Unmuting the the Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I saw three “capitalism in honor of Martin Luther King Day” commercials this week. Sears, Kmart and some mattress company really wants us to celebrate the life of the martyred Civil Rights champion by spending money we don’t have on crap we don’t need. And you might say… what’s the problem? We celebrate Jesus’ death and resurrection by buying and consuming bunnies filled with high fructose corn syrup. Why should Martin expect better treatment? That’s a good point sarcastic voice in my head.

But I guess like Jesus I am worried that what Martin Luther King actually said and did has gotten lost a glaze of rhetoric. And we all laugh and scoff at the corporations who choose to put commercials out there asking to come shop at their “MLK Day Sale.” But I don’t think KMart and friends are the only ones complicit in what Cornell West calls the “Santaclausification” of Martin Luther King.

And while I am happy to spend this whole post complaining about the people selling me mattresses in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., I’m going to leave that behind and pick on some people who are closer to my home: the progressive church.

I’ve been on a little bit of a rampage for the past few months. As much as I love the progressive church and the fact that it welcomed me and my call when we were both homeless, I have some challenges for them… us? And my challenge as it pertains to Martin Luther King Jr. is to not ignore race and racism when it comes to celebrating his legacy.

Now, this seems like a really dumb thing to have to say. But unfortunately it is necessary. Yes Dr. King spoke out against Vietnam and yes he was organizing the poor people’s campaign. Yes he saw the connections between many kinds of oppressions and many types of violence. But the root of his ministry and mission was to the freedom and dignity of people of African decent in the the US. His words very distinctly cut to the core of America’s racial history. In very specific terms he named and spoke out against the legalized physical, social, psychological and spiritual violence that was waged against African Americans every day.

He did speak about the war and about poverty because he saw the connection between various forms of oppressions. But one did not trump the other. But all these years later, majority white progressive churches, tend to lean heavily on his anti-war and anti-poverty angle while muting the struggle against racial oppression. I really am not sure why this has begun to happen. Is it because we are “post-racial”? Is it because Obama is president? Or is it because it is easier to talk against poverty and war than it is to talk about race? Is it the fact that if we spoke about the work that Martin Luther Kind did to end segregation, we’d have to admit that we didn’t really get finish doing that work in our churches?

I think it’s a kind of fear and guilt based denial that makes us want to make Dr. King into a man whose racial commentary didn’t go beyond speaking in vague terms about people of different “skin colors” getting together and singing a spiritual. It’s scary to think that some of what he actually said about racism in American may still be socially if not legally relevant.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.-Some other words you probably have not heard from the “I Have a Dream Speech”.

10 Years Ago… 10 Years Later

Part I
I was upset, crying too much. Yes I cry a lot and I’d been crying a lot lately. But I could not stop the hysterical crying.

My best friend William and I had started that day talking about how we loved Mariah Carrey’s new song. We were excited that she was really singing again. No more slightly melodious whispering for her! But we ended the conversation with the painful choice to spend time away from each other. It seemed like 9 years was enough for him. I was sad and resistant, unwilling or able to understand.

So maybe that’s why I couldn’t stop crying. But it seemed like there was more to the story…

I woke up the next morning and, again, of course, I was late for class. If my class were in Warner or Rice I would have been on time. But they just HAD to have the Black Women’s Literature class all the way across the campus in a classroom in the administration building, I don’t remember it’s name. I remember getting half way across of Tappan Square when those bells started chiming. The “Dominique’s late bells….” It was 9am.

I think it was an emotional class. That class always was. I remember our discussion would always consist of the black women telling these really difficult stories about our lives and the white women crying about it.

I walked out of class with Imani. I guess we both had class in Warner after. I was the TA for Adenike’s Afro-form dance class. I can’t remember if Imani was in that class too. We walked together to Warner. We were laughing and giggling about something, probably the Black Women’s class. But as we approached the building, Mrs. Grier-Miller, Imani’s mother, my former advisor walked up to us. She said something like, “something’s happened that I have to tell you about.”

We were still sort of in giggle mode.

“A plane hit the World Trade Center”

I was still a little giggly. I thought it was funny. During that summer at man accidently flew a small plane into the statute of liberty. And it was something we all sort of laughed at. (Prophetic mistake I guess.)

“And then another plane hit the other tower.”

The giggling stopped….

“Basically the World Trade Center is gone…”

what?

