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M sispann!
I so much want to be able to speak and understand this language, but if I can't do this outside the classroom, then I just don't know the language.
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History as Cassandra
Let me bring in a little history for you today. Let’s talk about Haïti . . . Haïti was once called the “Pearl of the Caribbean” because of its beauty and its profit for the colonizers. Of course, that profit came at the cost of human misery, torture, sexual abuse, and death. But that doesn’t matter when profit is the highest good. The original inhabitants were turned into creatures of labor (“slaves”) by the colonial slave-masters and rapidly died off because hey abuse and beating and torture and all the rest ends up killing the people you’re trying to make a profit from. So the slave-masters started importing Black Africans—teachers,…
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Do This in Remembrance of Me
There were some who could eat right at the altar of sacrifice and restoration with hearts so hard that they would deny food to their own brothers and sisters in community because “well, if they wanted to eat, they should have brought their own.”
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Connections
Learning a new language can be difficult, but get the right tools, such as lessons, coaching, and live conversations, and it's easier. #Duolingo #italki #Lingbe
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Bullhorns and Butterflies
If you want to build your faith up so that you honor Jesus and you draw people to Jesus in your lives, might I suggest you do it the way that Jesus did?
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At long last, language
91 days from now you could be exactly where you are, or you could be deep into the study of a new language, ready to connect with people!
- American Exceptionalism, Black Lives Matter, faith, history, justice, Life Recovery Skills, racism, violence
When They See Us—Buffalo Edition
Perhaps white people's thoughts and prayers and good intentions aren't enough when their Black friends are asking for love and dignity.
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Wherefore art thou, Evangelicals?
As America evolved as an independent nation freeing itself from certain connections with Britain such as political and economic control, so did the church, centering itself in the power and people of America who ran the nation, and inescapably represented their cultural values through religious language and theology.
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SPEAKASY: An interview with Elyse Douglas
I had the opportunity to interview Elyse Douglas about her latest book, SPEAKEASY, published by Broadback. I appreciate that she gave so generously of her time when she could be working on the sequel!
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SPEAKEASY, by Elyse Douglass
Roxie Raines is a girl out of time in 1925s New York City. So how did someone from 2019 end up in a speakeasy, anyway?
- American Exceptionalism, Black Lives Matter, Celebrate Recovery, history, justice, Life Recovery Skills, racism
Not Your Place, Not Your Time
White people, do not go into Black spaces to help change the conversation or add your very important opinion. It is just not the time and place for that.
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Making Good in Trouble
“Making good trouble” means stirring things up so that we do not become complacent about our situation and resigned to injustice
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Wyte Innocence
Wyte people can’t be accused of bias or wrong unless there is exceedingly overwhelming “proof,” and even then we will go down fighting and insisting that we were not wrong
- American Exceptionalism, Black Lives Matter, Celebrate Recovery, faith, history, justice, Life Recovery Skills, racism
Jesus as Emperor
The vision of Jesus for empire Christianity in our Sunday Schools and sermons and theologies is really an irrelevant Jesus who does not match the Jesus of the texts.
- American Exceptionalism, Black Lives Matter, Celebrate Recovery, faith, family, history, justice, Life Recovery Skills, racism, remodeling
On Deconstruction
For the vast, vast majority of people, “deconstruction” is a good thing. Deconstruction can result in something far different and, in my opinion, far better than, white Evangelical Christianity.
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When Our Bibles Get It Wrong
The history of the church is our confidence in rightly understanding until we realize how terribly wrong we’ve misunderstood everything.
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To Be Human Again
Sometimes the arts can entertain us. Disney has surely figured out that formula. But sometimes . . . the arts can open something up to us that we didn’t ever think we needed to see and learn.
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REVIEW: Anxious to Talk About It
You will not find this to be the “answer book.” It’s not designed for that. This is a book that invites us to join in the community, in the discussion, in the journey.
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Be Like Betty White
Betty White, a white woman in an industry that empowered only white men, stood up for what's right. It cost her the job that she loved. But she did it, not “anyway,” but “because.” She did it because of her own moral integrity.
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REVIEW: Subversive Witness: Scripture’s Call to Leverage Privilege
The book’s subtitle hints at what’s to come: we are all granted some level of privilege in life that others do have; those who have the most privilege are called to use that privilege
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When the Good News Isn’t So Good
We have to face the fact that Christians often pick up odious behavior traits and exhibit them while singing songs of love and praise to Jesus of Nazareth.
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The Cross and the Gun
A lot of what passes for discipleship and church membership in America is lacking in this demand to lay down our lives before Jesus and to cast aside the devil and all his works.
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REVIEW: Shoutin’ in the Fire
I had to read this slowly, thoughtfully, with many pauses and breaks. There have been books I’ve read through in one sitting, sometimes because they are so fast paced that they demand my continued attention until I am done. Sometimes it’s over a few days. But this book . . . this book was something I’d pick up, read some pages, and then become so full of feelings that I had to put it down. To think a little. Process what was going on. Try to understand what was happening as the part of me I recognize as “me” was encountering this most remarkable book. Danté has written a book…
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When You See Their Truth
Whatever your beliefs are about redemption and salvation and even universalism—Jesus was always with those who are most despised and feared by Evangelicals. They’re the people he had meals with. Their homes were his resting place. They were whom he wept for.
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REVIEW: The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
These are the stories of Black women living lives as Black women with no one else as their betters, let alone their equals.
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Which Way?
Your faith is about your personal relationship with your values, and it should not matter in the slightest whether anyone knows why you behave as you do when you behave better because of your faith.
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The White Voice in Black Conversations
There seems always to be that moment when the white participant says something that is simply too much to handle.
