I am adopting a child! Journey with me. #1

For the past 4-5 years I have been considering adopting a child. I want to make a positive difference in a child's life--a child who wants and needs a mommy like me. About four years ago I made a vision board and on that board I wrote "adopt a child in 1-2 yrs". I am a bit overdue, but we cannot control all the circumstances that will bring about the vision--when or how it will mature. First, I wanted to publish a couple books so I wouldn't feel so pressured to do so when I became a mother. You could say I wanted to "lean in" now in preparation for welcoming a child into my life. I have published three books. I also needed to be more financially stable. While I don't have more money than I did three or four years ago, following a series of pay cuts due to the economic downturn and its impact on student registration at my institution, I feel I am more in control of my finances. I cut out a lot of unnecessary expenses, like gym memberships and personal training fees (instead I bought more free weights, a jump rope, dvds, exercise ball, and hit the pavement) and cable (yes, cable which seemed more like rerun hell, only I had to pay for it).  I still need to become better at avoiding a good clothing sale, but I have made great strides. So even though I am beyond my target date for adoption, I believe this is the right time and season for me to adopt a child. 

It has already been a very emotional process, beginning before I contacted my first adoption agency. I would be watching tv, as a temporary reprieve from my routine or an escape into some comedic or adventurous reality transcending my own, but my escape would be interrupted by some commercial or story about abandoned or abused children. And I would break out in an uncontrollable, deep soul sobbing and wailing. I’d ask myself, out aloud, “what the heck is wrong with you?!”  I think it was a combination of my compassion for children needing safe, loving homes AND menopause. God was knocking at the door of my menopausal heart. My body, its season in life, was reminding me and pushing me in the direction of that commitment I had yet to honor.  I had fears. I feared my life would become less controllable; that I would not be able to manage a child and a vocation; that I might not be mom material no matter how much I wanted it--not enough patience, for example. [more about my fears later]

It is strange and ironic that I find myself in this place. Although I love children, I never had an overwhelming desire to inhabit a delivery room in order to sweat profusely in unspeakable pain with people telling me to push for what would seem like an eternity. I had severe menstrual pains most of my life and I thought if birthing a baby was anything like that I would pass. My mother said she didn't have much pain during childbirth. In fact, she would stay at home until the very last minute before going to the hospital. She said it was better to wait at home than in a cold hospital room. I pushed my way out of her womb in the elevator at the hospital! I also never wanted to be a single mother having seen how my mother struggled. But I am now choosing to be a single mother, a single black mother. More about this in another blog. I will parent a black female child in a world that is too often an unsafe place, unfriendly, hostile and deadly, for females, for minorities. The human trafficking epidemic in the US, in my state; the 2000 missing children in my state; the willingness of people to kidnap school girls and rape them or rape them on their way to school. The fate of the Renisha McBrides are as troubling to me as are the deaths of the Tamir Rices. She, my child to be, likely already "knows" this about the world, unfortunately. But I am grateful I am not deterred by fear, anymore, but moved by compassion and love.

So my life is not what I expected (and neither is hers), nor what others expected either--who cares what others expect? It is what it is, and I am who I am, now. Others saw my future as a wife and mother of several children---not as a scholar, author, preacher. I do know that if I had married young and had children, I would not be the person I am today, doing what I love (though not always loving it) and wanting to share my life with a child I have yet to meet. I am not saying that one life would be better, more virtuous, than the other, just different. Both could be grand! I may have avoided some physical pain, but adopting, the process, has its own emotional ups and downs and pangs and stressors---few experiences are painless. And I will share some of them with you, if you will join me on this journey here. Blog #2 will discuss the reactions to the news. From time to time I will publish a PS (postscript) or afterthought between numbered blogs. Blog #3, My first orientation with the first of (three) adoption agencies. And on....  Ask questions if you please, and I may be able to answer them.