Mommy… all I could think about was Mommy. Under the rubble. She was riding on a train that went right under the World Trade Center. She can’t be dead. I need to call her… I went inside and used the phone in the office. The woman in the office said, “I’m sure the phones are down and everyone’s calling. You may not get through.” I know but I need to talk to Mommy. I have never not be able to get through to her… not in my 21 years… She was always there to answer the phone. I called home… but she wouldn’t be at home. But maybe she didn’t go to work. Why wouldn’t se have gone to work?

No answer…

I went upstairs to class. It’s kind of a blur. But I remember Adenike yelling at us for being so upset. So many other countries deal with this sort of thing every day. There were so many people who lived through WWI and WWII. Why are we so upset? So we went on with class. So I went on to the warm up. I stood in front of that class… crying as I bent and flexed my arm.

Bend… flex “Are you ok?”

Bend… flex “I don’t know where my mother is…” I was dazed. I just kept crying and bending and flexing my arm until he chair of the dance department came in and forced Adenike to stop our class.

I went out of the studio and I remember crying and hugging this woman, this dance professor, that I hated and wouldn’t have spoken to let alone hug. But I needed to hold on to someone. And there was no one else there.

I got dressed and went over to the student union where everyone was gathered. I needed to find someone from NY. I need to find William who, was the driving force, the one who set this stage for me… The one who whose influence led me to be in Oberlin, OH… not the E. Village attending NYU… when those planes hit. But William and I had decided not to be as close the night before. Would he even talk to me? I saw him… and I didn’t care. I needed him. I couldn’t find my mother. He couldn’t find his family, who owned a store in Chinatown, very close to the world trade center. Maybe we needed each other.

For some reason in the midst of all of this I got really excited because I remembered: My computer had come! I got the slip in the mailbox! It was the one I had ordered to replace the one that my sister and her partner bought me… the same one that had burned up in a massive car fire a few months earlier… fire and loss… I felt stalked by the uncertainty of randomness. My since of protection was gone. But in that exact moment, I want to get my computer and get it home so it would not get lost in the mayhem. I asked my new friend Jill to give me and William rides home. We lived really far a way from each other (according to Oberlin standards) but Jill was willing to do “anything to help New Yorkers” in that moment. And I was ready to take that help.

But after that I need to be alone. The only voice I wanted to hear was my mother’s. I went to my dorm room and called my mother over and over. I called the training center where she was training for her new job for the Administration for Children’s Services. I left a desperate message. “I just want to know if my mother made it to work. If anyone can call me back and let me know that my mother is ok…” I called and called. I called my sisters who were both in Boston. They hadn’t heard from her. We joked about security at Logan airport. We talked about sociology… how the terrorist must have really studied American culture to know the exact times and cities to hit and how to hit them when they were the most vunerable. We talked about Mommy and hoped she was alright. We freaked out on the phone together… as we would do so many other times over the next few years… when my sister’s partner died in 2003, when our grandmother died in 2004, when our other grandmother died in 2005, when our father died in 2008…

I called my grandmother in Pennsylvania. I wanted to make sure she was ok… I knew she was ok. She didn’t live in Shanksville! I asked her if she had heard from my mother. I knew she hadn’t heard from my mother… my mother wouldn’t have called her mother before she called me! And I felt bad for scaring my grandmother by telling her my mother was missing. But I guess I just needed to feel mothered in that moment. I just needed to connect. I wanted to feel connected…I guess.

After trying to call for hours… I turned on the CNN and laid down…. I remember hearing some fool they were interviewing saying something like “If we took all that money we spent on education and put it into the military, stuff like this wouldn’t happen.” I remember realizing as they interviewed people involved that there was indeed a difference in regional accents. There was a distinct NY accent that I missed in that moment. There was a Boston accent and a Pennsylvania accent.

I fell asleep with tears in my eyes… as I had the night before. I woke up and the sun had gone down. And I could hear helicopters or military air crafts in the air. I got up called the Bronx.

“Hello?”
“You’re alive…”

She told me the craziest story. She went to her training and had no clue what was going on. She was in a training room and heard people screaming. But she thought maybe it was just loud laugher or people playing around. The man training her ignored his pager and phone. But eventually, similar to my situation, a supervisor came in and they were told what was happening. Everyone went outside… they could see the smoke from where they were…

My mother… my mother who got mugged on the way to church and chased mugger through the South Bronx trying to get her purse back… my mother decided that she was going to walk home… to the Bronx… from Brooklyn. She knew the city was about to shut down. She didn’t know how long. She didn’t want to get trapped in Brooklyn. She set off and approached the Brooklyn Bridge and was turned away by cops…

She described people coming across the bridge from the Manhattan side covered in ash… “walking like zombies”. But she still wanted to walk across… “I needed to get home…I needed to feel safe. I need to talk to y’all.”

