Any opportunity to view the scarce work of the deceased Intuitive painter, Reverend Everald Brown, is a mighty treat.

NGJ Blog:
http://nationalgalleryofjamaica.wordpress.com/tag/religion-and-spirituality

Art-Recognition-Culture (ARC) Mag:
http://arcthemagazine.com/arc/2013/12/national-gallery-of-jamaica-presents-relig ion-and-spirituality-a-chapter-a-day

Thanks Z. Our cultural side is deep. It is always a pleasure to introduce guests, dryland or farin, to aspects of our culture presented in an authentic and pleasing setting.

Best.

turey...regarding the centrality of the Bible [i.e., biblos***; I (Eye) am the Word & the Word is made Flesh]...

I am curious, if growing up & growing out on our Rock of Faith/Ages, you had either a Hebrew or Christian Bible (containing both) in your home, and (most succinctly) was that biblos the repository of turey/Sol... family history/genealogy going back centuries to ancestors of other lands (perhaps, the seafaring/marauding "Portugals"; African trade routes meeting across the Sahara), and all those temporal Crossroads beyond Kings-ton.

One Love, bredren...Prosper in Happiness & Beauty & Lean/'Nuff Wealth-Value!


***Biblos, the Greek word for book and the first word of the New Testament, is a root of "Bible" in English and many other languages, including "Bibel" in German and "Biblia" in Latin and Spanish.
(Source: SmartChristian.Com)

The Gutenberg Bible as a Early Source of Learning/Literacy & Artistry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg_Bible

Another swing around our sun Z, another chance to do the things that need being done.

turey...hmmm. Do we get it? Jamaicans and our "historical" (hysterical) Bibles...in Just-i-fications; Consolation; Artistic Imagery; Ethical Standards; Pre-Judice; Dietary Guidance...Rastafarian Vitality (I-tal)...

15 For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’

16 But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.

17 For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

--Nouveau Testament [Matthew 13: 15-17...New International Version]

Words can be signposts, they point to a destination. Holy words should point to a holy destination and wholeness.

The fruits of current actions do not smell so holy; conflict, denial, power over others/manipulation, self rightiousness leading to hate and blood, ecological interference, greed/insecurity and the worst...."Cyaan Badda".

Still Z, I sense an awakening to our reality; beings of light clothed in flesh dancing on a holey blue-green orb, the promised land.

Later will be greater.

...With our chlorophyll companions ready in service. Our fellow animals longing for us to remember Stewardship.

I hear whispers from greybeards, grandmothers, visionaries and pathfinders, no need to shout, the beauty of the design we are called to by Livity/Life is taking form. The seeds of change never died, despairing and exhausted at times, yes.

The balance sheets will include the real valuations of our land, air, water, plants, animals and minerals. One form of wealth will be the richness of your soil, the varieties of plants and animals around you and the contentedness of your neighbours.

Blessings surround us.

turey...sticking to the theme of this posting, that is, a round-a-bout way of our artists finding an expression of wholeness in this Existence...a proportionality to the Babel of teachings & prophesies, inherent in a streaming of the Universe of knowledge from hurts, joys, companionships, meditations & ecstasies that propel us forward.

When our art, of any stripe - be it's nature visual, auditory, culinary, or any imaginative bouillabaisse of the senses - layers in our best evolved intentions, beyond some fixed orthodoxy, it seems we are not clearing a path of figurative boulders & weeds, but enfolding all dat.

So when we get to those biblical passages referring to man's dominion, ought we not to take pause, and suspect the linkages to stewardship?

