Book of Rules "Builders for Eternity"

Because righteousness governed the world.

Broadcasting live and direct from the rolling red hills on the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica, from a magical place at the intersection of words, sound and power, the red light is on, your dial is set, the frequency in tune to the Rootsland Podcast Stories that are music to your ears.

One of reggae music's most popular and enduring tracks is the song Book of Rules, recorded by the Jamaican vocal trio the Heptones and produced by one of the genre's pioneers, Harry Zephaniah Johnson, known as Harry J.

Originally released as a single on Johnson's JWax label in 1973, the song captured the hearts of Jamaica.

With Barry Llewelyn's smooth, understated vocals and Leroy Cybill's driving bassline, the Songbook of Rules traveled along the same route of the island's diaspora up to Miami, then Philly, the Bronx and Brooklyn, and across the Atlantic to the uk, Birmingham, Manchester and eventually hitting in London, where the Heptones would sign with Chris Blackwell's Island Records.

The song's catchy melody borrows from Glen Campbell's country song Try A Little Kindness, and the lyrics, crafted and sung by Barry Llewellyn, are Adapted from an 1890 poem written by Robert Lee Sharp titled Bag of Tools.

The song has become a standard in the reggae canon and has even crossed over into rock music with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead's 1981 cover version on his Bobby and the Midnights album.

Isn't it strange how princes and kings and clowns that caper in sawdust rings and common people like you and me Are builders for eternity each is given a bag of tools, shapeless masks and a book of rules.

It's unclear where Barry Llewellyn originally heard the R.L.

sharp poem.

It was taught in many US English classes, and quite possible in Jamaica as well, where primary and secondary schools still borrowed from the old colonial English education system.

And it also could be that Llewellyn, who was raised in the slums of Trenchtown, was a mechanic by trade.

I would naturally feel a connection to a poem named Bag of Tools.

Whatever the reason, in late 1973 the Magnificent Forces of nature aligned when the Words of a 19th century poem written by the White sun of the south was adapted into a timeless song recorded by a soulful 20th century reggae band that were the descendants of African slaves.

Isn't it strange Old princesses and kings and clown dedicated saw the screen Just wild people like you with me when we be less foreign.

The poem was written in the late 1800s, but its reggae to the core.

From the very first lines, the poem disparages, dismisses the princes and kings as clowns that caper in sawdust rings, rendering the elite ruling class as an irrelevant circus act, while the common folk, the poor people, wear the irreplaceable ones, the builders, for eternity, not only with physical labor constructing the material world, but a grounded spiritual force building castles in the sky.

And from the outside, looking in, we're all born into different circumstances, some more entitled with better opportunities than others.

But from the inside looking out, we're all the same, all born with a heart, soul, and potential to become anything we will ourselves to be.

We're all given our bag of tools and with it shapeless mass, meaning we control our destinies.

We're like sculptors with a block of clay.

Each one of us endowed with a unique set of skills and life is about finding the right tool from our bag and using it to create our masterpiece.

And just in case we get distracted or lost on our journey, in our quest, we're given a set of guidelines, principles to live by.

A book of rules which is meant to even the playing field, designed to make this a fair race where we all set up at the starting block, at the same time, and after finish at our own pace.

And what is this book of rules that the author is referring to?

Is it the Bible?

Sharp's work was featured in a book of spiritual and religious poems.

Or could it be that the book is merely symbolic?

A metaphor for an internal moral compass that we all possess an innate ability to understand right from wrong, good from evil.

Either way, I'm not even sure it matters.

Because all of our great writings, the Bible, the Quran, the Veda, they're all reflections of ourselves.

And we are reflections of something even higher.

From the very beginning of civilization, man has had the desire to make our lives, our stories, our beliefs, permanent.

We want them to last forever.

From the ancient cave petroglyphs in the Southwest to the Mayan temples, to the Egyptian pyramids, we have forever carved our codes and commandments on tablets of stone, etched our declarations and proclamations in parchment and ink.

We've cut down entire forests so we can print our dogma in books.

Somehow, all those societies that preceded us knew that our stories, our history, needed to be preserved.

There needed to be some record for posterity beyond just oral traditions and word of mouth.

Our ancestors were desperately trying to tell us something, sending us a message from the distant and not so distant past.

And yet, not everyone wants us to receive this Knowledge?

Why?

Because knowledge is power.

Why do you think every time there's a war or a conquest, the first thing the victor wants to do is erase the history of the defeated?

They kill the scholars and teachers.

They burned down the library in Alexandria, toppled the obelisk in Egypt, Babylon destroyed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

The slave masters cut the Africans off from their language and culture, and the Nazis burned the sacred Hebrew texts.

And now we're in the age of banning books, editing and revising and modifying important literary masterpieces to make them more palatable, more in tune with the times.

And I understand that many authors and writers don't age well.

They're outdated, obsolete, even offensive.

But maybe it's better to reveal the ugly truth, expose it, rather than sweep it under the rug and make believe it doesn't exist.

You may not agree or like what an author has to say, but at least we know it's what the author said.

