All that hate me whisper together against me: against me do they devise my hurt.
An evil disease, say they, cleaveth fast unto him: and now that he lieth he shall rise up no more.

The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.
I said, Lord, be merciful unto me: heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee.
Mine enemies speak evil of me, When shall he die, and his name perish?
And if he come to see me, he speaketh vanity: his heart gathereth iniquity to itself; when he goeth abroad, he telleth it.

The First Shall Be Last and The Last Shall Be First

BLESSED is he that considereth the poor: the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.
The Lord will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies.

For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up: they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me.
Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me: O Lord, make haste to help me.
Let them be ashamed and confounded together that seek after my soul to destroy it; let them be driven backward and put to shame that wish me evil.
Let them be desolate for a reward of their shame that say unto me, Aha, aha.
Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: let such as love thy salvation say continually, The Lord be magnified.
But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me: thou art my help and my deliverer; make no tarrying, O my God.

Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me.
I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.
I have preached righteousness within the great congregation: lo, I have not refrained my lips, O Lord, thou knowest.
I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart; I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation: I have not concealed thy loving kindness and thy truth from the great congregation.
Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, O Lord: let thy loving kindness and thy truth continually preserve me.

Many, O Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and they thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.
Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thous opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required.

And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our god: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.
Blessed is that man that maketh the Lord his trust, and respecteth not the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies.

On The Hour, Every Hour

I WAITED Patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.
He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.

Before most situations change they become worse, and eventually the situation will make a person come to terms with their reality. My reality is firmly anchored in the truth, that most of what I say, most of what I give, most of what I do isn't looked upon until long after I'm gone. This is a great price to pay for the things that I say and do. I can see, I have vision, I have a very good understanding of the people in my life, and who they are. The problem with that is I'm a giver of gifts, and many times I give gifts to those who believe that they don't need any. Many times I give an encouraging word, or a simple greeting, and they fall on deaf ears. Its almost as if I have offended them, as if my humanity is beneath theirs, and I have no right to speak to them. So I do what I always have done....I will pray.

Day of Days

Before I sleep I must praise today. Maybe I'll dream of it, my dreams might become my prayers, or maybe this day will come again. This has been a day of days. On this day I celebrate my peers and give thanks for the time I have been given with them. On this day I honor the great presence of the spirit that is love and friendship.

"The one who makes the most mistakes makes the most corrections."

Today has been a telling day of the quality of my teaching. I think it is a question of my thinking, and my ability to share my thoughts with others. I need to take a critical look at why I am sharing knowledge at all. I believe knowledge to be an understanding of experience, and the relevance of that experience to the surrounding society. My experiences are relegated to an entirely different realm of possibilities. These possibilities are only visited when one wants to be entertained, and or encouraged. It has no place in the "actual" educational world, and only has relevance in extreme times or in children's fairytales. All of my mistakes as a teacher have caused me to question my reason for being here at MICA. When does my experience matter? What can I do when my experience isn't the one others want to hear, but maybe the one they need to hear? What has lead me to believe that others need to hear my experience? Why am I even attempting to be an educator if I'm still attempting to educate myself?
My life as a minority in itself is one that makes many people uncomfortable. The history of the black male is one of much pain and great triumphs. Its an epic story that involves both the destruction and reconstruction of the soul of a living being. The very mention of this topic can silence the most non-bias of educational environments. My black experience, wrapped in its Christian foundation, can silence an entire college class room full of great thinkers. I have found it hard to separate my experience, my thinking, and my ways of teaching from the effects of my cultural history. There have been many tears shed this semester in regards to my failures as a teacher. I have wanted to give up for so long, and just walk away, silently. The weight of ignorance, and the haunting of insignificance has been with me at MICA. In all of this, the only joy that I have found is that I have not been alone in these feelings. What has broke my heart, has been how some of my peers have felt these same feelings. It has hurt me to the marrow of my bones that my fellow classmates have been experiencing the same pain as myself, and I have missed it completely.
We are our brothers and sister keeper, and yet I have not been able to care for my neighbors as I should. Hurt, pain, and misunderstanding can paralyze a persons attempts to live, and sadly force them to just survive. In this experience I have thought about how these are very real emotions that effect students. Everyday students sit and feel insignificant in a world that qualifies insignificant things. How can a student be well rounded, when all that is asked of them is to pass a test, or regurgitate information? Words alone are dead, when they are not given the chance to grow into meaningful experiences. Someday I will be an educator, and in that day I must make a vow to myself and my students. I must promise them that no matter their race,their gender, their faith, their sexual orientation, their socioeconomic status, or even their IQ, that I will not allow them to be forgotten in my classroom. I will not let my students slip into the trap of feeling useless or not smart enough. No experience in my classroom will be buried by the weight of logic, because no human on this earth lives by logic alone. I will uphold this with all my strength, and if even one of my students gets lost in any of these, I will know how to find them, because I was once there.