When I first saw Brother Everald Brown's paintings at the an early "Intuitive Exhibit" at Harmony Hall (Ochie), perhaps called "The Hills Have Eyes", it was difficult to weed out the humans from the plants, trees, environment, and other cohabiting animals.
Those are some unities that yield to peace in some imagined/real "peaceable queen-dom" (hum Gaia)


When we obey the Cultural Mandate, we participate in the work of God himself, as agents of his common grace… entering upon a lifelong quest to devote our skills and talents to building things that are beautiful and useful, while fighting the forces of evil and sin that oppress and distort the creation.
--Nancy Pearcey (her book: Total Truth)

In Genesis 1:26-28 God calls mankind, beginning with Adam and Eve, to exercise dominion over the earth, subdue it, and develop its latent potential. We are called to fill the earth with his glory through creating what we commonly call “culture.”

... today ("we") tend to shy away from God’s more specific call of dominion.
This is somewhat understandable. For many of us in this current generation, the word “dominion” has gotten a bad rap: it implies some sort of aggressive or violent destruction.

Dominion does not mean destruction, but responsibility. It is important to avoid flawed convictions about the right and power of humankind in relation to the rest of the natural world...(spiritual beings are) called upon to exhibit this dominion, but exhibit it rightly: treating the thing as having value itself, exercising dominion without being destructive.
--Justin Holcomb @ Resurgence

Source: Institute for Faith, Work & Economics (Creativity, Purpose, Freedom Blog---Dominion:Stewardship)

I Have Learned So Much

I
Have
Learned
So much from God
That I can no longer
Call
Myself

A Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim,
a Buddhist, a Jew.

The Truth has shared so much of Itself
With me

That I can no longer call myself
A man, a woman, an angel,
Or even a pure
Soul.

Love has
Befriended Hafiz so completely
It has turned to ash
And freed
Me

Of every concept and image
my mind has ever known.

From: Hafiz's 'The Gift'
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

turey...sticking to the theme of this posting, that is, a round-a-bout way of our artists finding an expression of wholeness in this Existence...a proportionality to the Babel of teachings & prophesies, inherent in a streaming of the Universe of knowledge from hurts, joys, companionships, meditations & ecstasies that propel us forward.

When our art, of any stripe - be it's nature visual, auditory, culinary, or any imaginative bouillabaisse of the senses - layers in our best evolved intentions, beyond some fixed orthodoxy, it seems we are not clearing a path of figurative boulders & weeds, but enfolding all dat.

So when we get to those biblical passages referring to man's dominion, ought we not to take pause, and suspect the linkages to stewardship?

When I first saw Brother Everald Brown's paintings at the an early "Intuitive Exhibit" at Harmony Hall (Ochie), perhaps called "The Hills Have Eyes", it was difficult to weed out the humans from the plants, trees, environment, and other cohabiting animals.
Those are some unities that yield to peace in some imagined/real "peaceable queen-dom" (hum Gaia)


When we obey the Cultural Mandate, we participate in the work of God himself, as agents of his common grace… entering upon a lifelong quest to devote our skills and talents to building things that are beautiful and useful, while fighting the forces of evil and sin that oppress and distort the creation.
--Nancy Pearcey (her book: Total Truth)

In Genesis 1:26-28 God calls mankind, beginning with Adam and Eve, to exercise dominion over the earth, subdue it, and develop its latent potential. We are called to fill the earth with his glory through creating what we commonly call “culture.”

... today ("we") tend to shy away from God’s more specific call of dominion.
This is somewhat understandable. For many of us in this current generation, the word “dominion” has gotten a bad rap: it implies some sort of aggressive or violent destruction.

Dominion does not mean destruction, but responsibility. It is important to avoid flawed convictions about the right and power of humankind in relation to the rest of the natural world...(spiritual beings are) called upon to exhibit this dominion, but exhibit it rightly: treating the thing as having value itself, exercising dominion without being destructive.
--Justin Holcomb @ Resurgence

Source: Institute for Faith, Work & Economics (Creativity, Purpose, Freedom Blog---Dominion:Stewardship)

I doubt that it will take very long before the religious aspects of so-called biblical directives/teachings, as delivered in Steve McQueen's movie (12 Years A Slave), will seep deeper into artistic & cultural consciousness.

