The Race Game (2018)

I (a white person) proposed The Race Game [source: Thandeka’s Learning to Be White: Money, Race, and God in America, 1999] to a (majority but not exclusively white) planning committee for a major LGBT Christian conference in 2003. They had asked me to bring a proposal about what they might do to confront the legacy of racism at a past event.

As I remember it, I (a white person) was told by older, more experienced folk that my proposal was both too naive and too radical. My proposal was set aside for other tactics and approaches.

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Never Enough

I am never going to be man enough
Or woman enough
Never going to be butch enough
Or femme boi enough
To play the game
As anything more
Than an imposter

Love Thyself: Exodus, Trinity, and OtherWise

The Rev. Dr. Kelli Brown Douglas manages to sum up several threads of what I call OtherWise — woven right up in there among that (annoying) Christian theology (which I can neither tolerate nor ignore).

To move to be free.

To vision beyond the binary
to see what is really there.

To address privilege
and be in solidarity
with the crucified of our time.

Starting Over

Tabernacle United Church, Philadelphia, PA
February 28, 1999 (Lent)

John 3:1-17 is read by the liturgist.

[Communion table has a big celtic cross (which is always there), bowl of ashes (for lent), candle, and a row of misc books.]

A reading from the Hebrew scripture: Psalm 121: 1-2

I lift my eyes to the hills
From whence comes my help?
My help comes from God,
who made heaven and earth.

[Amy, who is visiting, gets up from her pew.  Walks to the communion table.  Shoves all the books onto the floor.  Pauses. Approaches the large cross.  Moves it to the center of the table. Returns to her seat]

A reading from the Persian scripture.  The prophet Rumi.

Today, like every other day,
we wake up empty and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the Beauty we love be what we do.
There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.