“I wonder where we’re goin’ baby/ that is my concern

Are we really headed to the point of no return?

A place where generosity has been replaced by greed/

I’m not sure how we got here

but this is what we need:

Revolution.”

lyrics by Joseph Wooten, from his song “Revolution of the Mind”, named after a James Brown album of the same title.

Every blue moon, someone asks me a powerful question, the kind of question that gives me pause, makes me stop what I’m doing and think deeply about a particular idea, issue or current event.

Last week, my wife asked me what I was going preach about on Sunday's sermon at the Happytime Tabernacle Temple Number Two for All People on the Earth, in the Universe and Every Dimension Beyond.

She said “Reverend Boogaloo, when are you gonna preach again and teach the people about ..The Change that Can Re-Arrange..? Because some of those deacons and trustees need to check themselves-before-they-wreck-themselves!!...on change management, leveraging diversity, thinking-outside-the-box...Why last week during that building fund committee meeting, half of them were sitting up there on the rostrum sound asleep, with slobber comin’ out the side of their mouths...”

I cut her off. 

“But lamb-chop, they had just finished lunch and it was a really hot afternoon...” and I made up some excuse about how some of them are getting old and I quickly changed the subject. Later on, I began to meditate and think about change and what change agency means, what with all the big hub-bub about Mr Obama’s first 100 days and all. And suddenly, I had a vision (because I am a prophesizer) of what change would look like for black people in ‘Merica and around the world if real, substantive change in our thinking took place.

One thing it could mean would be that we would stop killing, raping and robbing each another over petty slights, imagined insults and stupid stuff.

Also, it might mean that we would believe in ourselves and each another.

I imagined us black folk speaking Portuguese, French, Spanish, German, Lendu, Lingala, Lango, Fon, Kiswahlili, Xhosa, Jamican Patois, Ebonics, Mandarin and Russian, pooling our resources to start banks, credit unions and businesses together so that no one would be unemployed and everyone would have a wholesome place to live. We would teach each other how to take care of our bodies with proper nutrition, exercise and stress management techniques so that things like kidney and heart disease, diabetes and cancer, high-blood pressure and hiv/aids would be a thing of the past.  We would heal each other with a love so strong that our surplus would spill over into the rest of the world and we would solve global problems for everybody else, being leaders instead of followers.

And then I thought to myself, “But Boogaloo, that would take a revolution” in our thinking, our values, our habits, our practices, our beliefs about ourselves and our role in the world.

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