Perhaps the most memorable and harshest passages, in this regard, is the depiction of a white slave owner's (Edwin Epps) confidence that the "submission texts" of the Christian Bible justifies slavery & his race's hierarchy in the scheme of things:

Epps quotes Luke 12:47 to his slaves: “And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.”
He then shuts the Bible and says, “That’s scripture.” Epps takes this verse literally and whips the slaves who pick the least amount of cotton each day. When he has a good harvest, Epps attributes it to “righteous living”; when the crops die, he claims it must be a “biblical plague” brought on by his slaves’ unrighteousness.

McQueen seems to be making a point about how people pick and choose the verses they live by and how those verses should be applied. American history demonstrates this is true. Many Christian clergy advocated for slavery and, as historian Larry Tise notes in his book, Proslavery, ministers “wrote almost half of all defenses of slavery published in America” and believed the Bible taught that white people could own black people as work animals.

Sadly, the examples in history don’t end with emancipation. Many American clergy vocally opposed the civil rights movement and supported Jim Crow laws. In the 1950s, The Alabama Baptist newspaper editorialized,
“We think it deplorable in the sight of God that there should be any change in the difference and variety in his creation and he certainly would desire to keep our races pure.”

Read More @: "On Faith & Culture"}
http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/09/16/12-years-slave-religion-best- worst

Significance of Religion in "12 Years A Slave"...The Anti-Magnolia Myth/Deceit of "Gone With The Wind"
http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2013/11/now-thats-scripture-significance-of.html


"The movie challenges yet again the myth of a Christian nation. Who can make such a claim with a history of 250 years of slavery? And we must add the Native American holocaust and manifest destiny — the Anglo claim that the genocide was God’s way of replacing heathens with godly Anglos.

Nations will be nations, so let them be nations, without throwing a cloak of godliness over what they are and what they do."
--John Sharp (From: "Agony, Slavery & An American Myth" in The Menonite World)

Someone told me that my use expires after I raise my children Z. Here to carry DNA across a generation, then exit....

They did not understand that we may also affect the evolution of culture. For better or worst.

If for the worst, should it be called culture?

Disculture?

Stewardship vs domination.

we all choose to have selective memory about somethings, like being Afro/Caribbean and choosing to forget that human nature is a fallen nature and that slavery is as old as recorded history itself. All the races have at some point in history been enslaved or have enslaved other races, slavery in Africa right now is probably worst than at any other point in the history of that continent. This issue we conveniently choose to ignore or don't care a whit about!

distraction...what's this NON-SENSE about RACES of which you speak. Or do you mean: "I'm off to the Races...My money is on Half-Breed!"

I was pleased to see that the New York Times published a letter pointing out that it has long been known that the human species has no biological races, and that the race concept ("a cultural construct rather than a biological reality") has a long history of being used in the service of social injustice.
--Jefferson M. Fish, Ph.D

Link: "The Myth of Race, Again" (Looking in the Cultural Mirror)
www.psychologytoday.com/blog/looking-in-the-cultural-mirror/201307/the-myth-race -again

www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/opinion/invitation-to-a-dialogue-the-myth-of-race.htm l?_r=0

Yes about slavery distraction.

But from where did you fall?

I've fallen far from the topic of this thread.

Regarding the Arts of Our Seeking Brothers & Sisters On Deposit in the Gallery Rooms/Passages of the National Gallery of Jamaica:

The Jewel of the Secret Treasury
by: Hafez (c. 1325-1389)

The jewel of the secret treasury
Is still the same as once it was; the seal
Upon Love's treasure casket, and the key,
Are still what thieves can neither break nor steal;
Still among lovers loyalty is found,
And therefore faithful eyes still strew the ground
With the same pearls that mine once strewed for thee.

Question the wandering winds and thou shalt know
That from the dusk until the dawn doth break,
My consolation is that still they blow
The perfume of thy curls across my cheek,
A dart from thy bent brows has wounded me--
Ah, come! my heart still waiteth helplessly,
Has waited ever, till thou heal its pain.

