writing the journey
I’ve come to know many Haitians who are delightfully unique in their outlook on life as they are in their accents and vocabulary, which gives me no end of headaches as I try to figure out yet another idiom or unique word play I need to understand so that I can grasp their meaning.
Why does the world exist the way it does that a people confined to a third of an island in the Caribbean are seen as less-thans? How do they grapple with the faith that comes from white people to their land, given to them to give them hope, and yet used as a tool by those same white people to call them despicable names and degrade them?
The oppressing side in its acts of oppression is doing wrong by nature. There is no “just” oppression. Whether it is cruel or superficially “kind,” oppression is wrong and cannot be redeemed either by language or a reduction in cruelty.
How do I make my faith work anymore (and maybe it never did) when such a very Christian nation seems incapable of seeing the violence we are initiating, celebrating, and dismissing, often while claiming the name of Jesus?
You want to terrify politicians? Take away their signs of power which are “respect” and obedience and decorum and complacency. Trip them up, make a point to oppose them at every turn, continuously point out their failures, and continuously refuse to accord them the power to silence you.
That Good Samaritan did a good thing to someone in distress, and if the story stops there, then we have learned a good lesson, right?
But what the story doesn’t tell us in the background, and doesn’t tell us “the rest of the story.”
Let me bring in a little history for you today. Let’s talk about Haïti . . . Haïti was once … More
Perhaps white people’s thoughts and prayers and good intentions aren’t enough when their Black friends are asking for love and dignity.
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.
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.
“Making good trouble” means stirring things up so that we do not become complacent about our situation and resigned to injustice
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I had to read this slowly, thoughtfully, with many pauses and breaks. There have been books I’ve read through in … More
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.
There seems always to be that moment when the white participant says something that is simply too much to handle.
We learn, slowly, how to gather the people around us who will care for us and who will give us some space in their own lives.
CRT is about systems, not individuals. Systems are developed as shortcuts for lengthy processes so that we don’t spend all our time trying to figure out how to hand multiple situations and not have disparate outcomes.
I’ve read many books this year, some of them similar to his in that they are life stories. This is the first one that I finished where I wanted to have more.
Jesus gets to the heart of the matter, which is simply you can’t follow Jesus if you have more important things than Jesus.
Much ink will be spilled in the next few months or even years about the topic of Critical Race Theory (CRT), both by those who think they support it and those who think they oppose it
