GUERNICA Pablo Picasso 1937
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WHAT CAN YOU SEE ABOVE?
CAN YOU SUSTAIN BOTH IMAGES?
IS IT AN EITHER / OR PERCEPTION/PARADIGM?
TWO SEPARATE IMAGES.
TWO SEPARATE CO-EXISTING TRUTHS.
CAN THEY BE HELD WITHIN ONE’S MIND AS WHOLE OR SEPARATE?
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Idealism and Reality
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Racism (overt) v. Bias (covert)
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Moral Courage
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To Dream the Impossible Dream
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Transition to a new configuration of thought
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The new threat: ‘Racism without racists’
Whites and blacks don’t speak the same language when they talk about racism
For many minorities, racism is less about overt hostility and more about bias
(CNN) — In a classic study on race, psychologists staged an experiment with two photographs that produced a surprising result.
1.) They showed people a photograph of two white men fighting, one unarmed and another holding a knife.
2.) Then they showed another photograph, this one of a white man with a knife fighting an unarmed African-American man.
3.) When they asked people to identify the man who was armed in the first picture, most people picked the right one.
4.) Yet when they were asked the same question about the second photo, most people — black and white — incorrectly said the black man had the knife.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/26/us/ferguson-racism-or-racial-bias/?cid=ob_articlesidebarall&iref=obinsite
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The definition of moral courage
of an individual,
of a community,
is the decision, the capacity and the practice
to step UP
and
take a stand against violence of any type:
physical, moral, spiritual, and psychological.
And, to offer alternatives/configurations of relational dynamics
which will inspire and yield new narratives.
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Moral courage is the
courage to tell the truth,
to ask the questions,
to blow the whistle,
to create a clarion to fell walls of Jerichos
withstanding intimidation, isolation and reprisals,
both hidden and visible,
when slanting the truth to denying the truth
would be more socially comfortable.
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People who possess moral courage have souls
that have a True North universal compass and divine force.
“To thine own self be true.”
To disconnect and to hide is to desecrate their souls.
That is the risk of not stepping up.
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One can blow a horn for aesthetics only.
Yes, I believe art can be a powerful catalyst of social change.
One can blow a horn for a culture that extends the possibilities of truth
between each individual
and
between the individual and their community.
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Moral courage is the waterfall,
the threshold moment,
the defining crossroad for social change.
Moral courage is the instrument and vehicle of the seer,
of the visionary who can imagine a NEW reality.
The Hurricane Lamp.
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Creative courage dances and creates music with moral courage.
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All r/evolutions start from a clear sight + a passionate heart
that is a touchstone that can discern what is true and what is tinsel.
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DON QUIXOTE PABLO PICASSO 1955
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Create a windmill
whose INITIAL single rotation can change
the directions, the conversations,
the paradigms of conventional visions/practice of:
social justice,
intellectual discourse,
relational dynamics,
infrastructures that shape a society
and
restricts or opens the creative thinking that envisions
a blueprint of what actions are necessary
to live a purposeful life,
a life worth living,
a life that begets a legacy of courage: moral + creative.
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One event can define the opposing realities
of a dominant culture and the “other” made invisible cultures.
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Culture is the foundation that defines the values of a society,
a nation, a community and an individual.
The stories told by each reveals the prism, the filters, the myths,
and
what is accepted as the cohesive narrative
identifies the signifier, magnet and nuclei.
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A singular current
gathers momentum into a collective vortex
of creative breakthroughs and new social diagrams
that offers reality as a supple life force,
a vital, constantly changing energy field
that can overturn beliefs/practices
that either welcomes or suppresses
the hurricane lamps of humanity:
the visionaries that break open vistas into
wider and deeper sacred fields of the majesty
of the nature of our better angels.
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The Hurricane Lamp + The Spearhead is necessary
to create the light and wedge to enter a dominant thought/practice
and
to open the moment of suspended belief.
The wedge is needed to widen the scope of what is being re-seen,
revealing the truths of diverse realities
defining the driving values of various cultures and societies.
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We learned what narratives prevail in Ferguson, USA.
We learned the opposing narratives that assigned the value of life
between an Officer and a young male that met at the crossroad.
The Officer thought he was a child as he shot rounds of ammunition
killing the young male who he perceived as a demonic giant.
The Mother described her slain child,
who was of the same height as the Officer,
as a gentle giant.
