The Matre d at the Ivy in Beverly Hills has seen it all, but when I told him I was waiting for Solomon Burke, he stopped in the midst of his frantic schedule to inquire, “the Solomon Burke? When I said, yes, he gave me his card, adding, “If you ever need a table here, just call me.” Even in this star watcher’s paradise, every neck spins as Mr. Burke is wheeled from his limo into the house. He is dressed immaculately, like some grand duke, with a presence that drifts above the crowd in this and every other way. Even if you had never been blown out of your seat by that hurricane on a tin roof voice, you knew that a man among men was with you.
He has been called the king of Rock ‘n’ soul, and he holds court like any great monarch, a compassionate ruler that acknowledges each subject by name, bestowing little bundles of wisdom grace, not unlike the King of all Kings whom this lesser king is now resting in the loving arms of.
Solomon Burke requested that I have the best food and drink the best wine this prestigious house had to hand, even though he had neither. When I offered to pay to the bill, he cupped his ear and said, “I can’t hear you.” Before the king was wheeled back to his waiting car, he turned to me and said, “Next time I’ll barbecue for you at my house.” There was no next time. The one and only Solomon Burke, born above a church, rocking his crib to that Philly choir in 1940, took the next big step in an endless journey on October 10th of this year. He was a member of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, writer of the song made famous by the Rolling Stones, Everybody Needs Someone to Love, considered by many, including Jerry Wexler, who signed both Ray Charles and Solomon Burke in 1960, the greatest soul singer of all time. The man/king is survived by 21 children and 90 grandchildren. Long live the King. There will never be another.
~Lucas Parable - Notes From A Cultural Wasteland
He knew everything about everything and we listening to him for hours as he told of discoveries and books and worlds he had visited. He said there was no God. Of course we believed him; he had a college degree. He drank and smoked and after divorcing his wife, he had many women. Since he was the smartest man in the world, we also drank and smoked and tried to have as many girls as we could. He eventually discovered drugs and suggested we all try them. Of course we did. He was the smartest man in the world. One day I asked the smartest man in the world how he knew there was no God. At first he smiled and spoke softly, but soon he was shaking his fist and raising his voice. Soon, he was screaming. Was he angry with me or the God who was not there? He never answered my question, but I believed in him because he was the smartest man in the world. One day it occurred to me that the smartest man in the world knew nearly nothing, not even what one of his 100-trillion cells were doing at any given moment. Why had I had followed him into this hell of contradictions and hatred? One day I met the dumbest man in the world. He told me stories that I had heard as a child. The dumbest man in the world was kind and tolerant and gave me a book to read and sent me on a journey that has yet to end. The smartest man in the world and the dumbest man in the world died on the very same day. The smartest man in the world died cursing, the dumbest man in the world, died praying. The dumbest man in the world and the smartest man in the world saw God. The dumbest man in the world fell to his knees and gave praise to the One he had followed forever as he entered heaven. The smartest man in the world told God that He (God) did not exist and therefore heaven and hell did not exist. So he went to the hell that he did not exist, even though the heat sometimes made him wonder. This all happened a long time ago, but not an eternity.
Every million years a butterfly brushes a wing against a metal ball ten thousand times harder and larger than the sun. By the time the ball is worn to nothing, one second will have gone by in eternity. ~Lucas Parable
When I was a kid I would look through the dictionary and read words. When I got older I read a lot of books. When I got older still I wanted to write books. I wrote some books and now I wonder what the big deal was. After all, it is just a matter of taking all the words in the dictionary and arranging them in your own order. Who can’t do that? Big words are especially easy because so few people understand them. But small words can be more powerful. Two words totaling two vowels and one consonant nearly got a man killed once. “I am,” said Jesus in a way that makes no grammatical sense: …before Abraham was, I am (John 8:58). The story continues by saying that the religious leaders tried to kill Jesus. Even the worst teachers wouldn’t kill you for bad grammar. Legally, however, Jewish religious law allowed them to kill someone for blasphemy. Hey wait, what did God tell Moses His name was? Either Jesus’ sentence is poorly constructed or these are about the most important words in the world. Let’s look at that sentence construction again.~E. Samuel Prophet
To die for, we hear that phrase a lot, usually spoken flippantly about food or shoes. The other day a friend asked me what I would die for and I thought back to being a young dad, crossing the street with my then two-year-old daughter in my arms. As I crossed, a car failed to stop at the sign and the bumper came screeching toward us. Then, without thinking, I found myself putting myself between my only child and a stranger’s car, ready to be sacrificed to death’s wheels. The car stopped a fraction of an inch from me, and both my daughter and I were spared.