Eventually she said the trains started running again. And she got on the D and came home. It blew my mind that NY kept moving even as this was going on. It never slept even when it needed to… even when the world was giving it permission to… But Mommy got home and alive. So I was grateful for the insomnia of my city.

Part II My City 10 Years Later.

10 years later. So much and so many have passed. So much has changed. William and I do much better now, mostly because we live on two separate coasts. I lost many of my friends and family members. But I also gained people and so many new people entered the world and entered my world. I went back and listened the call to be who I was pre-loss… pre-anxiety. I went to seminary. I went from being a college student in the Midwest struggling to figure out what it meant to be in her twenties to an ordained minister in the Midwest who is struggling to figure out what it means to be in her thirties.

But even as I stand at another turning point, trying to figure out how not to return to NY, I still miss miss my city, though. I miss what it was. People forget that NY is a place where people live. We’re not all characters. We are real even though our “Main Street” is called Broadway. It’s where I was born and raised. It’s where I spent 25 of the most literally and spiritually formative years of my life. And this huge community that is NY changed that Tuesday morning 10 years ago.

Yes, NY has always been a ball of energy and anxiety. So it seems like the heightened anxiety would be unnoticeable. And for the most part it has gone unnoticed. It’s been overshadowed by the rhetoric about Ground Zero being sacred ground, by non-NYers who protest the Muslim Community Center and then probably go buy some food from a Halal truck, by all the references to America in general, all of Giuliani’s and Bloomberg’s pushing to make America know that we were ok and open for business. (You wouldn’t want a lose the tourist dollar…) But no one looked back to make sure the residents of this “fake American” city were really recovering. So the New York I returned to in 2002 was not the NY I left in 1998. People coped how they could. And the result is a city filled with zombie-like people who are unable to deal with much of anything. Everyone is shut off… ears plugged, head down, going where they are going… unable to be aware of the person next to them… seemingly unwilling to connect… just needing to get where they are going as fast as possible. And outsiders may say this is the way it’s always been. NYers are just rude. We are. I’m not arguing with that point. But there is something new, symptomatic of something much larger. Culture can sometimes be born out of the unprocessed collective reaction to tragedy. I think NY has created this sort of culture post 9/11…

I hope it’s not to late to heal.

Log-eyes vs Rainbow Seekers: My response to Lillian Daniel’s Articles

Why you hatin’ on the spiritual not religious???

That’s what I’d like to ask Lillian Daniels after reading both her short reflection in the UCC Still Speaking Devotional and her longer article in Christian Century. And what did that man do to you beyond tell you his story? Did he hit you? Did he have a bad aura? Did one of those God-is-a-rainbow children call you a name? It just feels extreme to me.

After the 40trillionth 2030 clergy friend posted the short reflection on Facebook, I thought I should probably read it. And I posted the link on my page and said the following:

Well… I hear and feel her. There are some spiritual/not religious folk are products of a “self-centered American norm.” BUT the last person who told me “I am spiritual, not religious,” has a story of being rejected by his church. He could not find that divine community in the church where he first found God. And I suspect that many of the spiritual/not religious among us have similar stories. So I think I’d turn the question away from the individual and turn it back on to the church: what are we doing to make sure that people no longer feel the need to run to the mountains to find the spirit of the living God? What do we do about the fact that it seems as if there are less roadblocks to God in nature? What do we do about the fact that nature will never ask you too “qualify” for access to the divine but humanity will?(And I am not just posing these questions to so-call conservative churches…)

Then one of my brothers in ministry asked me to read the longer “more nuanced” piece and see if my opinion would change. And it did change my opinion… but not for the better. I shifted from thinking about my friend who recently left the ministry and the church because of poor treatment, to thinking about Jesus in Matthew 7:4. I want to ask Lillian Daniels, “how can you say to your brother,’let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?” And I’m not just asking Lillian Daniels. I am posing this question to ALL church pastors who feel for whatever reason that those who chose to find spiritual alternatives to organized religion are somehow missing out on the authentic God.

On some level, I understand what she is saying specifically. I at least partially understand the idea that communal engagement is more likely to produce true foundation. I understand the theory that religion and the religious can create a sustaining foundation. But what I don’t agree with is the idea that we as the church have the right or good answers. I don’t agree that God can always be experienced better in a structured (Christian)community.

And I go back to Matthew 7 because I don’t think we need to be point a judgmental finger at the Spiritual/Not Religious until we as a church get some saline solution and wash that plank out of our eye.