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Add the variables which re-contextualizes the narrative:
the syntax and lexicon of spoken/body language communications;
effective and flexible conflict resolution skills;
the spectrum of “freezing” an escalating confrontation
from verbal command to Taser to gun shots;
gun shots directed at limbs or the killing zones of the human body;
race; age; physical characteristics; time of day;
latitude and longitude of the location;
the loci/ context;
the perceptual lenses of protection and safety in a community;
the community funded Officers of Peace or Officers of Anticipated Violence;
and
the majority of the community being
served/perceived by law enforcement/governing agencies
as the “usual suspects”…
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WHATCOLOROFSKINDOYOUWEAR Catherine L. Johnson 2013
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CLICK TWICE ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE
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At the crossroads,
an awareness of the magnitude of the crossroads
is the necessary sanctum
to flip the script,
to turn the windmill,
create the wedge
that invites the possibilities of alternate epilogues
and
the genesis of a new narrative
that upholds the value of each and every life
as precious
and
a source of light.
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Decide to move out of your own enclosed dogma.
Risk being naked.
Improvise.
Listen.
Practice.
Let go of what does not work.
Initiate a template for conversations
that honors and respects what you discover
-rather than what you think you must know.
R/evolution.
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The world is not flat.
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Labels to define the “other” are created by the values of the dominant culture.
Freedom of discovery and fear of discovery is an equation that has no movement.
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The dominant culture of a society is not necessarily the culture of humanity.
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In healing centers,
a venue that is unique and apart from the dominant culture,
the values of the dominant culture fray.
What is practiced is loving kindness.
What is sought after is wholeness.
What is practiced is courage staring down the annihilation of fear.
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I have lived in healing centers
and
straddled a life in the dominant culture my entire life.
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I honor and respect individuals
whose lives are/were a testament of moral courage
and
inchoate complexity called out both their creative courage and genius.
That is/was my culture that shaped me.
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I believe and practice widening the energy of life,
upholding social justice
and
live in the light of creative altruism.
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The Impossible Dream
from the Man of La Mancha
was the choreography/blueprint/score
of my life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJuBaSLgMnU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXDG3LYh4p0
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Artists ask questions
that opens up awareness
of how humanity is defined/expressed/suppressed.
Artists share that role with the Hurricane Lamps,
throwing light forward into the darkness,
and
the Spearheads of Social Justice.
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ASK QUESTIONS.
The simplest question of WHY
creates
a wedge into the PRISONS
of tightly held belief systems.
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In Plato’s Symposium,
he described what he called the true artists
– namely, those who give birth to some new reality.
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Practice asking questions.
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Turn windmills.
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Reach for the highest star for/of humanity that is majestic and breathes.
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Attend to the FIRST LIGHT @ Night.
Transition to a new configuration of thought.
Practice.
Practice.
Improvise.
Practice.
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Step up.
Be A/LIVE LIFE.
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It’s a Wonderful World
Louis Armstrong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2RbFVRRtqI
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We all know the actions Louis Armstrong made in September 1957.
The Day Louis Armstrong Made Noise
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/opinion/23margolick.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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The most frequently experienced form of cowardice is the statement:
“I did not want to become involved.”
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EXODUS:FREEATLASTIAINTGOINGBACK Catherine L. Johnson 2013
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CLICK TWICE ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE
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THE HUMANITY PORTFOLIO 2013
https://catherineljohnson.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/fifteen-paintings-28-august-2013-the-humanity-portfolio-28-august-2013-the-50th-anniversary-of-the-march-on-washington-for-freedom-jobs-rev-dr-martin-luther-kings-i-have-a-dream-s/
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FRESHDRIEDBLOODIAMHUMAN Catherine L. Johnson 2013
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Step up.
Be A/LIVE LIFE.
PRACTICE, PRACTICE the SIMPLE GIFTS of FREEDOM:
ASK WHY?
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Thanks + Giving = HUMANITY
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On Oct. 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation inviting citizens of the United States to “set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” His act established Thanksgiving as a national event to be celebrated the last Thursday of each November.
Thanksgiving that year was celebrated on Nov. 26, one week after Lincoln’s trip to a small Pennsylvania town, where he memorialized the fallen in one of the Civil War’s most critical and devastating battles. With bodies still lying unburied in the fields behind him, Lincoln asked the nation to “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom.”
October 3, 1863
By the President of the United States of America
A PROCLAMATION
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.
And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.
CATHERINE L. JOHNSON 