In this song, Common Good collaborator Devin Bustin follows Howard Thurman’s direction, centers down, and sees a series of jarring images. You can hear the stripped-down demo using the SoundCloud Player below.
The Sound of the Genuine
The voice of Howard Thurman inspired Martin Luther King Jr, to the extent that he traveled with a ragged copy of his most famous work, Jesus and the Disinherited. This warm conversation celebrates Thurman’s call to contemplation, his encouragement to listen to the persistent questions we hear within. Don’t miss Thurman’s metaphor of the inner sea at the 12-minute mark.
On Being Podcast: The Sound of the Genuine
Bring Them Back Alive
Over the next several months, we’ll be featuring a few original pieces, including several tracking this intriguing project from CG Contributor Greg Jarrell. In this piece, Greg offers a reflection built from the lives of women and mothers who have resisted the machinations of Empire, from Argentina, to ancient Israel, to the 20th century United States.
Bring Them Back Alive: Disappearance, love, and the quest for justice
By Greg Jarrell
This newsletter will avoid sermonizing. But this week, I am publishing a sermon, as it draws directly from the work I’m doing in researching and writing on the history and theology of churches during the Urban Renewal era. The voice of the writing is a little different. I hope you won’t mind.
Below is my homily from the Third Week of Advent, delivered at Beloved Community Charlotte. The Gospel text I am using is printed in Wil Gafney’s incredible new work, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year A. It originates with Anne Patrick Ware of the Women’s Liturgy Group. Read the stunning translation here. The Psalm text is Dr. Gafney’s translation. A portion is quoted below.
Advent 3
Psalm 78:1-8
Matthew 1:1-16
“Bring Them Back Alive”
Argentina was ruled by its military from 1976-83, a period there often called the Dirty War. During that period, the Argentine government waged a campaign of terror against its own people. One of the terror strategies of the military junta was the use of right-wing death squads to make people disappear.
A Free South: The Black Arts Movement and the politics of emancipation.
No art, no freedom. The Black Arts Movement in the American South worked from that powerful belief as they “sought to produce a culture that valued Black people and used cultural forms like theater to encourage their entry into Black Power politics.” The result was multiple institutions working to bring art, music, and theater that could complement the Southern Freedom Movement.
A Free South: The Black Arts Movement and the politics of emancipation.
By Elias Rodriques
In the 1960s, the Free Southern Theater, an organization founded by a group of activists with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), traveled to a church in a predominantly Black, rural corner of Mississippi. There they staged Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, an absurdist drama about characters conversing as they wait for someone who never arrives. The play may have seemed like a strange choice—who would imagine that Beckett might connect with rural Black Americans in the throes of the civil rights movement?—but it found at least one admirer in civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer. “I guess we know something about waiting, don’t we?” Hamer said from the audience.
Everyone agreed, and as they discussed the play, the conversation eventually turned to slavery and prisons. “We had this incredible discussion with people who barely had a sixth-grade education,” Denise Nicholas, an actress in the Free Southern Theater, said later. And drama—even high-modernist, experimental drama—functioned as political education.
This was the Free Southern Theater’s goal. As cofounder John O’Neal recalled of its creation:
We claimed to be playwrights and poets; yet the political facts of life presented by the situation we first learned of in the South called for a life of useful (political or economic) engagement. How could we remain true to ourselves and our own concerns as artists and at the same time remain true to our developing recognition of political responsibility?
Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen Master, Dies at 95
We celebrate the life of the beloved Thich Nhat Hanh, who died recently at age 95. Nhat Hanh was a revered teacher whose religious practice had material and political meaning. He spent his life not only in meditation, but also advocating for nonviolence, for civil rights, and for communion among the people of the world. Thich Nhat Hanh embodied the work of liberation in his life and in his practice.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen Master, Dies at 95
By Joan Duncan OliverJan 21, 2022
Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh—a world-renowned spiritual leader, author, poet, and peace activist—died on January 22, 2022 at midnight (ICT) at his root temple, Tu Hieu Temple, in Hue, Vietnam. He was 95.
“Our beloved teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has passed away peacefully,” his sangha, the Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism, said in a statement. “We invite our global spiritual family to take a few moments to be still, to come back to our mindful breathing, as we together hold Thay in our hearts in peace and loving gratitude for all he has offered the world.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.