Aberjhani Quotations

At some point, a flash of sustained clarity reveals the difference between what someone would have you believe is true, and what you know from the depths of your own heart to the peaks of your soul to be true. What happens after that is up to you.

The study of history empowers nations and individuals with an ability to avoid errors of the past and lay foundations for victories in the future.

Varieties of angels, like varieties of love, are many.

Classic romantic love is an emotional attraction between two individuals in which they may share a heightened awareness of mutual adoration. Erotic love, traditionally, has been described as shared sexual attraction.

Many people can rightfully claim, as much as anyone can rightfully claim anything, that much of their lives have been spent stumbling through a cloud of cluelessness.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 laid the foundation for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it also addressed nearly every other aspect of daily life in a would-be free democratic society.

Mainstream medias representation, or its guerrilla decontextualization, of black mens lives in particular can set the stage for erroneous assumptions capable of damaging an individual or a nation.

Valentine's Day itself, like most holidays in the modern era, has been heavily influenced by commercialism that focuses on the appeal of romantic fantasies.

The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented precisely such a hope - that America had learned from its past and acted to secure a better tomorrow.

Because Mr. Mandela's early opponents invested so many resources into distorting the true nature of his advocacy, the singular historic moment millions now celebrate could have been tragically lost to guerrilla decontextualization.

Minister and writer Barbara Kaufmann has addressed the subject of guerrilla decontextualization on both the 'Voices Compassionate Education' website and on 'Inner Michael', where she offers the kind of insights into the spiritual aspects of Michael Jackson's creative artistry that mainstream media mostly ignores.

The political, social, and spiritual impact of the life example set by Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela might be measured in part by the profound and unique gestures made by people in different countries to honor his life upon learning of his death.

Most of the more celebrated names among African-American authors, poets, and artists are known to the world because of their association with specific cultural arts movements.

Movies can provide tear-inducing or comically-entertaining representations of love, but many agree that its deeper conflicting complexities often seem unfathomable.

The same hot lightning that burns your blood with passion–– cools your fears with peace.

A river is nearly the ultimate symbol for the very essence of change itself. It flows unceasingly from one point of being to another, yet continuously occupies the same bed or pathway, and accommodates life's endings with the same musical grace with which it accommodates life's beginnings, along with all the muted and explosive moments that surface between the two extremes.

Writing for me is a form of spiritual discipline and creative vision, a means of being in the world and giving one's love to it without compromise or dilution.

As life in general constituted much pain in the form of struggles against poverty, disease, ignorance, and emotional anguish, what more civilized way for people to alleviate the same than by giving themselves to one another as brothers and sisters in deed as well as in word? A society of people hoping to become politically superior needed first to become spiritually valid.

Ours is an age in which thousands are driven daily from their homelands by the unforgiving brutalities of war, terrorism, political oppression, starvation, disease, economic piracy, and the relentless suffocation of that singular breath which makes human beings individuals.

Nation-building is never a 'done deal' confined to history already established.

President Obama appears to me to have elevated and implemented the artist-activist concept to the role of empowered servant-leader...

At one end of the continuum known as history are first-time events that have generated notable measures of public recognition due to either a positive or negative impact...

The fate that condemns or saves one sooner or later often condemns or saves another.

Overall, my books represent a kind of shared communion and meditation with my fellow human beings... The books are also a part of what I call the great continuum of spiritual literary dialogue that I feel has been in progress since human beings first gave in to the urge to pray to their sense of something greater than themselves and interpreted certain signs or events or silences as responses to those prayers.

Someone had to embrace positive beginnings before anyone could celebrate successful conclusions or continuations.

His [Ben Okri's] work poses very serious questions for the twenty-first century. Among them: To what extent will we allow the indefinable dynamics of something called "destiny" to maintain grief and horror in the world? How hard are human beings willing to fight to achieve and sustain justice, equanimity, or joy? And should progress be called such when it devours what is best within the human spirit?

Stars wishing upon the potential of humans shine faithfully on.

And therein shines one major definition of what it meant to be Clinton D. Powell: someone who looked for, trusted in, and helped empower (if you will) the best in others. It takes a lot of beautiful love, uncommon sincerity, and spitfire courage to do that.

In an age when nations and individuals routinely exchange murder for murder, when the healing grace of authentic spirituality is usurped by the divisive politics of religious organizations, and when broken hearts bleed pain in darkness without the relief of compassion, the voice of an exceptional poet producing exceptional work is not something the world can afford to dismiss.

While it is unlikely that poetry or art shall eliminate the reality of war in the twenty-first century, it is thrilling to know there remain individuals, and even entire communities, still willing to invest in art and poetry's own uniquely explosive contributions to the great, and small, dramas of human history.