Inhumane!: Detroit Shuts Off Water to Thousands of its Residents

Utility companies are quick to disconnect and shut off utilities, such as electricity and heat, even when the absence of those resources could mean the difference between life and death, sickness and health--during the coldest winter months and the most sizzling summer months. And all one needs to do to get a shut-off notice or to be disconnected is to miss one payment. If we are honest, many of us have been there.  We could have paid our bills on time for years, but let some emergency or something unexpected come up or  let us inadvertently miss a payment, and we are out of luck, especially if we cannot come up with a deposit plus the bill we missed. Our need for heat and/or electricity vary from season to season, but our need for water remains constant.  Human beings cannot survive for long and cannot remain healthy without water.  How in the world can we deny any human being access to water, unless we no longer see them as human beings but as entries in a ledger? How do we justify cutting off people's access to water at any time, but particularly when so many have lost their jobs or been subject to a decrease in pay during this latest economic recession or downturn, which we have yet to fully recover from? And I understand that Detroit Water and Sewage has been increasingly raising its rates during the recession. Few of us have been exempt, but the impact is greater on some than on others. And we must be our brothers and sisters keepers, if we would maintain some semblance of our own humanity.

One would think that we are living in a two-thirds world country (where famines occur all too often and a history of colonizat

Mouth of Lake Michigan

ion has stripped naked the land making it more vulnerable) and that water is scarce. But here are some facts about Michigan water: 
"Michigan is blessed with an abundance of water above and below the ground. Every drop of water that falls from the sky has the potential to contribute to the vast quantities of water that will flow into one of our Great Lakes. Water drops from rain are collected and stored in watersheds.
... A network of streams and rivers that flows to a larger river system will eventually end up in one of the Great Lakes. Michigan has 86 major watersheds. The longest watershed in the state, the Grand watershed, is 260 miles long. The largest drainage basin is the Saginaw River watershed which is approximately 8,709 square miles.
Michigan has 26,266 inland lakes throughout the state that are greater than one acre in size. The largest lake is Houghton Lake, which is 20,044 acres and has over 30 miles of shoreline. The Great Lakes has a shoreline of 3,288 miles. About 40 percent of the major rivers in the state flow into Lake Superior, 35 percent flow into Lake Michigan and 25 percent flow into Lake Huron and Lake Erie.
There are about 120 major rivers in Michigan. The total miles that these rivers cover is about 36,350 square miles. To put this in perspective Michigan has more square miles of rivers than the states of New Jersey, Connecticut, and the combined miles of Delaware and Rhode Island in total square miles." [Source:http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/michigan_water_facts ]

Yet, Detroit, a major US city within Michigan, has no qualms or conscience about cutting off the water supply to thousands of its individual customers, even those who may have missed only one payment or maybe as little as $40 in arrears (I am told). And it appears that many of those customers are the elderly, the poor, and children. Nonprofit organizations like We the People of Detroit and Detroit People's Platform and individual Michigan residents are raising their voices and opening their wallets to help those residents left without water for washing their bodies and clothes, for cooking and cleaning, for flushing their waste, and for drinking. The Detroit Water and Sewage company, according to Detroit People's Platform,"launched its most aggressive shutoff and collection campaign in the history of the department.   According to press accounts the department has pledged to shut off and disconnect from the city water supply an average of 1500 to 3000 households per week with an overall target of 30,000 households during the next several months.   We believe that this policy of water shutoff as a collection strategy in addition to posing serious ethical issues, also has serious public health impacts.  For example, shutoffs create unsanitary conditions leading to the transmission of dangerous bacteria contributing to increased UTIs; gastrointestinal problems; hepatitis A; influenza; and other diseases that are linked to unsafe water and poor sanitation.   Household water shutoffs also exacerbate adverse mental health conditions in the home and is likely to bring about anxiety, anger, depression and other post-traumatic stress disorder like symptoms. Further, we are concerned that the notice of water shutoff which signals by public health code that the residence is unfit for human habitation, will also trigger a child welfare crisis potentially leading to the removal of children from the home under the orders of the child protective services." 

It appears that Detroit is systematically and callously and inhumanely pushing people, the most push-able, the most vulnerable, out of the city or into a grave!

Recently, the Detroit Water and Sewage company has said that it will also begin to do to some local businesses what it has already done to some of the "least among us". This turn toward businesses comes after much protest from Michigan residents and  after the targeting of individual residents first--once again the needs and rights of corporations are placed above those of the ordinary citizen.


