J’essays

These short pieces of spirituality from the streets are my J’essays, a mashup of “journaling” and “essay.” I’m honored you’re here and hope you enjoy the experience.

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The cars that go boom

Unlike sistas Tigra and Bunny, the forty-five-year-old version of me sharing this three-dimensional experience with you does not like cars, especially not the ones that go boom.

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Extinction-level event

It’s all but certain that humans will go extinct long before the sun swells into a red giant and swallows the Earth.

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Crazy love

I’m grateful to have women in my life who give me love, love, love, love crazy as Aaron Neville’s hairstyle.

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For better or worse

Chaperoning my son’s nature field trip helped me realize that humans are still in the larval stage of our species’ development.

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Clueless

My favorite Jane Austen adaptation, Clueless, just turned 30! To the evolved version of sapiens, homo spiritus, it may as well have turned 30,000. 

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Big beautiful bs

I call big, beautiful bs on anyone who calls Trump and his laws un-American.

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The Age of Aquari(not)us?

Women are poised to flip the script and payback’s a bitch. That might could be why Elon, Bezos, and them billionaire boyz are so hype to get off planet.

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The Genie

Satis, Ancient Egyptian goddess of war, hunting, and fertility, and granter of wishes to those seeking love.

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Megachurch

I attended megachurch and loved it. This is an AI-generated image of a pretend one.

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Genesis

If you don’t know, now you know that’s the cover of The Notorious B.I.G.’s classic first single, Juicy.

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Body squabbles

We’re the same, you and I. We’re all made of the same stuff.

We are love and light.

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Heart over smart

Lower-minded problem-solving can be clever, but it’s never intelligent because it always produces outcomes that elevate the ego over the greater good. When the lower mind drives how we engage with the world, our behavior resembles that of apes and other beasts.

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You can’t handle the truth

My dad is a master storyteller in the grand African American tradition. Like me, he’s descended from folk who birthed a spoken-word culture from the most adverse conditions imaginable. Today, the culture is arguably the most artistically vibrant the world has ever known.

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Pipe dream

There’s always something to be grateful for. We can practice gratitude by focusing on the Now, and visualizing something we’re grateful for. Tune in to the warm, tingling feeling in the heart space and solar plexus. Now, visualize something wonderful you’ve only dared to imagine in a dream, and tune in to the electric feeling in your future self’s heart when your dream comes true.

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Aldi’s and tigers and bears (oh my!)

Aldi’s is not my favorite chain supermarket. I’m glad it sells reasonably priced stuff, but several suboptimal features coalesce into a shopping experience I don’t love.

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Mountain man

I don’t know anything. As Socrates defers, “All I know is that I know nothing.”

Sometimes, I fool myself into thinking that I know things. Fortunately, there are plenty of wise ones in my life who speak their truth in love to me and are down to pipe up to help me remember what I don’t know.

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