#she went to seminary for a couple years but then was called to teach in NYC public schools | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

chas3supremacist · 8 months

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big brother, best friend

pairing/s: Robert Chase x Sister!Reader (Platonic, obviously.)

summary: Robert Chase being the best big brother for 1800 words straight despite being through hell himself.

Request - Anonymous asked:

what about older brother/cousin/family friend (basically someone you're close to and grew up with) Robert Chase who hates when people in the hospital try to flirt with the reader. maybe he even gets the rest of house's team + wilson to also prevent them from getting hit on

cw: overprotective big bro chase!! cat calling, sexual harassment, mentions of child abuse, childhood trauma

word count: 1.8k words

a/n: I love big brother chase!! best big brother on planet earth!! Also, I know that chase canonically has a younger half sister who he took care of, but for the sake of my fic, I'm going to be ignoring that - The reader is chase's full sister! Also, for the first couple paragraphs of this there is little to no dialogue, just backstory! Also I kind of differed from the request so I hope you liked this anon! also this is an absolutely atrocious ending on my part im so sorry

For as long as you could remember, your older brother had looked after you - Despite him being 5 years older than you. He'd try and settle you the best that he could while your father was away on his work trips, and when your mother was drinking and couldn't deal with the two of you and she would lock you in your fathers office. He knew that your mother hated the two of you from a young age, but it didn't click for you - You loved your mom more than anything ever, even if she didn't feel the same way about you.

When your dad left when you and Chase were ten and fifteen, it left the two of you to look after your alcoholic mother - Chase took the brunt of looking after her, since you were still so young. He had taken on more than any child his age should have ever needed to, he was responsible for both you and your mom. He was responsible for making sure that you got to school and picking you up, responsible for making sure that you were eating, that your homework was done. Well, that was until your father made a brief return, only to tell your brother that he was sending you off to boarding school in England, claiming that Chase should be focusing on more important things rather than looking after you since that should be your mom's job. You spent 3 years at boarding school, on your own in a country you had never been to in your life before your brother decided that he would attend seminary in England.

Despite everything that had happened to you in your relatively short life, Chase had always known you to be happy and cheery even in the darkest situations - However, 3 years at boarding school had clearly had a negative impact on how you viewed your life and yourself. You were excited to see your brother, of course you were, but you were nowhere near as happy as you would have been had your father not torn you away from your entire life and made you start a new one at 10 years old. Chase took you out at the weekends when he could, but found himself having 'a crisis of faith' - Meaning he slept with the groundskeeper of the seminary's wife and was reconsidering his commitment to his faith. Upon leaving the seminary, Chase found himself considering returning to Australia to attend the University of Sydney to continue his study of medicine - He felt terrible for considering not telling you and disappearing. But he soon remembered how you were feeling when he had first seen you, you looked exhausted and as if you hadn't eaten in days; Remembering that, Chase knew that he couldn't leave you.

Since then, you had been living with your brother, moving to New Jersey with him since he had went for a job at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital - Unbeknownst to you, your father had called up Chase's boss, Dr House to convince him to give him the job. You had turned 18 the week before Chase started his new job, and since you were starting college, it appeared that you both had something to celebrate. Chase was beyond proud of you, you had gotten straight A's all throughout high school and had received a full scholarship to Stanford Law School in California, where you could at least travel back to see your brother since at least this time you were in the same country - Which you often did. Your drive to become a lawyer was so you could specialise in family law, after talking through your childhood with your therapist, you decided that you wanted to make a difference to children like yours lives before things could go as far as they did for you. Now on your summer break from your junior year, you were going to spend the summer in New Jersey with Chase - He had told you of the new fellows that House hired, Allison Cameron and Eric Foreman. You had teased him about Cameron, saying that you gave it 3 months before they were sleeping together.

You rubbed your tired eyes as you walked through the hallways of the Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, you hadn't managed to sleep on your 5 and a half hour flight from San Diego to New Jersey and it was really taking its toll on you - You didn't cope well without sleep, which your brother would attest to. You sighed and threw your head back against the wall of the elevator, exhaling heavily as your backpack weighed heavy on your shoulders. You gave a tight lipped smile to the janitor who stood in the elevator with you, who grinned back at you, giving you an uneasy feeling in your stomach. You looked away from him, opting to look at your legs instead.

"You're a beautiful girl, you know," He told you, reaching out to touch your shoulder. You shied away from him, feeling your heart pound against your chest as you saw his face screw up at you implicit rejection of his advance. "Listen, I'm just trying to compliment you, you don't need to be a bitch about it." He scolded angrily, moving to stand in front of you as you blinked back the tears which burned in your eyes.

"Please just leave me alone," Was all you could meekly manage out as a response to his anger at your rejection. He stepped back as the elevator dinged at your floor, acting as if nothing had happened. As you pulled your hoodie over yourself, you froze as the janitor grabbed your butt. You sighed and shook your head, trying to stop yourself from crying as you stepped out of the elevator and made your way to the diagnostics department. You sighed as you opened the door to the office, freezing like a deer caught in headlights as an older man, who you presumed to be Dr House, spun around to face you.

"Chase, why is there a mini you standing in my office?"

Chase looked up, a grin on his face as he saw you in Houses office. House knew that Chase had a sister, but he had never met her - Now he wished he had met her sooner.

"Hey," You greeted him, looking out of the office window, fearing that the janitor had followed you to the office. Chase took note of your lack of enthusiasm and how alarmed you seemed to be. He stood and came to hug you, noticing how you almost flinched at your brother stepping towards you - From this alone, Chase knew that something had happened.

"Are you okay?" His big brother instincts were cranked up to 11 as he saw the tears bubbling in your eyes, threatening to spill over at any second. You always got this way when something happened, you would try and be brave about it, but the second someone asked if you were okay, you would crumble. Chase knew you were close to crumbling when your bottom lip started to tremble. "Okay, why don't we go outside," You nodded in agreement to chases suggestion, not listening as he apologised to House, who made some kind of snide remark that you didn't care to listen to.

You managed to hold back the tears until you got out of the office, and that was when you crumbled, breaking down into tears in your brothers arms. "It's okay. Why don't you tell me what happened?" Chase asked you, his heart breaking and anger filling him at the thought of someone making you so upset.

"W-well I got in the elevator to come up here and there was a janitor in there too and so I didn't say anything to him and-and then he called me beautiful," You tried to compose yourself a bit before continuing so that your brother could at least understand you a little better. "And so he like...reaches out to touch my shoulder and I move away from him and then he says that I'm being a bitch because he's just trying to compliment me and then when I left the elevator he grabbed my butt." You explained to him. Chase was beyond mad. How could someone do that to you? To anyone, never mind his own baby sister.

"Did you manage to see his name on his badge?" He asked you gently, not wanting to upset you anymore than you already were. You sniffled as you nodded, rubbing your eyes and nose as you tried to calm yourself down.

"Yeah, it was David, he was like..5'3, bald, had a really weird looking beard," You described to Chase, who nodded as he hugged you again. He'd make sure that he was punished to the full extent Cuddy could punish a janitor, which would hopefully mean that he would lose his job, and have to explain to potential employers that he was fired for sexual harassment. And maybe, just maybe, Chase would pay him a visit. Chase was by no mean a violent person, but if someone messed with his little sister, he wouldn't let that slide - He had once hospitalised one of your ex boyfriends who had sent an explicit photo of you around your school.

Yeah, maybe you didn't have such a terrible big brother.

#Robert chase #hatecrimes md #house fanfiction #housemd fanfic #house md #robert chase x sister!Reader #x sister!reader #angst #house md angst #greg house #robert chase x reader

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wutbju · 1 year

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Dorothy Mathews Walker died to this life October 14, 2022. The funeral service for Mrs. Walker will be held at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022 at Fort Valley United Methodist Church, 301 West Church Street, Fort Valley with the Reverend R. Scott Walker, son of Mrs. Walker, officiating. Burial will immediately follow at Oaklawn Cemetery, 720 South Camellia Boulevard in Fort Valley.

Mrs. Walker was born on Dec. 29, 1921 in Fort Valley to Robert and Edna Mathews. She graduated from Fort Valley High School in 1939 and went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts from Bob Jones University. In 1946 she married Dr. Elbert H. Walker, Th.D. The couple lived in Florence, S.C., where he was pastor of Calvary Baptist Church from 1949-1957.

In service to others, as she was for much of her life, Mrs. Walker joined her husband in appointment as Southern Baptist missionaries in the Philippines from 1957-1965. Dr. and Mrs. Walker taught at the Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary in the city of Baguio. Dr. Walker died tragically in 1965, and with her two young children, Mrs. Walker returned to Fort Valley, where she worked as an elementary school teacher until 1972.

After teaching, Mrs. Walker was employed by the Women’s Missionary Union (WMU) of the Georgia Baptist Convention in Atlanta, where she served for many years. She also became Children’s Minister of First Baptist Church of Pensacola, Fla. before her retirement.

Mrs. Walker retired in Savannah as a proud, happy grandmother and was lovingly called “Mama Dot” by her five grandchildren. She was a member and ordained deacon of First Baptist Church of Savannah. Mrs. Walker also lived in Monroe in her retirement and was active and engaged in the ministry of First Baptist Church Monroe as well as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

At nearly 101 years old, Dot lived a wonderful life and was adored by her family and many friends. She was committed to faithful service of the church wherever she was and is remembered fondly, particularly as she lovingly and dutifully raised her two children for many years after her husband passed away.

She is survived by her children R. Scott Walker (Beth), of Macon and Donna Walker Mixson (Mike) of Ellijay and grandchildren Drew Walker (Katie Alice) of Columbia, S.C., Luke Walker (Jessica) of Atlanta, Jodi Walker of Asheville, N.C., Dylan Mixson (Lauren) of Dahlonega and Ryan Mixson of Edinburgh, Scotland as well as four great grandchildren and two step great grandchildren.

Her family wishes to thank the directors and staff of The Oaks Nursing Home in Marshallville, Ga. for their dedicated love and care of Mrs. Walker in her final years. Rooks Funeral Home in Fort Valley is in charge of arrangements.

#Bob Jones University #Archive #Obituary #BJU Hall of Fame #BJU Alumni Association #2022 #Sophomore #Class of 1941 #Dorothy Mathews Walker

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ironwoman18 · 3 years

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We Found Love in a Hopeless Place part 20

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all of you. I hope next year will be better for all. And even though this wasnt the best year, I'm happy because I found my inspiration once again and I hope it stays because it's much fun to write.

Thank you for reading and think this is good enough to keep reading and use your time to comment or just like it.

This is the last chapter of 2020 for this story. Read you in January 2021.

Chapter 20: Our little moments

October arrived and it was Spencer's favorito month of the year so he was happy he would enjoy it all thanks to this deal with the FBI.

The month started with the news that they wanted some classes at the academy for new students who wanted to learn how to profile.

It could be a short period during the week and on weekends he would have his seminaries at universities.

So after classes he met with Max for lunch and they went to his apartment or hers to keep working on his classes.

On Saturday they watched movies at her dad's house and have a conversation about the movie like a club.

Sammy loved it and wanted to learn more. Which make Dom very happy about it.

One Saturday Spencer saved it to teach Max's co-workers to know how to act in a shooting. He even recommend to her that she could do something special for Halloween.

She could help her students to do their costumes with boxes and painting them. Later they could modeling them for their parents.

She loved it and does it. All kids where happy and did it with enthusiasm. She was a pretty creative person but she never found good ideas for this month.

"Spence?" She said in a whisper while they were cuddling on his couch.

"Yes?"

"Why do you enjoy Halloween so much? Because you are a very logical person and who doesn't believe in things that aren't very scientific"

"Well... It started when I was younger. My mom was having troubles with the schizophrenia. I even have to learn how to cook and how to drive in order to take care of us" she looked up at him "she wasn't mentally there must of the time but when she was ok she and I watched horror movies because she wanted me to not be afraid of dracula or ghost and my brain connect happiness and a mom- son moments with her"

"So you enjoy Halloween because it reminds you to your happy memories with your mom"

"Yes. It's the same effect that serial killers have after their first murder" he looked at her and blushed when he saw her raising an eyebrow and smirking "it's a phycologist thing..."

"Ok I'll stop you right there before this goes from cute to creepy" they laughed "by the way tomorrow is my student Fashion show and I would love if you can go" she bit her lip "it's after your class"

"I would be honored to be there" she smiles and kisses him.

The next day he dressed with his best suit and went to his class at the academy. He used what he talked to Max the night before but turning the situation into a serial killer example so the students could profile it. There were some good profilers for the team.

At the end of the class most of the students did the exercise correctly so the rest will have to finish it at home.

He left the academy and went to her school to watch the show. The kids made some really good costumes with boxes and he could see their parents so proud. He had never been in that kind of situations before but it felt so nice to see their joy and the proud in their eyes watching an eight year old modeling something he made without their help.

He just saw parents after getting their kids back from hostage situations or after been kidnapped but this was so different and satisfying. Making him realized how much he wanted to be part of that group one day.

He just felt it when he had Henry in his arms or after talking with Emily about his future or not been able to fulfill his own expectations.

After the show ended he went to see Max in the backstage and some kids walked to him.

"Are you Miss Brenner's boyfriend?" Asked one of her first graders. Spencer nodded and leaned on one knee to see him face to face.

"You make her smiley" said another little girl "so don't hurt her, please?"

"Or we will kick your ass" said an older kid.

"Michael!" Said Max from behind.

"Sorry Miss Brenner" he looked down.

"Alright kids. Go to the dressing room to get your costumes and backpacks. See you next week" they nodded and left after looking again at Spencer. Max kissed him softly "sorry. They know about Mike..."

"It's ok and adorable. I never thought I would be threatened by a ten year old kid" they laughed "but I'm glad to hear that you smile more" she blushed and hit him softly.

