Nation Building The United States government has failed at nation-building and democracy-creating more often than not. And never so badly as in the case of the defeated Confederate States of America. I’m an outcome of that failure, as is the white terrorist who recently murdered people in their own church. We are an old and ignoble line. I was a kid during the 1960s, a hundred years after the war, and I heard the muffled drums on Confederate Memorial Days.... Read more
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives are involved in the investigation into the incidents — though the FBI says it’s too soon to tell if they’re at all connected. The churches targeted have majority black congregations. “They’re being investigated to determine who is responsible and what motives are behind them,” FBI spokesperson Paul Bresson told BuzzFeed News. “I’m not sure there is any reason to link them together at this point.””... Read more
It’s Been a While The first person to doubt. Did she or he doubt because of oppression; because of terror or grief; or just the opposite—because of some heady freedom; because of safety and joy? Was perhaps the first person to doubt also the first to believe? What is it in human consciousness that causes either? Are they intertwined, the one inevitably triggering its opposite in a perpetual dance? How does the world we experience come into being and continue... Read more
This past week’s terrorist act at Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston, South Carolina, has shaken many of us. There have been calls for unity. My dream is unity, too. But, of course, racial unity isn’t achieved by thinking nice thoughts or saying nice things. That’s because racism isn’t a matter of thinking bad thoughts or saying bad things. Racism is not even a matter of doing horrific acts. Racism is when a society predictably produces unequal outcomes, irrespective of effort. ... Read more
Maybe we could just sit down and cry together first. In the presence of Black rage. In the presence of white shame. In the presence of grief and despair and the overwhelming knowledge that white men with guns just keep killing people. In the devastating remembrance that this is not the first time that a white man with a gun has chosen a place of worship as the most devastating possible place to exact horrific violence. We need to say... Read more
Time Share Proposition: The Earth is a time-share condo. Like a time-share condo, each of us gets just so much of the Earth and just so much time on it. As with a time-share condo, we are dependent upon the last ones to occupy the space; we are responsible to the next ones who will occupy the space. Just now the state where I live, Minnesota, is experiencing a severe outbreak of H5N2, avian influenza. So far, this outbreak has... Read more
After years filled with state sanctioned violence and murder against people of color, the #BlackLivesMatter movement is calling out to each of us to resist the oppressive power of fear, hate, and greed; calling out to each of us to be persistent in our insistence on the power of love. We exist within particular (and peculiar) political, social, and economic systems. When civil rights are denied, when human rights are denied, we are called as a people of faith to... Read more
OK, honey, you know we love you, right? We love your novels and your essays and your memoirs and your wonderful Facebook posts. We love that you see your own imperfections, which look so much like ours, and that you are so clear that God treasures each of us in the presence of those imperfections, not in spite of them. So…maybe now would be an OK time to talk about mistakes? Like how each of us thinks small, snitty things... Read more
Getting the Metaphor Right It was the German writer Heinrich Heine who imagined a battle of Hebrews versus Hellenes. Soon it began to be imagined as Jerusalem versus Athens. Nowadays we endlessly tease at the science / religion chasm. Endlessly we ask: is it a chasm? A great divide? Is it reconcilable? Heine was looking to the recent European past, the Age of Enlightenment, in which the chief theorists had seen themselves as purveyors of light to a world darkened... Read more
From criminal justice majors at a university in Iowa, to Unitarian Universalist youth groups from North Carolina and Maine, to high school students from an exclusive private school in New York, my colleagues and I have had a seemingly never ending dialogue about systemic racism with hundreds of dear soul lights traveling to New Orleans for service this year. On Saturday, June 13th, we will continue the conversation locally at the Gillespie Memorial Community Breakfast, where scores of social justice advocated... Read more
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