a different turn-table and the track was, “I Don’t Love You Anymore…” by Teddy Pendergrass. Subsequently, I was engrossed in arranging more albums on the previous turn-table. But according to the groom and other friends, while the crowd went crazy on hearing the song by Teddy Pendergrass, the groom’s ex-girlfriend was seen fuming at me because of the contents of the track blaring over the speakers.

All I knew was that the woman suddenly appeared in the Disc Jockey’s cubicle, her eyes filled with fury. In spite of her attitude, I asked “Hey…how are you doing?”

“Oh, you want to know how I am doing?” she asked with a sneer.

I nodded without a word.

And boom…she threw a glass of beer in my face!

“Now, you know how I am feeling?” she screamed in tears. “I know you don’t like me…and you played that stupid music just to ridicule me…”

 

 

 

The Inevitability of Disappointment.

“Disappointment is inevitable. But to become discouraged, there's a choice I make. God would never discourage me. He would always point me to himself to trust him. Therefore, my discouragement is from Satan. As you go through the emotions that we have, hostility is not from God, bitterness, unforgiveness, all of these are attacks from Satan.” - Charles Stanley.

 

 

Black America's Invisible Crisis by Lois Beckett.

In America, violent crime is down significantly since 1993, when the nation’s gun homicide rate hit its peak. But there are still neighborhoods in cities like Oakland, Detroit, New Orleans, and Newark, New Jersey, where shootings are a constant occurrence and where the per capita murder rates are drastically higher than the rest of the country. Some 3,500 American troops were killed during the eight-year war in Iraq. Within the same time period, 3,113 people were killed on the streets of Philadelphia. According to FBI data, between 2002 and 2012 Chicago lost more than 5,000 people to homicide—that’s nearly three times the number of Americans killed in action in Afghanistan…

Over the past 20 years, medical researchers have found new ways to quantify the effects of the relentless violence on America’s inner cities. They surveyed residents who had been exposed to violence in cities such as Detroit and Baltimore and noticed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): nightmares, obsessive thoughts, a constant sense of danger. In a series of federally funded studies in Atlanta, researchers interviewed more than 8,000 inner-city residents, most of them African-American. Two thirds of respondents said they had been violently attacked at some point in their lives. Half knew someone who had been murdered. Of the women interviewed, a third had been sexually assaulted. Roughly 30 percent of respondents had had symptoms consistent with PTSD—a rate as high or higher than that of veterans of wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.



Experts are only now beginning to trace the effects of untreated PTSD on neighborhoods that are already struggling with unemployment, poverty and the devastating impact of the war on drugs. Women—who are twice as likely as men to develop PTSD, according to the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—are more likely to show signs of anxiety and depression and to avoid places that remind them of the trauma. In children, PTSD symptoms can sometimes be misdiagnosed as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Kids with PTSD may compulsively repeat some part of the trauma while playing games or drawing, have trouble in their relationships with family members, and struggle in school. “School districts are trying to educate kids whose brains are not working the way they should be working because of trauma,” says Marleen Wong, Ph.D., the former director of mental health services, crisis intervention, and suicide prevention for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Men with PTSD are more likely to have trouble controlling their anger, and to try to repress their trauma symptoms with alcohol or drugs. Though most people with post-traumatic stress are not violent, PTSD is also associated with an increased risk of aggression and violent behavior, including domestic violence. The Atlanta researchers found that civilians they interviewed who had PTSD were more likely to have been charged with a violent crime and incarcerated than other people of similar backgrounds without PTSD—but the cause and effect behind this wasn’t clear. For some people, PTSD symptoms may have contributed to their involvement in the criminal justice system, while others may have developed PTSD later. “Neglect of civilian PTSD as a public health concern may be compromising public safety,” the researchers wrote.

Culled from Essence, October, 2014.

 

Another Victim of Racial Profiling.

“I know they killed my son… this was wrong and it was cold-hearted.”

To many readers, the above statement will sound familiar. But no, it was not made by the mother of Trayvon Martin (February 5, 1995 – February 26, 2012) a 17-year-old African American teenager from Miami Gardens, Florida who was fatally shot by an idiot who was so prejudiced as to assume that all young black men were potential criminals.



Rather, the anguished statement was made only last Saturday by Lesley McSpadden (shown above) the mother of Michael Brown, the latest victim of a racial profiling.

Michael Brown was an eighteen-year-old African American whose life was cut short by the bullets fired by a police officer in as the young man walked down a street in Ferguson, Missouri. The time of the sad incident was reported as 2:15pm on a bright Saturday afternoon. The worse aspect of it all was that the young man was merely a few days away from starting classes at Vatterott College.



According to eye witnesses, Brown was stopped by a police officer for reasons still unknown. But the people around the scene recollected seeing the officer making attempts at dragging Brown into his patrol car. As the officer did this, Brown was said to break into a run while the police officer began shooting until the young man felled to the ground. From all accounts so far, the victim was not armed.



A friend of Michael Brown was heard saying, "Everyone else wanted to be a football player, a basketball player…he wanted to own his own business.”

"He said he wasn't going to end up like some people on the streets.” another friend, Hershel Johnson, told the CNN. “He was going to get an education…he was going to make his life a whole lot better."

Unfortunately, the police officer that shot Michael Brown did not allow the fulfillment of the young man’s destiny.

The local NCAAP and other community leaders had asked federal officials to get involved in the racially-charged shooting. And the latest news on the incident is that the FBI will conduct its own investigation in addition to the one already under way by St. Louis county police. The FBI’s focus will be on whether the civil rights of Michael Brown were violated.

 

Holding on to Anger

"Holding on to anger 
is like grasping a hot coal
with the intent of throwing
it at someone else;
you are the one who gets burned." 
- The Buddha.