Then they turned and saw her students smirking at them "what are you looking at? Go with your parents" they laughed and left. Spencer was laughing too "and you sir stop laughing" she said with a smile "by the way the older kids will do this next year because they loved this. I hope Miss McGinty doesn't hate me to much"

He laughed "she's the older art teacher?" She nodded "then she will"

"Ha...ha...ha... Very funny Doctor Reid" they laughed more "now let's go. It's almost lunch and I'm starving"

They left and ate at her favorite place then visited her dad where Sammy was and he asked Spencer to go with him and aunty Max to treat or trick on Halloween night. He will be Darth Vader. And of course he accepted.

On October thirty-first they went out with some of his friends around the neighborhood. Sammy was Kylo Ren, Max was Leia, some of his friends were Rey, other was Han and another was Luke.

They had fun and at the end of the night Spencer did some magic tricks while they ate pizza.

At the end the kids started to call him Uncle Spencer and he was ok with it.

November was least relaxed but he and Max found time to have some moments together. They even got everything ready for the next month to go to the wedding of his friend in New Orleans.

The hotel would be provided by his friend so they just need to buy the fight tickets and she wanted some tours.

They found a present for the couple so when December arrives they would be ready.

OOooOOooOO

I had this on my mind for a while but couldn't find a good way to write it. This was a fast forward chapter so we can reach to 2018 when Linda Barnes appears.

And I was thinking about making Max one of the people telling Spencer to fight for the team or even change a little bit his conversation with Emily so she could be there.

What do you think?

Tags: @andiebeaword @aperrywilliams @dreatine @moviequeen51 @nerys2

#criminal mind #spencer reid #maxine brenner #maxcer #fanfiction

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gtunesmiff · 4 years

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Ravi Zacharias (1946 – 2020)

When Ravi Zacharias was a cricket-loving boy on the streets of India, his mother called him in to meet the local sari-seller-turned-palm reader. “Looking at your future, Ravi Baba, you will not travel far or very much in your life,” he declared. “That’s what the lines on your hand tell me. There is no future for you abroad.” By the time a 37-year-old Zacharias preached, at the invitation of Billy Graham, to the inaugural International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam in 1983, he was on his way to becoming one of the foremost defenders of Christianity’s intellectual credibility. A year later, he founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM), with the mission of “helping the thinker believe and the believer think.” In the time between the sari seller’s prediction and the founding of RZIM, Zacharias had immigrated to Canada, taken the gospel across North America, prayed with military prisoners in Vietnam and ministered to students in a Cambodia on the brink of collapse. He had also undertaken a global preaching trip as a newly licensed minister with The Christian and Missionary Alliance, along with his wife, Margie, and eldest daughter, Sarah. This trip started in England, worked eastwards through Europe and the Middle East and finished on the Pacific Rim; all-in-all that year, Zacharias preached nearly 600 times in over a dozen countries. It was the culmination of a remarkable transformation set in motion when Zacharias, recovering in a Delhi hospital from a suicide attempt at age 17, was read the words of Jesus recorded in the Bible by the apostle John: “Because I live, you will also live.” In response, Zacharias surrendered his life to Christ and offered up a prayer that if he emerged from the hospital, he would leave no stone unturned in his pursuit of truth. Once Zacharias found the truth of the gospel, his passion for sharing it burned bright until the very end. Even as he returned home from the hospital in Texas, where he had been undergoing chemotherapy, Zacharias was sharing the hope of Jesus to the three nurses who tucked him into his transport. Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias was born in Madras, now Chennai, in 1946, in the shadow of the resting place of the apostle Thomas, known to the world as the “Doubter” but to Zacharias as the “Great Questioner.” Zacharias’s affinity with Thomas meant he was always more interested in the questioner than the question itself. His mother, Isabella, was a teacher. His father, Oscar, who was studying labor relations at the University of Nottingham in England when Zacharias was born, rose through the ranks of the Indian civil service throughout Zacharias’s adolescence. An unremarkable student, Zacharias was more interested in cricket than books, until his encounter with the gospel in that hospital bed. Nevertheless, a bold, radical faith ran in his genes. In the Indian state of Kerala, his paternal great-grandfather and grandfather produced the 20th century’s first Malayalam-English dictionary. This dictionary served as the cornerstone of the first Malayalam translation of the Bible. Further back, Zacharias’s great-great-great-grandmother shocked her Nambudiri family, the highest caste of the Hindu priesthood, by converting to Christianity. With conversion came a new surname, Zacharias, and a new path that started her descendants on a road to the Christian faith. Zacharias saw the Lord’s hand at work in his family’s tapestry and he infused RZIM with the same transgenerational and transcultural heart for the gospel. He created a ministry that transcended his personality, where every speaker, whatever their background, presented the truth in the context of the contemporary. Zacharias believed if you achieved that, your message would always be necessary. Thirty-six years since its establishment, the ministry still bears the name chosen for Zacharias’s ancestor. However, where once there was a single speaker, now there are nearly 100 gifted speakers who on any given night can be found sharing the gospel at events across the globe; where once it was run from Zacharias’s home, now the ministry has a presence in 17 countries on five continents. Zacharias’s passion and urgency to take the gospel to all nations was forged in Vietnam, throughout the summer of ’71. Zacharias had immigrated to Canada in 1966, a year after winning a preaching award at a Youth for Christ congress in Hyderabad. It was there, in Toronto, that Ruth Jeffrey, the veteran missionary to Vietnam, heard him preach. She invited him to her adopted land. That summer, Zacharias—only just 25—found himself flown across the country by helicopter gunship to preach at military bases, in hospitals and in prisons to the Vietcong. Most nights Zacharias and his translator Hien Pham would fall asleep to the sound of gunfire. On one trip across remote land, Zacharias and his travel companions’ car broke down. The lone jeep that passed ignored their roadside waves. They finally cranked the engine to life and set off, only to come across the same jeep a few miles on, overturned and riddled with bullets, all four passengers dead. He later said of this moment, “God will stop our steps when it is not our time, and He will lead us when it is.” Days later, Zacharias and his translator stood at the graves of six missionaries, killed unarmed when the Vietcong stormed their compound. Zacharias knew some of their children. It was that level of trust in God, and the desire to stand beside those who minister in areas of great risk, that is a hallmark of RZIM. Its support for Christian evangelists in places where many ministries fear to tread, including northern Nigeria, Pakistan, South African townships, the Middle East and North Africa, can be traced back to that formative graveside moment. After this formative trip, Zacharias and his new bride, Margie, moved to Deerfield, Illinois, to study for a Master of Divinity at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Here the young couple lived two doors down from Zacharias’s classmate and friend William Lane Craig. After graduating, Zacharias taught at the Alliance Theological Seminary in New York and continued to travel the country preaching on weekends. Full-time teaching combined with his extensive travel and itinerant preaching led Zacharias to describe these three years as the toughest in his 48-year marriage to Margie. He felt his job at the seminary was changing him and his preaching far more than he was changing lives with the hope of the gospel. It was at that point that Graham invited Zacharias to speak at his inaugural International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam in 1983. Zacharias didn’t realize Graham even knew who he was, let alone knew about his preaching. In front of 3,800 evangelists from 133 countries, Zacharias opened with the line, “My message is a very difficult one….” He went on to tell them that religions, 20th-century cultures and philosophies had formed “vast chasms between the message of Christ and the mind of man.” Even more difficult was his message, which received a mid-talk ovation, about his fear that, “in certain strands of evangelicalism, we sometimes think it is necessary to so humiliate someone of a different worldview that we think unless we destroy everything he holds valuable, we cannot preach to him the gospel of Christ…what I am saying is this, when you are trying to reach someone, please be sensitive to what he holds valuable.” That talk changed Zacharias’s future and arguably the future of apologetics, dealing with the hard questions of origin, meaning, morality and destiny that every worldview must answer. Flying back to the U.S., Zacharias shared his thoughts with Margie. As one colleague has expressed, “He saw the objections and questions of others not as something to be rebuffed, but as a cry of the heart that had to be answered. People weren’t logical problems waiting to be solved; they were people who needed the person of Christ.” No one was reaching out to the thinker, to the questioner. It was on that flight that Zacharias and Margie planted the seed of a ministry intended to meet the thinker where they were, to train cultural evangelist-apologists to reach those opinion makers of society. The seed was watered and nurtured through its early years by the businessman DD Davis, a man who became a father figure to Zacharias. With the establishment of the ministry, the Zacharias family moved south to Atlanta. By now, the family had grown with the addition of a second daughter, Naomi, and a son, Nathan. Atlanta was the city Zacharias would call home for the last 36 years of his life. Meeting the thinker face-to-face was an intrinsic part of Zacharias’s ministry, with post-event Q&A sessions often lasting long into the night. Not to be quelled in the sharing of the gospel, Zacharias also took to the airwaves in the 1980s. Many people, not just in the U.S. but across the world, came to hear the message of Christ for the first time through Zacharias’s radio program, Let My People Think. In weekly half-hour slots, Zacharias explored issues such as the credibility of the Christian message and the Bible, the weakness of modern intellectual movements, and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. Today, Let My People Think is syndicated to over 2,000 stations in 32 countries and has also been downloaded 15.6 million times as a podcast over the last year. As the ministry grew so did the demands on Zacharias. In 1990, he followed in his father’s footsteps to England. He took a sabbatical at Ridley Hall in Cambridge. It was a time surrounded by family, and where he wrote the first of his 28 books, A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism. It was no coincidence that throughout the rhythm of his itinerant life, it was among his family and Margie, in particular, that his writing was at its most productive. Margie inspired each of Zacharias’s books. With her eagle eye and keen mind, she read the first draft of every manuscript, from The Logic of God, which was this year awarded the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) Christian Book Award in the category of Bible study, and his latest work, Seeing Jesus from the East, co-authored with colleague Abdu Murray. Others among that list include the ECPA Gold Medallion Book Award winner, Can Man Live Without God?, and Christian bestsellers, Jesus Among Other Gods and The Grand Weaver. Zacharias’s books have sold millions of copies worldwide and have been translated into over a dozen languages. Zacharias’s desire to train evangelists undergirded with apologetics, in order to engage with culture shapers, had been happening informally over the years but finally became formal in 2004. It was a momentous year for Zacharias and the ministry with the establishment of OCCA, the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics; the launch of Wellspring International; and Zacharias’s appearance at the United Nations Annual International Prayer Breakfast. OCCA was founded with the help of Professor Alister McGrath, the RZIM team and the staff at Wycliffe Hall, a Permanent Private Hall of Oxford University, where Zacharias was an honorary Senior Research Fellow between 2007 and 2015. Over his lifetime Zacharias would receive 10 honorary doctorates in recognition of his public commitment to Christian thought, including one from the National University of San Marcos, the oldest established university in the Americas. Over the years, OCCA has trained over 400 students from 50 countries who have gone on to carry the gospel in many arenas across the world. Some have continued to follow an explicit calling as evangelists and apologists in Christian settings, and many others have gone on to take up roles in each of the spheres of influence Zacharias always dreamed of reaching: the arts, academia, business, media and politics. In 2017, another apologetics training facility, the Zacharias Institute, was established at the ministry’s headquarters in Atlanta, to continue the work of equipping all who desire to effectively share the gospel and answer the common objections to Christianity with gentleness and respect. In 2014, the same heart lay behind the creation of the RZIM Academy, an online apologetics training curriculum. Across 140 countries, the Academy’s courses have been accessed by thousands in multiple languages. In the same year OCCA was founded, Zacharias launched Wellspring International, the humanitarian division of the ministry. Wellspring International was shaped by the memory of his mother’s heart to work with the destitute and is led by his daughter Naomi. Founded on the principle that love is the most powerful apologetic, it exists to come alongside local partners that meet critical needs of vulnerable women and children around the world. Zacharias’s appearance at the U.N. in 2004 was the second of four that he made in the 21st century and represented his increasing impact in the arena of global leadership. He had first made his mark as the Cold War was coming to an end. His internationalist outlook and ease among his fellow man, whether Soviet military leader or precocious Ivy League undergraduate, opened doors that had been closed for many years. One such military leader was General Yuri Kirshin, who in 1992 paved the way for Zacharias to speak at the Lenin Military Academy in Moscow. Zacharias saw the cost of enforced atheism in the Soviet Union; the abandonment of religion had created the illusion of power and the reality of self-destruction. A year later, Zacharias traveled to Colombia, where he spoke to members of the judiciary on the necessity of a moral framework to make sense of the incoherent worldview that had taken hold in the South American nation. Zacharias’s standing on the world stage spanned the continents and the decades. In January 2020, as part of his final foreign trip, he was invited by eight division world champion boxer and Philippines Senator Manny Pacquiao to speak at the National Bible Day Prayer Breakfast in Manila. It was an invitation that followed Zacharias’s November 2019 appearance at The National Theatre in Abu Dhabi as part of the United Arab Emirates’ Year of Tolerance. In 1992, Zacharias’s apologetics ministry expanded from the political arena to academia with the launching of the first ever Veritas Forum, hosted on the campus of Harvard University. Zacharias was asked to be the keynote speaker at the inaugural event. The lectures Zacharias delivered that weekend would form the basis of the best-selling book, Can Man Live Without God?, and would open up opportunities to speak at university campuses across the world. The invitations that followed exposed Zacharias to the intense longing of young people for meaning and identity. Twenty-eight years after that first Veritas Forum event, in what would prove to be his last speaking engagement, Zacharias spoke to a crowd of over 7,000 at the University of Miami’s Watsco Center on the subject of “Does God Exist?” It is a question also asked behind the walls of Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola Prison, the largest maximum-security prison in the United States. Zacharias had prayed with prisoners of war all those years ago in Vietnam but walking through Death Row left an even deeper impression. Zacharias believed the gospel shined with grace and power, especially in the darkest places, and praying with those on Death Row “makes it impossible to block the tears.” It was his third visit to Angola and, such is his deep connection, the inmates have made Zacharias the coffin in which he will be buried. As he writes in Seeing Jesus from the East, “These prisoners know that this world is not their home and that no coffin could ever be their final destination. Jesus assured us of that.” In November last year, a few months after his last visit to Angola, Zacharias stepped down as President of RZIM to focus on his worldwide speaking commitments and writing projects. He passed the leadership to his daughter Sarah Davis as Global CEO and long-time colleague Michael Ramsden as President. Davis had served as the ministry’s Global Executive Director since 2011, while Ramsden had established the European wing of the ministry in Oxford in 1997. It was there in 2018, Zacharias told the story of standing with his successor in front of Lazarus’s grave in Cyprus. The stone simply reads, “Lazarus, four days dead, friend of Christ.” Zacharias turned to Ramsden and said if he was remembered as “a friend of Christ, that would be all I want.” =====|||=====

Ravi Zacharias, who died of cancer on May 19, 2020, at age 74, is survived by Margie, his wife of 48-years; his three children: Sarah, the Global CEO of RZIM, Naomi, Director of Wellspring International, and Nathan, RZIM’s Creative Director for Media; and five grandchildren. =====|||=====

By Matthew Fearon, RZIM UK content manager and former journalist with The Sunday Times of London

Margie and the Zacharias family have asked that in lieu of flowers gifts be made to the ongoing work of RZIM. Ravi’s heart was people.

