Eldrick (Tiger) Woods

“All I wanna say is that they don’t really care about us!”  I don’t care whether they call us… African-American, black, people of color or even the N-word, it boggles my mind that in the United States there is still a culture set on destroying anyone of us who gains a tremendous degree of fame and fortune. I suppose boggle is not the verb I should use because I am not overwhelmed or bewildered; I am angry as hell.

I can assure you that my anger is nowhere near the intense level of anger the man standing at the center of this very vivid controversy feels about his own transgressions. In fact, I firmly believe the man deeply regrets many of the decisions he has made in his personal life over the past few years, however, that is a different story for another time.

For the most part, it seems the celebrity of blacks who obtain their fortune through sports and entertainment is the root cause of the tremendous discord deeply embedded in the psyche of White America… though they are loathe to admit it. And, of course, this celebrity places them under an unnerving degree of scrutiny whether they like it or not.

For more than 10 days now, there has been a media frenzy building around an incident that took place in the private life of Eldrick (Tiger) Woods, the son of a black father and an Asian mother. Tiger Woods knows he is an African-American -just being based upon the U.S. one drop rule, however because of his mixed heritage  he made a conscience decision to blend into the country club sports network of golf where his athletic prowess is recognized.

If we are to believe everything presented to us by the media, we now know that a bevy of unscrupulous females have emerged as either a one time or current mistress of Tiger Woods, even during his not-so-acceptable marriage to a former Swedish model. The “breaking news” gets more bizarre with each passing day, and is based on pure speculation. Respected news media are giving ‘top story’ status to any rumors coming in from sources whether they are reliable or not.

Tom Joyner’s Morning Show is having a field day making fun of Tiger Woods and what these recent events –whether pure speculation or not, may have done to Woods’ clean image. This is where the verb boggle can be put to good use. The insensitivity of the comedy pouring through the radio boggles my mind because it fuels the speculation and negativity to the point that both tabloid print and television media have requested interviews with Joyner. Were the interviews requests looking for an honest assessment of the situation, or because Joyner -a black man- openly made comedic fun of Tiger’s dilemma? I actually had to turn the radio off.

We have followed Tiger Woods since his childhood, just as we followed the career of another child prodigy who achieved celebrity, fame and fortune, and channeled his fortune into caring, universal causes until the media began tearing him down. Although the alleged ‘unscrupulous’ behavior was different from the speculation surrounding Tiger Woods, it was still the beginning of his downfall.

As long as Black America doesn’t pose any type of threat to White America we can make as much money, gain as much celebrity, and even try our best to assimilate their culture. It’s almost like the slave master and the overseer (media) mentality weighing in to bring them down if they get too uppity. Let us just suppose the accident that started all this was at the home of Phil Mickelson. What would the media do with that story?

Tiger Woods is on the threshold of meeting and breaking the record of one of the golf world’s greats –Jack Nicklaus, and has surpassed many long standing achievements dating back to 1913. He, along with his father, developed the Tiger Woods Foundation which is dedicated to children offering character development programs, scholarships, grants, junior golf teams, and the Tiger Woods Learning Center. The Foundation is helping young people reach their goals.

Tiger Woods Design is a business venture slated to design and build golf courses in three locations around the world. Three are currently in the works… Dubai, North Carolina and Mexico.

The tragedy here is the media –because of ratings, which of course translates to dollars, has created such a rush to judgment that a feeding frenzy beyond comprehension has brought people crawling out of the woodwork to stake a claim on Tiger the golfer, not the man. The root of all the attention is based upon something that is personal to Tiger and his family, and need not be addressed in the media.

Laughing at ourselves helps make our societal journey a little easier, given the many obstacles we as a people face every day. We must, however, be very careful about the perception we give our oppressor –and yes, as long as one group feels they are superior to another there will be oppression. The tone of media spin at a time like this plays right into their hands, and we provide even more fodder by our own insensitive actions in the midst of this madness.

