42 posts tagged “flotsam”

Fred Wesley, that's all I'm sayin':

So I'm fresh off the Bill Moyers interview with Jeremiah Wright. Quite illuminating. But it only confirmed what I'd finally come to conclude. The racial divide in this country is alive and well.

Honestly I had my issues with sound the bites initially. "God Damn America"? a bit over the top and cringe inducing. "Black Liberation Theology"? I rolled my eyes.

I watched Hannity ambush the man a bit later. Okay, but what did I expect? It's Fox. And it's Sean Hannity. But back it up a bit and realize it's television "journalism", a dying medium desperate for ratings. But And then a writer for The Times likened the good reverend to something akin to a "crackpot." The Times? The Great Bastion of "Liberal Media?"

Passing strange.

Over time, I've come to realize that the sentiments Reverend Wright expressed are pretty much in line with what I've heard from the pulpit, or around the kitchen table, all my life. Much of it helped shape my world view. And admittedly I'm a bit of a subversive, but I'm a long way from way from a fire breathing black nationalist radical. I don't renounce everything I learned from either venue, nor have I accepted it all as gospel (or Gospel) either.

I find it funny, and ironic, that so many white commentators are shocked by what they've learned about the black church since this "controversy" began. If they only knew. My grandfather used to say that white people in his community should be thankful that so many black people did go to church. Otherwise there'd be hell to pay. In the same context, I think for Wright to acknowledge and bring context to the anger and frustration that so many of his congregation have experienced is good for all of America. He provided context for their frustration and hope based on the historical example of scripture.

Wright likened much of what had been attempted at Chicago's Trinity United before his arrival as "missionary work." An attempt to "civilize" and pacify the congregation. Present them with high teas and cultural enrichment, while blatantly ignoring the challenges of their daily lives. He said that he was challenged by one of his white mentors to meet them where they were, to address their day to day lives through the lens of scripture. To tell them that the message of Christ, that the meaning of Christianity, has relevance in their daily lives, and is more than some vague promise of the hereafter.

Ironically I had that same lesson affirmed in Lutheran schools, in a largely white setting. It took me years to realize that my background is largely anomalous to much of the faith and society in general. The thrust of what has historically been taken as religious life in this country has more to do with confirming manifest destiny (the rightness of conquest), being "nice" as opposed to ethical, and lately, getting paid (or "abundant living").

I heard someone say on NPR last week that part of the thrust of Black Liberation Theology follows the prophetic tradition of scripture, in affect "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted." In this, Reverend Wright has few peers. However, he's hardly traversing uncharted territory, at least from my point of view.

I'll be waiting to hear what he says in Detroit this Sunday with great interest.

For lack of any original content (yeah par for the course) a random compendium off my Google Reader Feed:

Mark Morford is creeping me out

A Little Hope

Nothing to see here, move along: Government and corporate employees engage in an "epidemic" of snooping into databases

Felix The Cat Meets a Yeti and I Will Squeeze Him and Pet Him and Call Him George

Frog Tongue, a ballet of life and death brought to you by the Vancouver Aquarium

Somebody Cheated

Capitalism At It's Best

Guns In Spaaaaaaaaaace

Living: "It’s your life. Live it how you want to. Accept the responsibilities of your decisions, but also the rewards and pleasures — without guilt."

For years I answered the phone: "Tuffy's Tavern, Tuffy aint here."

My mother was not pleased.

Watchful owl at night

It's 2:20 in the morning and I actually hear an owl hooting in a tree in our backyard somewhere.

I know how he feels.

I can't sleep either. Though I'm guessing he's supposed to be up. I've been getting 9 hours a night since Christmas and I'm not due back at work until Thursday. This is a major setback to my sleep debt recovery.

What is wrong with me? This is not good. I've got to drive to the airport in a little more than 6 hours and then be half way cogent for the morning church service. But I'm wide awake.

The house is far from quiet this time of night. Fridge just kicked on. Noisy thing. Sounds like it's trying to take off. The heat registers are popping as hot water swooshes through their pipes and the house creaks when the occasional breeze blows by.

"Dead of Night" my fat behind.

Fixed myself a peanut butter and muenster on half a bagel a bit ago (don't knock it, it ain't half bad). Another glass of water and I think sleep may overtake me now.

Enough with the stilted prose. I'll leave it to the owl.

escalator

Girl 1: "People who walk down an escalator so get on my nerves!"

Girl 2: "Yeah, like what's the point in riding? You may as well take the stairs..."

Note:  I swear I've heard this story before, though I can't for the life of me remember where....

- found via Warren Ellis

theinferior4+1 - The Monkey's Tale...

http://community.livejournal.com/thei...

Here's a story. Years ago, I was in a group called the Cathouse Band. It was a damn good band and we had a hell of a time. One of our roadies, this guy named Gordon, was a biker. (Our other roadie was Tom Sherred, the son of science fiction writer, T.L. Sherred, but that's another story). Not a gnarly old biker. He was eighteen or nineteen, and it was his philosophy that fighting was the purest form of physical expression. He put this philosophy to frequent test. During one of earliest gigs, at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, I was onstage singing when I saw him come into the back of the room and he waved to me. His right hand was gloved in blood. Another time, at the Golden Hatchet Saloon in the old lumber town of Bad Ax, Michigan, he saved our ass by shooting the fender off a car full of guys who wanted to kill us because they thought we had trifled with their womenfolk. Anyway, Gordon was actually kind of a sweet guy, though that may be hard to swallow. He looked upon me as an older brother and came to me for advice on worldly matters. Once he was told he had been given probationary status with the Cleveland chapter of Hell's Angels, something he had long desired. The only trouble was that in order to become a full member you had to kill a cop, and he wasn't altogether sure he was up to it."How many members in the Cleveland chapter?" I asked him."Seventy, maybe.""So you think the Cleveland cops have seventy open police homicides on their books?"He looked at me, his brow furrowed."No way they've got that many," I said. "The Angels are screwing with your head.""Fuck," he said after a while.One day Gordon came to me excited and told me he'd found a place where he could fight a monkey. It appeared there was a ranch down near Monroe where one could fight a monkey for fifty bucks and shoot a buffalo for, if I remember correctly, two hundred. Gordon had signed up to do the former. He asked if I'd come with him. I said I didn't know if fighting a monkey was such a good id...