Meeting Bob Marley is a special and profound experience. The night before I had performed his song "No Woman No Cry" at The Sweetwater in Mill Valley, California, with guitarist Gary Sangervasi. Gary is one of the best reggae sound and rock players I know. I met him when I taught high school poetry in San Francisco and he was one of my students. Gary comes with me to Solomon's Tower in San Francisco where we meet Bob Marley. Marley's music plays in the background of the record store. Bob's hips are swaying in rhythm to the music. There's more to his presence than his dreadlocks, being a man of creative passion with a genuine outpouring of love.  He captivates my attention & there is a deep spiritual seeking in his eyes, and the graceful motion of his hips, and in his simple smile there is peace about him, even though he has cancer.

Bob is dancing in front of me and Gary, and writes a note and hands it to me:

Bob Marley's inceptive spiritual orientation is as a  Christian, and he performs Biblical songs like "The Lord Will Make A Way". Influenced by Ethiopian illustrations of a dreadlocks Jesus, and incited by Rastaman Mortimo Pianno, Marley recorded an obscure first record, adapting the doo-wop hit "Crying In the Chapel" and changing it to "Selassie In the Chapel". The soul searcher who's early acoustic gem "Pray For Me" saw himself as a soul singer in the genre of rhythm and blues, and inspired by the ska vibration and tempo, and African-Jamaican folk drumming, a new unique soulish sound called reggae is born.

"Once for all, I have sworn by my holiness - and I will not lie to David - that his line will continue forever and his throne endure before me like the sun; it will be established forever like the moon, the faithful witness in the sky." (Psalm 89:36-37). Some consider him the promised messiah. They quote Jeremiah 23:1-8 to justify their belief that the scattered flock of Africans would be righteously restored, and his followers look to him and call themselves "Rastafarians". They believe Jesus looks like them. In the climate where Jesus grew up his skin was tan dark, his hair long. They wear a mane of dreadlocks, the ultimate symbol of their independence from Babylon. Reggae music is their conscious vessel to spread their message. They say they are faithful to living life according to the Bible. They adhere to a principled code. They study the Bible from an Afro-centrist view. They read of Moses marriage to an Ethiopian woman, and how Christ's apostle Philip baptized an Ethiopian Jew on his way to Jerusalem (Acts 8:26-40). They begin to see themselves as a remnant to be recovered.