emerging mosaic

I couple years ago the theme song for the mixed action cartoon movie with Michael Jordan was Space Jam was I believe I can fly. African American kids all across the country sang that song with visions of becoming a basketball star in their heads.

Today on this morning in America That takes on new meaning. Ms parks sat so Martin could walk, Martin walked so Obama could run, Obama ran and won now my sons can fly.

My oldest son who many say looks like Obama and has a biracial and a immigrant parent in common insisted he stay up to see the results to their conclusion and Obama acknowledge the win. He thought nothing of saying after a basketball career at Princeton I’ll go on to the presidency. It was all within the realm of possibility and for the first time i could say without hesitation yes son you can.

His flight is no longer restricted to sports on this morning in America. A black man who has normally been relegated to the bottom of the social totem pole in America has risen to the highest office in the land.

It is morning iAmerica and it is a good morning for my children they  have the pontial to be anything that they want to be. I believe they can fly!

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Technorati Tags: african american, Barack Obama, black people, obama, politics, president

I was listening to NPR (my favorite radio station) earlier today and someone described receiving this text message from a friend.

Rosa sat so Martin could walk

Martin walked so Obama could run

Obama is running so our children can fly

Tears came to my eyes. Could we be on the precipice of the dream realized. Or is it someone worse nightmare. Race matter because so many fond hope for hte future in the promise in the possiblity that the country live up to its creed one nation under God with liberty and justice for all.

Years ago Tuck and Patti wrote in a song called tears of joy

I can see the trace that sorrow has left upon your face. An being relistic I know that here are some things that time cannot erase…. inside every tear that sorrow has left you tears of joy can take their place. Tears of joy, wash you clean, let them, set you free.

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Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, tears of joy

God’s Politics: A Blog by Jim Wallis & Friends.

Here is a great blog addressing some of the issues I have about the way some proponents of new church movements approach what they do in relation to people of color. The perspective and experience of people of color is most often ignored, dismissed or trivialized. Race and racism as a shaping force in America is not acknowledged. May it is because they have no experienced the ills of personal racism up close. I don’t know ,but Chanequa Walker-Barnes hit the nail the head with here analysis. glad to know that tere is another voice adding a loving critique.

Thanks to my friend Joe for sending me in to the link

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Technorati Tags: african american, movement, new monastics, race, racial_reconciliation

In one Thursday afternoon in August after a drive from Grand Rapids to Chicago I boarded a bus with about 40 other people and started out on my first Sankofa journey. Sankofa (looking back to move forward) is a bus tour of several civil rights sites and a process of conversation and reflection about racial reconciliation. It is conducted by the compassion, mercy and justice ministry of the Evangelical Covenant Church.

We visited sites in Birmingham and Selma Alabama, Jackson Mississippi, and Memphis Tennessee. On the way we watched videos dealing with racial tension and reconciliation. Movies like Crash and Remember the Titans, Race the Power of Illusion and the Color of Fear. After each viewing or site visit we were asked to reflection on what we saw or experienced with a partner who was from another racial ethnic group.

I have to say I was skeptical and ambivalent at first. I have done Cross roads anti-racism training and Cognitive Toolbox diversity training so I wasn’t sure what would learn. However these were sites in the south that I had never been to and would probably not go to alone since my first and only visit to the deep south was kinds of scary. So I decided to make the trip after being asked. I’m glad I did.

Our host/facilitators Chrissy, Debbie and Mona put together a powerful experience. The 72 bus ride made me feel as if I was one of freedom riders as we went from site to site seeing the critical places and experiences that shaped the civil rights movement. They asked the right questions and created the right moments to get the participants really thinking.

So some observations from my experience.

• Some white Christians still don’t grasp the impact of racism and white privilege in American society and the church
• Some people including me aren’t fully aware of this nations civil rights history. This is important for me to understand as I’m not African American having been born in Jamaica if I expect to work with African Americans in ministry.
• Some white Christians don’t appreciate the the ongoing complicity of the church in perpetuating intolerance and racism.
• There is still a fair amount of paternalism among white Christians in response to race and racial reconciliation.
• If someone is open and willing to suspend their preconceptions and entertain the ideas of others much progress in the dialog can be made.

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Technorati Tags: bus tour, civil rights, diversity, race, racial_reconciliation, racial_separation, sankofa, south

Today I got the chance to here Alan Hirsch talk at Grand Rapid Theological Seminary. These folks are constantly bringing some good people into town to stimulate conversation all across the theological spectrum of thought. This is a good thing. No they aren’t paying me to say that.