Her thesis seems to be the closer you get to a community filled with people the closer you get to the “real” God, who is not “invented”. This takes away the possibility that an authentic God can be found in the sky, mountains, rainbows and birthdays that GOD created. It says that humans are the only things God created or the only God created thing that God dwells in. It takes away the possibility that the Spiritual/Not Religious could interact in a community and find the same things you find in a church. It says that we in the church or houses of worship have a truth that no one on the outside can access. And it says that what we have now, this religion that has been passed through thousands of years of imperialism, colonialism, white supremacy, misogyny and false divinity, is THE truth.

And maybe it was the truth. I believe that Jesus is the Truth. And I believe the church as Jesus intended it could heal all and save all. But what I am not as confident about is the state any church is in today, even churches that are filled to the brim with people, even churches who are preaching “good theology”. Way too often the church today has nothing to do with the truth that God spoke through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

I think we all “invent” God. Some do it collectively. Others do it individually. And I think there is truth in all our our inventions. I believe God speaks through our mythology. The certified canonized mythology and the rainbow in the sky mythology.

Truth be told, the church community is often much more interested in maintaining (worshiping) tradition. We are often distracted by holding on to “how it we always did it” that we miss God who is standing in the middle of our sanctuaries waving his/her hands like an air traffic controller trying to get our attention. How is that better than someone who experiences the authentic movement of the Holy in nature?

As one who feels called to ministry in a parish I understand Rev. Daniel’s need to defend the validity of organized religion. But as someone who has often felt unwelcomed in a diverse rainbow of organized religious spaces, I also feel the need to take a closer look at what we have. The key is not to point finger in one direction or another. The key is to find where God is in both and try to move toward something more authentic. The rainbow people need to visit church sometimes and the church folk need to find God in a rainbow every once in a while.

The Sign of True Freedom (The Mad Preacher Rants about the Bed Intruder Song and Precious) aka Man in the Mirror aka Stop the Hate

So I tried to write a response to this NPR Article as a comment on someone’s Facebook page. But it got too long. So I will do it here, as I continue to ignore my worship prep work. (I’ll get back to it right after this I promise!)

This article truly makes me sick. Oh wait maybe it’s not the article. I’m doing what I’m about to say black people do all the time, which is blame the media for taking the type of black people who we cannot stand seriously. It’s not the tv station’s fault that Antoine Dodson was was “angry, defiant and flamboyant” as much as it’s not NPR’s fault that 80 years later the “New Negro” is still running around trying to rid the world of the “Old Negro” they don’t want to see. (It’s a Harlem Renaisance reference look it up.)

It’s the Precious debate all over again. Black folks too often blame the media for showing the side of black life that self-hatred and internalized racism tells them shouldn’t be viewed “in public”. “I don’t want to see a black man with a red rag on his head on TV because white people might see him and judge me. And I don’t even wear a rag!” “I don’t want the story of a plus size poor black girl being told because that same white person might judge me.”

I wonder, instead of asking authors and filmmakers and tv stations to censor every black person that doesn’t reach our New Negro standards, if we could begin to say to ourselves all of the people in our community are fully human and fully free and have a right to exist and be seen in spite our our personal (internalized)racist discomfort. I wonder if we could write into stations and not say things like “don’t air Antoine’s story”. I wonder if we could separate our calls for justice from our own internalizes self hatred.

Instead we could write to networks and movie studios and maybe to the NAACP and to ourselves and say something like:

We as African Americans long for true freedom. We long for the freedom that each white citizen has, not to be judged monolithicly (I know it’s not a word but work with me) by the behaviors of any individual white person. We want the freedom that white Americans have to tell their stories and be all of who they are no matter how rich or poor or racist or funny-looking they are, without it reflecting poorly on the whole white race. We as African Americans long for that true freedom. And we think you, tv producer, writer, (blah blah blah) can help by telling all stories from all perspectives for all kinds of black people. In a medium where both Tea Party members and Alex Trebek can exist, I think there is also room for both Antoine Dodson and Dominique Atchison.

Oh and by the way, just in case anyone cares… while we are lost in our embarrassment about Precious’ potential Mammy-dom or Antoine’ red rag… yet another story about a black women being sexually abused and/or assaulted got passed over and ignored… I just thought I’d throw that in there NP(freakin’)R! I know you want to talk about the rag some more… so run and tell that homeboy… homeboy… home homeboy!

