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    Delicate as an orchid yet brave as a lioness

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    By Blessed

              She is my orchid an orchid is a person in your life whose personality and presents reminds you of the beauty in the world and the beauty inside humanity. Orchids are of supreme importance to the fluidity and progression of human existence, because through their work in our lives we are reminded that we have obligations to fulfill in the lives of those whom God has assigned us to. Hopelessness has a heartbeat; in the pitch black of my nights, I can hear that heartbeat hovering over my head. Faithlessness is a snake, constantly slithering through the gardens of our minds, waiting to sink its teeth into the Divine thoughts which empower us to give CPR to our souls.

    That is the Dark World in which I live, where the Sonya Massey and George Floyd’s don’t have cameras to record the last moments of their lives for the footage to continue to cry out for justice denied. My environment is dark, many mornings I wake up with my soul dehydrated from a night of stumbling through the desert of misdirection, as my situation systemically tries to confuse me about where my life should be and how to get there.. can you relate? I live in a mental, spiritual, and literal Matrix where regrets work daily to cannibalize your resolve to rise beyond your circumstances.

    I’m in a living graveyard a Bermuda Triangle where the dead bodies of yesterday’s public schools to prison pipeline can be found. The autopsies would reveal that most of these souls died inside the womb of a malignant society the umbilical cords of social economic imbalance wrapped around their necks choking them in the womb of inner-city war zones. But this article isn’t a trumpet being blown as a reminder of the multifaceted realms of decay embedded in our social systems. This article is a celebration of the orchids God plants in our social gardens, people who have tapped into a beautiful resplendent light within themselves and live their lives intentionally signing the light in the darkest crevices of the social gardens of our fallen Edens.

    I’ll try my best to be an orchid but many mornings I wake up punch drunk from the fight dazed and confused from the body blows delivered by a social system designed to destroy me. I wake up many mornings gasping for air desperately calling for the thin strands of light streaming into the darkness. Yesterday I spent my entire day working to diffuse a situation moving at warp speed designed to leave a 23-year-old young Black man stabbed to death by 28-year-old Black man.

    I woke up this morning like many other mornings spiritually drained and struggling to see the beauty in humanity and desperately trying to hold on to the beauty within myself. I’ve lost count of the Sonia Massey and George Floyd scenarios. I have witnessed crew murders and during a season in my life when I was losing the battle to stay true to my commitment to get up and pour my light into people and their struggles she walked through the door.

    I can’t afford to allow you to treat your lies or sexualize my fascination with this woman. While she does have the most beautiful skin, eyes like sapphires, hair like silk and the facial beauty of a goddess more hypnotic than the power of her femininity is her inner beauty. To understand the powerful woman she is and the power she lives in I first must educate you to these facts. After just a few weeks of working as an officer in a prison most people spiral into the worst version of themselves. Go watch the movie the Stanford Prison project a true story about an experiment carried out by the Stanford Psychology Department, where within hours of an experiment where students play the role of prison inmates and others as prison guards in a section of the school used as a makeshift prison, those students, and professors playing the role of guards were verbally, emotionally, and sexually abusing the students playing the role of inmates. Abuse got so intense that the experiment which was intended to be a two-week experiment had to be shut down within three days.

    To detail the psychological and emotional abuse we have to navigate daily at the hands of staff would require 10 articles. To give mentally unstable and immature people unchecked authority over the lives of humans deemed socially worthless is a recipe for the creation of a holocaust like conditions. Were you sickened by what your eyes seen as Sandra and George were taken from us. I have a list of similar stories which could cost me my life if I expose the secrets these walls hold. Only a small group of human beings rise above the Holocaust like culture of D.O.C and execute the strength of character and spiritual stability and moral compass required to treat us like human beings.

    Those spiritual Gladiators are our orchids and we’re in a national moment where Sonya Massey’s death requires us to pay close attention to the hiring process used to employ law enforcement personnel. I’m in a moment where much is being said about the toxic and sadistic behavior of the nation’s law enforcement staff. I felt it only right to use this article to remind you that there are spiritual giants heroes and sheroes orchids in those uniforms as well. I must remind you of the importance to acknowledge and celebrate these heroes and sheroes who go to work daily aggressively committed to not taking lives but speaking life into those whom their professional responsibilities bring them into contact with. What makes the behavior of those like the woman who inspired this article heroic, is, there is no audience in here to applaud them, no cameras to record them, they do it from a place within them that hungers for no accolades.

    I love the brothers whom I live among, but I must be honest and sharing with you that these walls have destroyed the logic and stability of many and the animalistic culture has permeated many. Many men will show respect to the prison guards who they know will handcuffed and beat them but will disrespect the guards who they know operate with compassion, the behavior is a sick trauma derivative fuel injected by Stockholm Syndrome elements.