I cannot think of any thing that I would die for. I like to think I would die for an idea like freedom. I would probably die for a close friend or family member, but not the driver who could have killed me. And never for someone who flipped me off, spat at me, or beat me senseless. What about a streetwalker?
In Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo dies with his arms entangled around Esmeralda, the streetwalker who once gave him water. But I was never as kind as Esmeralda. I was there when they gave dying man vinegar to drink. He in turn, got in the way of the car, crushed beneath the wheels.~Lucas Parable
As a 20-something I rarely attended church, frequency increasing upon the realization that there was a favorable ratio of women to men there. So, I poured myself into a pew two Sundays in a row, followed both times by a most attractive young woman, who sat right next to me. Then I thanked God for sending me the right one, not realizing my youthful blasphemy, as I secretly vowed to serve Him better and sit in that same pew until such time as the girl and I exchanged phone numbers. From week three on, I never did see her again and I quietly slipped out of church and into years of seeking the right one, finding her, losing her to divorce and finding a string of other right ones over the years.
Of course there is not really a right one, but there is a Right One, and He does not care to share the number one spot with the right one, no matter how attractive. I have shared my journey with the closest thing on earth to the right one as together we have done imperfect service to the Right One for the last 18 years.~CMA
Dear God
If there is a God
Save me from hell
If there is a hell
“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”
~GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy
We believe in Marx Freud and Darwin.
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone,
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your definition of knowledge.
We believe in sex before during
and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that taboos are taboo.
We believe that everything's getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated and
you can prove anything with evidence.
We believe there's something in horoscopes,
UFO's and bent spoons;
Jesus was a good man
just like Buddha Mohammed and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher
although we think some
of his morals were basically bad.
We believe that all religions are basically the same,
at least the ones that we read were.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of
creation, sin, heaven hell God and salvation.
We believe that after death comes The Nothing
because when you ask the dead what happens
they say Nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied,
then it's compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan.
We believe in Masters and Johnson.
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.
We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behavior that lets him down.
We believe that each man must
find the truth that is right for him
and reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust. History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.
We believe in the rejection of creeds.
And the flowering of individual thought.
If chance be the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky,
and when you hear
State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man worshiping his maker.
~Steve Turner, 1980
You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. ~Simon Peter, Matthew 16:16
Yesterday I went for a drive, deciding to stop only at places previously unknown to me. I ventured upon a Chinese restaurant in Poway, California and was waited on by a Thai woman named Pauline. Pauline smiled brightly and looked me in the eyes, before asking my name, something few other waitresses have ever bothered doing before. The food arrived and it was above average, but Pauline was a five-star experience, sharing sustenance and joy with me and all her other customers. When she brought the check, I asked her the secret to happiness. “No secret,” she replied, “just be happy.” I paid my bill and as I walked away she came to the door of the restaurant and waved goodbye to me. In the car I cracked open my fortune cookie and read, “Turn off the TV and the computer and exercise your mind with a good book.” And so I read in my car on the hot asphalt of that altar/mall parking lot for half an hour, full of food and joy. ~Lucas Parable
Someone has passed and with it something that was once Southern California. Like many who came of age in the ‘60s he lost his bearings when the developers thought to sell our collected memories for mere money. I met him in the late ‘60s when I was among the few of my friends to own a car on Maui. I was driving out to ride perfect surf when I took on a passenger, kid, of maybe 14, hitch hiking and all alone in the world, but at home as soon as he hit the powerful surf. Kevin and I didn’t catch up again in the mid 1970s when we shared a house in Santa Cruz, living on scraps and good times. Then I didn’t see him for a long time and heard that he was living in Mexico. When I saw him again, he looked as old as the earth and the sea that had once loved him. His wave came to us unnoticed and broke on a lonely beach. ~CMA