His passion and life’s work centered on helping people understand the beauty of the gospel message of salvation.

Our prayer is that, at his passing, more people will come to know the saving grace found in Jesus through Ravi’s legacy and the global team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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blackkudos · 4 years

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Sterling A. Brown

Sterling Allen Brown (May 1, 1901 – January 13, 1989) was a black professor, folklorist, poet, literary critic, and first Poet Laureate of the District of Columbia. He chiefly studied black culture of the Southern United States and was a full professor at Howard University for most of his career. He was a visiting professor at several other notable institutions, including Vassar College, New York University (NYU), Atlanta University, and Yale University.

Early life and education

Brown was born on the campus of Howard University in Washington D.C., where his father, Sterling N. Brown, a former slave, was a prominent minister and professor at Howard University Divinity School. His mother Grace Adelaide Brown, who had been the valedictorian of her class at Fisk University, taught in D.C. public schools for more than 50 years. Both his parents grew up in Tennessee and often shared stories with Brown, their only child, who heard his father's stories about famous leaders such as Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.

Brown's early childhood was spent on a farm on Whiskey Bottom Road in Howard County, Maryland. He was educated at Waterford Oaks Elementary and Dunbar High School, where he graduated as the top student. He received a scholarship to attend Williams College in Massachusetts. Graduating from Williams Phi Beta Kappa in 1922, he continued his studies at Harvard University, receiving an MA a year later.That same year of 1923, he was hired as an English lecturer at Virginia Theological Seminary and College in Lynchburg, Virginia, a position he would hold for the next three years. He never pursued a doctorate degree, but several colleges he attended gave him honorary doctorates. Brown won "the Graves Prize for his essay 'The Comic Spirit in Shakespeare and Moliere'" in his time at Williams College.

Marriage and family

Brown married Daisy Turnbull in 1927 and they went on to adopt a son together. Daisy was an occasional muse for Brown: his poems "Long Track Blues" and "Against That Day" were inspired by her.

Married for over 50 years, the second poem in Alfred Edward Housman's A Shropshire Lad was meaningful to the couple. Brown read the poem to Daisy on their wedding day and she read it to him fifty years later on their anniversary. They had one son, John L. Dennis.

Academic career

Brown began his teaching career with positions at several universities, including Lincoln University and Fisk University, before returning to Howard in 1929. He was a professor there for 40 years. Brown's poetry used the south for its setting and showed slave experiences of the African American people. Brown often imitated southern African-American speech, using "variant spellings and apostrophes to mark dropped consonants". He taught and wrote about African-American literature and folklore. He was a pioneer in the appreciation of this genre. He had an "active, imaginative mind" when writing and "a natural gift for dialogue, description and narration".

Brown was known for introducing his students to concepts then popular in jazz, which along with blues, spirituals and other forms of black music formed an integral component of his poetry.

In addition to his career at Howard University, Brown served as a visiting professor at Vassar College, New York University (NYU), Atlanta University, and Yale University.

Some of his notable students include Toni Morrison, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Sowell, Ossie Davis, and Amiri Baraka (aka LeRoi Jones).

In 1969 Brown retired from his faculty position at Howard and turned full-time to poetry.

Literary career

In 1932 Brown published his first book of poetry Southern Road. It was a collection of poems, many with rural themes and treated the simple lives of poor, black, country folk with extra poignancy and dignity. Brown's work included pieces authentic dialect and structures as well as formal work. Despite the success of this book, he struggled to find a publisher for the followup, No Hiding Place. Sterling Brown was most known for his authentic southern black dialect.

His poetic work was influenced in content, form and cadence by African-American music, including work songs, blues and jazz. Like that of Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and other black writers of the period, his work often dealt with race and class in the United States. He was deeply interested in a folk-based culture, which he considered most authentic. Brown is considered part of the Harlem Renaissance artistic tradition, although he spent the majority of his life in the Brookland neighborhood of Northeast Washington, D.C.

Quotes

"Harvard has ruined more niggers than bad liquor."

Brown's warning to Thomas Sowell, as quoted in Sowell's A Personal Odyssey (2000).

Honors

In 1979, the District of Columbia declared May 1, his birthday, Sterling A. Brown Day.

His Collected Poems won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in the early 1980s for the best collection of poetry published that year.

In 1984 the District of Columbia named him its first poet laureate, a position he held until his death from leukemia at the age of 88.

The Friends of Libraries USA in 1997 named Founders Hall at Howard University a Literary Landmark, the first so designated in Washington, DC.

The home where Brown resided is located in the Brookland section of Northeast Washington, DC. An engraved plaque and a sign created by the DC Commission On Arts And Humanities are featured in front of the house.

Works

Southern Road, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932 (original poetry)

Negro Poetry (literary criticism)

The Negro in American Fiction, Bronze booklet - no. 6 (1937), published by The Associates in Negro Folk Education (Washington, D.C.)

Negro Poetry and Drama: and the Negro in American fiction, Atheneum, 1972 (criticism)

The Negro Caravan, 1941, co-editor with Arthur P. Davis and Ulysses Lee (anthology of African-American literature)

The Last Ride of Wild Bill (poetry)

Michael S. Harper, ed. (1996). The Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown. Northwestern University Press. ISBN 978-0-8101-5045-4. (1st edition 1980)

The Poetry of Sterling Brown, recorded 1946-1973, released on Smithsonian Folkways, 1995

Mark A. Sanders, ed. (1996). A son's return: selected essays of Sterling A. Brown. UPNE. ISBN 978-1-55553-275-8.

Old Lem (Poem)

Old Len was put to music by Carla Olson with the permission of Sterling Brown’s estate. The resulting song is called Justice and was recorded by Carla backed by former member of The Rolling Stones Mick Taylor and former member of the Faces Ian McLagan along Jesse Sublett on bass and Rick Hemmert on drums.

#05/01 #01/13

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humansofhds · 6 years

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Eliot Davenport, MTS '18

“Recently, I have realized that, at the bottom of everything, I came to the study of South Asian religion and Indian philosophy because I couldn’t imagine not reading Sanskrit every day.”

Eliot graduated in 2018 from the MTS program at HDS and is currently applying to PhD programs in South Asian and Religious Studies departments, where she will continue to study Sanskrit and Indian philosophy.

Leaving the Bubble

I am Texan, through and through. I was born and raised in Fort Worth. Same house, same school, same all-the-things for my whole childhood. Religion tied into my life in an early way. When my mom found out she was going to have kids, she thought, “What was important to me when I was small? The Church!” So she immediately started attending again, and my sister and I were raised in the Episcopal Church. My mom worked as the secretary to the rector, so we ended up going to the church school for K-12. It was sort of a bubble of a life.

For most of my life, I wanted to be a priest. Whenever anybody asked me what I wanted to do I would say, “I want to be an Episcopal priest,” and they’d be like “Great, except that you’re a lady.” Turns out that I totally could have, but my diocese was very not progressive. It was stagnant. I didn’t know that women could be clergy until I went off to college and I had already changed my plan at that point. I was good at math and I thought I’d just be an engineer, so I moved to College Station and earned my bachelors of science in civil and ocean/coastal engineering at Texas A&M.

Once I found out about female clergy I called my parents and I was like “what the heck, I could have done this!” They suggested that I put a pin in it and try out the engineering thing. So I did—I worked as an engineer in Austin for about five years. But I still always thought I wanted to go to seminary. About a year into the formal discernment process in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, I thought, “Wait, that’s not what I want after all. Turns out I want to study Sanskrit.” And everybody said, “Excuse me, what?” That’s how I ended up coming to Massachusetts in a nutshell.

Serendipitous Encounters

When I moved to Austin to begin my first real job after graduating from Texas A&M, I realized that engineering had taken up my whole life. I just felt like I didn’t have much of a personality outside of my education and career. So I started to do a bunch of stuff, thinking that year that I would do literally anything that came my way hoping that something would catch me and hold tight. One day somebody said that I should go to a yoga class. I initially thought, “No thanks,’ but something changed and I walked into one, some free class somewhere, and it just stuck. It became my thing.

A couple of years later I started yoga teacher training and was introduced to Sanskrit. From the moment we started learning proper syllable pronunciation, I was hooked. I realized that if I intended to be a yoga teacher who said the names of poses in Sanskrit and spoke with any sense of authority about anything related to the Yoga Sutras, then I better be able to read them as a primary source and not just as an English translation. So, at the suggestion of Professor Clooney, I applied to the University of Texas to try my hand at first-year Sanskrit, and three years later here I am applying for PhD programs.

I started practicing yoga in 2012. I became one of those people who practiced multiple times a day, then I started teaching, and then I quit my full-time engineering job all-together. Then I came here (HDS), and it disappeared from my life. I didn’t grieve the loss of this thing that I had loved; it was just that it's time sort of ended for me. I still do it from time to time, and I’ve started doing it more since graduating. Although yoga is the thing that introduced me to Sanskrit, my relationship to yoga is different now. For me it is physical. I don’t buy into the way that people are trying to package a spiritual experience and a bodily experience all at once. After coming to HDS, I separated the philosophy, the language, and then finally the actual physical practice, so when I do it now I do it just to feel good in my body.

I usually don’t get a lot of good reactions when I tell people this story. Overall there seems to be a sense that this undeniably modern avenue into the world of studying religion, South Asia, and Sanskrit somehow indicates an inability to take it seriously. People have mixed reactions to the idea that the billion dollar, stretchy-pants yoga boom could lead somebody into the academic study of religion, but it did for me and I hope others are lucky enough to let it do the same for them.

Learning Curve

Engineering school never felt right. I never really meshed with that culture. Honestly, even when I thought I was going to be a priest, that didn’t feel quite right either. And then I walked into that first class of beginner Sanskrit at UT and I was like “Oh! I found the thing, and it’s not a place, or a particular career; it’s this other new thing that I’m so glad I ran into.” It was a beautiful accident. And I’m thankful for it, every day.

Because my first year at HDS was also my first year in the humanities, my time here was like a compressed undergraduate education. There was a huge learning curve. I mean, my first paper in my life that was longer than three pages was my first paper here at HDS. So, I had to give myself time and space to properly develop an idea of what I wanted to do. Even now I can say more easily what I don’t want to do than what I do want to do, whether it’s in regard to a simple term paper or a future book. My dearest friend back in Austin teases me that I went from wanting to do everything in all the libraries in all over the world to wanting to do something in all of the libraries on one continent, and now I’m trying to shrink it down to one country, one city, and perhaps a single library.

Recently, I have realized that, at the bottom of everything, I came to the study of South Asian religion and Indian philosophy because I couldn’t imagine not reading Sanskrit every day. This whole world didn’t initially open up to me through English translations of Sanskrit texts or even from the mouths of my professors. I became familiar with some of India’s epic narratives and philosophical works simply by reading them in the language in which they were meant to be heard and read. In fact, it was only after my second full year of language study that I was finally asked to think critically about them from a non-language-based perspective. This perhaps odd way of doing things, learning the language before knowing what my academic questions might be, has certainly affected the way I study. I’ve finally zeroed in on the thing I love reading the most: Indian philosophy. In particular I’m interested in epistemology, philosophy of language, theories of sensory experience, and the efficacy of sound as a source of knowledge. I’m interested in not just what these philosophers had to say, but also the intricacies of how they chose to say it. What do they have to say about language and how, in turn, do they utilize language to do so? For a lot of people, it probably sounds like the most boring thing in the world. But this is what’s captured my imagination, so I am just going with it.

Hidden Motivations

In my last semester, I took a class with Professor Hallisey about Buddhism and modern fiction. In this course, it was incredible to me how we were all presented with the same paper prompts and every single one of us wrote on distinctly different topics for each. When we were asked “What is the author of this novel asking us to reflect on?” each of us zeroed in on such fascinating and differing topics that it made me wonder if we’d even read the same book.

In the final paper for that class, the basic question was: Why read fiction at all? I started thinking about how fiction forces us not only to look into the minds of different authors, but also to dive deep into our own brains to see what we’re reflecting on. Fiction is a conduit for us to live other lives and see what in those lives is important to us. I wrote about grief and loss for one assignment and about the human tendency to self-deceive for another. As I wrote the final, I thought back and self-psychoanalyzed a bit, realizing that those topics are things that are always present in my mind. I was totally unaware of this while I was reading the novels and writing the individual papers. All this to say that this class changed the way I want to approach the works of certain Indian philosophers. In addition to looking at what they were trying to convey through their arguments, I want to analyze the ways in which they were attempting to convey it in order to gain insight into their world. Perhaps this insight may be able to add to our own experience in unexpected ways.