It seems that so far Detroit Water and Sewage and the Detroit Department of health and Wellness Promotion have turned a deaf ear to the citizens and organizations who are protesting the water shut-offs for the most vulnerable among us.  Detroit People's Platform is asking for the following considerations from Ms. Vernice Anthony, Director of Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion:

• "As Public Health Officer for the City of Detroit, advise the mayor of the potential threat to public health in the face of the widespread water shutoffs;
• As Public Health Officer for the City of Detroit call for a moratorium on all water shutoffs;
• Recommend that as a matter of public policy a health impact assessment be conducted on the impact of water shutoffs on the population’s health with an analysis as to how these conditions further contribute to racial health inequities."

 I hope that people of faith and people of conscience will also stand up and speak out against this gross injustice.  In the meantime, donate some water or some money to help get someone some much needed water.

visit: http://www.unitingdetroiters.org/ for more info.

Teaching All Nations: Interrogating the Great Commission is on pre-order at Amazon.com

Available at Amazon.com

pre-order rate of $36 (reg. price $49)

That Christian missionary efforts have long gone hand-in-hand with European colonization and American imperialist expansion in the 19th and 20th centuries is well recognized. The linchpin role played in those efforts by the "Great Commission"—the risen Christ's command to "go into all the world" and "teach all nations"—has more often been observed than analyzed, however. With the rise of European colonialism, the Great Commission was suddenly taken up with an eschatological urgency, often explicit in the founding statements of missionary societies; the differentiation of "teachers" and "nations" waiting to be "taught" proved a ready-made sacred sanction for the racialized and androcentric logics of conquest and "civilization."

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part 1: Colonial Missions and the Great Commission: Re-Membering the Past

1.      Colonial Mission and the Great Commission in Africa — Beatrice Okyere-Manu

2.      Examining the Promulgation and Impact of the Great Commission in the Caribbean, 1492–1970: A Historical Analysis — Dave Gosse

3.      US Colonial Missions to African Slaves: Catechizing Black Souls, Traumatizing the Black Psychē — Mitzi J. Smith

Part 2: Womanist, Feminist, and Postcolonial Criticisms and the Great Commission

4.      The Great Commission: A Postcolonial Dalit Feminist Inquiry —Jayachitra Lalitha

5.      Privilege but No Power: Women in the Gospel of Matthew and Nineteenth-Century African American Women Missionaries through a Postcolonial Lens — Lynne St. Clair Darden

6.      ‘Knowing More than is Good for One’: A Womanist Interrogation of the Matthean Great Commission — Mitzi J. Smith

Part 3: Theology, Art, and the Great Commission

7.      Images of the White Jesus in Advancing the Great Commission — Sheila F. Winborne

8.      The Great Commission in the Face of Suffering as Minjung  — Michelle Sungshim Lim

9.      Children’s Agency and Edinburgh 2010: The Great Commission or a Greater Omission? — Rohan P. Gideon

Part 4: The Great Commission and Christian Education: Rethinking Our Pedagogy 

10.  Interrogating the Matthean Great Commission for US Christian Education: Reclaiming Jesus’ Kingdom of God Message for the Church — Karen D. Crozier

11.  Beginning Again: Rethinking Christian Education in Light of the Great Commission — Anthony G. Reddie

12.  Christian Moral Education and the Great Commission in an African Context — Lord Elorm-Donkor

Part 5: Interrogating the Commission from Beyond the Academy 

13.  A United States Inner-City Oriented Great Commission — MarShondra Scott Lawrence

14.  The Great Commission’s Impact on a Short-term Missionary and Lay Leader in the Church of God in Christ — June C. Rivers

 

RIP Mighty Warrior, Madiba Mandela

On yesterday, December 5, 2013, Rolihlahla (Madiba) [Nelson] Mandela (b, 1918) died in his native South Africa. I remember first learning, in any critical way, about Apartheid in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC), and about Nelson and Winnie Mandela in the mid-80s in a course about Apartheid at OSU as a black studies master's student.  In 1963, Mandela was brought to trial  together with his fellow black activists for about the third time. This time, he and 10 other ANC leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment for political offenses, including sabotage. Nelson Mandela was incarcerated on Robben Island for 18 of his 27 years in prison. During this time, he contracted tuberculosis and, as a black political prisoner, received the lowest level of treatment from prison workers. However, while incarcerated, Mandela was able to earn a Bachelor of Law degree through a University of London correspondence program.