If seekers after rubies there were none,
Still to the dark mines where the gems had lain
Would pierce, as he was wont, the radiant sun,
Setting the stones ablaze. Would'st hide the stain
Of my heart's blood? Blood-red the ruby glows
(And whence it came my wounded bosom knows)
Upon thy lips to show what thou hast done.

Let not thy curls waylay my pilgrim soul,
As robbers use, and plunder me no more!
Years join dead years, but thine extortionate rule
Is still the same, merciless as before.
Sing, Hafiz, sing again of eyes that weep!
For still the fountain of our tears is deep
As once it was, and still with tears is full.


We have, in our midst, Treasuries a-plenty for a life-time of exploration! Good treading & trampling...as in the forces of:

He is trampling out the vintage
Where the grapes of wrath are stored
He hath lossed his fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.

from The Battle Hymn of the Republic (by Julia Howe-1861)

"Grapes of Wrath"
Isaiah 63:2-3
Why are your garments red, like those of one treading the winepress?
"I have trodden the winepress alone; from the nations no one was with me. I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing."

Ouch..."someone" isn't pleased?/!

But turey, it wasn't 'distraction' who introduced this topic in to this thread. He is however correct in his observations.
So Zed, you are denying the existence of races? Remember philosophy is oftentimes 'foolosophy'.

distraction & turey...honestly, there is no axe-grinding about the "nature of slavery", on anyone's part, in pointing out on this thread the artistic outpouring, in Our Land, of a deep spirituality in response to its deprivations (freedoms).

One of the broad & overlapping themes of the six gallery presentations deals with "Spiritual Warriors", and explores visually a rooted,fairly recent human re-actions, in prayer & rebellion, against deplorable conditions.

According to the National Gallery's own text (excerpted for its memorable relevancy):

The work in this gallery reflects on the role of religion and spirituality in local resistance and liberation movements, especially during the colonial period.

Religion and spirituality played a critical role in the fight against slavery throughout the Americas. In Jamaica, Nanny of the Maroons, had charismatic spiritual powers which she used to empower her followers in guerrilla warfare against the colonial authorities.
Similarly, Tacky, the leader of the 1760 rebellion, was an Obeah Man and it is worth noting that Boukman Dutty, who presided over the Vodou ceremony at Bois Cayman that marked the start of the Haitian Revolution in 1791, was from Jamaica.

These rebel leaders are symbolically represented in this exhibition by Renee Cox’s The Red Coat, which provides a contemporary interpretation of the figure of Nanny, in which the artist herself adopts Nanny’s persona and in a poignant act of defiance, wears the red coat of the colonial militia.

In the late 18th century, the Baptist, Methodist and Moravian Church established missions in Jamaica and became actively involved in the Abolitionist movement. These new religious movements gained significant popular support and interacted with African-derived religious traditions. Out of this came several resistance leaders, such as Sam Sharpe, the leader of the 1831 Christmas Rebellion in western Jamaica, and in the post-slavery area, Paul Bogle, the leader of the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion.
Both were Deacons in the Baptist Church. Bogle is represented in this exhibition by a 1952 carving by Kapo, who opted to represent him as one “who threw a stone at the establishment,” the final maquette of Edna Manley’s controversial Bogle monument (1965) and a 2010 poster by Michael Thompson, who represents Bogle as a modern revolutionary.

This conflation of the spiritual, the religious and the political is also evident in modern nationalist movements, to the point where several of its leaders have been compared to Biblical figures such as Moses and Joshua, of which Edna Manley’s drawing Moses (1954) is a reminder.
While he was a secular leader, Marcus Garvey was also directly influential on religious representation in modern Jamaica – as could be seen in the previous gallery, titled In Our Own Image – and his teachings are foundational to the main political-religious movement that emerged in modern Jamaica: Rastafari.