    I’ve watched this woman day after day come to work and fight to show love to the very men day after day respond to her in ways that are not always appreciative of the respect she gives. This woman is by no means weak, when she’s forced to show her fangs, I’ve seen her snap and trigger fear and respect in the eyes of psychopaths and killers. She’s mastered using her authority without abusing it. Last month on her day off she got up got dressed and showed up at 8:00 a.m. to attend the graduation ceremony of the men in her dorm who had graduated from the Collegiate Horticulture program. On many occasions after a day of dealing with the oppression and sadistic behavior of staff members I watched her enter the control booth to start her shift as the dorm sergeant and just by her presence, deflate the tension in the minds of 224 men on the verge of explosion. I watch her chastise then encourage men whose cells smell like the drugs they’ve been smoking all day instead of just locking them up and ridding herself of the problem. I admire her from a distance but the brilliance of the light she brings to work everyday forced me to ask her last week why do you do this and who embedded those qualities in you. She said if I don’t come to work and show my coworkers how human beings are worthy of being treated who will. She said the life lessons in embedded in her by her amazing mother of the jewels that are her North Star. Everyday this gorgeous but humble woman with Trinidadian roots comes to work in the darkest and most demonic war zone and walks on the waters of the sick savagery in which her co-workers drown holding out her hand to the social outcasts like myself pulling us up out of the drowning waters reminding us that we are seen and worthy of love and respect. Every day that I look at this orchid I’m reminded that one person can change the world, every day she reminds me that the breath of one righteous person can breathe life into the lungs of an entire valley of dry bones. I’m hoping that this article inspires you to not allow those who abuse their power to call you to forget that those who don’t are worthy of our appreciation and our respect. In our last conversation it broke my heart to hear her rightfully say that one of the main reasons that there wasn’t a national roar for Sonya Massey in the manner of George Floyd, was that there is a devaluation of the lives of Black woman embedded into the nations culture. I agreed and agreed. But as I watch this beautiful queen, this giant, this woman of Grace whose presence has the power to calm jungles, walk among the broken and remind them of their royalty, I’m reminded through her that truly there are those who walk amongst us who have been free ordained to be world changers to change lives by changing cultures and changing perspectives. This article is dedicated to the goddess who told me orchids are her favorite flower. She’ll never see this article but it’s okay because there are still those in uniform who walk among us who do the right thing not for accolades but simply because it’s the right thing to do. We must honor and celebrate them. We must lift them up with our love and appreciate as they work to lift us up. Rip Sonya Massey.

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    Carma Lynn Henry Westside Gazette Newspaper 545 N.W. 7th Terrace, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33311 Office: (954) 525-1489 Fax: (954) 525-1861

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He has grown his flock from the 25 or so students who showed up at his first services to more than 200 each Sunday. Sometimes, it’s standing room only. “We’ve been trying to figure out what to do next because on Easter Sunday we had 342 people, and some were standing in the back,” he said. Word In Black talked to Lockett about the secrets of his success: how his adjustment of Sunday ser-vices got people into the pews, why his philosophy for guiding students on their spiritual journey centers on independent thought, and how his “Spin the Block” initiative is shaking things up on campus. The in-terview has been edited for length and clarity. Word in Black: The first thing we want to know is, how do you get so many young people to chapel every Sunday?. Lawrence Lockett: Well, first of all, I changed the time of service from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. I realized a lot of the students like to sleep in late. It gives them time to do whatever they need to do. I’m sure many of them still like to party hearty over the weekend. So they have a good chance just to kind of refocus, recali-brate, get themselves lunch, and then come over to the chapel for service. When I started in November, maybe 20-25 students came, but now it’s over 200 that come every Sun-day, and it’s pretty cool. So now we’re repositioning ourselves to go after the freshman class this year. If we have the same success as last year, there’s definitely not going to be any room. Word in Black: Tell me about pastoring on a college campus. Lawrence Lockett: Morgan actually started as a biblical institute, so the Christian traditions have al-ways been here. As a pastor or shepherd, I’m walking students through their questions, not always just trying to preach answers to them. It’s about being vulnerable. I tell them I was in their same position, just trying to figure it out. And it’s not me just trying to give them answers. Having been there helps me really walk with them and anchor them in the storm of life that’s going to come. I want them to understand that their soul really matters. A lot of students focus on mental health, but they really need to focus on spiritual health as well. It should be one and the same. So I’ve been trying to preach that, if anything, spiritual health is just as important as your mental health. But we do encour-age the use of the counseling center, for sure, if there is a mental health crisis. WIB: What does Monday through Friday look like for you? LL: Mondays, we are usually off because of Sundays. On Tuesdays, we have Bible studies, so I’ll host a Bible study at noon along with my colleagues that work in the chapel. And then, I’m teaching a class called Hip-hop and the Gospel on Tuesdays at 2:30 p.m., dealing with mixing culture and religion. 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Students want something real and authentic, something they can gravitate to, and something that’s convenient. So when we’re outside, people are like, “What’s all the noise outside? What’s all the music?” Then they come outside, and there are chairs, so they grab one and sit and enjoy the service. We come to them. They don’t have to come to us. At the very beginning of the semester, we do services outside the four resi-dence halls. And that kind of gives us a steamroll into homecoming week. And we’ve seen a lot of success because of that. WIB: What should I expect when I arrive for Sunday service? LL: You’re gonna see a lot of involvement with students. I’ve learned that students like to feel invested, and they want to participate in what’s going on. They don’t want to be told by adults what they should and shouldn’t do. So when you go to the service, you’ll see our praise team full of students. You’ll see a choir full of students. You’ll see students reading scripture. You’ll see students giving testimonies. And then I’ll come in and give a sermon, or I’ll have a guest friend or a guest preacher come in to do the sermon. But you’re gonna see a lot of student involvement, and I think that also assisted with a lot of the growth be-cause when they see fellow students, they understand they’re just like me, and if they can do it, I can do it. WIB: What about musicians and choir? LL: The musicians are also students. They say, “Hey, I love to play. I wanna use my gifts in some way, shape, or form.” And they’ll ask whether or not there’s a spot for them. And we say absolutely. And there is a chapel choir. Some of the members are also members of the university choir. WIB: What is the “next” you see for the chapel? LL: I want the students to know God, find freedom, discover purpose, and make a difference. The chapel really is the heartbeat of the campus, and I want students to know more about where faith, hope, and belonging really stem from. 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