In this digital world, when you download a book or read an article, how do you know you're even reading what the author wrote?

Or if it's been censored or sanitized by some website or platform without our knowledge, tampered with by some young programmer in Audible's coding division?

I'm just getting nervous at who controls the narrative and how much control do they really have?

This isn't like moderating bad words on a Reddit message board.

I mean, this is literally the history of our world.

And I think I would be much more comfortable to going back to seeing it carved on rock than storing it in the clouds.

And speaking of timeless authors, if you're a fan of the Lord's work, especially his early material, I'm talking the five books of Moses stuff.

Well, you need to brush up on your reading because most of today's problems, they date back to civilization's most ancient family feuds.

Talk about history repeating itself.

Those biblical dramas play out like a 4,000 year old episode of the Golden Bachelor meets the Real Housewives of Canaan.

I mean, just check out the book of Genesis and our hero Avraham, a sprite, 86 year old silver haired studio with a hipster beard, decked out in white flowing robes.

He's a powerful patriarch, promised by God that his descendants would be a great nation, as numerous as the stars in heaven.

But as a husband, eh, he's not so great.

And as a father, well, that depends on where you stand on sacrificing your son or exiling them in the desert.

And not to mention his wife Sarah could be Considered the first biblical Karen.

At the ripe age of 76 and never pregnant, she's come to the realization that she ain't going to conceive a great nation for anyone.

So she nags and nags her husband Avraham to sleep with her beautiful Egyptian handmaid, Hagar.

Not the greatest idea.

And we all know from those Bravo reunion shows how this one ends up.

You know, when the baby mama and the wife confront each other on live tv.

And once Hagar gives birth to her son Ishmael, everything changes.

Over at Avraham's crib, Hagar turns instant diva.

You know, gets the lipo, the bbl, joins the gym over in Hebron, takes over the house and takes every opportunity to throw shade at her former boss, Sarah.

You know, posting those portraits of Ishmael and Avraham enjoying some lamb kebab at the kosher buffet.

Then fast forward to season 10, episode one titled Karma is a Bitch.

And now a 90 year old Sarah with her revenge body and new attitude lures back her old flame Avraham, and boom.

Gives birth to a son, Isaac.

That's when the story really heats up, when Sarah tells her man to quite literally kick the side chick to the curb.

At first a reluctant Avraham hesitates.

But when the big man, Hashem, the executive producer of the show, intervenes and promises that Ishmael will get his own spin off series and like Isaac, both will be big stars with big followings and lead great nations, Avraham relents and decides to exile his oldest son and baby's mother into the cruel, hostile desert where the two barely survive.

And now, generations later, the descendants of Ishmael became the Muslim nation and the descendants of Isaac, the Jewish nation.

Two people that share the same father, the same history, the same blood, yet can't manage to share the same piece of land.

The really sad thing is that biblical scholars say the two actually got along.

And that when Ishmael was sent into the desert, he mourned his lost brother.

And later on when the two reunited at their father's funeral.

At first they fought over who would carry the body before finally reconciling and out of respect for their father, agreed they would both carry Avraham.

And it's even said that Isaac agreed to share his inheritance with his brother.

You know, our governments, politicians and so called leaders have become so good at breaking things, at war, at destruction, and when it's all over, who ends up cleaning up the mess, sifting through the rubble in order to rebuild and repair a Damaged and broken world.

It's the poor, the common people like you and me, who poet R.L.

sharp calls the builders for eternity.

And also in that same poem, he says, each shall have built when his hour has flown.

A stumbling block or a stepping stone.

What do you want to build?

What do you really want to be remembered for?

You know, the author of the poem once told his story.

And I think it says so much about his character and maybe why the poem has such heart.

He said.

One spring day when I was just a kid, my father called me to go with him to Trussell's blacksmith shop.

He had left a rake and a hoe to be repaired.

And there they were, ready, fixed like new.

Father handed over a silver dollar for the repairing, but Mr.

Trussell refused to take it.

No, he said, there's no charge for this little job.

But Father insisted that he take the payment.

And if I live to be a thousand years, Robert Sharp said, I'll never forget that old blacksmith's reply.

Sid, he said to my father, can't you let an old man do something now and then just to stretch his soul?

It's the old the giver receives more than the receiver gets.

Bread cast upon the water comes back a thousand fold.

One who stretches his soul into deeds of love and kindness unfailingly reaps a just reward.

I love that.

I love the story as much as I love the poem.

That expression, stretch our soul.

I think we all need to do that.

We all need to stretch our souls, make them as flexible as Simone Biles.

And I love that It's a blacksmith, Mr.

Trussell, that comes up with that.

The old law, you know, I think we need to go back to those old laws.

The giver receives more than the receiver, gets bread cast upon the waters, comes back a thousand fold.

And by the way, if you want to know where that's written, it's in the Book of Rules.

Saw the screen.

Just wild people like you and me when we began shamelessness and the Book of Rules.

Each must make their lives flow.

We need, I said, all people like you.

With me, with.