These dynamics are illustrated here by Edna Manley’s Prophet (1935), which is conceptually and stylistically related to her nationalist icon Negro Aroused (1935) and alludes to the prophetic role of visionary Black leaders such as Garvey, and in Carl Abrahams’ Visionary World of Marcus Garvey (1976), although this painting represents Garvey’s influence on Rastafari through that artist’s uniquely irreverent caricatural lens.

The conflation between religious and political militancy is however most obvious in the Rastafari movement and its fundamental challenges of the social and racial establishment.

The Rastafari movement has brought this militant spirit to its cultural production, as can be seen in the examples by Neville Garrick and Clinton Brown, both of which adopt Ethiopian religious iconography, and Parboosingh’s Ras Smoke I, in which the sacramental chalice is wielded defiantly, almost like the machete in Renee Cox’s nearby The Red Coat.

1 Race, 1 People, 1 Love, 1 Planet, there is no other. Not much for religion and spirituality is of a personal nature to me. If a tree falls in the forest is it heard (yes). If there were no humans would there be gods( )?

Archie...Regarding the modern concept of RACES, it's not a matter of Philosophy but Bio-logy (i.e., in genetic make-up, our species is a "fluidity" of Human traits, with some beautiful, mostly climate-influenced variants...such as melanin in dark skin to protect against the sun's rays in equatorial regions, and blond thin hair/light skin-eyes, in Scandinavia, to allow the benefits of sunshine Vitamin D entering the body, in a location of our globe where the benefits of sunshine is scarce for much of the year.

Yet, biologically, which is the major way of defining OUR similarities, we ALL share more of the same genetic material than differences.

There are enough fool's-caps (fool-osophy) to go around, including those preaching "racial-purity" & inventing pseudo-sciences of human eugenics to improve the Racial Stock by choosing what is considered "superior" (Nazi-Aryan culture) & eliminating the intellectually, sexually, diseased inferiors (as thoiugh we were all bovines to experiment with).

Sorry, I should have said "there is no other that we have discovered yet". I think the possibility is "there is".

Z, whichever way you cut it there are distinct races- but did you know that Marcus Garvey believed in keeping the black race pure?

As a "Born again" christian I have to say something regarding "Religion" because "Technically" Christianity is not a religion "Judaism" is a "Religion".What is the difference you ask? well I am glad you asked that question.In Judaism or the Law GOD demanded a righteousness from man and of course they failed and that is why they ended up in Babylonian captivity. In Christianity that righteousness that GOD demanded is freely given in the person of CHRIST so that is why Christianity is a relationship and not a religion. The confusion comes from the fact that the word of GOD is not being rightly divided. 2 Timothy 2:15.

Why are we getting into religious arguments on this site? It seems inappropriate.

I would not be darting down the side-roads on which this discussion began were it not for the artistic merit embedded in the relevant subject of spirituality, mysticism, intuitive genius manifest in the Jamaican Arts...Out of Many One!

archie...if you accept the Science embedded in the fossil records & the DNA chemistry of humankind, we humans are all descended from a theoretical "Eve" from the African continent with physical features necessary for survival in that climate before migrating to the rest of the planet, whereby natural selection & by some enigmatic, emotional-social, chemical-sexual attraction, other traits evolved.
Vitality of our species, under "dynamic" conditions, seems to have been selection criteria for our ancestors, not some Master Race horror of a Dr Josef Mengele ("Angel of Death" Nazi genetic experimenter) injecting blue dyes into dark eyes just because he could get away with it.

archie...in any rum bar that you choose your insistence on racial categories could go on to-and-fro. We'll see what evidence we pull out of our knowledge/experience crocus bags, and let the heavens judge our screeds!

To hint at how arbitrarily obnoxious Race Classifications are, take a gander at Brazil and try to figure out where a generic Archie belongs in the hundreds of genetic features submitted, .whereby a first cousin might slip into some version of a random classification. In effect, "you" (conceptually) could be a different "race" (ethnicity) than your closest relatives & all the consequences of judgement, social treatment, perception of morals/intelligence that might be ascribed by the ruling class (?Race), who may have the leisure time, power, sinister reasons & motivations to create such "rank" divisions...A Race to the top, or a Race to the bottom!

