We have been educated into believing someone else's concept of the deity, and someone else's standard of beauty. You have the right to practice any religion and politics in a way that best suits your freedom, your dignity, and your understanding. And once you do that, you don't apologize.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of personal belief systems and individual freedom.
John Henrik Clarke's quote reflects on how societal norms can shape our understanding of spirituality and aesthetics. It encourages individuals to embrace their own perspectives on religion and beauty, advocating for personal freedom, dignity, and authenticity without the need for apologies to others. This speaks to the importance of individual agency in defining one's own truth in a world filled with external expectations.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the importance of individual beliefs in a diverse society.
I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.
As the eldest son of an Alabama sharecropper family, I was constantly troubled by a collage of North American southern behaviors and notions in reference to the inhumanity of people. There were questions that I did not know how to ask but could, in my young, unsophisticated way, articulate a series of answers.
Anytime someone says your God is ugly and you release your God and join their God, there is no hope for your freedom until you once more believe in your own concept of the 'deity.'
The Europeans not only colonialized most of the world, they began to colonialize information about the world and its people. In order to do this, they had to forget, or pretend to forget, all they had previously known abut the Africans.
I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.
Africans in the United States must remember that the slave ships brought no West Indians, no Caribbeans, no Jamaicans or Trinidadians or Barbadians to this hemisphere. The slave ships brought only African people and most of us took the semblance of nationality from the places where slave ships dropped us off.
Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds - and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe.
In the stream, _x000D_ Rushing past _x000D_ To the dusty world, _x000D_ My fleeting form _x000D_ Casts no reflection.
God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials.
I study religion because I find it fascinating and problematic. But I struggle with the idea of what religion is, what being religious means. A lot of people assume that if you write about early Christianity, you must be some kind of Sunday-school teacher.
The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish; the impressions remain flat and unconnected in the soul. Thus they are easily led by the opinions of others, are content to let their impressions be shuffled and rearranged and evaluated differently.
I am the passenger, I stay under glass. I look through my window so bright, I see the stars come out tonight. I see the bright and hollow sky, over the city's ripped backsides and everything looks good tonight.
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