What is it that I think I’m going to discover there? I don’t know. But I want to get into their brains and I want to know why they chose to talk about the things they chose to talk about. Who were they? What was important to them? What motivated them to write these difficult, intense, complicated things? The engineering side of my brain wants to break down the structure of the texts, the specific sentences, words, and letters. But I also want to put the puzzle pieces together of what they were thinking about on the surface to see what they may have been thinking about below it. Hopefully it leads me somewhere I can’t quite yet imagine.

Elton John

I played the piano competitively for a long time. I started really young because The Lion King was my favorite movie. I remember walking out of the film and being like, “Mom—that music! Who wrote it?” And she told me “Elton John!” I said “I’m going to marry Elton John.” She replied by saying, “Do you want to play the piano?” Soon after that I started to play and still do just for fun. Elton John came here last fall when he was awarded the Harvard Foundation’s Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian, and I finally had the chance to see him in person after 25 years. It was amazing.

Interview and photos by Anaïs Garvanian

#Harvard #Harvard Divinity School #yoga #sanskrit #elton john #buddhism #Religion #episcopal #large

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davidjjohnston3 · 3 years

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1. Others' innocence can make us feel more alive and cleanly but we have sooner or later to 'cleanse the inside of your own cup' (Jesus).

2. I miss 'sis.' That's all. I'm not married at 36.5 but someone did say, 'as a sister.'

3. I listened to Sowon's cover of 'Happy' and wrote a letter to Taeyeon on Instagram that she said something nice to.

4. I have several wishes pace Pope Francis' 'Come Let Us Dream' in the Covid era. One of these is to move to Korea of course again, another to move to LA, and another to publish under the imprint of (Mrs.) Catherine Cho's literary imprint as 'Inferno' was terrifying to me in a good way and I too encountered both racism, antagonism towards introverts and quiet people, warehousing by TV, and other forms of evil and crime in the mental healthcare system from people who just want money or, worse in a way, fun and PRIDE. I also think now that the mental healthcare system in Milwaukee Conuty was designed to give nursing school graduates either an 'easy money' job or exposure to a new Nazi-like system pace abortion-culture under the Democratic Party (including at least one Asian sadly; Andrew Yang), in which the mentally abnormal are considered second-class citizens if not Hitlerian 'life unworthy of life.' My parents are Democrats incidentally and fully support this.

5. I am pro-life 100%; I was going to be aborted and my biological 'father in law' still wants to post-partum-abort me; I could describe the spiritual realization but it's anatomical as well as literally electric. I hope and pray the pro-life movement will be able to present a living paradigm whereby the value of orphan life can be demonstrated and God glorifide in a literal 'spirit of adoption' or at least a very good orphanage. This has been part of my dream or 'ghost' since at least 2010.

6. I was driving to see Bethlehem Baptist Church + Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis and felt a crucifying energy from the church; I also thought about Monica and the 'white garments' of righteousness and covered sin ('white as snow' - Isaiah).

7. I don't want to 'nuke the Johnston clan' but as I was brutally attacked by both my parents in a campaign involving widespread exaggeration lying to both biomedical professionals / sci-tech establishment as well as civil authority (police) I have written some notes and passages of a 'purple and gold' project, 'Johnston Family Promises; or How Easter Became April Fools,' which could be characterized as a parody of self-destruction, specifically self-post-partum-abortion by reversing the fact that medical doctor brain trust thought I'd be born on April Fool's but was actually born on Easter Sunday in Los Angeles, CA.

8. I just want a future at this point however as my biological 'family' turned violently against me and I am in the position of 'gathering in the summer' (Proverbs).

9. I thought, 'an authentic love'... I love Changrae Lee also but it took me a long time to understand the spiritual 'Requiem' sense of his best book, by far, 'The Surrendered.' Koreans I sometimes think are the one race or rather _ _ now taking the past seriously without throwing away the future. With Secretary Pompeo I feel America could fall in on itself or at least on people like me, including many vulnerable loved ones of all of yours, my Facebook friends.

10. On a lighter note I like (Ms. / Artist) Kim Taeyeon's 'Cover Up' - 'I can't cover up my heart.'

11. I still like Baskin Robbins Pineapple Coconut thoguh for some reason it makes me think of being a billionaire world-saving commerce-warrior in financial triller Michael Kim's 'Offerings.''

12. I gave the wrong things to the wrong people and made them worse; I expect to be judged by Moses as well as my former teacher-trainers and mentors for being 's/Sensei' who failed his students in both senses of fail (gave them F's and failed to teach them things that made them 'better'). It was a traumatic experience that made me feel demoted from EdAdmin that I had just been offered to wanting to assist-teach K4 or Spec/ExcepEd. That's what you get for 'adult education' / being honest with Boomers about your thoughts, feelings, and decades of study. I think Confuciu would say you can't teach constructively who have no sense of shame (old American whites), and moreover participate in a rape-culture including both literal rape, sex-traficking, university campus-culture, porneia,

13. I haven't yet had an EKG but could have experienced acute idiopathic cardiac distress from the Pfizer vaccine since too many beautiful women ages 11-80 all love me. I thought a while back at 36, 'How to use my last half of my life.' Then suddenly with pericardial effusion on my mind I thought, 'What to do with 3 months to 2.8 years.' I wanted to go to Korea; I saw a Servants of Christ video where she was in Korea walking by a river to 'I Need Thee Every Hour' a Christian hymn to Jesus about absolute dependency, 'most precious Lord.' I remembered Psalm 23 and a time I just wanted to be buried in a certain cemetery in Incheon. Some other things happened involving my marital future, 'Skinship,' but now I am hoping for at least 5-10 years as the acute issues have mostly settled down and I am a clever self-dietician. Honestly though with the state of healthcare in Wisconsin I thought about purchasing a needle myself for a pericardocentesis to drain the H2O.

14. I have one writing-project I might not complete but I feel a solid start that could / should be published about abortion-culture and based on 'Love in Color,' a popular song by a no-longer-pop-idol.

15. I still think about expositing American literature but suddenly 'The Old New World' means more to me; the old Midwestern novel, 'Winterlight,' 'My Soul at Night.' And, 'The Magnificent Ambersons,' destined love. I had a student in Korea who would be the card-carrying image of Lucy Morgan if they adapted it in addition to Mark Helprin's 'In Sunlight and in Shadow.'

16. I am (too?) afraid of the Cross of Gold. America getting rich. China's 'moderately prosperous nation' i.e. Get Middle Class or Die (and Take World w/ Us) Tryinng.' I want to be poor and poor-in-spirit except that I love some people who could use the money. That is part of why I think about Michael B. Kim.

17. I like green peas, peanut butter, and blueberries.

18. The best audiobook I read lately is almost holy to me, 'Inferno' by Catherine Cho but 'Forgotten God' by Francis Chan is also incredible. I listen to it while sleeping on audio and it always seems to wake me up at the perfect moment.

19. I finally figured out an 'audience' as well. If I could finally write a couple novels with a 'professional' utterance in addition to 'Love in Color' my 'caritas et amor' homage to a beautiful song and also something on the Covid era and old and young. Like Pastor John MacArthur, or with him / following him I just feel like the whole point of Covid was to give people a chance to do better by / with kids. 'We plant the trees; our children enjoy the shade' - a Chinese proverb that the orthodox preacher / shepherd John MacArthur cites nonetheless. The American Families Plan. Also even more (AUTHENTIC, non-guru-guff, non-fetishistic, non-trends-based) professionalization and humane policing and children's rights within the South Korean public and private schooling sectors.

20. I had one grand project as well called 'The Distant Lights of Seoul' that is kind of my take on 'In Sunlight and in Shadow' but it evolved in to something more personal that that's all... a trip I thought of taking, in the days when I was unsure whether to be the new or old.

21. I remember the most anguished summer of my life till now was 2003. 'Deep Inside of You' by 3EB. 'I would change myself if I could / I would walk with my people if I could find them / and I'd say I'm sorry to you.' Coincidentally I went on an 'icy-hot' date with a hyper-beautiful woman at the cafe-bar where Jenkins wrote 'Motorcycle Driveby.'

22. I made a 'partial audiobook' of the early Psalms - particularly 5, about God defending - and had a beautiful experience like reading to children.

23. I don't want to broaden myself out too much physically or experientially; I'm afraid of becoming mentally American. 'Leaving Babylon, Leaving America, Leaving Milwaukee, Leaving.' My homage to Madison Kwon Eunbi as well, theme-music 'Eraser.' But I have to be a better man to approach my new _.

24. My original 'Korea project' was called 'Transferring to Line Zero' and like many Millennial writers in 2010 I tried to sound like a Haruki Murakami narrator but my experience turned out to be more like Kazuo Ishiguro, Marcel Proust. I aimed for whisky but got wine. I wish I could write this as I know for whom. IDK if anyone cares though as Millennials almost all had 'these.' I just wish I could make something of it instead of seeming like 'Acute Fangirl's No. 1 Fanboy.' There wasn't a 'zero.'

25. I had a crush on Dreamcatcher JiU 'Lily Kim' I saw once in Chicago - 'prettier in real life' is a good way to zonk people out into falling in love with a picture - but I saw a picture of her in traditional Joseon garment and just thought, 'cordial neighbor.' That's all.

26. I used to write 'nuke Harvard' self-hyper-fanfiction about me v. the more customary winners and my ideal project is 'The Chinaman (or Chinese Poet) at American-Korean Thanksgiving.'

27. remembering my 2003 self / poet persona

akaka soru no

I thought about snow falling on velvet. I got in trouble in the neighborhood. I liked Red Velvet's 'Wish Tree.' I liked Wendy Son and Kim Yerim. A noble name, Son Seungwan, I'll say it once.

Maoists. I read 'Wild Swans.' I wanted to join you in your sadness and your beauty but I wasn't being Kawabata Yasunari. I don't want to generalize about my love for you but I don't believe in things either; Time disappears; mathematics inspires my disbelief; I think it can change.

'I love other people.'

What is it when parents grow old Do they go in to a new world They go to Heaven before us They know about being young

Wine, Elizabeth Strout novel 'Protestant endurance' in the old Midwest 'We are different from everybody'

The only question a bomb-threat at the school after 9.11 'Sospiro' fioritura In those days they were innocent 'I would take you seriously' (if I were a teacher) Now they try to be like New Yorkers I am not home

The poem that belonged to everyone flower a flower Can the passive-aggressive therapist Chinese girlfriend tea in the morning 'If I had to live with you'

the children of tomorrow where understanding ends require a world

a walk by the river i was old then carrying something i knew how to cook i knew how to live you sang 'dream' i said something like someone once said to me my old love contacted me via e-mail she said she had become materialistic and Republican she looked really good / happy married with kid after Covid-19 anaesthesiologist

28. Dov Danilov had abjected himself; he was known; on one cared. The only decisive or critical factor... There was that armored 'girlfriend of steel' or perhaps better-than-girlfriend, the trial by ordeal, the one-look judgmentality, but it was all the past. There was 'When You Are Old' and there had always been the presence of the Other like in 'The New World' with Pocahontas and John Smith; 'Who are you that haunts my dreams?' That was a gooood movie. He watched 'The Last Samurai' back in the day and didn't take it seriously but believed it contained good 'advices.' There was Manheim Wagner's 'Korea: How You Feel' that had a great photo that seemed to mean something about the author's feelings but the book was all about illegal narcotics and sex-trafficking. There was 'Brother One Fell' but it was all about masturbation and poor diet and illegal narcotics and what the Native Amerrian Indian shepherd-scholar hda called 'Mental Europeanness.' The shepherd-scholar called himself a 'sheep-rancher.' It was RU, 2005 autumn. 'Being known and ont cared for,' like HAndong from Dreamcatcher. Maybe, it was the beginning of the end of the nightmare. - I could eat again a little if I got another love-letter from a female student... or even another bouquet from a gay male student... Maybe I'll mrary a North Korean woman after reunification... Remember 'Honey and Clover?' - Good song. - It's an anime-drama. Originally it was a dorama. Pramodh liked it before BLM stole his soul and he death-threated me with Cannibal COrpse and hate. 'Moon River' on pianoforte.

- 'The Remains of DJ.' 'LA Dream.' 'Red Mansion Dream.' 'Pandemic of Honesty.' 'At the End of the Winter-Light; the Last of the Good Old Wisconsin Blue.' 'John Updike R

and I am not ashamed while my love is near me and I know it will be so till it's time to go So count the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again

'doctrine of unconditional evil'

29. My father acted in a really scary obsessive fashion toward me lately and now suddenly he is just eating and drinking.

30. Jesus Himself said in the Gospel not to curse your parents.

31. I thought something about 'Sentimental Education' lately.

32. A while ago I wanted to write or read 'stories about families.'

33. I want to return to my '2003' project that predicted bioweapons and stuff but not really.

If I were redoing it I might just make it about 'Honesty' and instead of magic assassins it would be the medical doctor charged with mitigating bioweapon magic damage and the FBI agent investigating the bad guys. Psalm 5.

34. Wanting to be the spiritual-intellectual successor to Bruce Cumings (hyper-meta historiography of the Korean War and, by extension, Covid, the world, Christ / CHristology, and the problems with non-Asia-based E. Asian Studies academicians or anyone who lacks Confucian scholar-gentleman / 'sunbi' / Scholar in Kingdom of Heaven sincerity). China buries corrrput intellectuals alive.

