paravanes:meditations

Photo (c) Deborah Evans Another Black History Month has come and gone. A most important message is:  know and understand Black history is more than trauma. The inescapable inequities built into American history, traditions, and common practices tell any objective observer about the extreme trauma experienced by the ancestors of those trapped in American chattel slavery and the legal barriers of state enforced segregation.  But undeniable is the determination of those who survived the worst things any modern culture has imposed on enslaved people and their descendants. No one survives a life filled with nothing but trauma. Survivors and thrivers have moments and hours and days of love, caring closeness, laughter, connection, goodness, and support -- even small victories are not absent from the survivor's life. When you examine or attempt to understand Black history, beware of those who would define this history as nothing but a series of traumas. That viewpoint, tho...

Image from northbrunswicknj.gov The Bible has been criticized for listing, portraying, describing, and including violence. Would it be a credible book about the human condition if it did not? Of course, the Bible has much to say about other topics: life, love, death, goodness, sin, holiness, faith, purpose, etc. When you are describing the human condition, you cannot escape a discussion of violence. Violence has marked much of how we define human history. As a college student and a history major, I learned how much of what was defined as history was actually the record successive rulers and kingdoms. Their comings and goings were marked by violence: war, military conquest, genocide, and forced migrations. You cannot understand or address human needs without acknowledging we really aren't naturally good at heart. Original sin marks itself in our history through violence. God acknowledges this violence by giving us a revelation---the Holy Bible-- that clearly show...

Hollywood has really lost its appeal. Unless there is a new Star Trek film on the horizon, I no longer look forward to knowing what's in the works in major commercial theaters. Why? I am too tired of Hollywood films that continue to depict a single element of the African-American experience while calling these films "historical", "powerful", "educational", and "enlightening." Recently, a friend urged me to see "The Butler", and I wrote back explaining why I wasn't going to see the film. I told him I was tired of seeing African-Americans depicted almost exclusively in subservient roles which did not present an image of people empowered to make material changes in their lives. I told him I am still waiting to see a film on the life of Ida B. Wells-Barnett , or Mary Ellen Pleasant , or Toussaint L'Ouverture . Do you recognize these names?  Why or why not? I told him I acknowledged the true history of African-Ameri...

 This Lent, I am reading Eric Metaxas ' magnificent biography of one of my spiritual godfathers, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In the passage below, Metaxas quotes from one of Bonhoeffer's letters to his brother-in-law, Rudiger Schleicher. Bonhoeffer, a religious conservative, offers his position on the centrality of scripture to Schleicher, a religious liberal. "First of all,  I will confess quite simply--I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we need only to ask repeatedly and a little humbly, in order the receive this answer. One cannot simply read the Bible, like other books. One must be prepared really to enquire of it. Only thus will it reveal itself. Only if we expect from it the ultimate answer, shall we receive it. That is because in the Bible God speaks to us. And one cannot simply think about God in one's own strength, one has to enquire of Him. Only if we seek him, will he answer us. Of course it is possible to read the...