Whether all or part of Tiger Wood’s situation is of his own making is not important, especially since he has not broken any laws –just perhaps gone against some people’s moral values. Each of us have our own demons and we are hard pressed to cast a sinless stone in anyone’s direction. The thing we cannot allow is a white controlled media to continue spinning rumors and creating stories based on speculation and innuendo, or the voices of money grabbers looking for  a huge payday and their 15 minutes of fame.

If the other child prodigy were alive today this is what he’d have to say. Tiger, take a listen.

“Tell me what has become of my rights
Am I invisible because you ignore me?
Your proclamation promised me free liberty, now
I’m tired of bein’ the victim of shame
They’re throwing me in a class with a bad name
I can’t believe this is the land from which I came
You know I do really hate to say it
The government don’t wanna see
But if Roosevelt was livin’
He wouldn’t let this be, no, no

Skin head, dead head
Everybody gone bad
Situation, speculation
Everybody litigation
Beat me, bash me
You can never trash me
Hit me, kick me
You can never get me

All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us
All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us”

Lyrics: They Don’t Care About Us, written and composed by Michael Jackson, MiJac Music (BMI), MJJ Productions, Inc.

© 2009 Sharon Moore Stenhouse – All Rights Reserved

Michael Jackson

Everyone’s life has value…think of it as a precious coin. Coins have two sides, just as life begins in birth and ends in death. Without both sides and everything in between -life, just as a coin, will have no value.

Can you imagine living without the in-between?

Can you remember what you were doing at the age of five?

Sitting in silence with my eyes closed, mourning the loss of someone who has been a part of me since the beginning, I tried to imagine what it must have been like to be Michael Jackson. I’m thinking what it must have been like having fun with your family, especially your brothers, singing and dancing in the basement.  We’ve all done that at some point in our lives -at least I can say I’ve been there.  Well having fun is wonderful and when your father suggests that the family can make money singing and dancing, that sounds wonderful too. It is wonderful until it becomes an obsession.

Okay, so now starts the living out the dreams of the father, things are going to improve -especially since the singing and dancing brothers get a big break.  Father’s obsessive dictatorial push grows even stronger.  Lives are now being managed, no one has a mind of their own. This is good until one day you look around and discover you are no longer five years old, but ten years old.  You are singing and dancing all the time -rehearsals, recording sessions, television performances, club dates and stage shows all over the country -when you realize that another ten years has gone by and you’re now fifteen.  Everywhere you go people recognize you and you’re starting to realize that everyone wants a piece of you.  You can’t go anywhere alone… you can’t go to beaches, parks, amusements, movies, concerts (unless you are the concert), shopping, restaurants, or for a simple walk.  Makes you wanna holler  -throw up both your hands.  Oh, that’s another singer’s story.  Lets get back to being Michael.

Somehow, along the way, your talent emerges and outshines the talents of your brothers causing dollar signs to appear in the eyes of producers, promoters and your father. Now, we all know that no matter how much love exists between brothers at least one -maybe two or more, will become green with envy. Most likely, the father begins to play ends against the middle and you start to feel like an outsider. You love what you’re feeling in terms of the ideas coursing through your brain, and you wouldn’t mind the opportunity to jump out there and give it a try.  You’ve been in the business for a while and you’ve seen the toll it takes on some of the best; Marvin and Paul come to mind though their pain and turmoil has not yet surfaced at this point in your life.  People are pushing at you from every direction.  Your chance is coming.

This is a time in America when black and whites still stand with a rope drawing a line in the sand.  Music, with the possible exception of jazz, is still a dividing factor among the races with artists trying to ‘crossover’ the color line.  Motown, which is where you got your start, perfected crossover artists; black to white audiences.  Even the new innovative methods of marketing such as the onset of music videos set demarcation lines through vehicles like cable television and MTV.