Michael Jackson National African American Art Examiner Series

Here are lips of flame eager to be extinguished by love's liquid sigh.

By striving so mightily to accomplish specific goals on behalf of one segment of humanity, she [Toni Morrison] went beyond them to create literary wonders capable of enriching the lives of not just her own people, but of all people.

Literary genres and techniques tend to take form in one's mind somewhat the way computer templates provide form for different computer tasks.

Creative visualization may be described as an extended meditation session that reaches beyond passive contemplation and achieves transformative action. The uses to which it may be applied are limited only by an individual's imagination.

By consciously meditating upon spiritual truths and cultivating personal integrity, one need never fear negative circumstances.

An author accepting language's invitation to dance steps onto the floor of his her sensibility-charged consciousness and begins to move instinctively--even if with much dread--in ways that synchronize images, ideas, emotions, sounds, smells, ignorance, and knowledge.

As goes love so goes life.

A horn of plenty spills from your hands into the starved lives of millions.

The thorn is a bridge spanning the muddy depths of agony and sorrow so that one may on the other side dance to the drums of the rose of joy.

At its most dynamic, faith evolves into powerful applicable knowledge.

Careful studies of cases dealing with supposed 'mental disorder' have at times revealed that many thought to be insane or warped in some fashion were actually simply highly sensitive individuals. What they suffered from was not mental debilitation, but personal and communal ignorance of psychic reality.

The more sincere the soul, the heavier the cross endured.

That good gardener, who wept thorns plowing his fields - harvests grace with joy.

The Emancipation Proclamation...can remind us in 2013 of all the mistakes we never want to commit again but it can also motivate us to fulfill to an ever greater degree the definitive freedom-sustaining and life-enhancing principles of democracy in living action.

The fact that an African American sits in the White House at the helm of government in the United States of America on this 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation represents both phenomenal political symbolism and a victory of faith in democracy that should not be lost on any American.

Many may very well continue to ask why more value is placed on technicalities of a law than on a man's flesh and blood life, especially when there is any amount of "doubt" at all regarding his guilt or innocence.

When reading about what may be described as the lesser celebrated heroic figures of the Harlem Renaissance, we rarely get a definitive look at just how complicated and sometimes dangerous their everyday lives were. In fact, until the past ten years, many defined the period primarily by its well-known literary, musical, and artistic elements while overlooking the fact there was any political component to it at all.

Although himself frequently a target of guerrilla decontextualization, a major part of the meaning of Michael Jackson's life was to help balance the accumulation of horrors with something closer to love in its most empowering and healing sense.

The literary artist lends verbal depth to the visual. The visual artist provides visible articulation for the literary.

I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant.

Happy World Poetry Day: 'The American identity has never been a singular one and the voices of poets invariably sing, in addition to their own, the voices of those around them.

In the days when hyenas of hate suckle the babes of men, and jackals of hypocrisy pimp their mothers’ broken hearts, may children not look to demons of ignorance for hope.

Your pain is a school unto itself–– and your joy a lovely temple.

A bridge of silver wings stretches from the dead ashes of an unforgiving nightmare to the jeweled vision of a life started anew.

History dressed up in the glow of love’s kiss turned grief into beauty.

In a world gushing blood day and night, you never stop mopping up pain.

Time (again, Time) like the soul, wears many faces, many bodies and climates and attitudes. The past is one face, the present a second and the future yet another.

With my ninth mind I resurrect my first and dance slow to the music of my soul made new.

When a reader enters the pages of a book of poetry, he or she enters a world where dreams transform the past into knowledge made applicable to the present, and where visions shape the present into extraordinary possibilities for the future.

The act of writing itself is much like the construction of a mirror made of words. Looking at certain illuminated corners of or cracks within the mirror, the author can see fragments of an objective reality that comprise the physical universe, social communities, political dynamics, and other facets of human existence. Looking in certain other corners of the same mirror, he or she may experience glimpses of a True Self sheltered deftly behind a mask of public proprieties.

And now we step to the rhythm of miracles. --from The Light, That Never Dies

Unless you are here: this garden refuses to exist. Pink dragonflies fall from the air and become scorpions scratching blood out of rocks. The rainbows that dangle upon this mist: shatter. Like the smile of a child separated from his mother’s milk for the very first time. --from poem Blood and Blossoms

Within the universe of the extraordinary, those qualities we designate to human concepts of gender are often shared, exchanged, or even completely obliterated. Because of this mixture of traits, these twins called Genius and Madness often appear to be the same thing. They both have a tendency to blur the lines of what we call norms, or established reality. They both, when we study that grand tapestry known as history and modern-day society, tend to stand out in much bolder relief than other figures. -- from Dancing with Madness, Dancing with Genius

Feet sandaled with dreams tread paths of vision leading to wisdom’s sharp peaks.

