40

Early morning, April 4
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride
                 -U2 Pride (In the Name of Love), 1984
40 years ago this morning, MLK Jr. was shot and killed.  Leonard Pitts has an excellent piece about this [...]

My Weekend

Here’s what I’ll be doing this weekend:

Visit Central High School (Little Rock, Arkansas) visitor center.
National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, TN (450 Mulberry)
Worship at Ebenezer Baptist Church
Visit King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
Visit the National Voting Rights Museum, Selma
Walk the Edmund Pettis Bridge

Reverse the Curse

Today’s lectionary readings include both Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2. Actually, Textweek lists the two as options in the place of the Old Testament text; though only the Acts passage is differentiated in the denominational breakdown.
I think it is very insightful to read the Pentecost story in light of the Tower of Babel [...]

A Timely Piece

Clocks are everywhere around us. Many of us live by them to an unhealthy degree. Some of us need to live by them a bit more faithfully. Either way, we don’t escape them. Moving Daylight Savings Time up a couple weeks was supposed to have caused a fuss, but the world [...]

The topic that never dies (but should)

 A young man come by my office last week to talk about “reverse racism.” He doesn’t like it when he, as a white guy, is discriminated against.
But who does?  No one likes it, no one deserves it.  Jesus calls us as the people of God to treat everyone with love and respect as we would have God treat [...]

Rooney Rule and American Churches

David Alexander wrote about this rule immediately following the Super Bowl.  If you have an aversion to clicking through to it, or just don’t feel like taking the time, the Rooney Rule is a policy of the National Football League that requires teams to interview ethnic minority candidates for filling coaching vacancies.
David’s question was: “In [...]

CRASHed

I saw Crash this past Friday night. Not only is it one of the most intense movies I have ever seen, I really enjoyed it. No, “enjoyed” cannot be the right word. Crash grabbed me and would not let go for quite a while after the credits had rolled.
Crash, if you don’t know, is about [...]