A knight in shining armor comes into your life to lift you out from under the weight of the past years.  He sees your talent and potential, and the two of you team up to create what becomes a powerful suite of music. You’re empowered.  With the success of the first musical effort and with your new mentor, the two of you embark on a greater challenge which results in career and world changing magic. You become the hottest selling recording artist in the world, you break down color barriers to open doors for others, you win accolades and numerous awards; everything has come together after more than twenty years in the music business and you’re not even thirty years old.  Where did the time go?  What happened to the family?  Where are the buddies?  Although there is schooling, there was no one place where you part of the class, no teenage crushes, no high school proms or graduation, no college life with dormitories and pledging for Greek letters. Now what?

You still can’t go anywhere in peace, can’t even hold a simple conversation on things other than the business… and if you want peace and quiet you have to stay secluded, so you take the money you’ve earned, buy up some land and build yourself a place where you can do some of the things you missed as a child. Only problem is that it won’t be fun if you’re there all by yourself.  Well who better to share this wonderful place than the little ones?  Even better, you decide you want to help those who can’t help themselves so that they don’t grow up without a childhood memory.  This is great until somewhere along the way, someone with unrelenting motives sees dollar signs and decides in their twisted mind that something is amiss behind the gilded gate of your retreat. Now you are perceived as someone sinister instead of someone with a good heart… a child’s heart.

Damn, damn, damn!

Can’t stop here because there is another aspect that is so tormented you need to become someone else. Your public persona must keep up with the successes you’ve created, else you’ll be stuck being a grown-up who never had a chance to grow up. Okay, maybe if you tweak a little bit of the outside you’ll relieve some of the torment; though you’re not even sure what is the root cause. Anyway, one thing leads to another and before you know it you’ve evolved into a different physical person on the outside, but deep down on the inside you are still you.

Are you keeping your own notes? Let’s see… now you’ve been in show business for thirty years, you’ve become extremely wealthy, extremely extravagant -that’s because you are such a giving person, and yet there’s still something missing.  And, the bottom feeders and hangers on who want -no need- to be near you are also helping to destroy you.  Suddenly you become fodder for simple mindedness, trashy newspapers, and across the pond in the UK, you’re referred to as ‘Wacko Jacko’.  This is painful. You also have to endure both a physical and mental pain that has developed over the years. Your insides are burning when suddenly someone takes the wonderment and turn it into something sinister.  You’ll discover later that this endurance race is just the start.

Know what, you realize that you need to pour out love on someone special and block out the world’s insanity. Finding a spouse is not easy because of who you are and what you’ve become however, the perfect person steps into you life. The story of their life has similarities to yours, and with a tremendous amount of understanding, you get married.  Pressures on the outside become tremendous and with two years you’re single again. Children…your own children that’s the ticket. Within the next ten years, you accomplish becoming the parent of three beautiful children, the two oldest from your second marriage. Of course, your methods are criticized perhaps because no one but you and those involved need to know details of your most intimate life. Now at least you have a legacy bloodline, but wait…that may prove to be difficult at some point.

Hey, readers are you still with me here?  Maybe you should sit in silence with your eyes closed and try being Michael when you’re done reading.

Think for a minute. You’ve been in show business most of your life, you’re starting to age meaning you can’t perform like you could a few years ago, you have three children and you’ve been battling internal and public demons for years now.  You have mounting debt and you’re life has been filled with promoters, lawyers and accountants while you’ve had to dodge bullets of accusations about your perceived lifestyle; this last one was the most painful experience of your life.

After many sleepless nights in reflection and discernment, you realize your responsibility to set matters straight and decide to face the world and its demons head on, one more time; this is it.

Like a coin you had the in-between.  It is sixty-five days before your fifty-first birthday. Yesterday was a good day.  Working on your planned salvation is fulfilling, yet strenuous. Your body aches, you are physically tired, your mental stamina is exhausted, and within the blink of an eye God says “Come home my child, I will take care of everything, with me you can get your the rest.”

