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The shadows were not originally cast in what we now know as America…
We relish the presence of our elders in the “Garden of Eden” on a content that houses the “Red Sea.” Biblical history teaches us that this is where God instructed and admonished Adam and Eve. It is also shared that God fashioned Adam from the waters and of the dirt of the earth blew air into his lungs and later removed a rib from Adam to present him with a help met.
Nowhere have I found that he made multiple and duplicate copies of himself, of Adam nor of Eve in different hues.
Our shadows are not a ghost nor the fairy tales of a lost people, according to all of the bibles of this earth our shadows are the descendants of Christ. They are purposeful legacies established to provide life’s “blueprints” for an eternity.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not words that lend themselves to only a few, nor were the only known and uttered by a single individual attempting to express poetic verses of poetry nor were they designed to be monopolized by a group of individuals congregating to draw attention to a selfish agenda that would only address those in the room and others that resembled them. Could it be that those words were framed by those, supposedly, invisible ancestors, is it remotely, possible, that they; infused themselves into the minds of those writers and into the ink that was used to splash words of unity upon a canvas to be hailed as a constitution.
Please do not insult those shadows with willful neglect and failure to acknowledge their sacrifices, contributions, and loss of life by heaping false praise upon and giving credit for inventions to those who labored not.
Those invisible shadows wore battered, broken, bloody, dusty and bruised bodies while paving the way for All to have an opportunity to life, liberty, and the pursuits of happiness.
Legacies left by our shadows, clearly indicate that they did not sacrifice their lives to provide handouts to the lazy, the greedy, the hateful, the scornful, the liars and the crooked inhabitants of this earth.
Embrace the abused, stolen, manipulated and misused, the intellect of our shadows, gently kiss their sun-baked, cracked faces, rub their aching heads, soothe their bloodied, calloused hands with salves of love, kindness, and understanding.
Closely observe and learn to appreciate their images, study their “TRUE” history and acknowledge their architectural, mathematics, medicinal and other skills that remain in place and serves to assist millions of individuals all over the world to this very day.
Do not be afraid to accept and to enjoy their effervescence, realize that their plights are no different from your own, that they left legacies that are proving to stand the tests of time. Appreciate the essence of those ancestral shadows, they, just as everyone else’s, were simply attempting to be included in the world’s pursuits of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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Melvin “Casey” Lars ©
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Photo credit: ilbusca on istockphoto.com