I’m not going to watch the breaking of the second seal in Washington, D.C., tomorrow. Instead, I’m preparing to host two training sessions this weekend, and I’m thinking about what constitutes sound community. Among people who consider themselves progressive, those committed to the deep social transformation that actively creates space for typically marginalized people to […]
A poetic break
My latest literary companion, Umair Muhammad’s Confronting Injustice, features a sentence that was so arresting that I had to look up both the source and its author. (Get Confronting Injustice the way I did, via Haymarket Books.) Eduardo Galeano wrote through the second half of the 20th Century about the political struggles of his native Uruguay. […]
On #NMOS14, Ferguson, and Rooting for a New World
This post took me three weeks to prepare. There’s so much to say, and the word-containers I’m drawing together feel far too narrow and too shallow to hold that “so much.” The community of Ferguson, MO, has been in grief since August 9, and that grief, first re-presented as aggression, then analyzed from afar, and dismissed by the […]
Transcript: Toni Morrison at Portland State, 1975
Educating the conqueror is not our business. —Toni Morrison Last week some of us heard for the first time a presentation that Prof. Toni Morrison made in May 1975 during a public lecture series on the theme of the American Dream. “A Humanist View” begins by surveying technically objective shipping records. Comparing the records’ descriptions of rice, tar, […]
Raise a Fist: On Saluting the Humane
Real peace is more than the absence of war. Rather, we need to change the culture, situations, and systems that lead to violence. —American Friends Service Committee Five years ago I’m sitting behind the bar of a House of Representatives committee room, Washington, D.C. It’s a mark up day, when the committee meets to comment […]
Event Update: The Future of Adventism
Adventist Today has posted an updated announcement for the panel discussion on the Millennial Generation and Adventist Faith next month at Loma Linda University: I’m looking forward to talking with Edgar Momplaisir, Alfredo Lee, Pr. Courtney Ray, Syd Shook, Monte Sahlin, and Ryan Bell about our denomination’s future (if not its “arc”!). When I have […]