RIP Michael… Amani na Mapenzi: Love & Peace

You will live forever in my heart and in my home where your music often fills the air.

© June 27, 2009  – Sharon Moore Stenhouse – All rights reserved.

Children's Artwork - Palm Sunday

At church, there was the distribution of the palms, the blessing of the doors at the entrance of the church, and the triumphal entry procession with the congregation raising their palms in celebration; rejoicing.  It was during the prayer before the sermon when I truly felt the presence of God in my heart.

While sitting in my pew, head bowed in the posture we have come to call “looking to the Lord,” I heard the beauty of Jesus’ voice. The priest was praying for the congregation and the world, and asking for a remembrance of Gospel (Mark 14 & 15) which is a very holy time for Christians. During the thought-filled prayer, a young child’s voice echoed in the sanctuary -not crying, but speaking softly with a sense of gentle innocence. Then another child’s voice joined in, and another and another until there were many. The voices were a sweet sound. This was not disturbing, just a soft murmur underscoring the prayer.

As the priest continued praying, raising his voice in adulation, the children’s voices increased. When the prayer ended and all said Amen, the sanctuary fell silent. The voices stopped just as suddenly as they began, and there was quiet stillness in the air.

That is when I felt the presence of the Lord, and I knew in my heart that Jesus was speaking to us through the children; offering up peace.

Sanctus and Benedictus… Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

© 2009   Sharon Moore Stenhouse  -All Rights Reserved-

The Lion Tells His Own Story

How do we stop the pimping of the church?  With each new conference comes a new gimmick, DVD, etc.  Each new worship experience comes with a new fund-raising effort and sales pushes!  How do we stop the prostitution of gifts in the church?  Let’s talk about it!

Instead of offering my responce on Facebook, I decided to write this blog.

“…until the Lion tells his own story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

Ask yourself this question “What is the Church?”  When we answer this question correctly we discover something quite simple.  It amazes me how many people won’t study the Word or misuse the Word.  God didn’t make it difficult. We fail in knowing the history OT and NT.  We interpret the history for our own agendas.

THE WORD MADE FLESH asks us to ‘love one another’; he commands us to go out and teach the world about love. He did not ask us to compete with Him, bear false witness against Him, use his name to break the commandments or relay his message for self aggrandizement (the act of increasing the wealth or prestige or power or scope of something). He doesn’t want or need the types of messages being relayed in many of the congregations of today’s denominations (or non-denominational gatherings).

Ask yourself how is it that Christians all over the world can live in faith without all of the glitz we see in the U.S.  Ask yourself how is it that worship takes place in the smallest of villages where love and family and community prevail.

Jesus’ mission was to reach the ‘lost sheep’ of Israel.  They were careless about the law, the religious leaders had become enemies of God; but God loves his enemies.  He came not to condemn us but to save us from ourselves.

The standard of God’s law set in Deuteronomy 30:11-20 is not incomprehensible or unachievable.  It is the human element called ‘free will’ that over the centuries has tried to bend and twist God’s law to serve themselves.  Whether it be power, greed, or their own sense of deity (politics) humans will persist in developing their own ‘church’.

This free will also gives humans the ability to reject those who teach values which go against the simplicity of God’s love for us.  Instead, today we see people following the populist thought -Sadducean mindset, of mega congregations. The easiest way to “stop pimping the church” is to realize the ineptness of the teaching; to know the history is to dare to repeat it.

I know, I’ve been there.  Now I find the simplicity of worship without fanfare, the quietness of prayer, and the thirst for study brings me closer to God than I’ve ever been in my life.