Now on to Hirsch. I read the shaping of things to come a couple years ago and used it when I taught a class on the missional church at GRTS a year ago. I own but have not finished reading Hirsch book the Forgotten Ways. It was helpful to hear him share his thoughts first hand. Hirsch talked about four critical shifts for the church to stay relevant and not die in the current context for ministry

• recovery of the centrality of Jesus
• recovery of discipleship
• recovery of  incarnational missional impulse
• recovery of apostolic ethos and movement

I think I have heard or read most of this stuff before. Some of it I have been saying myself for years. (Not that that means anything.) But what was interesting to me is how different his perspective on these issues were as opposed to whatI have heard coming from those who love his writing. The people who have talked to me about Hirsch’s SOTOK approached it in such an either or manner that I got the feeling that if I didn’t buy into every he said and follow is right now I was part and parcel of the death of the church.

Don’t get me wrong there is a prophetic urgency to Hirsch voice but he presents it with a much broader fuller, perspective and graciousness than many of his adherents (at least the ones I know) have. Maybe this is the way that books on this subject have to be written so that people will buy them. But after listening to Hirsch I didn’t get the same eiither or feeling about what he is proposing that I got reading the book. Instead I find myself in agreement with Hirsch that we need to learn how to rediscover what it means to be fully Christian fully human, and fully the church.

I beilieve he is correct when he challenges us to appreciate the fullness of the gospel and Jesus message and not simply attach to the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus like  some kind of a “cosmic fire insurance”. Or place so much emphasis on the ethos of Jesus that we make him into a nice example for good living. As Hirsch said many times in his talk that is not the whole picture of Jesus. Jesus is lord. he is lord of the church, Lord of our lives, and the author and finisher of our faith.

In this regard I find Hirsch to be completely orthodox in his thinking, His methodology my be radically different but we are in radically different times. It was refreshing to hear him talk about the way the evangelical church has subverged the message and minstry of Jesus with our subjective interpretation of Pauline theology. This amounts to what he calls Paulism not Christianity. If we are to be Christians then Christ/Jesus  must be at the center of everything we do. As Hirsch said Paul would be disturbed by what we have done since he specifically taught that this faith we live was not about him but about Jesus. I think our emphasis on Pauline theology and only the death and resurrection of Jesus rather than his whole life and mission provided a convenient means to fit the Christian faith in a western North American US box. Buy my ticket follow the rules and I will be home free. The reign and kingdom of God is much more than that.

Now in case you think that I have become a Hirsch groupie let me say that I was a little disappointed in his response to my question which followed some others about how all this translates into a multi-racial pluralistic culture. He basically said the US was another animal all together because of the long history of segregation and slavery. Yep knew that. He also said the kingdom of God is multi-racial/multi-cultural. Then he asked I thought. So here goes.

Writes like Hirsch must challenge their readers to a broader cultural and contextual understanding of their thoughts. The readers especially anglo readers to must learn to see the implementation of these thoughts those lens other than their own discomfort and disconnect the the modern western church. We all must learn to ask what if their are perspectives other that those I am familiar that shape the way that I think about how church looks feels, tastes and smells. Finally we must avoid at all costs taking our interpretation of any writer and elevating it to an absolute (by doing this we avoid the cult of personality that seems to be developing in much of the emerging/missional church conversation) . More on this to come in another post.

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Technorati Tags: bigot, diversty, npr, race, racism

Last night as we watched the events unfold that ended the Democratic primary process and gave Barack Obama the nomination, the reactions of my family stick in my mind.

My son (who favors Obama a bit according to his peers) asked “Did he do it?”  “Did he get it?” When I replied he did his reaction was YESSSS!!!!! with a fist pump.

Later as I watched the Obama’s speech with me wife she said, “I’m worried for him, do you think he is safe?” My response I don’t know.

As I listened to Tom Brokaw talk about how the younger generation was more color blind than his I wondered how real that statement was and whether I really wanted the younger generation to be color blind.

So what was my reflections? I am still processing the church resignation thing and I watch a movie yesterday called Carbon Copy starring George Segal and a young Denzel Washington. The premise of the movie (which seemed cheesy to me when it first came out) is a white guy discovers he has a son from a relationship (fling) with a black woman he eventually left to marry into the ultimate WASP family. When his son shows up tries to may his father pay for the way his mother was hurt everything goes into the toilet for this well to do white guy. He loses all of the things he came to expect as a white person, job family, clubs etc.

When he finally comes to grips with white privilege he tells his WASP father-in-law that the real issue is not just that blacks come into the game with two strikes its that the game is rigged so blacks can’t even get a third swing. Later on he tells his son “when I saw you all I saw was black”.  In other words he didn’t see a person he saw his mental model of a whole race and then attached all he assumptions and preconceived notions about that race to the individual.