Hippy’s not enough…

So the word “Hippie”/Hippy… has been floating around my world a little too much lately. And while I celebrate all that I am, I am a little unsure about that particular title. Yes I am theoretically a pure bread hippy. I was raised by a very poltically conscious mother. I went to Oberlin. I went to Union Seminary. I left the Baptists for the UCC. I love my Birkenstocks! My hair is natural. I like long flowery dresses and skirts. I use the word “vibe” and “energy” to describe spaces and communities. I use the words “space” and “community” a lot. I sometimes like to walk barefoot in grass. I’ve gone hiking a few times. I think sitting next to water and looking at the sky are great spiritual practices. I’ve lived in Park Slope. I live in Ann Arbor.

But there are a few specific things about claiming this term that does not sit well with me.

1) My ancestors and other black people. For me my hippie-dom is a representation and celebration of my freedom. And isn’t that what the ancestors were fighting for? The freedom of our people? Sometimes the reactions I get make me wonder. I often think about how Maya Angelou said “I am the dream and the hope of the slave.” I sometimes think “yeah Maya so am I…” but other times I wonder if I’m actually the nightmare. Black folks too often act as if physical and legal freedom is the only thing we can hope to get in this world. Emotional, spiritual and social freedom is only for white people. I way too often get punished by black people for being too free…

2)White folk. I sometimes think that if the above list of schools and accomplishments and places of residence and blah blah… were pinned to the chest of a 30 year old white woman named Kate… we’d have a whole ‘nother story. Kate would be ordained a hippy and I guess a minister if she wanted to be and that would be it. She would be married to some progressive man who would have taken her last name. And no one would question why she didn’t just settle for the the dude in front of the Popeye’s on 125th. And Kate would have little cute kids who would wear cute political tee-shirts and go to drumming circles every week. And those kids will never have to chose between being “progressive” and being “white”. Kate would would not constantly be questioned about her loyalty to her denomination (even if she had come from the Baptist church). No one would EVER tell the administrator of the church to not collect offering on the Sunday she supply preached, lest Kate take the offering. Kate would never have been asked 3000 times “how did YOU get into Oberlin?” And even if she were on scholarship… no one would ever point-blank ask her questions about how she afforded her college education.

So the point is as much as freedom has led me to all of the hippy spaces and hippy conclusions… there is a white supremacist (yeah I said it) legacy that keeps me from fully engaging and experiencing true “hippy-dom”.

(Yeah I spelled hippy 2 different ways I don’t know which is right… just leave me alone!)

Preference vs Oppression

It’s funny how so many including John Stossel want to boil racial history down to a matter of preference. And while there are some aspects of racial discrimination that could theoretically be seen as a preference, I don’t think that’s what white supremacy and what someone I was speaking to call “cultural imperialism” has ever been about. We seem to forget that it wasn’t about anything even related to preference that led to slavery, segregation and Jim Crow and desperities in health care and the shooting of Sean Bell or any other racialized moment in American history.

But before I go into more detail with those points, I’d like to say this: If you are a so-called “private business owner” who sit on land within the borders of the United States and receive the benefits of tax revenue paid by EVERY citizen and many non-citizens (including the land itself, paved streets and roads people take to get there, the public transportation people take to get there, street lights, the benefits paid to the employees when they retire or are disabled, police, and even the military if it come to that), YOU should and will be held to the standards of the Constitution and Federal Laws including the Constitution and it’s amendments inclusive of the Civil Rights Act. Therefore while you have a right to be privately racist (I don’t recommend it), a business on US soil by nature is not private. Sorry…

Having said that, I really really want to get at this notion that racism is about preference. So first of all no one is EVER going to tell a blond woman or a white man with a beard that they cannot come into a country club or a privately owned business. So a) stop being ridiculous John Stossel! And b) if some lunatic decides that’s what he wants to do, that action will not be the result of hundreds of years of systematic and violent oppression of men with mustaches or blond women and it does not represent the current and future lack of access to the children of those blond men or women with mustaches (lol).

So for the blond and the mustached the moment of preference begins and ends there. But for people of color in America the moment of oppression has lived throughout history and may very well continue to live into the generations to come. And it has and may continue to have strong emotional and psychological (if not physical) ramifications.

An Affirmative Action Baby’s Reflection on the Birthday of Malcolm X

Today would have been Malcolm X’s 85 birthday. I searched YouTube to find some of my favorite clips of Malcolm in his hay day. And unlike many, my favorite Malcolm moments or quotes are not his speeches or quotes from his autobiography or easily swallowed quotes from his post-Mecca days. My favorite moments were the interviews he did with the white media. It was so very clear in all of those interviews how bias these “unbiased” newsmen were. It was clear how much they wanted Malcolm to be something he wasn’t. It was clear that they wanted Malcolm to be an inarticulate brute filled with contradictions and nonsensical ramblings. But he wasn’t that. He met them toe to toe and articulated his point to them using their language and syntax and cultural mannerisms.

