Sometimes I feel like Moses, praying you would send someone else. At times I feel like Gideon, desperately looking for a sign that you have spoken to me. On occasion I feel like Saul, hoping to disappear into the background. And other times, I feel like Jonah, wishing to be overcome by a whale so …
Tag: Faith
Do We Really Want Reconciliation? Or Are We Just Conflict Averse?
Can we all just get along? If you were around in the early 1990s, you would remember this challenge posed by Rodney King, a black man who was beaten by police officers in Los Angeles. To quell the riots, perhaps, after the officers were acquitted for their level of inhumanity, King exhorted people to learn …
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Facing Racism, Embracing Hope Part II
Slavery. Convict leasing system. Sharecropping. Jim Crow. Restrictive housing covenants. Redlining. Eugenics. War on Drugs. Vietnam. Mass incarceration. Police brutality. 400 years of continual oppression and marginalization, with no end in sight, has the tendency to create a sense of hopelessness and even nihilism. As the author of Hebrews attests, hope deferred really does make the …
Facing Racism, Embracing Hope Part I
“Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.” These are the opening words to Ta-Nehisi Coates seminal work, the Case for Reparations, published in the Atlantic in …
Cycles
You decide to take a risk. You say to yourself, "well maybe this place will be safe. Maybe they will accept me for me even if they don't understand every bit of me." Testing the waters, you expose a little of yourself. Vulnerability and honesty for the sake of growth, relationships, and genuine transformation. You …
Black Women: Elevating the Neglected Voices Among Us
In our American society, we pay the most attention to those who have a lot of clout. We tend to flock after those who have reputable degrees, have some sort of coveted expertise, or are for other reasons highly influential. These are the people to whom we ascribe value and importance, and as such, these …
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Ebony Johanna 