35. 'Final Offer' in Time (on Pres. Moon Jaein). 'Peace in Our Time?' Blessed are the peacemakers; blessed are the pure in heart.

36. IDK if it's worth saying but - dept. of Anti-Christology or study of Antichrist - the 'first world' as it used to be called by and large seemed to be trending towards Imperium. I honestly feel as if Barack Obama could be pulling the strings from within the CIA building and David Cameron adn Angela Merkel are in charge of all of Europe, while POpe Francis holds suzerainty of influence if not command-authority over the Spanish-speaking world. IDK if there is meaningful dissent outside of a few republic-nations such as Poland and South Korea, who paradoxically take on a posture of what Park Chunghee callde 'itnernational responsiblity' despite a history of atrocious suffering and monoethnic somewhat xenophobic traditional social makeup.

37. Flaubert's notes to his supreme masterpiece 'Sentimental Education'... I'll just say... How he taught Frederic Moureau to fall in love with Marie Arnoux; taught himself how to LOVE Marie both before the beginning and after the end of being 'in love' with this mother-paramour.

That said, I still remember the days when I had 'optimism' and someone said, '[woman] is happy because of you.'

38. I can't write more but do have specific goals, chiefly, master Korean and learn all the basic facts. Professionals and experts believe in facts; as my Russian Yale MBA friend used to say, 'I am a scientist.'

I wish I had a profession... 'literary criticism of life?' I am interested in 'the condition of fiction' and 'the logic of pulverization' but I just track John MacArthur. I need to reconstitute my body and mind then maybe...

Dreams of [doctoral degrees].

39. 2 Timothy, Acts 2, Thessalonians, Revelation, in the Covid era.

40. Dreaming of Bethlehem College and Seminary.

41. Dov Danilov had abjected himself; he was known; on one cared. The only decisive or critical factor... There was that armored 'girlfriend of steel' or perhaps better-than-girlfriend, the trial by ordeal, the one-look judgmentality, but it was all the past. There was 'When You Are Old' and there had always been the presence of the Other like in 'The New World' with Pocahontas and John Smith; 'Who are you that haunts my dreams?' That was a gooood movie. He watched 'The Last Samurai' back in the day and didn't take it seriously but believed it contained good 'advices.' There was Manheim Wagner's 'Korea: How You Feel' that had a great photo that seemed to mean something about the author's feelings but the book was all about illegal narcotics and sex-trafficking. There was 'Brother One Fell' but it was all about masturbation and poor diet and illegal narcotics and what the Native Amerrian Indian shepherd-scholar hda called 'Mental Europeanness.' The shepherd-scholar called himself a 'sheep-rancher.' It was RU, 2005 autumn. 'Being known and ont cared for,' like HAndong from Dreamcatcher. Maybe, it was the beginning of the end of the nightmare. - I could eat again a little if I got another love-letter from a female student... or even another bouquet from a gay male student... Maybe I'll mrary a North Korean woman after reunification... Remember 'Honey and Clover?' - Good song. - It's an anime-drama. Originally it was a dorama. Pramodh liked it before BLM stole his soul and he death-threated me with Cannibal COrpse and hate. 'Moon River' on pianoforte.

- 'The Remains of DJ.' 'LA Dream.' 'Red Mansion Dream.' 'Pandemic of Honesty.' 'At the End of the Winter-Light; the Last of the Good Old Wisconsin Blue.' 'John Updike R

and I am not ashamed while my love is near me and I know it will be so till it's time to go So count the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again

'doctrine of unconditional evil' - humans mistaking themselves for God the Father - abortion-culture - Pope Saint John Paul II 'Humana Vitae'

42. Ideas of Christianity versus praxis and parataxis of Christianity

43. I was fond of Becca on Xanga but not as much as 'Clover' People open so much they can't but close off like a French novel 'humanity-rule' though their psychology of women is 'unconvincing' Glenn Gould ate a lot of eggs he was a hypochrondriac I want to drink 'Delta Covid Winter Summer Wine' and think of Mary HK Choi 'Yolk,' Lear's Cordelia and the real one, caritas / a'ga'pe I hope I don't get kilt with a _ _ _

44. Side- / mini-project 'My Brother's Type' about anti-Asian racism.

45. Ideal YA novel / counter to all corrupt YAL books, 'Clover' from the Promise / Fromis song. It's beautiful, beauteous, 'fragrance from life to life.' 'I kept wishing for luck until I realized that which I wanted was happiness, yes?'

46. They were bored psychopathic Boomers; retirement had made them cannibal sociopaths. His mom was like Volumnia in Coriolanus. He didn't want to think about it. He remembered Shan by the Han River, 'Fair Love.' It was ten years ago; he weighed 25 pounds less but his mentality was the same. People were different. Children were different. In Wisconsin they evinced a... He was tired of being a bridge between West and East. No one was curious.

47. I approached something really intense and pure and holy - and absolutely specific - and can't back off or back down without harm to myself. This might be my last FBI.

48. I was 'boring guy.'

49. Summer rain.

50. That holiness... but also... CVA ('Charity edifieth')...

51. I want to read Korean poetry again as well. Better poetry than ever, I imagine, better people. 'Perfect Children.'

52. 'And When We Are Older' - A Poem for Someone about My Age

And when we are old it won't necessarily get easier or fall into place or smooth into bonhomie or grow delicate as papery exquisite autumn leaves like the face of Jennifer Aniston and sometimes at the gym my smaller shoulder-muscles push harder but they remind me in this cute, precious way of some kind knowing amid Cross and sword that ever valor is a risk and God has got his hour writ. I thought that by now I would know what it's like to be one flesh with a wife, to watch a daughter practicing pianoforte, play catch with a son in the yard of a house by New Jersey reedy ponds. That dream began in 1994 and there it stays, between the 'cello-clabbered music-room and gildered auditorium and still, in these institutions, nowhere to confess my love, nowhere to begin, just papers to plan on or wise. I used to love book-reviews, the language of dictionaries that could seem to get life so right, "Validity in Interpretation," the days when newspapers seemed to love me more than my own teachers, Colossians 4:6, editing sprinkled with salt, giving reason for hope, appropriate, apt, jeongdokhada. They get old and old and much is made of the things we can experience; sometimes I think that my dear friend quit Samsung too soon to know how to build his own team and I quit at least three jobs too soon and didn't stay in hot pursuit and now feel almost as if only my thoughts are as brightly alive with a love-light as your face once was. I get so lost at shopping malls, drowning; I don't get what anyone is up to. There was a Monsignor who composed or redacted this immense ethnography of all Korea but it must have broken his heart too, man who never took a wife, knitting red, his memory, the kind of person who arrives as I, watching Pompeo et al, in the hope of a benevolent ruler both forever and for the time being too... My friend used to say I could lead but I couldn't even shut down the snark-machine and Reddit had a field day with me and honestly maybe I've never loved anyone adequately. Let's be young a while more and though I didn't like this as a kid we can talk to the TV like at my grandparents' house long ago and again born on the new day, maybe we'll spend some time married.

53. 'Happy Days'

54. I miss the good K-dramas from Dramafever days though I don't watch television anymore... I wish I did just to rest my eyes... I miss 'Please Come Back Ahjusshi'... He's on the flying aerospace train to Heaven with his tears of contrition but decidees to return to Earth to delete his porn-collection for his wife and daughter surviving him... I deleted my biological father's literary porn collection ('daddy'-stepdaughter coercive / rape; adulterous housewife)... but he tried to send me to death and Hell.

55. It was like autumn in Korea this morning with the lamps and air-moisture; it was like Korean summer this early evening with August rain.

56. I want to regain my purity of literary style but hopefully God willing write something profitable / fruitful. I might just teach again for pay..

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faithfulnews · 4 years

Text

Wayne Grudem explains male leadership in marriage

Man and woman working on a computer upgrade

I’m not willing to take advice on this from most pastors, but Wayne Grudem is someone I respect because he does such a good job of applying the Bible to political issues. So he’s practical.

Anyway, here is something he wrote that was shared by a newlywed couple I am friends with.

Excerpt:

Someone might say, “Well, okay, fine. There’s a leadership role for Adam, and I guess that means husbands should have a leadership role in their marriage of some sort. But how does it work? How does it work in practice?”

In our own marriage, Margaret and I talk frequently and at length about many decisions. I can tell you that I wouldn’t be here tonight unless Margaret and I had talked about this and asked the Lord about it, and she had given blessing to it, and said, “Yes, I think that’s right.” Sometimes we make large decisions such as buying a house or a car, and sometimes they are small decisions like where we should go for a walk together. I often defer to Margaret’s wishes, and she often defers to mine because we love each other.

In almost every case, each of us has some wisdom and insight that the other does not have. Usually, we reach agreement on the decisions that we make. Very seldom will I do something that she doesn’t think is wise–I didn’t say never. She prays; she trusts God; she loves God. She is sensitive to God’s leading and direction, but in every decision, whether it large or small and whether we have reached agreement or not, the responsibility to make the decision still rests with me.

Now, I am not talking about every decision they make individually. Margaret controls a much larger portion of our budget than I do because all the things having to do with the household and food and clothing and house expenses and everything . . . she writes the checks and pays the bills. I take care of buying books and some things about the car. I have appointments during the day with students. She doesn’t get involved in that. She has her own appointments. She has her own calendar. I don’t get involved in trying to micromanage all of that. We have distinct areas of responsibility. I am not talking about those things. I don’t get involved in those things unless she asks my counsel.

But in every decision that we make that affects us together or affects our family, the responsibility to make the decision rests with me. If there is genuine male headship, I believe there is a quiet acknowledgement that the focus of the decision making process is the husband, not the wife. Even though there will often be much discussion and there should be mutual respect and consideration of each other, ultimately the responsibility to make the decision rests with the husband. And so, in our marriage the responsibility to make the decision rests with me.

This is not because I am a wiser or more gifted leader. It is because I am the husband. God has given me that responsibility. It is very good. It brings peace and joy to our marriage, and both Margaret and I are thankful for it. Now, I need to add very quickly, men, this does not mean that a husband has the right to be a selfish leader.

Just about three years ago, maybe four years ago now, we started the decision making process. Margaret had been in an auto accident in Chicago. As part of the aftermath of that accident, she was experiencing some chronic pain that was aggravated by cold and humidity, and Chicago is cold in the winter and humid in the summer. Chicago was not a good place for that. Some friends said to us, “We have a second house in Mesa, Arizona, if you would ever like to go there and just use it as a vacation place, we would like you to do that.”

So we did. We visited Arizona. Mesa is a suburb of Phoenix. Margaret felt better. It was hot, and it was dry. And so I said, “Wow, Margaret I would love to move here, but I am only trained to do one thing; I can teach at a seminary and that is it. There aren’t any seminaries here.” The next day Margaret was looking in the yellow pages–literally. She said, “Wayne, there’s something here called Phoenix Seminary.” One thing led to another and God was at work in that seminary, and it was starting to grow.

Then we went through a decision making process. When we were in the middle of that decision making process, on the very day that we were focusing on that, I came in my normal custom of reading through a section of scripture each day, I came to a Ephesians 5:28, “Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.”

I thought if I would move to take a job in another city for the sake of my body, if I were experiencing the pain that Margaret had, and husbands should love their wives as their own bodies–then shouldn’t I move? Shouldn’t I be willing to move for Margaret’s sake? That was really why we moved to Phoenix.

Anyway, Dina and I were talking the other night about what would happen if – hypothetically – we suddenly found ourselves stuck with a child and responsible for it’s education. I said to Dina that I would have a meeting with her, and ask her to research all of the alternative forms of schooling, and look over the research on education and then come back with her recommendation about what would get us the most effectiveness for the least cost and risk. Dina said that she thought that was an excellent plan, but being the kind of person she is, she said that she would not wait to be asked to do this, but would instead pro-actively go and do the work and then present it to me to make the decision. A wife is a chief of staff, she does the research. She has to know all the politics. She has to do the face to face conversations. She has to make all the calculations. She has to be good at putting aside her feelings and being logical and analytical, in order to get results.

I think a lot of people worry that male headship means that husbands will micromanage like a tyrant, but that’s just wrong. That’s not at all what a man learns about how to lead others, in his workplace. A man looks for a wife with skills and experience to solve these sorts of problems for him while he is out working, and without needing a lot of guidance or monitoring from him. Micromanaging makes them both less efficient and more stressed. The more education and work history she has before she marries, the better she will be at solving problems on her own initiative. I always encourage young women to study hard things and to do hard jobs, but to stop working when young children appear (the first five years of the child’s life are critical). Learning hard things and doing hard jobs makes them more prepared for the roles of wife and mother.

Similarly, a wife does not want to choose a poor leader for a husband. She wants to choose someone who makes good decisions, and follows a plan through to a result. She should be looking at his decision making, especially in education, work and finances, and deciding whether he can do the male roles in a marriage. She should be looking at his leadership style and communication ability. These things are well-defined, and she should be able to assess his ability by looking at his life to see if anyone follows his lead at work or outside of work on anything that matters. Does he reach the goals that he plans to reach? Is he realistic about risks and costs? She has to do an assessment of his leadership ability, because if she marries him, he will be leading her. Naturally, she will have to know something about leadership first, and know something about men, and what men expect to achieve with their marriages. What is his plan?

The easiest way for a man to avoid marrying a woman who resists his leadership is to not marry her. And the easiest way for a woman to avoid marrying a man who does not delegate tasks to her that she is better at is to not marry him. We are responsible for these decisions. As long as you don’t follow your feelings and intuitions, you’ll be fine. Don’t marry someone unless you have observed them demonstrating their ability to do the marriage roles cheerfully and well.

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csuclass · 5 years

Text

A farewell to Gregory Sadlek

College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Dean and Professor of English

Gregory Sadlek, founding dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, will be remembered for many things. A fiery temper isn’t one of them. Then again, he did get so upset once during a high-level meeting that – gasp! – he threw down his pencil.