And in a white dominated (supremacist if you will) world, there is nothing more frightening than a person of color that make sense, who cannot be dismissed. There’s nothing more frightening than a person of color who has seen the inside of the white world and knows how to communicate in that context and uses that context to communicate dissatisfaction with that world. And for white America that’s what Malcolm was. He was part white, in a way that was visible (light skin, red hair, freckles). He grew up in predominately white schools. Like Obama he knew how to switch out of that “negro dialect”. Yet he was not a “happy negro”.

As a black woman who, with the exception of two years, was educated in majority white prep schools, I resonate with this side of Malcolm. I’ve been thinking about the fact that many of your more “angry” black radicals and radicals of color spent a whole lot of time, specifically their formative years, in a very white cultural context. I often think about the beginning of Soul of Black Folks where WEB DuBois describes his early years as a child in an all white school in New England. This in turn makes me think about the justified anger of those of us who some fool at a conference I went to referred to dismissively as “Affirmative Action Babies”.

I feel that there is a whole generation of us who were the “only-onlies” in our all white schools who have similar radical anger. Yet in this generation we have found no real cultural space in black society and no political place in white society. So we sort of live in the liminal space between the two world communing with each other. We are activist and artist and preachers, who struggle to find space. In a world of the post-Civil Rights, “Dangerous Minds” and “Finding Forester” paradigm of educating children of color, there is no room for anger against the society that “allowed” you to get “out of the streets” and “be somebody”. But we are angry. We feel more isolated and alone than we actually are.

But this is why I, the one that some (maybe even Malcolm) might call a sell out, hold on to that side of Malcolm for hope that there is some truth in my anger and that there is some redemption to be found in this tight-rope walking double conscious journey.

This Sunday’s Sermon

“Can You See ME Now”

Job 42:5 “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.”

At this point in the scripture Job is facing the end of his very difficult journey. He had been through many dangers toils and snares. He’d faced death of his loved ones, the destruction of his property, illness and a parade of bad advice from well meaning friends. But now he was at the end of that journey and things were about to get better for him.

And in that time he began to reflect on his experiences. And as he did that he said something that I though was very interesting. He said, until now I had only heard of God, and now I am able to see God.

I think that is a powerful statement. In the midst of struggles we can easily lose sight of God. We have no idea where God is in all of it. We experience loss and destruction. Then we turn on the TV and se see loss and destruction. Three major earthquakes, have hit our world in a very short amount of time in Haiti, Japan and now Chile.

And for the most part we don’t know what to do. We give money, we pray but we cannot effect change in the way we’d like. We can’t undo the damage. We cannot bring back those who’ve died. We can’t even afford to go down and help with recovery. So we look to God in prayer. We ask God why. We ask other people why God would allow this much suffering in the world. We start wading in the deep deep waters of Theocracy, if God is good ALL the time, why is there so much pain in the world.

And the sad thing about it is there will be so many people who will jump up and claim that they know, who like Pat Robertson and the cab driver in NY (who found out I was a preacher), will claim that they know where the problem lies. They know who to blame. It’s the blame of the Haitian Revolution. According to the cab driver, it’s the blame of all churches who are leading God’s people astray. And Job faced these sorts of people. If you read Job, you’ll see that there whole chapters devoted to his friends who seek him out in his misery simply to give him advice about God and tell him that his suffering is due to his lack of faith, his lack of knowledge of God and so on and so forth. And in the end, expresses God’s anger towards the friends and it is Job that must offer them a prayer for their salvation.

We spoke last week about the ways in which people attempt to define us as individuals unaware of God’s purpose for our lives. In the same way people try to define God unaware that only God defines God. There are some things that we as humans cannot understand and may never understand about God and the way God moves through the earth. Therefore we must constantly seek God’s face and in prayer ask God what is it that I should be getting from this situation. What is it that you are speaking to humanity through these events? We should never assume and we should never take anyone else’s statements about God as Gospel without seeking out the answers for ourselves.

God knows that we have a tendency to just God with the herd and not check in to see if God is leading the herd. I think that as uncomfortable as the story of Job’s destruction can be to read, there is something that God wants humanity to grasp through the reading of the story in it’s entirety. We can learn something from the wisdom Job is able to receive at the end. As we delve further into the season of lent, and closer to the celebration of the resurrection, we have to hold Job’s reflection in our mind. Let’s work together to not leave our faith up to others. Let seek God’s face, and ask God the tough questions, and practice our faith in a way that, we can begin to not simply hear OF God but we can began to see God and know God. I hear God saying “Can you see me now?” Amen….