No more, no less, just me.

It has been a while since I last thought about what has been meaningful to me. Much has happened in my life in the last few months that has caused me to re-evaluate my thinking and actions as an artist and as a prospective teacher. I have been so busy in my attempts to find approval amongst my peers that I have forgotten to find that same approval within myself. For too long my artistic influences have been in the hands of those who have a vague idea of who I really am. This was due in part to my cowardice as an artist and as a man. I suppressed my identity, my soul, my very existence in order to make others around me feel comfortable. I changed my voice so that others would want to hear me. I changed my appearance so that other would want to see me. I even suppressed my God, so that others could accept me. I have been a foreigner to myself, and in essence an immigrant to those who have loved me. Many of my family members have said that I have become unrecognizable to them. My wife, my love, couldn't believe some of the things that had come out of my mouth. I had made peace with one side, but war with the other.

My God, my wife, my family, even my identity I questioned. In the past two weeks I woke up hating myself. I hated my black skin, because so many people are uncomfortable with the history associated with it. In conversations with many of my peers I have found, that I can not speak of my experience as a black man in fear of being labeled as angry or a racists. As a Christian man, there is no room for me in many conversations. I am a human being, living in a modern world, serving a god; that is my label. I'm in college, surrounded by free thinkers, extensive libraries, instant access to knowledge, and yet I get on my knees everyday, and pray to God. I believe in the spirit of all mankind, and that we have been crafted into the most Holy beings this side of our galaxy. I go to class, I attend seminars, I read up on educational articles, I teach classes to some of the most intelligent children I have ever met, and yet I still put my faith in God. The name Jesus is the blessing in which I will live and die by. I can't forget what He, Jesus, my lord has done for me, my family, my friends, even how through my prayers he has blessed those who have hated me. I love Him with all of my heart, and yet he has given me a wife to give that same heart to. I am working towards a masters degree, and yet my soul is measured by the degrees of my master Jesus and the Word of God.

How can this be? A man that lives in the world, but yet puts his love and trust in things not of this world? Where is my place in this world, amongst my peers, in higher academia, in the working sector, or even within myself? This is the turmoil that I wake to, and the pain that fuels my prayers before I go to sleep. Many days I am hanging on by a thread and the love of God is what lifts me up, and keeps me standing day by day. I had to put my very existence into the hands of God, and in the faith that my struggle is not in vain. I have started to see that in all that I suffer, that my pain is so that my family, my friends, and even my enemies will have someone there to understand what they are going through.

The Lord Jesus teaches us that the greatest thing a friend could give to another friend is their life. Not literally in death, but sacrificing their time, energy, and even peace of mind, so that someone else can be blessed. I believe that this is my purpose and the very reason that I am alive at all. I believe that I can do this through my artwork, and create a visual prayer of sorts that will bless the one that the image is for. My art work is a dedication to those who have lost all trust in the goodness of life. Its a monument to anyone who has ever doubted their self, and thought that they were just not good enough. My artwork is inspired by the concepts of Kehinde Wiley. His work gives power back to those who's power was stolen from them. His images of contemporary Black males in historical poses of royalty infuses them with a power lost, and with one in which they never had. Even though my work isn't composed of strictly black figures, I still have adopted Wiley's concept in my work. Just as my Lord has given back to me all the love, joy, and peace that was stolen from me, I will do the same for my friends and enemies alike through the artwork that I make for them.

Taking Back What Was Taken Away

I have been very interested in the moving power of images. Im not very fond of conceptual conversations of material usage and phylisophical reasonings for not using a material versus another. Basically I like artwork that has a "reciept" of the hard work put into its creation. I know that art is an extention of the spirit of the artist, and the only conceptual reasoning rests within that spirit. When I say spirit, I literally mean the etheral pressence that lives within a person. I know this might be a stretch for some, but im really tired of this destructive attitude in art. In most of the critiques I have participated in, there is always this attitude of destruction. The word deconstruction is thrown around alot and its very disheartning that in many artists' attempts to explain their work, they are stopped in their tracks by the words of shallow critics.

There IS a spirit to all things; it starts within the artist, and ends up in their artwork. I know that many artist are speaking about issues deeper then many critics will admit. Two artists that I believe speak truthfully about tough issues are Kehinde Wiley and Kara Walker. They are speaking about the power stolen from Black Americans throught out their history in America, and these artist are taking back that power through the issues represented within their art. They are speaking on the residues of slavery on the modern day Black American, and the many ways Black Americans have embraced the spirit of their past, to energize the spirit of their future. In essence, these artist are the extention of a screaming voice in a world of deaf intellectuals; intellectulas who are rich with words but poor when it comes to spiritual things. Much of there work has been called confrontational, but i do belive that is the point. The 800 pound gorrilla in the room has never been confronted, and these two artist have met it head on, telling it to go, and leave all that it has taken on its way out.