Deirdre Mageean, who was Cleveland State University’s provost at the time, witnessed it firsthand. “Greg later apologized, gentleman that he is,” she recalled. “I was chuckling because on the scale of outbursts that I had to experience in all my years in administration, that was probably the mildest.”

After 14 eventful and fruitful years at the helm of CLASS, Sadlek will retire from the deanship June 30.

“I’m ready to pass the baton to the next person, somebody with new ideas and new visions,” he said on a recent afternoon in his book-lined office on the 18th floor of Rhodes Tower. Classical music played softly in the background.

Sadlek was instrumental in the establishment of the CSU Arts Campus at Playhouse Square, where the current academic year saw the opening of CSU’s new School of Film & Media Arts. “The Arts Campus wasn’t my idea, but I immediately recognized it as an exciting possibility,” he said. “Part of the dean’s job is to recognize not only your own good ideas, but those of others.”

Among his other crowning achievements are the creation of the new CLASS Lounge in Berkman Hall and new departments such as Theatre and Dance. He also helped facilitate new research hubs such as the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities.

Above all, Sadlek is proud of nurturing a sense of identity for CLASS, which comprises more than a dozen different departments and schools. “I’ve always tried to point out how great it is that our College encompasses the arts and the humanities and the social sciences, and how we all form this coherent unit,” he said.

To improve communication and camaraderie, Sadlek not only launched the CLASS Directions newsletter, but wrote the content himself. Truth be told, not everyone was a fan. “Reading this makes reading the phone book sound exciting,” one senior faculty member grumbled. (Note to younger readers: A phone book was a voluminous directory of phone numbers.)

“I found Greg’s management style to be a positive change,” said Leon Hurwitz, former CLASS associate dean. “He was a team player. Staff meetings were inclusive, with open discussion. Differing opinions were freely given and, if rejected, were rejected with kindness.”

Born in Collinwood and raised in Parma, Sadlek is the oldest of six children. (His sister Susan Bazyk taught Occupational Therapy at CSU for more than 30 years.) Dad was a Cleveland policeman; Mom was a medical secretary.

After graduating from Quincy University with a B.A. in Philosophy, Sadlek briefly worked for a sink manufacturing company. When it became clear that a career in sales administration wasn’t for him, he went on to earn an M.A. in English from Eastern Illinois University and a Ph.D. in English from Northern Illinois University.

Before finding his calling in higher education, he considered the priesthood, only to drop out of the seminary and fall in love with a foreign exchange student. He followed Françoise all the way back to France, where Sadlek spent a year teaching ESL at the Université de Nantes. Married in 1981, the couple has two sons, Jonathan and Benjamin.

Prior to Sadlek’s arrival at CSU in 2005 (he spotted the CLASS job opening in The Chronicle of Higher Education), he taught at Hamilton College and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. At the latter, he also was president of the faculty senate and chair of the English department.

Particularly well-versed in medieval literature, Sadlek has been known to make Chaucer come alive in the classroom by putting the author of The Canterbury Tales on “trial” for antifeminism. “Students get so worked up about arguing the pros and cons,” Sadlek said. “That’s when they really learn. It forces them to dig into the text.”

As he contemplates his own next chapter, Sadlek is looking forward to having more time for writing and reading. Brushing up on his Latin and other languages, too. Quite possibly even moving to France with Françoise.

Whatever the future holds, of this much he’s certain: He’ll look back on his time at CLASS and CSU with profound gratitude.

“This job has provided an amazing opportunity to lead an extraordinary group of people,” Sadlek said. “The students, faculty and staff of the College are just remarkable. I can’t believe my good fort

#college of liberal arts and social sciences #Cleveland State University #gregory sadlek #Dean's office

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sallymolay · 7 years

Photo

Lesbian Power Couples From History Who Got Shit Done

Autostraddle writes:

Ethel Mars & Maud Hunt Squire (1894-1954)

These two American artists (top photo) met at the Cincinnati Art Academy in the 1890s and stayed together for 60 years, living for patches in France and in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Maud was known for her book illustrations and color etchings, Ethel for her painting, color woodblock prints and drawings. They collaborated on projects like illustrating the legendary Child’s Garden of Verses. The couple were regulars at Gertrude Stein’s salon in France (and the subject of her word portrait Miss Furr and Miss Skeene). Also, The New York Times says they “loved to behave outrageously.”

Ethel Williams & Ethel Waters (1910s-1920s)

“The Two Ethels” (second photo from top) met at the Alhambra Theater in Harlem — Ethel Waters was a popular blues singer and Ethel Williams was a dancer. They fell in love and summarily merged: Waters got Williams a job working at the cabaret where she worked, they lived together in Harlem and Waters took Williams with her on her first nationwide tour, where Williams would dance to warm up the crowd before Waters’ performances. In the touring revue Oh! Joy! they even did a little bit about being “partners” that winked at queer audience members while refusing mainstream identification. Waters’ managers at Black Swan Records manufactured gossip about Waters, once pushing a piece about how her recording contract stipulated that she couldn’t get married to explain her not having a male partner. Eventually, Ethel Williams left Waters and her job to marry a dancer named Clarence Dotson.

Harriet E. Giles and Sophia B. Packard (1855-1891)

Giles met Packard in in the mid-1850s when Giles was a student at the New Salem Academy in New Salem, Massachusetts, and Packard was the preceptor. They hit it off right away, and shortly thereafter shuttled off to Atlanta to start a school for Black women who had been newly released from slavery. Packard was the first president of the school, then known as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary and now known as Spelman College, when it opened its doors in 1888. Giles took over after Packard’s death in 1891. The two women (third photo from top) are now buried next to each other in Silver Lake Cemetery.

Mabel Hampton and Lilian Foster, 1932-1978

Mabel Hampton, born in 1902, had a tumultuous childhood that took her from North Carolina to New York City to New Jersey and eventually to a job dancing in Coney Island just as the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing. She performed with stars like Moms Mabley and Gladys Bently and lived openly as a lesbian, eventually giving up dancing and becoming a domestic worker — for the family of the now-famous Joan Nestle. She met Lillian Foster in 1932, and they were inseparable until Lilian’s death, living together on 169th street in the Bronx and calling each other husband and wife. They were active in the Gay Rights movement, ran their own laundering business, and worked together to collect and organize a wealth of documents, newspaper clippings, photographs and books, including programs from the opera performances she and Foster loved attending, that would help form the Lesbian Herstory Archives, of which Joan Nestle named Mabel a founding member. Mabel’s oral history was preserved by Joan in the archives. (Fourth photo from top)

Sallie Holley and Caroline Putnam (1848 – 1893)

Sallie and Caroline (bottom photo) met at good ol’ Oberlin College, and the noted “anti-slavery team” became agents of the American Anti-Slavery Society immediately after graduation. They traveled on the abolitionist lecture circuit, often along with the legendary Sojourner Truth. After the Civil War, Sallie stayed up North giving talks, raising money to educate freed slaves in the South, and Putnam went to Virginia to teach freed slaves, eventually starting The Holley School, which became America’s first settlement house. Sallie then joined Caroline in Lottsburg, where they integrated themselves with the community, operated their school year-round and unlike some future suffragettes, were dedicated to enabling, preserving and protecting the right of Black men to vote even when white women could not yet do so. Sallie died in 1893 and Caroline in 1917, at which point the school was deeded to an all-Black board of trustees and continued operating for decades.

11 more lesbian power couples here!

#lesbian history #lgbt history #lesbian #lgbt #lgbtqa #Sallie Hilley #Caroline Putnam #mabel hampton #Lilian Foster #Harriet giles #Sophia Packard #Ethel Williams #Ethel Waters #Maud Hunt Squire #Ethel Mars

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fear-god-shun-evil · 6 years

Link

By Zhen’ai, Canada

In 2015, I accepted the Lord Jesus’ gospel when I worked in Canada. I remember it was my first time to go to the church for meetings, and the brothers and sisters greeted me warmly and shook my hand, which made me feel very warm. Especially, when pastors preached that the Lord Jesus was nailed to the cross for the sake of rescuing mankind from the hands of Satan, I was moved by the Lord Jesus’ love and effort for man. And then I thought I was so blessed to believe in the Lord, so I determined to follow Him all my life. From then on, I went to church to attend Sunday worship service every week, went to Sunday school, read the Bible, and was baptized after half a year.

Time passes quickly. Disasters all around the world are getting bigger and bigger. We all felt the day of the Lord was near. And pastors often told us: “‘This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven’ (Acts 1:11). The Lord Jesus left on clouds, so He will return on clouds then. This is the promise that the Lord gave us. It won’t change. We will be raptured into the kingdom of heaven when He returns. So we should be constantly watchful and waiting.” I was taking the words of pastors to heart and waiting for the Lord to descend upon the clouds to take us into the kingdom of heaven.

Afterward, I always met with something frustrating in the work. The employer made excessive demands of me, which made me undertake much pressure. After I went home, my family couldn’t understand me, and we were always bickering over some trivial matters. One time, while I was frying food in the kitchen, my mother was standing next to me and said: “You should put this vegetable and that seasoning first. …” I was annoyed that she told me how to cook, and then I said unpleasantly: “I know how to fry and needn’t your advice.” My mother said: “I’m saying this for your own good. Is it worth getting angry over this? You are a believer in the lord. But how can you even be annoyed over such a small matter.” Hearing her words, I said nothing but thought she was nagging and boring. After that, I regretted my deeds. How did I speak to my mother with anger? I didn’t have the likeness of a Christian! Then I came before the Lord to pray and repent. However, I still lost my temper when I met such a thing next time.

I thought I could gain comfort by going to the church to listen to sermons. But the sermons of pastors couldn’t solve my problem either. On the contrary, the more I listened the more I felt dry, and I felt that it did not benefit me spiritually. After the worship service, the brothers and sisters came together for selling products to each other or talking about their own affairs and children. What’s more, even some brothers wanted to stand for Parliament, and then they went to the church to solicit votes. I saw most brothers and sisters went to the church not for truly worshiping the Lord but for their own purpose and interest. I couldn’t help losing heart at the condition of the church. And then on account of moving to other place, I went to a local church. But the condition of the church was the same and I gained nothing after one gathering, Therefore, I gradually went to church less. Yet, emptiness of the soul caused me to feel more and more sad and lonely, so I fervently hoped to attain the Lord’s aid. Even sometimes I looked up at the white clouds in the sky and thought: Which cloud will the Lord come with? If He comes with clouds to receive us soon, I won’t need to live in pain and depression.

In March of 2017, when I had cafe with Sister Mo of the church, I met Brother Peter by chance. I saw that Brother Peter received the Bible purely by talking and the experiences he talked about were practical. I could be edified by his fellowship. From his speech and behavior, I believed he was a true believer. Then we exchanged the contact information. Over the next couple of days, I frequently consulted Brother Peter and every time his explanation could benefit me.

One time, Brother Peter invited us to attend the Bible study, and then I met Sister Jane and Lucy. During the period of attending the Bible study, I referred to the condition of the church. After hearing my words, Sister Jane said: “Why is the church in a state of widespread desolation now? Let’s think back to the time of the end of the Age of Law. The temple, once so full of Jehovah’s glory, became a place where believers exchanged money and sold oxen, sheep and doves, became a den of thieves. Worse still, the chief priests, scribes and Pharisees didn’t hold to God’s laws, didn’t follow Jehovah God’s teachings and didn’t have Jehovah God’s disciplining. This is because there was no work of the Holy Spirit in the temple, and the Lord Jesus did His new work.” Then Sister Lucy continued saying: “If we want to measure whether or not there is the work of the Holy Spirit in a church, we should evaluate it according to whether we can attain the provision of life and keep gaining a new understanding of God. If we just listen to some letters and rules, have no new understanding of God and can’t resolve the practical problems, then there will be no work of the Holy Spirit.” After hearing the fellowship of the sisters, I thought: That’s right. We listen to pastors in the church, but we can’t obtain a new light or feel gratified. Besides, the believers’ lives don’t receive any supply, so we are thirsty in spirit and even the church becomes a place of trade. Now I understand that this is because there is no work of the Holy Spirit in the temple. I feel the fellowship of the two sisters, which is enlightening, makes my heart enlightened. Such a Bible study meeting is very helpful toward me, so I should consult them more.

One day, Sister Li of the church gave me a call and asked why I didn’t go to the church for meetings. Then I told her I attended the Bible study in a house church. Hearing that, she said in surprise: “A house church? Pastors often tell us not to listen to the sermons from other churches. In addition, the preachers of a house church are not be trained in seminaries and their sermons are not higher than pastors’. So you’d better not go there.” I said: “I have attended the Bible study with them for several times, and their fellowships benefit me a lot.” But Sister Li still constantly tried to persuade me not to go there to listen to sermons. After hanging up the telephone, I felt a little worried in my heart. Sisters Lucy and other sister fellowshiped well, but I wondered whether I should listen to their sermons. I told my anxiety to Sister Mo, and then she said: “I think the fellowships of Sister Lucy and other sister are full of light and of the Holy Spirit’s enlightenment and illumination, and are good for our life, so we should listen to them. Pastors are trained in seminaries, but do they understand the Lord’s will? Do their fellowships have enlightenment? We believe in God, and can’t only listen to and believe people’s words.” Sister Mo’s words were quite reasonable, so I determined to continue attending the Bible study with them.