At this point in the scripture Job is facing the end of his very difficult journey. He had been “through many dangers toils and snares”. He’s faced death of his loved ones, the destruction of his property, illness and a parade of bad advice from well meaning friends. But now he was at the end of that journey and things were about to get better for him.

And as he did that he said something that I though was very interesting. He said, until now I had only heard of God, and now I am able to see God.

In the midst of struggles we can easily lose sight of God. We experience loss and destruction. Then we turn on the TV and see loss and destruction. Three major earthquakes, have hit our world in a very short amount of time in Haiti, Japan and now Chile.

And for the most part we don’t know what to do. We give money, we pray but we cannot effect change in the way we’d like. We can’t undo the damage. We cannot bring back those who’ve died. We can’t even afford to go down and help with recovery. So we look to God in prayer. We ask God why. We ask other people why God would allow this much suffering in the world. We start wading in the deep deep waters of Theocracy, if God is good ALL the time, why is there so much pain in the world.

And the sad thing about it is there will be so many people who will jump up and claim that they know, who like Pat Robertson and the cab driver in NY (who found out I was a preacher), will claim that they know where the problem lies. They know who to blame. It’s the blame of the Haitian Revolution. According to the cab driver, it’s the blame of all churches who are leading God’s people astray. And Job faced these sorts of people. If you read Job, you’ll see that there whole chapters devoted to his friends who seek him out in his misery simply to give him advice about God and tell him that his suffering is due to his lack of faith, his lack of knowledge of God and so on and so forth. And in the end, expresses God’s anger towards the friends and it is Job that must offer them a prayer for their salvation.

We’ve spoken about the ways in which people attempt to define us as individuals unaware of God’s purpose for our lives. In the same way people try to define God unaware that only God defines God. There are some things that we as humans cannot understand and may never understand about God and the way God moves through the earth. Therefore we must constantly seek God’s face and in prayer ask God what is it that I should be getting from this situation. What is it that you are speaking to humanity through these events? We should never assume and we should never take anyone else’s statements about God as Gospel without seeking out the answers for ourselves.

God knows that we have a tendency to just go with the herd and not check in to see if God is leading the herd. I think that as uncomfortable as the story of Job’s destruction can be to read, there is something that God wants humanity to grasp through the reading of the story in it’s entirety. We can learn something from the wisdom Job is able to receive at the end. As we delve further into the season of lent, and closer to the celebration of the resurrection, we have to hold Job’s reflection in our mind. Let’s work together to not leave our faith up to others. Let seek God’s face, and ask God the tough questions, and practice our faith in a way that, we can begin to not simply hear OF God but we can began to see God and know God. I hear God saying “Can you see me now?” Amen….

In Defense of the Color Purple/Uncertain of TD Jakes

I’m watching “Not Easily Broken”. This is the second TD Jakes movie I’ve seen. I am appreciative of the fact that there is a big time black preacher delving deep into issues of gender and the negativity that exists between black men and black women.

BUT!

I’m a little concerned that he tends to paint an overly simplistic view of the relationship between black women and black men. The tension between black men and black women is acknowledged but the cause and solution is too often boiled down to something to the effect of “those damaged black women need healing”. This may be true. We do need healing. But my question is what about the men in the scenario? The abusive fathers? The bad ex-boyfriends? Where is the discussion of the culture and the systems within the black community that make it ok for black women to face such damaging situations? And more importantly: How can we go so quickly to the solution when we haven’t really fully investigated the problem?

Alice Walker attempted to delved into these questions with her book The Color Purple. She attempted to show a very real history of physical and sexual violence against black women at the hands of not white men but black men. And there was such an unbelievable backlash from the black male community. (There is this dude who always calls me “Lisa” and tries to bate me into an argument by saying “Alice Walker hates black men, right?” Dude! My name is not Lisa and no and go away!) The thing is I don’t think these men (Lisa-dude included) are upset because they are in disbelief about these issues showing up in our history but more because they didn’t want the dirty laundry out there. (Ya can’t wash ‘em without putting ‘em “out there”). They didn’t want to deal with it in front of “them”. But who cares about them in the face of such devastating violence in our own community? How can we tell “them” not to kill us as we kill ourselves? It’s like my sister said when we were protesting again police brutality and members of the Bloods walked up beside us with protest signs: “They can’t kill you but we can.” We take that position way too often in our community. We do everything to make sure white people aren’t abusing us but we think it’s ok if we abuse each other.