In 1982, Mandela and other ANC leaders were moved to Pollsmoor Prison. In 1985, South African President P. W. Botha  offered Mandela's release in exchange for renouncing armed struggle; the prisoner  rejected the offer. With increasing local and international pressure for his release, the government participated in several talks with Mandela over the ensuing years, but no deal was made. It wasn't until Botha suffered a stroke and was replaced by Frederik Willem de Klerk that Mandela's release was finally announced—on February 11, 1990. And in 1994 Mandela became the first black President of South Africa!

By 1986 I had returned to Washington DC to work in law firms as a legal secretary in anti-trust litigation and corporate real estate. When Mandela visited the US for the first time I was working at a law firm in downtown DC.  I heard some commotion outside and discovered that Mandela was across the street from our offices visiting a museum.  I ran outside to a crowd that had already gathered and the police had roped off a path for Mandela. Somehow I made my way to the front of the crowd just as Mandela was coming out of the museum, and he shook my hand. I wanted to never wash my hand. I had locked hands, if but for a second or less, with a man who epitomized courage, dignity, integrity, justice, community, peace, love.. under some of the most trying circumstances. I was so proud and honored to have shaken his hand.

 I shall not forget Apartheid, the struggle, the solidarity with the struggle that many  of us in the diaspora demonstrated, his fallen comrades (known and unknown), and Mandela's long walk to freedom!

A Great Elder has Left this World: RIP Professor François Bovon

Professor François Bovon

I am deeply saddened at the death of a great New Testament scholar Professor François Bovon, Frothingham Professor of the History of Religion Emeritus at Harvard Divinity School. He was an excellent scholar who encouraged and supported his students, demonstrated God's compassion, and continued to mentor former students, inviting us to have a meal with him every SBL/AAR! He was my teacher, academic and dissertation advisor, supporter, and friend. He was known to take time to pray with his students at appropriate times. I took my first class on the Christian Apocrypha from Professor Bovon, and his teaching style, his expert knowledge, and enthusiasm for the subject ignited in me a love for those texts.  In fact, it was out of that class that I published my first article as a Ph.D. student and it was published in an international journal. He wrote the French version of the abstract.  Professor Bovon, in these latter years, struggled with throat cancer.  One of the last times I saw him was on Harvard's campus where he invited me to lunch at the faculty club in the fall of 2009 (I was on study leave from my institution), and he shared his story with me. He never sought pity but courageously lived his life to the end continuing to do what he loved to do. He will be dearly missed in this world. Rest in peace, my friend!

François Bovon was a professor from 1967 to 1993 at the University of Geneva, in its Divinity School, which was founded by John Calvin in 1559. He was dean there from 1976 to 1979, and is still an honorary professor of the University of Geneva. He began teaching New Testament and early Christian literature at Harvard in 1993, and was chair of the New Testament Department from 1993 to 1998, and again in 2001-02. He was editor of Harvard Theological Review from 2000 to 2010. He was president of the international Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in 2000. In recent years he has developed his teaching and research in two directions: the exegesis of New Testament texts, particularly the Gospel of Luke, and the publication and interpretation of non-canonical Acts of the Apostles, particularly the Acts of Philip, legends on Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and apocryphal fragments. His critical commentary on Luke, in four volumes, has been completed in German, French, and Spanish. English and Italian will soon follow. The first volume in English appeared in the "Hermeneia" series, published by Fortress Press, in 2002. The second and the third, published together, appeared in Italian in 2007. His critical edition of the Acts of Philip, done in collaboration with Bertrand Bouvier and Frédéric Amsler, was published as volume 11 in the Corpus Christianorum: Series Apocryphorum by Brepols in 1999. His book The Last Days of Jesus was published in 2006, and a Spanish translation appeared in 2007. Two volumes of essays have been published in recent years: Studies in Early Christianity (2003; in paperback, 2005) and New Testament and Christian Apocrypha (2009; in paperback, 2011).

Precious in God's sight is the death of his children!