When we read the Bible and attended the meeting, Sister Jane and Lucy integrated the Bible and fellowshiped about the topic about who are successful and who are failures in their belief in God. Sister Jane said: “The Pharisees in the Age of Law were familiar with the Bible and served Jehovah God in the temple. But when the Lord Jesus came to do His work, they crazily blasphemed and opposed Him because His work didn’t accord with their notions, and finally nailed Him to the cross, which caused them to incur God’s punishment. We can understand from the failure of the Pharisees: As regards the thing about welcoming the Lord Jesus’ return, we can’t arbitrarily delineate God’s work based upon our conceptions and illusions, much less can we listen to someone. Instead, we should pray and seek for the Lord’s will, and moreover learn to distinguish, being wise virgins. In that case, we won’t miss the chance to welcome the Lord’s return.” Through the two sisters’ fellowships, I had the way to practice about the thing of welcoming the Lord’s return. I should learn to listen to God’s voice, which was in line with the Lord’s intention. By discussing together, I gradually had less suspicion and vigilance.

youtube

#Bible #Jesus #God #Christ #Lord #Salvation

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godsizemylife-blog · 7 years

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He shows up where and when I don’t expect Him!

It turned out to be just Sandy and me yesterday, off to “hike” (definition: walking leisurely, talking about the Lord, and interacting with docents and people on the trails) at the botanical gardens and then the zoo, taking advantage of our respective memberships. We walked unintentional circles at the garden, enjoying some funny pumpkin “sculptures” like the poor guy painfully covered in cholla and a couple of gourd-os sitting at a logs only campfire toasting s’mores. One of the docents who struck up a conversation with us didn’t even know the pumpkins were there, so we pointed her to, it turned out, the tail end of the pumpkin walk.

In our conversation there I shared a possibly too true insight a friend made in a Bible study group several years ago. He suspected one of the things that went unobserved and unwritten about all the times Jesus went off by himself to pray was (no disrespect intended) Jesus slapping himself on the forehead and crying out, “Oy vey, these yutzes! Father, how am I supposed to work with these yutzes??!!” The fact that we’d steered the docent in the wrong direction only emphasized the likelihood of the Lord’s possible prayer …..

We passed a beautiful red-flowered plant unknown to either Sandy or me. It looked like a cross between a Bougainvillea and a hibiscus, and though I don’t remember it’s scientific name, we decided it must be a bougainbiscus. We listened to another docent manning a table of blooms, and he pointed us in the right direction to go see the butterfly pavilion, which was wonderful. Fluttering, flitting beautiful wings were all around us, and I state publicly that the fact it takes four generations of monarch butterflies to make the round-trip migratory journey, and the great-grandparents of the returning lepidoptera aren’t around to tell their great-grandoptera where “home” is, clearly tells me there IS a Creator,Intelligent Designer, and Architect of all the wonders in the world. We wandered around trying to find our way out of the wildflower loop and drove down the road to the zoo.

More natural wonders awaited us on trails there: Komodo dragons, whose bite is venomous, so all they have to do is bite their prey and wait for it to die; orangutans strong enough to rip your arm off, but who spend their lives in the wild high up in trees and make “nests” in the branches for sleeping; giraffes, and enough said about their incredible design. I truly enjoyed my two years of working at the real zoo, after thirteen years of substitute teaching in a very different ”zoo” setting. We encountered Hannah, one of Sandy’s friends from her church who works at the zoo while she’s attending seminary, and since she was being trained to drive the train (yes, pun intended) I told her about the songs I wrote for about ten animals the train passes. She said she’s be glad for me to send them to her.

We bought sandwiches for lunch, sat down on the benches around a shaded table, and continued sharing about some of the”God-incidences” in our lives., when an older woman pushing a young child in a stroller politely asked if she could shar our table, and we replied we were happy to share the shade.Since I know personally about the early childhood programs there, I asked if the boy was her grandson, and then told her about the wonderful breakfast programs that are an adult’s “ticket” to get up close to some of the animals in the zoo’s collection. I asked Paul, who’sfour, if I could sing a song for him, and commenced into, ”Keep rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ in your muddy hole ’n’ keep your body rollin,’ warthog ….” to a tune only older adults always laughed at.

Being a bit humorous and silly seems to break the ice. Noting the cross necklace the grandma wore, I asked,”Are you a Believer?”

“Believer in what?” she replied.

I held up my own cross necklace and said,”In this.”

“I sure am!” she smiled, and a new door opened up for us to share about our faith. Even though we are in different denominations, Jesus’ sarificial death on the cross – God Himself paying the horrendous penalty for humanity’s rebellion against God’s Holy authority and Righteousness AND love for us all – unites Christians of every “flavor.” So together we said the opening line, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so!”

And here’s what it says:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23

BUT “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

And expanding on Romans:23 “Forallhave sinnedandfall short of the glory of God, AND ARE JUSTIFIED FREELY BY HIS GRACE through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate His justice, because in His forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – He (God) did it to demonstrate His justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” Romans 3”23-26

5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11 Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Romans 5: 5-11 NIV

God is Just, AND God is Love. Neither cancels the other. Only one unites them both perfectly: Jesus,Y’shua, however you say his name in your language. Jesus said:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.” Matthew 23:23 And after a long passage of “Woes,” Jesus cried out to Jerusalem with fierce love and longing to bring everyone there into his loving, sheltering arms.

It’s BOTH Justice AND Mercy, in one perfect person to satisfy both. And how utterly amazing, relentless, selfless, pure and passionate is the heart of God who Himself teaches, leads, forgives, heals, bleeds, rises from death, justifies and redeems us!

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need… because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Hebrews 4:15-16, 7: 24-25 NIV

In Jesus we can drop the censure we hear and feel from ourselves and from others, and become, in praising and thanking God for his incredible gift of love, the incense in the censer held by our Great High Priest Jesus, rising up in a fragrant offering to the One who makes us pure, loved, and joyfully pleasing to God.

The pumpkins and butterflies and orangutans and squirrel monkeys were fun, but sharing with “Mimi” and little Paul was pure joy! Behold what manner of love the Father has given us, that we should be called the children of God! And when Jesus drops into my life with connections like this, I feel the intense, outrageous love that he IS! Love alive, love present, love embracing, love forgiving (oy vey!) and love overcoming.

a”…BUT…” to pray today: Father God, loving Lord jesus, sometimes I don’t sense your love for me. Sometimes I feel all too much my “yutz-ness” and all I sense is the censure of others, BUT you promise that your love never fails and you will never, ever leave me, ,so I’m asking you to show me your love, and you get to decide how, when and where. Feel welcomed into my life to surprise me, Jesus! In your name I pray, and Holy Spirit, I’m listening, waiting AND watching __________________________________________________________

Bougainbiscus, Butterflies, Silly Songs and Jesus Loves Me He shows up where and when I don’t expect Him! It turned out to be just Sandy and me yesterday, off to “hike” (definition: walking leisurely, talking about the Lord, and interacting with docents and people on the trails) at the botanical gardens and then the zoo, taking advantage of our respective memberships.

#Beauty #Bible #botany #Christianity #Faith #Family #Friensdhip #gardening #God&039;s love #Humanity #Jesus #Zoo

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revlyncox · 7 years

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Aspirations and Inspirations

This sermon was presented to the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg on August 20, 2017, by Rev. Lyn Cox.

Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley and Clyde Grubbs ask, “Who are the prophets who inspire you?”

This congregation has been hearing all summer about personal stories of inspiration. You have heard of mentors, friends, and ministers. You have reflected on prophets of racial justice, and on what you are inspired to do to dismantle white supremacy.

The question of inspiration is not an idle one, nor does it hide neatly inside the folds of private spirituality. Inspiration is a deep breath, a connection to the forces that create and uphold life, an expansion of our consciousness past the limits of what was imagined before. Inspiration can cause trouble.

Yet we need a little bit of that. We need the winds of freedom and justice to blow and trouble the waters. Let us breathe in time with that wind. The prophets and mentors and ancestors who urge us onward show us how we and all of our siblings and the planet we share can have life abundantly. We know we need to change course. Inspiration is one of the ingredients that give us the courage to follow a new path.

Remembering the people who have inspired us is a beginning. The next part in moving us toward the world we dream about is figuring out what parts of those stories we want to weave into the future. Inspiration, breathing in a connection to something that is larger than ourselves, is paired with aspiration, exhaling into an expression of our hopes. Our sources of inspiration may lend us boldness to move forward. Our aspirations give us the power to join together and embrace what we are called to do.

We have to do a little bit of work in the space between inspiration and aspiration. We don’t want to simply imitate the people who have gone before. For one thing, our own times have their own challenges, and we may be able to borrow strategies from the past, but we have to choose them carefully. For another, nobody is perfect. Each person’s favorite historical figure is, most likely, problematic. We can work together to tease out which parts of our heritage and learning will become our inspiration, which parts will become cautionary tales, and how that translates into a list of shared goals.

So there’s a journey between inspiration and aspiration. Next week, I’ll talk about moving from aspiration to perspiration, hope into action. For right now, though, let’s back up to the inspiration part. I would like to tell you about some of my role models.

I grew up in a liberal United Church of Christ congregation in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Until I was around nine years old, the church I went to was served by a co-ministry couple: a man and a woman. I listen now to the stories of my elder colleagues, those who were ordained in the 1970s and 1980s, and I hear them talk about being in their teens or twenties or later before they realized that women could be clergy. For me, gender diversity in religious leadership has been a given ever since I could remember.

Our ministers were a great team. They had different gifts, and they clearly cared about one another and thought about how they would collaborate. One of our ministers had a wry sense of humor, drew analogies between children’s books and each week’s gospel lesson, and taught us silly songs about faith. The other minister played sincere folk hymns on the guitar and sang in the choir and made references to Hebrew and Greek languages. They spent time with children’s ministry as well as adult ministry, and they were there right alongside the members to raise money for the Crop Walk or the Heifer Project.

I did not consciously set out to show evidence of their influence on me. Once I noticed it, though, I had a chance to think about what I wanted to do with that inspiration. What about my upbringing did I want to carry forward into the future, and what did I want to leave behind?

When I was in my mid-twenties, much to my own surprise, I applied to seminary. I asked one of my childhood ministers for a recommendation. As we were talking about it, she explained to me that professional religious leadership is not just one thing, much like congregations are not just one thing. The collaborative ministry of clergy and lay leaders bears a whole rainbow of fruits.

That’s the kind of minister I wanted to be, the kind who pays attention to the whole circle of what a congregation can be and do together. I knew I wanted to be the kind of minister who worked on developing music, caring, religious education, justice, and service.

On the other hand, there were things I wanted to do differently than the way I perceived them as I was growing up. I had already decided to become a Unitarian Universalist, though with much gratitude and affection for the tradition in which I was raised. In the intervening years, I have discovered and re-discovered many sources of inspiration. The church of my childhood is one that I am glad to have.

Here at the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg, I see evidence of the ways that your heritage has inspired you to grow your aspirations. I hear how a long tradition of welcome and inclusion and enthusiasm has brought you to dearly cherish your music ministries, including the choir. I see how you have cultivated green spaces around each campus, expressing hope in ways that only trees and flowers can do. Throughout the congregation, there are smaller gatherings, affinity groups, Covenant Groups, and COUCH groups that express hopes for depth and relationship. The White Supremacy Teach-In two weeks ago and the Peace Candle are just some of the examples that show your hope in a world that finds peace through the practice of justice, equality, and compassion.

It is this tradition of commitment that has led your Board of Trustees to sign on the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg as a supporting organization for a unity rally this afternoon at Italian Lake. The event, “Speak Up for Unity: No Hate Here,” will be hosted by the Community Responders Network from 3:30 until 5:30. If you are planning to go, you are welcome to bring positive posters and to park at the Hadee Mosque on Division Street. Speakers and performers will “support unity, diversity, and love and condemn white supremacy.”

This is a community where people find comfort, challenge, and renewal together, so that you can be prepared to build relationships and be accomplices for the power of love in the world. I gather from what I know of you great aspirations of participating in the work of justice, disrupting the oppressions that get in the way of the full unfolding of life for all in safety and abundance. I believe you are inspired by famous community builders and civil rights leaders, and I also suspect that there are elders and ancestors from within the congregation whose legacy inspires you. I look forward to hearing more.

The world needs this. The world needs allies for love and justice to renounce White supremacy in its many forms of racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia; and to block its advances. The world needs warriors for compassion; those who heal directly, and others who make way for that healing with science, policy, education, and by defending access to health care. The world needs those who do the radical work of introducing people to one another, those who step outside their comfort zones to connect communities, those who build coalitions and make common cause and show up in solidarity with neighbors.

The world needs accomplices for the Spirit of Life, and I believe this congregation is called to be some of them. You have demonstrated your aspirations. The raw materials are there. The work before you includes clarifying those aspirations, committing to them and prioritizing as one people, and clothing your values in practices of community.

Knowing your aspirations and inspirations does not make the path ahead easy. Being clear about our call to be neighbors in solidarity and stewards of the earth doesn’t mean we have certainty about the future or that all the resources are lined up neatly in a row. Yet I believe that the gifts we have among us, including the resources of our heritage and the renewal we can draw from our faith, are enough to take the next step.

Sometimes our aspirations show up, even when we don’t think we’re ready to move forward. Before we close, I’ll give you an example from our Universalist heritage. You may have heard this story before. It bears repeating. I don’t know if the story happened exactly this way, but I believe it’s true.

In the year 1770, John Murray was ready to give up everything. About ten years before that, as a preacher in England, he had converted from being a Calvinist to being a Universalist. He was personally mentored by James Relly, the founder of English Universalism. Universalism holds that all souls will eventually find reunion with the Divine; in other words, salvation is the destiny for everyone.

Over the course of the 1760s, John Murray and his wife Eliza became more and more deeply involved in this heretical religious movement. Then disaster struck. First their infant son, then Eliza became sick and died. John Murray was thrown into debtor’s prison. Murray’s brother-in-law rescued him, but he was so demoralized that he refused Relly’s urging to return to preaching. Murray said he wished “to pass through life, unheard, unseen, unknown to all, as though I ne’er had been.” He boarded a ship bound for New York, the Hand-in-Hand.