Perhaps Marcus Garvey's wish for a pure black "race" meant, philosophically, an ancestral desire to return to the aboriginal man/woman out of Africa from whom we all descend.


Wiki: Recent African Origin of Modern Humans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans

Wiki: Mitochondrial Eve
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

No nation seems to play, and are more conflicted by the Race Game than the Brazilians, whose folly & confusion of "racial" categories rank in the hundreds:
Here's but a small sample, which can be explored to your wits end on the wiki-site:

...if allowed to choose any classification, Brazilians will give almost 200 different answers.

...analysing the July 98 PME, finds that 77 denominations were mentioned by only one person in the sample. Other 12 are misunderstandings, referring to national or regional origin (francesa, italiana, baiana, cearense). Many of the "racial" terms are (or could be) remarks about the relation between skin colour and exposure to sun (amorenada, bem morena, branca-morena, branca-queimada, corada, bronzeada, meio morena, morena-bronzeada, morena-trigueira, morenada, morenão, moreninha, pouco morena, queimada, queimada de sol, tostada, rosa queimada, tostada).
Others are clearly variations of the same idea (preto, negro, escuro, crioulo, retinto, for Black, alva, clara, cor-de-leite, galega, rosa, rosada, pálida, for White, parda, mulata, mestiça, mista, for "parda"), or precisions of the same concept (branca morena, branca clara), and can actually grouped together with one of the main racial terms without falsifying the interpretation.

Some seem to express an outright refusal of classification: azul-marinho (navy blue), azul (blue), verde (green), cor-de-burro-quando-foge (literally, "the color of a donkey that has ran away", a Portuguese humorous term for a color that cannot be determined).

Is it not an irony of History that Brazil, which is so tied up in knots over Race, was the the "last nation in the Western world to abolish slavery (1888: Lei Áurea--"Golden Law"), and by abolition had imported an estimated total of four million slaves from Africa. This was 40% of all slaves shipped to the Americas."

Wiki: Race & Ethnicity in Brazil...Especially Sections on IBGE Racial Categories/Controversy/Class
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_Brazil

Relevant to the Semantics that distraction: ms moxam brought us about Christianity (& its break-away formulations), it seems that I recall the rabbi Jesus saying to the first papa (pope):
"You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18).
It seems pretty clear that the rabbi (Christ) had an organizing principle in mind, ergo, a Religion ("an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods".)

DONE...with these digressions, retreating back to under my rock.

Reasoning is always appropriate Ms Kennedy.

It is one of the things that keeps us The I. Emotional, mental and soul food.

As long as we can listen to others perspectives in peace.

Archie...if you have a little leisure time, out of your many pursuits, you might find some entertainment value in two short films about our human origins.
Those beginnings are enlightening in revealing a Quest for the existential Unity of humankind, and One People, with adapted variations, if we are true to the evidence!

The Search for the Scientific Adam, from National Geographic, investigates some aspects of our nature being revealed in the National Gallery of Jamaica exhibit...our curiosity about the Universe & its Creation (Creator) beginning in mythology, the arts, story-telling, religions (spirituality) and continuing into the never-ending reaches of the Sciences.

Is it clear that our Mythologies evolve as our collective knowledge fractures & explodes?

Grab some popcorn & enjoy the movies, in which our collective resemblances to our global neighbours shouldn't surprise anyone, especially the "We" of Treasure Beach.

The Search for Scientific Adam
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry4aDwGioRk

The Human Journey--In Search Of Human Origins (Discovery Channel)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vOwUtywxI8

The fossil records are correct, we did originate from one common ancestor, you know... Noah, from Noah in the ark fame!I believe it was found in mount Ararat in Turkey in 1995 if I am not mistaking.