Everywhere we shine death and life burn into something new…

What can bombs know of the illuminated fields so golden with heaven in your heart’s sacred lands?

'Mixtape' is a very appropriate word to include in the title of Goran Hugo Olsson's film because it includes a rich mixture of cultural voices. They speak across different dividing lines such as those of haves and have-nots, youth and maturity, black and white, national and global, and the past and the present.

When we vote we participate in the construction of a context...

As history has demonstrated many times over, change may arrive slowly or quickly but it is the one constant, in one form or another, on which we can all count.

In your hands winter is a book with cloud pages that snow pearls of love.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream was a manifestation of hope that humanity might one day get out of its own way by finding the courage to realize that love and nonviolence are not indicators of weakness but gifts of significant strength.

Just above our terror, the stars painted this story in perfect silver calligraphy. And our souls, too often abused by ignorance, covered our eyes with mercy.

This world’s anguish is no different from the love we insist on holding back.

Now come the whispers bearing bouquets of moonbeams and sunlight tremblings.

Poetry looking in the mirror sees art, and art looking in a mirror sings poetry.

This rose of pearl-coated infinity transforms the diseased slums of a broken heart into a palace made of psalms and gold.

Then came the healing time, hearts started to shine, soul felt so fine, oh what a freeing time it was.

Got just enough room to be a friend of yours. Oh I hope you got room to be a friend of mine.

Searching for a mind long lost I found it shaping colors and history near the cliffs of your heart.

Change is one of the scariest things in the world and yet it is also one of those variables of human existence that no one can avoid.

To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.

When the will to learn from the ordinary is present, a seeker may indeed gain entrance into levels of awareness that are extraordinary.

The ecstatic beauty and soulful grace of Rumi's poetry inspires human hearts to believe in possibilities beyond the predictably fatal.

Journey through the Power of the Rainbow represents a condensed compendium of literary efforts from a life dedicated to transforming the themes of injustice, grief, and despair that we all encounter during some unavoidable point of our existence into a sustainable life-affirming poetics of passionate creativity, empowered spiritual vision, and inspired commitment.

On faith’s battered back calm eyes etch prayers that cool a nation’s hot rage.

The whole purpose of the construction of The Bridge of Silver Wings was to provide a path leading to The River of Winged Dreams, or to serve as a resting place until the river’s deeper and truer nature revealed itself.

Death wins nothing here, gnawing wings that amputate–– then spread, lift up, fly.

In your hands winter...

The music of revelation announces itself to the reader in somber brooding tones or in melodies light as air and one is invited to dance with the most captivating of partners: poetry.

The issue, perhaps, boils down to one of how perceptions or misperceptions of racial difference impact various 'individuals', or groups of 'individuals', experience of freedom in America. Some would argue that it goes beyond hampering their "pursuit of happiness" to outright obliterating it.

Love as a concrete foundation for an authentically functional civilization requires the around-the-clock labors of forgiveness. Without it, Love fails, Friendship fails, Intelligence fails, Humanity: fails.

The birth of a true poet is neither an insignificant event nor an easy delivery. Complications generally begin long before the fated soul carries its dubious light into whatever womb has been kind enough to volunteer the intricate machinery of its blood and prayers and muscles for a gestation period much longer than nine months or even nine years.

How many fears came between us? Earthquakes, diseases, wars where hell rained smoldering pus from skies made of winged death. Horror tore this world asunder. While inside the bleeding smoke and beyond the shredded weeping flesh we memorized tales of infinite good. -from The History Lesson

As painful as life can be at times for people all over the world there is some component of existence, or nonexistence perhaps, operating to implement a balance and give us an opportunity to turn the horrors we’ve forced upon each other into something more conducive to sustaining at least minimal degrees of sanity and love.

You are the hybrids of golden worlds and ages splendidly conceived.

Dare to love yourself

The best of humanity's recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance.

With intent to neither idolize nor demonize the man [Barack Obama], it seems fair and evident enough to say that the current president of America is not a leader whose way is that of violent public outbursts. It appears to be more that of a warrior-philosopher who practices the art of political persuasion by authoring acclaimed books, delivering well-crafted speeches, assembling unified coalitions, passing historic legislation, signing well-aimed executive orders, and cultivating a poised but accessible demeanor.

Beauty from another world gave birth to your voice-- sent to rescue scorned hearts from traumatized nights.