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    jackieholness

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    Dream a little dream…(R.I.P. Corey Haim)

    Hello World!!!

    I’m writing this post an hour later than I usually do…I wonder why… 🙂

    Anywho, when I was in high school and was blessed to have a boyfriend (wish didn’t happen very often), I knew that that the death knell of the relationship had rung when I dreamt of them…I don’t know why this happened but it did without fail…looking backing I wonder if this was God’s way of preparing me for the sad inevitable or maybe it was just something my subconscious mind picked up on before my conscious mind did…

    Still, I do know that dreams are one of the ways that God chooses to speak to us…It happens over and over again in His Word…God uses dreams all thoughout the story of the birth of Jesus Christ….

    But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.  Matthew 1: 20-21

    And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they (the Magi) returned to their country by another route.  Matthew 2:12

    When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”  Matthew 2:13

    After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”  Matthew 2:19-20

    My father, who also believes in the power of dreams, and I have had numerous discussions dreams, and he has given me tips on how to decode dreams. I have also attended a seminar about dreams in 2004 which was moderated by Dr. Stephen Aizenstat, a clinical psychologist who has conducted dreamwork seminars for over 25 years in the U.S., Europe and Asia.  I was blessed to have him interpret an important dream of mine in front of the whole class. I cannot share it here, but I thank God for using that dream to showing me a bit of my future…I have also read some literature on dreams and have Googled numerous dream interpretation Web sites…

    Everyone dreams….but every once in a while, we dream something that stays with us…These are the dreams that we are meant to seriously consider because God may be trying tell us something…Most experts suggest a few tips for dream interpretation…

    1. Keep a journal next to your bed. In the morning or in the middle of the night, as soon as you wake up, write the dream down…You don’t want to forget important details that help you decode your dream…

    2. The language of dreams is typically symbols….For instance, if you dream of a toilet, you may be flushing someone or something toxic out of your life…Consider what symbols mean to you personally and what they may mean in literature…I love to Google dream Web sites to figure what symbols mean….

    3. Consider the events of your life at that moment…I typically have dreams at stressful times of my life, and my dreams often tell me truths that I need to know and act on….

    4. And of course, pray and ask God for illumination…

    Any thoughts?

    P.S. Check out this song, “Dream a Little Dream” by the the great Louis Armstrong…listening to his songs always make me think of episodes of  “Tom and Jerry.” Guess it’s because they used to play those kind of songs in the background…Probably had to be born in the ’70s to remember that… 🙂

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    It’s March….Where Are You With Your Visions for 2010?!

    Hello World!!!

    So what’s up y’all? It’s March…time to check in about our goals…How are we doing? A few years ago, I made a vision board hoping that the images would somehow manifest in real life…and to my surprise, even today those images are becoming reality…I haven’t made a vision board since then but I do write down my goals each year…And while all of my goals don’t necessarily come true, I am amazed how many of them do without very much effort on my part sometimes…it’s as if there is magic in writing them down…This principle is illuminated in God’s word…

    “And the LORD answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.”  Habakkuk 2:2

    Actually, it’s not magic…I think that in writing our goals down or creating a vision board, we input the images and words into our subconscious minds. And then our subsconcious minds go to work to enable us to take the actions that we need to take…And of course, God works on our behalf to make our goals come true if they are in His will for us…

    So as I said before, we are three months into the New Year…how am I doing? I’m working it out….How are you doing? Let me know…

    Any thoughts?

    Check out the video for “Optimistic” by Sounds of Blackness!

    You hear the voice of reason
    Telling you this can’t never be done
    No matter how hard reality seems
    Just hold on to your dreams…

    As long as you keep your head to the sky,
    You can win as long as you keep your head to the sky….

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    Black History Post Obama…

    Hello World!!!

    You know I had to do it before the month was over…The obligatory Black History Month write-up…but since even Black History Month has become commercialized courtesy of corporations like McDonald’s (in actuality, I would rather it be commercialized than ignored…), I thought it would be apropos to turn over the Black History Month prism, if you will, and examine it from a different angle…

    Let’s the start the conversation with this startling news that I ran across last week – The Epsilon Chapter of Zeta Tau Alpa, a white sorority, beat out members of the Divine Nine Black fraternities and sororities in the Sprite Step Off in Atlanta last weekend! The steppers won a whopping $100,000 prize…gotta love corporate sponsorship…since then, a scoring discrepancy has been revealed which may make the team co-winners with a chapter of the AKAs…(READ: Deltas are still the best…yeah, I said it…)

    So what do y’all think about a white sorority even being allowed to step in a step show competition? Stepping is rooted in the illustrious history of the Divine 9 black fraternities and sororities which were formed because blacks were not allowed in white fraternities and sororities at colleges and universities throughout the nation…And although white fraternities and sororities seem to be organized for netorking and socialization purposes, black fraternities and sororities have had the added challenge of responding to the societal ills of racism, classism and poverty that disproportionately affected black people…Now since these black organizations were formed in the early part of the 20th century, much of this has changed…our first black president is evidence of this change (hope, change, yes, we can…you know the routine…just being funny.) But does this mean that white fraternities and sororities should be stepping in step show competitions? Apparently, the Epsilon chapter of Zeta Tau Alpha began stepping in the first place to take part in the University of Arkansas Unity Step Show 16 years ago…If Obama is president, maybe white girls can win a step show competition…

    Some other news that piqued my interest…Rev. Al Sharpton and Tavis Smiley were beefing last week in a way that sorta reminded me of the Booker T. Washington and the W.E.B. DuBois debate…(Shout out to Dr. Gloria Alibaruho who taught me about this debate in high school…) now, don’t get me wrong…The good Reverend and Mr. Smiley don’t compare to these black history giants…But apparently Smiley believes that President Obama is shortchanging black people by not focusing on our issues…And Rev. Sharpton believes that President Obama is everybody’s president and cannot focus on any one group to the exclusion of the other…There is a interesting commentary about the spat here….maybe in a post Obama world, black leaders don’t have to like each other and can nicely cuss each other out for the world to hear…

    And while we’re on President Obama and Rev. Al Sharpton, I heard on Sharpton’s show last week that the president has signed an executive order to increase funding at historically black colleges…What if white students began flooding historically black colleges? I attended a historically white institution myself so I have no opinion really…(Actually I love my HWCU – Goooo dawgs!!!) I wonder whatever happened to Joshua Packwood, the first white valedictorian of Morehouse College in 2008…Actually, a quick Google search revealed that he is an analyst at Goldman Sachs…pretty darn good I must say… and cute to boot…(my young readers may want to get up on that!) In a post Obama world, maybe HBCUs can have white valedictorians? what y’all think?

    Any thoughts?

    To honor Black History Month, I will offer a memorable quote from someone in black history on each post I write this month…

    “Everybody’s looking at you, thinking, ‘OK, they say you are the man. What have you got?” Kwatsi Alibaruho, NASA’s first black flight director and the son of my favorite high school teacher Dr. Alibaruho…You did that Dr. A! Congratulations!!!