50th anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre

21 March 1960. Remember.

For those living a difficult Christmas

Special thoughts and prayers for those who on this Christmas Eve are grieving, sad, lonely, brokenhearted, or depressed. Prayers and thoughts also for all those who live with addictions and for whom this is a particularly challenging season. May peace be with you all.

Coptic Nativity

Cross-posted on Facebook

World Malaria Day

ToujoursDan reminded us on Facebook that today is World Malaria Day. I see that he also has a post about this on his blog. Did you know that malaria is the single biggest killer of children under the age of five on the African continent?

Dan also wants everyone to know that for just $10 you can buy a net that will protect an African child from Malaria and save a life. Go here to give.

Note: I went to the site and made a "Spread the Net" donation and noticed that it is the UNICEF Canada site. Nothing wrong at all with that, but I think the $10 are thus Canadian dollars.

Spirit, Structure, and Flesh: my friend Deidre Crumbley's new book

I am just back from the book party for my friend Deidre's new book, held at St. Ambrose, Raleigh, a historically African American Episcopal church. The publisher (a university press) priced the book high and it's a hardback, but I am happy to say that Deidre's friends showed up and bought a lot of books -- and the founder of the church's Jazz Mass Quartet came and played the saxophone! There was food, particularly some excellent spinach balls. And a big cake saying "Congratulations." Here's a reproduction of the book cover.


It's a fascinating book and Dr. Crumbley (that's Deidre) has worked on it for something like 20 years. Four years of field work in Nigeria, countless rewrites, and the search for a publisher, plus illness and search for funding and all manner of obstacles. I gather there was also a cat involved at some point. Of course.

Rejoice with Deidre in her great achievement!

By the way, there are now members of African Initiated Churches, including the Aladura churches in this book, here in the U.S. -- including here in North Carolina. As Deidre noted in her short talk at the party, the African Diaspora did not end with slavery; indeed, our President-Elect is a child of this diaspora. So the African Initiated Churches, which began in the 20th century as indigenous African forms of Christianity, have migrated to other continents and are undergoing changes there.

More on the book on the publisher's website here. The full name of the book is Spirit, Structure, And Flesh: Gendered Experiences in African Instituted Churches among the Yoruba of Nigeria.

First day of school / African American religion course / Holy Angels mural

I guess blog break is over, de facto, though I will still be absent-minded and not all there till February, mas or menos.

Classes began today and despite all the grumpiness, lack of sleep, and hours in the office of this past weekend, I have first-day-of-school excitement after the first class of the semester. A nice group of students, racially mixed and also mixed in types of students ("traditional-age" i.e. 18-22 and adult students called "CCE" at our college, stands for "Center for Continuing Education") and I like the subject. This is a course I created for the college three and a half years ago when I arrived, African American Religion and Theology.

Below is the illustration from the cover of the syllabus, and below that is the explanation of the illustration on page two of the syllabus, before all the blabla about requirements and office hours and percentages and accommodations and outcomes and the course calendar with detailed list of assignments. As you will see, this is from Holy Angels Catholic Church in Chicago, an African American congregation. Note the Nativity scene in the middle and the heavenly host, who are all Black - as are all the angels from the biblical scenes depicted in the mural.

I may have already posted this a long while back, because as I was saving the photo to my "blog photos" file, the computer told me I already had it in there. I'm going to assume most readers either haven't yet seen this, though. It's worth gazing at again, for those of you who already know it.

Click to enlarge and see detail!

The Holy Angels Church Mural

The mural whose reproduction is on the front page of your syllabus is from an African American Roman Catholic parish church named Holy Angels in Chicago. The parish (which started as a largely Irish-American congregation) and its school have a long and proud history full of struggle and triumph. They continue to serve as centers of worship, education, and community for African Americans.

The mural was painted by the late Rev. Engelbert Mveng, S.J. The letters S.J. after someone’s name mean that person is a member of the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits, a Roman Catholic religious order of men. Father Mveng was a Catholic priest, theologian, and artist from Cameroon. He was murdered a dozen years ago in Yaoundé, Cameroon. His writings and art live on.The mural is a testimony to the bonds of art, spirit, and faith between Africans and African Americans

This is the home page of Holy Angels Church:

Here is a reproduction of the mural, the same one as on your syllabus; it is a little larger here, so you may be able to see the detail better.