I wonder if that is what is happening with Barack Obama right now. I wonder if we are at a true moment in history when we can move beyond race as a defining factor? Or maybe if Obama is successfully it will be despite his race and because he is politically smart enough to beat at system that say to people like him two strikes and you are out!

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Technorati Tags: color blind, history, obama, politics

Over the weekend Barack Obama resigned from Trinity Church in the wake of another tirade by the pundits about his being responsible for what a preacher said in his church.

Obama Quits His Church - The Caucus - Politics - New York Times Blog

I am disappointed. I’m disappointed because he said he would speak the truth even when we didn’t want to hear it. I’m disappointed because the decision seems more political than principled. I’m disappointed it seems the accessory price or pound of flesh for a black man to  pay to gain credibility. I’m disappointed because I wonder if it is worth it?

While browsing the web I came across this quote. I don’t know if it is accurate or not but It certainly relevant.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy - Martin Luther King Jr.

I’m disappointed!!!!!

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Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, faith, politics

Welcome to another episode of adventures in missing the truth.
Priest Mocks Clinton in Sermon - AOL News

WARNING RANT AHEAD

Maybe I reading the wrong papers or viewing the wrong political pundits. But I heard them all say the same thing about Hillary Clinton thinking that she was the inevitable democratic nominee.

So once again Obama must be responsible for what everyone who is in anyway connected to him says. First it was a black man now he has to be responsible for whites as well. OK where is Clinton’s responsibility for here husband’s remarks. I must be so stupid because I don’t get it. How is it that anything no matter how true that ruffles the gender sensibilities of the Hillary Clinton folks be so rapidly overblown when patently offensive stuff others say about Obama gets downplayed.

This white priest is once again falling subject to the demonization of a particular group of people for speaking the truth. Does anyone say, This is one sermon from the guy. Look at who he is and what he has done to help people in the church the past?  Does anyone say yes maybe he didn’t way it is the nicest way but its true?

Instead it becomes another Barack Obama problem. For which he must apologize. Geraldine Ferarro has yet to apologize for saying that Obama was here he was because he was black. (read political affirmative action)

If the cost of having the first black president is having to miss, ignore or deny the truth about race, and gender issues; if we must deny the truth of white previlege rather than expose it, I wonder if it is worth it.

THIS RANT IS NOW COMPLETE

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Technorati Tags: church, Clinton, obama, pastor, truth

OK so it is clear that i wasn’t very clear in my thoughts in this post  damned if you do damned if you don’t. This is not about being politically for Obama or Clinton. It is my observation of how differently we relate to politicians based on  their race or gender.

It has been my observation that black men in America are on the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to the social pecking order. Black men are attached to all kinds of assumptions, preconceptions and cultural scripts. If we are articulate, we are the exception. If we aren’t, we prove “the point”.  If we succeed we benefited from affirmative action. If we don’t we prove “the point”. If we get frustrated about how we are perceived, we are the “angry black man.” If we seek compromise and consensus we are “sellouts” and not fighters. If we protest, we aren’t patriotic, loyal, or team players. If we treat women poorly we are “dogs”. If we greet each other as friends we are “dogs”. Our friends actions are reflected on all of us.

In the same way that the way we can recognize that some people view Hillary Clinton through the lens of her gender we need to recognize and admit that some maybe many people view Obama through their of his race and gender. In this culture, despite his biracial international roots he is distilled to simply being a black man. With that comes all the historical and social mental models that we (that is all of us black and white) attach to black men.

We can wish that we can move beyond race but it isn’t going to happen right now. I am curious why some Anglos who support  Obama sound like they are patting themselves on the back that they are supporting a “black man”. In a truly character not race oriented society that wouldn’t be. But it is.

I’m not upset that it is. I just then we need to admit it and talk about it. We need to talk about it in the church and not demonize each other when we do. We need to talk about it with friends and be gracious to each other when we do. We need to talk about it in general and ask what if there is something shaping my perspective that I’m not conscious of. We will never get beyond race until we deal with race and its place in the cultural conversation. We readily talk about sexism and but hyper when we try to talk about racism. But we unable to have a real conversation about race.

This morning I read an essay written by my biracial son who sees his mixed heritage as an opportunity and a challenge. He wonders if his black friends see him as black or white; if his white friends see him as black or white. He is wrestling at the ripe old age of 14 with the social perception that young men of his skin color simply “black”. The dream is not yet realized that our children’s character would matter more than their (socially constructed) race.

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Technorati Tags: black men, gender, obama, politics, race, racism, unintentional intolerance