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Starbucks & Hypocrisy
…This story is a headliner because it happened in a Starbucks store in Philadelphia and not in a rundown diner in Selma. Starbucks touts its progressive values. During the great recession, the company didn’t withdraw benefits from employees, though they were under great pressure to do so. It’s Race Together campaign, where they asked their baristas to engage the customers on issues of race, fizzled, but you can’t fault it for its noble ambition. Now, the company that attempted to single handedly make conversation on race a normative, didn’t talk about race with its own people. It didn’t practice what it preached. I’m a bit comforted by exposure of Starbucks’…
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Snoring Through Communion
My middle schooler son, Ian, was snoring on stage as the bread of Christ was being passed. This was not a pastor-parent’s worst nightmare, lingering for a minute when I woke up, then fading out as I fell back to sleep. This was Palm Sunday, a few days ago, at Harvey Browne Presbyterian Church. Oh, and across from Ian was his younger sister, Elina, who swilled the blood of Christ, and then promptly spat it out, screaming “Yuck!” She slammed the communion shot glass on the floor, because it was her first taste of real wine and not the Welch’s white grape juice meant for children. She was also on…
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The Kiss
So Judas came straight to Jesus. “Greetings, Rabbi!” he exclaimed and gave him the kiss. Jesus said, “My friend, go ahead and do what you have come for.” —Matthew 26:50 Come friend, The air is warming with spring, and the stars are pregnant with Abrahamic promise. The cicadas are humming new hymns and the moon is dressed in bridal splendor. This is a perfect evening, wouldn’t you agree, for a long walk through the woods with friends? My friend? Now, why do you come slithering with a long procession? Why do you lead a march of flaming suns? Are not the stars enough to light our way? Why have you…
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Black Panther and the Challenge to the Church
If the church dares to embrace the badass decision for intercultural congregations, it already has everything needed to make that happen. The church only needs to be faithful to its source material. Do you remember the origin story of the church? The tongued-fire of the Spirit gifting supernatural powers? Powerful apostles – men and women, young and old, masters and slaves – proclaiming the gospel, regardless of threats from authorities? People from all corners of the earth hearing the same message, but understanding it in their heart-language? 3,000 getting baptized? All because superhero Jesus defeated death and now lives in a new form in their assembly, which we have come…
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How Does a Poem Work?
i’m not sure but it’s what you look for when your father dies and you were expecting it for awhile, because he had a full life, the pastor says, like a pear, ripe with sun, snaps from the branch and falls to earth, and no estranged child, everyone came and kissed his face the week before he passed away, ain’t that a blessing, amen, the church people say, and yet that emptiness in your 60 year old chest, is so vast even the night can’t fit in it, and you don’t know how to say it, so your hands go fumbling through you old poetry anthology from college, the one…
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Waiting
For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. – Romans 8:22 My wife has been in labor for 20 hours but the boy’s not ready for his revealing What’s he waiting for? I shuffle back and forth, from my wife’s bedside to the waiting room, where both mothers are wondering if they should stay put or run some quick errands, they ask, What time does the doctor say? I say, Anytime. A n y t i m e s t r e t c h i n g i n f i n i t e l y.…
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Silent Night on December 24th, 1914
German and British soldiers, in the thick of the first war of the worlds crawl out of their blood drenched trenches, rifles slung over sunken shoulders, and shovels across the other, meet halfway in the dead man’s land, carry back and bury the remains of their friends, then return to exchange prisoners and cigarettes, lighting them for each other, like Advent candles. They gaze at the stars, name them in their mother’s tongue, fabricate stories of the girl they will finally propose to once they return home. They take turns singing carols their mothers sang to cease their tears, then as if there was a conductor invisible except…
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Returning Home to America Through the Poet Langston Hughes
published in Dear America: Reflections on Race by Geeky Press “Go back home Chink!” Black ink sprayed all over the front door and wall of our house. Graffiti is homo sapiens’ version of territory marking: a creative expression degraded to dog’s piss; a prophetic art blemished to a slur; a spray of hatred: “Get the fuck outta here!” After six years of roach-infested, intermittent heating apartment, we moved into our first house, a step towards the American dream, a small plot of earth to our name, with a yard for us to tend, fenced not by white-pickets but steel mesh but a fence nevertheless. We turned the 70’s ranch house…
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Today’s Reformation: Ending Church Segregation
When the sun dawned on Oct. 31, 1517, Martin Luther prepared to share his 95 theses with the German church — not knowing the day would eventually be pegged as the birth of the Protestant Reformation, and a day that fundamentally changed the landscape of Europe. The parchment at hand had a laundry list of grievances against indulgence, a way to reduce the amount of punishment required to suffer for sin, as taught by the Catholic Church. In 1500s Europe, indulgences had become a practice that monetized salvation — for a monetary offering, the church would promise remission of punishment in purgatory. The gift of eternal life was turned into…
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Chi
(first published in American Journal of Poetry) my mother told me to get acupuncture for my ankle sprain, I laughed and corrected her, acupuncture is Eastern superstition, works by the transference of our attention, from one pain to another, i.e. from your torn fibula to the invasion of dermis by a needle, and not some mysterious Chi energy never observed by a microscope. but today, there are Western acupuncturists with degrees from universities that actually have campuses and credentials; and there are books, I mean hard cover — drop on your foot, shatter you cuneiforms, centuries of pages of resume-heavy papers — text books from publications not run from a basement but companies with market-researched logos stamped…