Faux Feminism: Just Lean In

Feminism is not a dirty word. In a nutshell, it is a movement that believes that women are equally human and deserving of the same rights and privileges their humanity calls for. It is not about male bashing or hating. Feminism calls for the naming and dismantling of all systems of oppression. Some have dubbed COO of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg as the new face of feminism.  Sandberg’s book Lean In has captivated millions of women and she is taking her show on the road again.  But black feminist scholar bell hooks is exposing her faux feminism in a recent article for the Feminist Wire.  I must admit that I read Lean In a few months ago because a black female pastor asked me to help her unpack it (and fortunately or unfortunately that conversation never took place).  Many career-minded women would naturally want to hear what the female COO of Facebook had to say; what nuggets of wisdom she might share that would help them navigate the corporate world with success. Although Sandberg offers some somewhat good practical advice, good depending on one's context, it is elitist and naive to believe that an oppressive patriarchal system will just give way to one’s gifts and talents because women,of any and every hue, ethnicity and class just "lean in". While one cannot underestimate the power of perseverance (I believe in perseverance), one cannot equally underestimate the power of evil and/or oppressive systems in which the power to hire, promote, and fire rests with misogynist, racist, classist, primarily white males and at institutions that fail or neglect to put in place any kind of systemic mechanisms against those and other isms.

bell hooks writes: 

“Sandberg’s definition of feminism begins and ends with the notion that it’s all about gender equality within the existing social system. From this perspective, the structures of imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy need not be challenged. And she makes it seem that privileged white men will eagerly choose to extend the benefits of corporate capitalism to white women who have the courage to ‘lean in.’ It almost seems as if Sandberg sees women’s lack of perseverance as more the problem than systemic inequality. Sandberg effectively uses her race and class power and privilege to promote a narrow definition of feminism that obscures and undermines visionary feminist concerns....

"Contrast her definition of feminism with the one I offered more than twenty years ago in Feminist Theory From Margin To Center and then again in Feminism Is For Everybody.  Offering a broader definition of feminism, one that does not conjure up a battle between the sexes (i.e. women against men), I state: “Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.” No matter their standpoint, anyone who advocates feminist politics needs to understand the work does not end with the fight for equality of opportunity within the existing patriarchal structure. We must understand that challenging and dismantling patriarchy is at the core of contemporary feminist struggle – this is essential and necessary if women and men are to be truly liberated from outmoded sexist thinking and actions.”

Read the rest of hooks’s article at http://thefeministwire.com/2013/10/17973/

A Womanist Reading of the Feeding Miracle

A womanist is "a black feminist only more commonly". A womanist, as a woman of color and/or a black woman values and privileges her own experiences as an individual black female and as a sharer and participator in the historical and cultural legacy and present reality of black women and black people's lives. The following is an excerpt from my article:

"There is no shame in begging especially when we have done all we can to survive. What difference would it make in people’s lives if we all lived in a sharing mode grounded in a compassionate consciousness of the existence and impact of unjust systems and situations, of human error, of hardships that can befall any of us, and an understanding of our human connectedness? In her 1983 book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Alice Walker describes a womanist as committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female …. Traditionally universalist, …Traditionally capable, as in: “Mama, I’m walking to Canada and I’m taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me.” Reply: “it wouldn’t be the first time.”...."The first time” signifies Harriet Tubman’s escape from slavery and her work to free other slaves. A womanist ethic asserts that we cannot free ourselves without freeing other people too. We cannot liberate ourselves and our children and leave other people and their children to themselves without the proverbial boots or bootstraps, if we can help it. Human beings need other human beings to survive....

"Both the miracle of the feeding of the great crowd in our text and manna in the Wilderness of Sin connect the earthly miracle with heaven. In the desert, Jesus looked to heaven before (or as) he blessed and broke the bread. 24 In the Wilderness of Sin, Yahweh promised to rain down bread from heaven for the congregation of Israel. In Matthew, both John the Baptist and Jesus announce (and commission his disciples to proclaim) that the “kingdom of the heavens (ouranoi)25 has come near” (3:2; see also 10:7). The Kingdom of heaven has drawn near in the person and ministry of Jesus; he embodies the Kingdom and encourages his disciples to do the same. Matthew’s Jesus is God with us (1:23). The food that fed the multitude was multiplied in the human hands of the earthly Jesus in whom the kingdom of heaven is brought near. “The source of the feeding is God, but the resources are human.” (Boring, 324). As Cheryl Sanders states, “God feeds the poor in our kitchens”; we must make “God’s kingdom come alive on earth.”....

"When human beings fail to respond to hunger, to dismantle injustice, and use what we have for the sake of others, then even the righteous will be forsaken and its seed begging for bread....

read the entire article at www.bibleandtransformatiom.com Vol 3