Notes From A Broken Heart

"You know I got to find me People, I got to find me A part-time love Oh I need I need me a part-time love Every time Every time my baby leaves me You know I need a part-time love." Back in the day when innocence lived in young hearts, the concept of tangible love---in songs, movies, novels, even comic books---flourished.  Archie loved Veronica with pure and untainted devotion.  Back in the day, boundaries limited thoughts as well as behaviors. I remember, " Wake up, little Susie; wake up! We gotta go home.  Bemoaning the plight of love-struck teenagers caught in an untenable dilemma, haunted my days and nights.  Susie and her boyfriend's fear merged with a kind of innocence that herald bygone days.   It chronicled a time of white snowdrifts, Valentine hearts, cotton candy, and boxes of chocolate-covered cherries.   1 Corinthians 13:1-4, 5, 7 describe both spiritual and natural love.  "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boa

Writing with prescience in 1895 that stupefies125 years later, Paul Laurence Dunbar penned: "We wear the mask that grins and lies. It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes--- This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties."  Labeled "Negro," Dunbar presented as an anomaly---son of former slaves born in 1872, seven years after Emancipation Proclamation, he became a first among Freedmen, published as poet and novelist.  "Jim Crow" laws, enacted five years after his birth, ushered in and enforced punitive, debasing, and dehumanizing laws that virtually suffocated the South in hatred.  Paul Laurence Dunbar died decades before "Jim Crow" ended (1877-1965); yet, he daily witnessed the indomitable spirit, the dissembling, and cunning of former slaves during his 34-year earthly sojourn in the "free state" of Ohio.   Thwarted in his desire to become a lawyer and eve

From: the Holy Spirit speaks? Through: the Holy Spirit speaks to me ? To: "Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove, With all Thy quickening powers..." Now: Yes, the Holy Spirit speaks to me ! A resolute affirmation of my steps on "the road less traveled," for longer than I can recount. The Holy Spirit, Who has always known me, Whom I am learning of, moment by moment and day by day, speaks to me , especially while I shower. "It's fear, again." He speaks loud enough for me to hear over the shower's rain. "Fear?  Really? It doesn't feel like it." "Yes, fear." And how do you know  how fear feels?" I thought I did, after all these years and "Eyes wide open" trials, tribulations, and adversities. "Fear takes myriad forms, presents itself in varied ways, and defines itself like a chameleon.  Fear may be experienced as 'clubs'..." Clubs? "Certainly! As a guild or syndicate or as