© Sharon Moore Stenhouse

-All Rights Reserved-

Circa 1963

Oh, How I Remember:

While on a business trip in Birmingham, Alabama ten years ago, I discovered what it was like to have the spirit of the civil rights past come to life. A group of my colleagues had gone out to dinner in a van provided by the conference we were attending. For some reason during the van driver decided to offer up a little history of the 1960s Birmingham. He seemed so well read in the history that I asked him on the way back to the hotel, if we were anywhere near the 16^th Street Baptist Church. His answer was “Well it’s a little out of the way, but it will take but a few minutes to get there.”  The driver then asked the other passengers in the van if they would mind taking a slight detour; they answered “It would be nice to see a little of the city.”

Within a few minutes the van comes to a stop and the driver says, “Here it is.”  I immediately got out of the van, stood on the sidewalk and found myself peering up the steps I has seen in numerous photos and newsreels of the 16^th Street Baptist Church.  As I took a deep breath, I began to climb those steps only to become overwhelmed with emotion. Tears began streaming down my face and all I could do was grab hold to a railing and sit myself down in the moment. After a few minutes, I continued up the steps to the huge locked doors of the church where I rested both palms and my forehead on the cold surface. At that moment, another flood of emotion overcame me. I knew I had to go to the corner of the church and find the window.

There is was right around the corner, with a plaque telling the story  “On Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four girls. This murderous act shocked the nation and galvanized the civil rights movement.”

Someone in the van stepped out to ask if I was okay and I asked to have my picture taken standing on the church steps. They immediately obliged. Funny thing though, I was the only black person in the van.

Reflecting back on that experience I began to remember what it was like living in the 60s. I came from a working class family, lived in a decent neighborhood, and yet I remember the many limitations faced because of the color of my skin. During my youth and into young adulthood, African-Americans in Baltimore and many points around this country were suffering from the Jim Crow laws of segregation. Blacks could not eat in certain restaurants, try on clothes or shoes in certain stores, drank from water fountains or used restrooms that were designated “colored only,” and went to public schools in restricted neighborhoods where there were few if any whites.

Public recreational places such as Gwynn Oak and Carlins Amusement Parks, beaches such as Sandy Point and Gunpowder on the Chesapeake Bay, and even the tennis courts and swimming pools in Druid Hill Park were off limits. White people looked at us with disdain, while refusing to ride with blacks in elevators unless we were operating them. Buses and streetcars were not much better, but to my memory, we didn’t have to suffer like Rosa Parks.

Black men, even those with high school educations and beyond, had difficulty getting jobs with utility and construction companies. There was a journeyman requirement or unions and most of the organizations did not allow blacks. Black men were still working as Pullman porters or in the steel mills, and in many instances in the fields. Black women had it a little easier; we were able to obtain service jobs or entry level, clerical jobs in city and state government although there were times when we knew employers looked the other way, and gave the jobs to white women.

I went to the best high school in the city -Western Senior High, which still ranks as one of the top all girls schools in the nation, although back then you could count the black students on one hand. The grade requirement average was a B+ (3.5) or higher, along with a stellar record in extra curricular activities. I was in classes with girls who were regulars on The Buddy Deane Show*; which finally offered a “Black Show” once every few months.

Stories were beginning to surface across the country of black people standing up to segregation. Images on black and white television sets became flooded with white men and women shouting racial slurs at students wanting to enter better schools, and people being beaten, pushed back with the full force of fire hoses and attack dogs. Then we heard about Emmitt Till, Medgar Evers, James Shuttlesworth, Bull Connor (Mayor of Birmingham), and places like Philadelphia, Mississippi where three civil rights workers -Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney are lynched with the help of county officials.

We formed organizations called the Southern Christian Leadership Council and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. Movements such as the Black Panthers, with leaders such as Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown begin to protest for black power. Men and women, black and white began traveling to the south as freedom fighters for equal rights. Ministers and other religious leaders such as, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X offered inspiration on different platforms in the face of freedom. People marched and gathered in the nation’s capital, on street corners and in meeting halls while under the watchful eye of the FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and segregationist politicians to bring about social change.

