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| this article was super interesting:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html
for a taste:
Pearls Before BreakfastCan one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 8, 2007; Page W10
HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L'ENFANT
PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH
BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in
jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap.
From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his
feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed
money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.....
...
On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in
an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing
against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of
the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world,
playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most
valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The
Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities
-- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal
setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend? ....
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| did you see American Idol tonight? the contestants who were left sang "Shout to the Lord" with a big choir behind them... wHAT? i dont understand what just happened. how could they all sing that song? are they all christian? are they mostly christians? what was american idol thinking in having them sing that?? i am just so confused. at first i was just repulsed because i assumed most of the contestants weren't christians and were just singing it like they would any other pop song... but maybe that was a wrong assumption... still... what is going on? i walked downstairs because my roommate called me, and i felt like i was in an alternate universe and couldn't shake the feeling for several minutes after they had sung. what? i am confused.. someone, let's talk about it. | | |
| ... we need to talk about it.
can we please?
an excerpt from Sojourners Mail.. "Healing the Wounds of Race" by Jim Wallis
... "There is a deep well of both frustration and anger in the African-American community in the U.S. And those feelings are borne of the concrete experience of real oppression, discrimination, and blocked opportunities that most of America's white citizens take for granted. African Americans across the spectrum of income and success will speak personally to those feelings of frustration and anger, when white people are willing to listen. But usually we are not. In 2008, to still not comprehend or seek to understand the reality of black frustration and anger is to be in a state of white denial - which, very sadly, is where many white Americans are.
The black church pulpit has historically been a place of prophetic truth-telling about the realities that black people experience in their own country. Indeed, the black church has often been the only place where such truths are ever told. And, black preachers have had the pastoral task of nurturing the spirits of people who feel beaten down week after week. Strong and prophetic words from black church pulpits are often a source of comfort and affirmation for black congregations. The truth is that many white Americans would indeed feel uncomfortable with the rhetoric of many black preachers from many black churches all across the country." ...
for more?
http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2008/03/healing-the-wounds-of-race-by.html#comments
and Asians need into this conversation just as badly...
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| an excerpt from this:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/03/go_tell_it_on_the_mountain_aga.html
Anne Rice
"My Trust in the Lord"
On the afternoon in 1998 when faith returned, I experienced a sense of
the limitless power and majesty of God that left me convinced that He
knew all the answers to the theological and sociological questions that
had tormented me for years. I saw, in one enduring moment, that the God
who could make the Double Helix and the snow flake, the God who could
make the Black holes in space, and the lilies of the field, could do
absolutely anything and must know everything --- even why good people
suffer, why genocide and war plague our planet, and why Christians have
lost, in America and in other lands, so much credibility as people who
know how to love. I felt a trust in this all-knowing God; I felt a
sudden release of all my doubts. Indeed, my questions became petty in
the face of the greatness I beheld. I felt a deep and irreversible
assurance that God knew and understood every single moment of every
life that had ever been lived, or would be lived on Earth. I saw the
universe as an immense and intricate tapestry, and I perceived that the
Maker of the tapestry saw interwoven in that tapestry all our
experiences in a way that we could not hope, on this Earth, to
understand.
the rest is challenging to the doubtful and cynical cover to my heart. but my heart hopes that this is true...
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| the Great Debaters is a great movie.
it spoke the truth, it revealed ugly parts of U.S. history that occurred less than a generation ago. i'm not white or black, but i love reconciliation. i cannot say i have experienced it yet in many areas of my life, but i want it. and so i get happy and encouraged when movies talk about issues like lynching, because i care about true racial reconciliation. and i think talking about those dirty sins are important for true reconciliation. blacks and whites. blacks and asians. asians and whites. hispanics and everyone as well.
it was a truly great movie. | | |
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