{"id":130,"date":"2013-11-07T15:44:25","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T23:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/?p=130"},"modified":"2015-03-20T14:12:57","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T21:12:57","slug":"soulfulness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/soulfulness\/","title":{"rendered":"Soulfulness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>(This is a re-post of a previously published page on 8\/28\/2013)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>August 28, 1963 and the march on Washington, where was I then? I don\u2019t even remember hearing Martin Luther King\u2019s speech when it was delivered. Did I miss the broadcast? Or was I too involved with preparations for my junior year of college to notice? I remember being intimidated by the course of study facing me in my chosen major. The subsequent two years would be consumed with the Greek philosophers and their successors in modern times from Descartes and Kant to the existentialists. My brain would be tasked as well by the syllogisms of Thomas Aquinas and the theological contemplations of Thomas Merton, men truly mindful and lofty of soul. But was my mind grounded by exposure to ideas that seemed as expansive as galaxies flying apart? Upon my eventual graduation from college, I toured Europe with my favorite aunt, a beautiful woman only 14 years older than myself and far wiser. During that time together, she began the process of deconstructing everything I thought I had learned. After that jolting experience, I returned home less sure of the academic template I assumed would guide me in the world. And then I met a sweet and charming young black woman who slammed the last bolt in my coffin of lifeless ideas. She startled me with her half-playful remark, \u201cWhat you lack is soul.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Listening to Dr. King\u2019s most famous speech today reminded me of what we have all gained in the last 50 years. At that time, he urged non-blacks to view his people differently, recognizing that \u201ctheir freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom\u201d and \u201ctheir destiny is part of our destiny.\u201d Referring to his people, he called them \u201cveterans of creative suffering\u201d and the black man, \u201can exile in his own land.\u201d He wasn\u2019t Moses leading his tribe to the Promised Land somewhere else. Most blacks have more tenure on this continent than any other group, except for Native Americans. But they did not come here by choice, but in chains. Their suffering under those conditions could be called \u201ccreative\u201d in the sense that it brought forth the dignity of their human spirit and its capability to rise above pain and oppression\u2014what came to be called \u201csoul.\u201d Today, we now call black people African-Americans; for they did indeed bring something from Africa very integral to contemporary America. We have all benefited not only from their excellence in the arts and athletics, but also in the awakening they affected in the conscience of all Americans. The President referred to the \u201ccoalition of conscience,\u201d and rightly so. With the slaves\u2019 freedom came the beginning of freedom for the persecutor from the dehumanizing bondage to injustice. The march on Washington 50 years ago helped extend our moral boundaries along a new trajectory that would eventually include peoples of all colors, race, gender and sexual orientation. That trajectory is our new shared destiny. When Dr. King spoke of brotherhood and non-violent change, he was motivated by compassion and the spiritual impetus of an oppressed but soulful people. Like all suppressed groups through history, blacks could either unite around vindicated rage or pull together in goodwill to oppose injustice with courage and faith in the goodness of their fellow human beings. Truly, it wasn\u2019t just \u201csoul\u201d music that African-Americans brought to all Americans, but a new collective consciousness.<\/p>\n<p>Two women rescued me from the literate idiocy of purposeless ideas. The younger woman, a passionate African-American, touched my heart with her own and seeded it with compassion. What we have all gained from the \u201cveterans of creative suffering\u201d is a renewed awareness of the brotherhood and sisterhood we all share\u2014our common soulfulness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(This is a re-post of a previously published page on 8\/28\/2013) August 28, 1963 and the march on Washington, where was I then? I don\u2019t even remember hearing Martin Luther King\u2019s speech when it was delivered. Did I miss the broadcast? Or was I too involved with preparations for my junior year of college to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-domesticissues"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3UqUK-26","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1188,"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions\/1188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}