The call for change was just as strong then as it is now. The call for change moved me to become involved in any way I could: youth meetings, demonstrations, sit-ins, political campaigns and voting every time there was an election. Voting rights were enacted while in I was in high school, so voting for me became a duty. We were taught that every voted counted and the only way to change the social climate was to cast your vote.

Fast forward to January 20, 2009 where millions of people gathered to share in the inauguration of the 44^th President of the United Stated, a black man named Barack Hussein Obama. There are so many tears of joy coming from people just like me who never stopped the movement or believing the dream of Dr. King. The history of every citizen in this nation came about because something changed. As Dr. Joseph Lowery, founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Dean of the Civil Rights Movement prayed on this day…

“GOD of our weary years, GOD of our silent tears
Thou Who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light
Keep us for-e-ver in the path we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places our GOD where me met thee
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand
TRUE TO OUR GOD, TRUE TO OUR NATIVE LAND.”

Front Page Jan 21, 2009

God: (noun English) the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe.

Christ: (noun English) Jesus of Nazareth, held by Christians to be the fulfillment of prophecies in the Old Testament regarding the eventual coming of a Messiah.

Allah (noun Islamic) the Supreme Being; God.

Buddha: (noun Sanskrit) Indian religious leader: founder of Buddhism.

Yahweh: (noun Hebrew) a name of God, and commonly rendered as Jehovah.

Atheists and Agnostics have a real problem with the use of God in public places. Their claim is that God denotes religious beliefs; as related to Christianity. In all actuality, God is universal. Weeks prior to the Presidential Inauguration, a group of Atheists filed a lawsuit is filed with the U.S. District Court to prevent Barack Obama from ending his oath of office with “so help me God.”  The argument is not associated with religious beliefs, but with “unauthorized alteration” of the Constitution.  They said those words have no place in the Constitution.  U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton refused to grant an injunction preventing ending the presidential oath with the words “…so help me God.

Actually, were President Obama a Muslim, he would probably have just said “so help me God,” since to Muslims (and Christian Arabs) Allah is just the Arabic word for capital-g God; and as such, when speaking in English saying “God” is perfectly fine.  The French Muslims can say “Dieu,” and even Persian Muslims will say “Khoda.” It’s all the same.

Although there are countless religions throughout the world, each different from the other, they all serve the same purpose, and their followers make a pledges for God’s help.

Faith leaders from various religions and denominations, men and women, who participated in the inauguration were:

Dr. Barry Black – Seventh Day Adventist
Pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell – United Methodist
Bishop John Bryon Chane – Episcopal
Archbishop Demetrios – Greek Orthodox
Rabbi Jerome Epstein -Judaism
Bishop Francisco Gonzalez – Episcopal
Rev. Wesley Grandberg-Michaelson – Reformed Church
Pastor Cynthia Hale – Christ’s Church
Bishop T.D. Jakes – Nondenominational
Bishop Katherine Jefferts-Schori – Episcopal
Rev. Suzan Johnson-Cook – Nondenominational
Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd, III – Episcopal
Rabbi Haskal Lookstein – Judiasm
Ingrid Mattson – Islamic Society of North America
Rev. Otis Moss – Baptist
Uma Mysorekar – Hindu
Bishop Gene Robinson* – Episcopal
Rabbi David Saperstein – Judaism
Rev. Andy Stanley – Community Church of Christ
Rev. Carol Wade – Episcopal
Rev. Jim Wallis – Sojourners
Rev. Rick Warren – Evangelical
Rev. Sharon E. Watkins – Disciples of Christ
Archbishop Donald Wuerl – Catholic

The private worship service the morning of the inauguration took place at St. John’s Episcopal Church with Bishop T.D. Jakes giving the homily (sermon), while the National Prayer Service took place at the National Cathedral (The Episcopal Church of America).

*The controversial openly gay Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire.

© 2009  Sharon Moore Stenhouse – All Rights Reserved