And here is an explanation of the illustrations and symbolism.

There is a small mistake – the last book of the Christian Testament (“New” Testament, the second half of the Christian Bible) is Revelation, with no “s” at the end, not “Revelations.” This is such a frequent mistake that few people notice it, but if you look at a Bible, you’ll see that there is no “s” there. Of course, the original is in Greek so that’s not the book’s original name anyway…

Enjoy the art.

You’ll be hearing some African American Catholic music a little later in the course, from a gospel music Mass by the composer and musician Rawn Harbor, now Director of Liturgy at St. Columba, an African American Catholic church in Oakland.

Night prayer

Now that the sun has set,
I sit and rest, and think of you.
Give my weary body peace.
Let my legs and arms stop aching.
Let my nose stop sneezing.
Let my head stop thinking.
Let me sleep in your arms.

8888888888 - Traditional Dinka prayer (Sudan)


(Found in Phil Cousineau, ed., Prayers at 3 A.M. Quoted in Jane Redmont, When in Doubt, Sing.)

Hope and discipline

I voted today. North Carolina is one of the early-voting states. I arrived at the polling place sometime after 2 p.m. and the parking lot was nearly full. Inside, there was a long line. I have never since I moved here seen so many people at the polls. I thanked the poll workers who helped me and so many others and commented to one of them about the numbers. "It's been this way every day this week," he said. (I had thought to myself that the high numbers might have something to do with its being a Friday afternoon.) "We've had about 900 people a day."

Everyone was serious and purposeful. There was a tiny bit of joking. No one said anything partisan. People waited their turn patiently and no one complained about the queue.

The comparison is not really apt, because for so many decades there was no vote for the people of South Africa, but still, the only event to which I can compare this is the first free democratic vote in South Africa, when the new photos showed us lines of people, patiently waiting, focused on their purpose, with a kind of buzz in the air that was in some ways more sober than jubilant. Government by, of, and for the people is serious business.

Like FranIAm and Grandmère Mimi, I have been obsessing about the election. For two hours before I voted and at least an hour after, I could not concentrate. I ran errands after going to vote, and at the bank I commented to the woman behind me on line (young, African American) how many folks I had just seen at the polls. "Everyone wants to get out there and make history," she said calmly.

I long for a president who will call us to service and sacrifice. We are a bloated and lazy nation in many ways --I count myself in the lot-- and it has been years, decades, since anyone has taken the lead in telling us that the energy crisis, the environmental crisis, the economic crisis, all of those and more, will require effort and self-denial on all our parts and collective work for the common good. It's our work our country needs and we need, not just "the government over there" or the corporations, though I long and call for their engagement and structural change and all the rest.

I pray that this will come to pass. I pray and I will defend to the end the rights of those who do not pray and do not wish to pray. I think Barack Obama has the potential to lead us in both hope and discipline --we need one as much as the other-- and I think it is hope that helps us to engage in discipline, and sometimes, if the discipline is healthy (a big if, I know, as abuses of political and religious power have forever shown) discipline that can lead to hope.

I pray also, in this nation whose religious liberty I will forever honor and whose establishment clause I firmly support, I pray for our nation and I pray for the safety of our candidates, of "that one" especially.

I am still stunned by the experience of voting this year. I have not seen an election like this since 1984. (Reagan's re-election and Mondale-Ferraro and the nuclear buildup.) In other ways I have never seen an election like this, and yes, race has something to do with it. I never dreamed that I would be involved in this kind of election, much less in the American South. (I am also remembering Jesse Jackson's candidacy, with all its flaws, and other predecessor events to this year's election.)

Perhaps I need not say, but I will say it anyway: the sacrifice and discipline of which I am speaking do not involve military violence.

The polar ice cap is melting, the economy is imploding, the poor are getting poorer, our soldiers die abroad, mothers clutch bone-thin children in Darfur and fathers weep for their daughters and sons in Israel and Palestine, and doggedly, with hope in our guts, we stand in line and vote.

Hope is not born in optimistic times. Hope is born in times of fear and dread and oppression and threat.


Hope and vote. Vote and hope.