The Hand-in-Hand got stuck on a sandbar off the coast of New Jersey, near Good Luck Point. Murray was among those who came to shore in search of provisions, and it was there that he met Thomas Potter. Potter had built a chapel on his land that was open for traveling preachers. Potter invited Murray to preach, but Murray insisted that he had left that life behind him, and that he would be leaving as soon as the wind shifted and the ship was able to move off of the sand bar. Potter assured him that the wind would not shift until Murray preached in his chapel.

According to the legend, Murray tossed and turned that Saturday night, but arose on Sunday to preach a sermon for Potter and his family and friends. Indeed, following the service, the wind did shift, and John Murray went on to reclaim his vocation as a preacher. He was one of the people who ensured that a religious movement of Universalism was established in our young nation, creating a heritage of freedom and a vision of unity that we still draw from today.

That we still tell this story almost 250 years later says something about our inspirations and our aspirations. I believe that we can hold reserves of hope for one another, as James Relly and Thomas Potter did for John Murray. We can challenge one another to use our gifts to bless the world. Unitarian Universalist congregations like this one hearken back to Thomas Potter’s chapel, practicing open minds and open doors, creating a place of sacred hospitality. When we practice abundance and welcome the stranger, we may find a word that lifts us up and renews our spirits.

In the coming week, I hope you will take some time to give thanks for the people who have inspired you. They may be historical figures, ancestors, or friends who are right beside you today. Take stock of what they have taught you. Look around for the evidence of the ways they have already influenced you for the better in your words and actions. Write down the hopes and goals you draw from these role models and mentors and loved ones. The world needs communities of love and justice. We begin to answer that call when we understand how to translate our inspirations into aspirations.  So be it. Blessed be. Amen.

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greatcnsuperpower-blog · 7 years

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You will see the kind of Black Diamond Log Splitter

Though it was founded in 1926 by UMC, Duke Divinity claims to have an Black Diamond Log Splitter approach to theology and boasts on its website about the school's commitment to diversity to "foster more faithful, hopeful, and loving forms of common life." "As a local pastor Log Splitter in Durham, I witnessed the development of students coming through the divinity school over the years that was positive and inspired me as an alum to be happy about the divinity school," Kenny said. "What I witnessed over the past couple of years has been the steady decline of that type of presence." Of the 631 students enrolled in the 2016-17 school year, 16 percent were African American, 6 percent Asian, 4 percent Latino and 68 percent white. Kenny said the evangelical community has gained more influence on seminaries across the country. "We have a shift in the way theological education is being taught nationwide that reflects the impact of evangelical teaching, primarily white evangelical ideas, and how they're being pushed upon the black church," he said. "To me it's bigger than just racism on the campus; it's how it impacts the black church. When you look at seminaries across the country, the funding of those seminaries is coming from evangelical entities who are very conservative. When I arrived at Duke, Log Splitter was a place for dialogue around issues of race and homosexuality. But the evangelical thrust has pushed Duke in a different direction." Kenny said he is worried that black people of faith now have such a limited presence in seminaries that it will affect the kind of pastors leading black churches in the future. "That's my primary concern, that the future of the black church is at risk," he said. "In the future, you no longer will have people like Jeremiah Wright and Johnny Ray Youngblood who are really centered around black liberation theology and giving a message to people about social justice. You will see the kind of conservative black pastors who support the Trump administration, with an emphasis on reconciliation without any dialogue. That's a very dangerous place for those who are committed to the black tradition." Annette Rodriguez, who graduated from Duke Divinity earlier Splitter month, said students of color have suffered because of the instability in the leadership of the school, which has had three deans in the past three years. "That has led to a lot of disarray," said Rodriguez, 30, a Puerto Rican from the Bronx who got an MBA and worked in the New York business world before she answered her religious calling and went to Duke. "

#Black Diamond Log Splitter

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dmmowers · 7 years

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Living Water

In the name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

As I begin this morning, I want to start by taking a moment to thank each of you who have welcomed to Baraboo and to this church community over the last few days. Your calls, visits to my office, meals, cards, and other well-wishes have helped us to feel such excitement about being here at Trinity with you, and I want you to know how grateful our family is to receive all of them. It is a joy to be called here to serve as your Rector; I firmly believe that the Lord Jesus has called me here to serve him with you all, and I'm grateful to God for the clarity I have felt about coming here since the beginning of my involvement with your search committee late last summer.

It all began with a daydream. I grew up in a small town about two hours south of here near De Kalb, Illinois. I grew up in first a Methodist and later a Pentecostal church every Sunday. By the time I graduated from high school, I knew that I was discerning ordained ministry as a career path. So I decided on a college for those going into ministry in the Pentecostal tradition in Minneapolis. I moved into the dorm and quickly befriended the slightly older student who lived across the hall. He was beefy and bald, I was a pudgy bookworm with gloriously thick hair. We were, and are, pretty different people. And yet, we struck up a friendship mostly because of his kindness, generosity and good nature. We started commuting together on breaks from class; it turned out Travis had grown up in a little town in south-central Wisconsin called Prairie du Sac. We'd drive down together to names on interstate signs that have always stuck in my memory: Lodi, Waunakee, Dane. We’d exit, and my parents would be there waiting.

We got older. He got married, I was in his wedding, and he took some time off school. I started reading theology and became disillusioned with the church and with Pentecostalism. I decided that I didn’t want anything to do with church work, so did what every person with no interest in church work does: I went to seminary [shakes head] thinking I would teach theology or New Testament in a college. Travis eventually moved home to Sauk and invited me to come visit when I passed through. So, in 2009, I came down 94 to Exit 92 and got off on Highway 12, a two lane road at that time, and gassed up at the Ho-Chunk Casino before going on to Sauk, passing through a town called Baraboo.

We got older, and in 2011, I met Elizabeth on an online dating website and we began dating. On a trip to visit my family in Illinois, I told her that we had to stop in and meet my friends in Sauk, and so the two of us drove through Baraboo together. At one point in the next year or two, we began to daydream with Travis and his family. They had a couple of kids and would love for us to live closer, they said. Where's the closest Episcopal Church, they asked me. I looked it up. "I think it's Trinity Church, in Baraboo." Travis' wife blurted out: "Okay, so here's your plan Dave: you should decide to work in the church, get ordained, become Rector of Trinity Church in Baraboo, and then you can live closer to us." I laughed. She laughed.

I did eventually decide on church work, and so got ordained as a deacon in 2014 and a priest in 2015, and have served for the last year in a half as an assistant in a church west of Minneapolis. We had a baby in 2015, and Miriam is here this morning: you’re likely to hear her before you see her. My position was a two-year job, so I knew I needed to find work at the end of two years’ time. I had started looking, not very seriously, when I saw a listing in July for Trinity Church, Baraboo, Wisconsin. I laughed aloud as soon as I saw the posting - it was the daydream parish! I said, "Well, I have to at least read the listing. I don't expect it to actually be a good fit, but I have to at least read it.”

And then I started reading. I noticed right away that this parish puts Jesus Christ at the center of its life, that you are not ashamed to discuss faith in Christ in direct terms, and that this community is founded upon coming together to hear the word of Christ and to receive the Eucharist at his table. I read that you are a diverse community, with differences in money, in politics, in professions, and yet are a close community that cares for its members. I read that you are a growing community that has grown in numbers, health and ministries over the last few years. I got to the end of my reading, picked up the phone and called Elizabeth and said, "Remember that daydream about living close to Travis’ family? There’s something I think you should see." And so, we began to work with your vestry and slowly but surely discerned the Lord calling us to be here; discerned the Lord calling to us through a daydream.

The woman at the well in our gospel reading this morning was having a daydream. As she did every day, she left her home with vessels to get water for her household and animals. She was not an Israelite. She was Samaritan, meaning that way back in her ancestry somewhere there were people who were part of Israel, but they had intermarried with pagans. They still practiced a form of Judaism but did not worship in the Jerusalem temple; they worshipped God instead on a mountain. By the time our woman at the well came along a few hundred years later, the bitterness between the two groups was stark: Jews, the people of Israel, would not speak to a Samaritan. They would not interact with a Samaritan. A Jewish man would never interact with a Samaritan woman. The only proper response to Samaritans was to build a wall to keep out the mongrel, half-breed cult-followers.

The woman arrives at the well, and finds none other than Jesus there. Without invitation, Jesus asks the woman to draw a drink for him. She knows she’s dreaming now! Surely a Jewish man couldn't be speaking to her, much less asking her for a favor. But it's true! Jesus is talking - to her! To a Samaritan! "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" she says, for, as the text puts it "Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans." That's like saying that Americans do not share things in common with terrorists, that Packers fans do not share things in common with Bears fans, that Those People over there aren't nearly good enough to share our things. You have to watch out to make sure those folks don't spit in your food and rob you blind!

And yet here is Jesus, asking for a drink. She asks him why he is asking her, a Samaritan, for water. He replies: If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. "Sir," she says, "you don't have a bucket. This is a deep well. How are you going to get the living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it?" And Jesus replies with another answer that would be better suited to a daydream: Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give will never be thirsty.

Now we have a problem, because Jesus is offering this woman living water - which is to say, he is offering her himself. She is not our kind of person, friends. She's not Episcopalian, she's not American. She's the kind of person we cross the street to avoid. We see her around and we go to check the lock on the front door that one extra time before we go to bed. We see this woman in public and we look away because of how shameful she looks. And here is Jesus, offering just this woman, this woman who is not a church person and not our kind of person, himself, that she would never be thirsty again. Jesus shouldn't be interacting with her at all, but this daydream just got pretty cracked: because there he is.

II.

This is a dangerous story for church people to read. We are notorious, we church people, for thinking more highly of ourselves and our faith in God than we ought. This tendency is one reason among many that we never grow out of needing Lent: of needing a way to come to terms with the fact that we aren't as faithful as we think we are, that our motives are not as pure as we think they are. Too often, our practice of Christian faith is motivated by a desire to look good in front of others rather than by a genuine desire to grow in faith. The flip side of this is that we sometimes look down upon those who we think to be not as spiritual as we are. If you catch in your attitude occasionally, as I do in mine, I wonder what we each would do with the woman at the well.

A friend of mine who is the pastor of a brand-new church recently asked all of his Facebook friends who were once Christian but now call themselves skeptics or atheists to share their biggest struggle with Christian faith. Many people responded. For about half of them, the thing that turned them off more than anything else was the spiritual superiority expressed by other Christians. Some said it was that the church was not friendly to outsiders, or that church people did not allow for disagreement from a certain way of believing. Some said people were condescending to those who didn't attend church or who didn't know what they believed.

Jesus' interaction with the Samaritan woman challenges all of those attitudes, and reveals them for the sin they are: in spite of all the ways it would have been culturally acceptable to condescend to her, he treats her with respect. For all of the ways in which she really was an outsider, Jesus was friendly to her. For all of the things that she believed that Jews like Jesus did not believe, where he could have lectured her on proper theology, he didn't do that either. He simply, merely offered her himself.

III.

And that offering transformed her life. She says to him, "Give me this water," without really understanding what she's asking for. She just doesn't want to come get water every day. But Jesus says to her, Go, call your husband and come back. And she says, "Well, that's a problem, because I don't have a husband." He says, "That's right, you've had five husbands and this man you're living with isn't your husband at all." At the end of the conversation, she says, "I know that Messiah is coming who will proclaim all things to us." And Jesus says, "I who am speaking to you am he.".

The woman leaves her water jar behind. Just leaves it on the ground there, and goes back to her town, and says, "This man Jesus told me everything I have ever done. Could this be the Messiah?" Her life has been transformed. Her routine has been upended. The water jar she took to the well is lying there on the ground, and she's going to tell all of her town about the Messiah. Jesus choosing to encounter her at the well, his kindness to her, set the stage for an encounter that would change her forever. She became the unlikeliest of witnesses to the coming of the Messiah: she was not a prophet or a religious leader or a Pharisee. She was not a priest or a senior warden or an old church lady who sat on the end of the same pew for 60 years. She lived in the trailer park, and her boyfriend was cooking up some meth in the back. She wasn't what you would call a trustworthy character, and yet Jesus changed her life anyway.

IV.

The thing is, there are a lot of us who wonder deep down whether we're trustworthy characters. For most of us, there's something. There's a broken relationship we're ashamed of, an addiction, a career that didn't work out, a business that failed, a relationship you don't want anyone to ever know about. We think about those things, and we think, yeah, maybe we're not the most sterling witnesses for Jesus that other church people might think we are. But God doesn't look at us through the lens of our worst moments. God does not define us by that thing we did that we don't want anyone to ever find out about. God has shown us how much he loved us: while we were still weak, while our lives were crazy, while we felt far away from God, Jesus Christ died for the ungodly. For that Samaritan woman who was an outsider in every way, and for all of us who have felt that our own actions or someone else's actions made us unworthy of God's love, Jesus Christ died for the ungodly.

Just as Jesus' offering of himself to the woman at the well, Jesus has offered himself to us - even us who have made mistakes, who have made a mess of our lives, who want to define ourselves by our worst moments. Jesus offer is simple: follow me, and I will give you living water. I will give you myself, and I will transform your life. Jesus shows us mercy, not judgment.

As we serve the Lord together here in Baraboo and Sauk County over this next season of life and ministry, my earnest prayer is that we would offer people Jesus in just this way: that we would be people of mercy, not people of judgment. I pray that each and all of us who call on the name of Jesus might put ourselves under the judgment we deserve and put our trust in the Lord Jesus, through whose sacrifice all judgment has been done away with. As we do, Jesus will be faithful to keep his promise: that he will come and bring us living water, that he will come and bring us himself.

Amen.

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