And I think TD Jakes is attempting to look at some of the same issues from a more faith based, less historical perspective. But we can’t move forward without first truly understanding and “unpacking” what happened before. (Sankofa) We’ve yet to do that as a community, really delve into the ways that slavery has so painfully damaged the relationship between black men and black women.

Somehow it has become the burden of the woman to heal and forgive the abuse perpetuated against her by black men. We do need to heal and forgive. But what I need is someone like Jakes to also say that it is also the responsibility of the black man to STOP. Stop abusing women. Stop being so permissive of misogyny in our communities, in the church as much as it is in the streets. And really start talking about gender rolls and strength in ways that don’t strangle your emotional stability. Strength doesn’t have to be so restriction. And talk about faith in a way that has no tolerance for abuse. YES be strong. But be strong enough to talk about those things things that are hard to talk about. Yes pray. But pray for understanding, mutual respect and healing of our whole history and the trauma we face in response to the legacy of slavery.

Michael Jackson: a prophet with no home.

I’m starting with the man in the mirror”
“If you can’t feed the baby, then don’t have the baby”
“Mama always told you be careful who you love. Be careful what you do because the lies become the truth.”
“Blame it on the Boogie”
“Don’t stop till you get enough”

The words of a disturbed prophet without a home… Michael Jackson’s artistry defined the lives of many, especially those of us socially awkward artists. His words and music marked major moments in my life. Thriller came out when I was 3. Ricky, one of the boys my mother babysat would sing Billie Jean saying, “but the chair is not my son.” That was the beginning of a life long use (or misuse) of Michael Jackson sayings.

We sang “Ebony and Ivory” at our performance at our all black day care center’s graduation ceremony. We sang “We Are the World” at my 6th grade graduation from Horace Mann. I remember when my oldest sister Niki was applying for colleges and was trying to get the application postmarked by the deadline. She had to trek all the way down to the Main Office on 34th and we sing to her, “Keep on to the POST OFFICE. Don’t stop to you get enough.”

I remember my sister Gabrie’l setting up our TV in my other Niki’s room and we all got together to watch the premiere of the Thriller video. I was pretty young. My mother had her concerns but I wasn’t scared at all. I watch it now and the threat of dancing zombies brings fear to my heart but at 3 or 4, I was captivated. My friends Michael, Kyle, and Janet (did I really have friends named Michael and Janet? Yes) would have regular Thriller sessions. We’d put the vinyl on our record player. I had a toy guitar and we’d get down and go crazy. Our favorite was “Beat It”.

“Bad” came our right as I was starting 2nd grade. At that point I was one of two black girls in my grade at Horace Mann Barnard Elementary School. I remember the other black girl, Dana Bethune, a descendant of Mary McCloud Bethune, lent me her tape. She really wanted me to hear the newest Michael Jackson songs. I took that tape. I don’t think I gave it back. (Sorry Dana.) This was probably because my sister Gabrie’l took the tape from me to choreograph a dance to “Man in the Mirror”. This is a dance that in many ways defined my sister for me. I will never forget my sister dressed all in white on the stage at Horace Mann doing that powerful dance to that powerful song. I will never forget crying to “She’s Out of My Life” when Gabrie’l left for college when I was only 9 years old.

I remember my mother always saying to me “You need to pull a Michael Jackson.” For her this reflected on how fiercely he’d perform in spite of how painfully shy he was. It told of the odd ability performers, preachers and prophets have to get over social awkwardness long enough to perform, speak or preach powerfully. Michael has often spoke of feeling the most comfortable in stage. He spoke of the music coming from God and the dances being spoken through the music. He spoke of feeling guilty giving himself credit because it was all God working through him. And I know some are screaming “Wacko-Jacko”. But as a person of faith I can’t help to think about one of my favorite Bible verses, Jeremiah 20:9, which says:

But if I say, “I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,” his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.

I think sometimes God comes through the human vessel in such a powerful way that it leaves very little room for “normalcy” by human standards. Many of the most powerful artists and ministers and prophets of old are the most socially awkward. And I often thought of Michael Jackson as someone who society and even his family didn’t know how to deal with. We don’t know how to simply be blessed by those who bring divine gifts. Our society seems to need to sell everything. So these people become products. And I’m not sure Michael knew how to be a product. Who does? Like many other un-nurtured geniuses, Michael went crazy. We can’t deny that. But his craziness over the past 10 or so years does not take away the power of what came before. So many life changing moments. So many blessings… thank you Michael. You’ve blessed my life. I will not stop ’til I get enough…