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A Change Is Gonna Come…

 

Hello World!!!

As we enter the last full week before the presidential election next Tuesday, I thought I would post a sober and reflective entry about “how we got over” thus far, and those who God has used thus far to exact change in the United States of America. ( will try anyway. I just love making people laugh!)

Last month at a journalism conference, I had the pleasure of meeting Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the first black woman to attend the University of Georgia. As she spoke about race relations during this current election cycle and compared and contrasted it with her bittersweet experiences at UGA, she mentioned that she is the daughter and granddaughter of ministers. Since I, too, graduated from the University of Georgia with a journalism degree, (I don’t care what you FAMU Rattlers say, I’m proud of my HWCU) and am the daughter and granddaughter of ministers, I knew I had to talk with her after her speech.

So as she signed my copy of her memoir In My Place, I asked her if she would be interested in being interviewed for my blog. She gave me her contact information and asked me to contact her later! But after a few weeks of playing phone tag, her daughter called me and told me that Mrs. Hunter-Gault was world traveling and wouldn’t be able to do the interview…oh well, you win some, you lose some…

However, I did read her book while I was on vacation, and I wanted to share some interesting passages in the book and my insights.

As I read her memoir, I was again reminded how the church has shaped many of the lives of American black heroes including Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Benjamin Mays, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Martin Luther King Jr. – and this is just a sampling… She wrote about being a part of her church’s annual Easter program, attending Vacation Bible School and traveling to church conventions – near and far. I can relate, I can relate. In another passage, she said, “the difference between my father and my grandfather as preachers was that my father was a minister – more cerebral, less theatrical.” That’s true for my Dad and my Grandpa (I know you’re in heaven, Grandpa!) too.  She wrote about a grandmother that fasted and prayed on Fridays. My dear grandmother, who is now deceased as well, used to scare me when she prayed. First of all, she prayed in a stream of consciousness way and a sob seemed to be caught in throat as she prayed. I could actually picture her vocal chords quivering. Plus she was loud! I always thought if the Lord doesn’t answer her prayer “just now,” somebody needed to so she could stop…

There are also a lot of interesting pop culture details for voracious pop culturists in this book.  For instance, Hunter-Gault attended Mt. Moriah Baptist Church in Atlanta, which is still in existence today, where she listened to her first elementary school boyfriend, William, and his cousin, Gladys, sing in the “Sunbeam” choir. They also sang at the Royal Peacock on Auburn Avenue on Saturday nights. (Y’all from the A know about the Royal Peacock!) Gladys, William and others later became Gladys Knight and the Pips!

I love history, but since I graduated from college, I haven’t been as motivated to read as many historical texts as I should. In reading this memoir, I was delighted to learn some Atlanta history that I probably should have known before now. For instance, civic and political leader John Wesley Dobbs, grandfather of the late Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor, was said to the originator of the term “Sweet Auburn.” Dr. King Jr. grew up in the Auburn Avenue area, which was and is a symbol of black pride in the city. Big Bethel, which is decorated with the words “Jesus Saves” on its tower, was the site of Morris Brown College’s first classes.

While she was in high school, Hunter-Gault and her family lived in Alaska. I wonder if she could see Russia from her house. (Shout out to Gov. Palin!) Jokes aside, maybe moose meat ain’t all that bad. Hunter-Gault described sampling and actually enjoying it. Her grandmother prepared it by marinating it with vinegar and onions and “cooking the stew out of it.”

Hunter Gault also talked about her decision to pledge Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., which is, of course, the best sorority in the world! Of course, I’m bias! (OO-OOP MY SORORS!) “They represented the kind of woman I wanted to be: soft and appealing, clear-headed and strong without being strident. And I liked the fact that they seemed to have steady relationships with their boyfriends.”

When it came time to endure the jeering, taunting and even a gun-toting madman as she started her life at UGA, the voice of her grandmother reciting the Twenty-Third Psalm comforted her. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me.”

I don’t know what’s in store this historic election and I don’t want to jinx anything, but even Hunter-Gault said she believes an aura surrounds Barack Obama. And a lady said to me yesterday that she feels that like our ancestors(a “cloud of witnesses” if you will) are gathering around here to see…it’s been a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come…

Any thoughts?

P.S. Don’t forget to vote early. It ain’t a done deal yet! Barack the Vote!!!

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The Lord Blessed Me With A House!

Hello World!!!

As of this month, I have owned my modest townhome for seven years…In this time of economic confusion,  I don’t see this feat as a minor blessing – Particularly since just months after closing on my first home, I lost my job…About a year after that, I still hadn’t found a job in my field and my roommate moved out…It was a trying time for sure, but the Lord brought me through, and here I am seven years later…

This may sound like hocus pocus but about a year before I closed on my townhome, on the morning of my birthday, the Lord revealed to me that I would be a homeowner…I don’t know how this happens, but sometimes although I don’t hear audible words, I sense that the Lord is speaking to me…This was one of those times…I sensed this revelation as I read the book Dancing in the Arms of God by Connie Neal.  (By the way, it’s a great book if you want to know how to develop a personal relationship with God!) At this time of my life, I wasn’t very making very much money at all so I wondered how this would happen…(Not that I’m rolling in the dough now…but I am doing better – praise God!)

There is an African proverb that states, “When you pray, move your feet.” After praying about the matter and coming to the conclusion that I had heard from God, I got moving. I began researching how to buy a home and even took a one-day seminar about buying a home, I talked with a friend who works in budget counseling about the costs of maintaining a home, and I started saving up my down payment money.

A few months later, I interviewed a woman for an article I was writing about her son who had won several scholarships to college. While I was at her home, I told her that I thought her new home was beautiful and that I was planning to start looking for my own home. She told me that through God’s favor, she was able to buy her lovely home although she had never thought she could afford a home as nice as that one. Then, she added that she rarely told the story of how she got the home to anyone. However, she said, to those to which she choose to tell the story, each one was able to get a home in spite of difficult circumstances…Finally, she gave me the name and contact information for her mortgage lender…My father said that the only way that you know that someone has truly prophesied is if the prophesy comes true…I called that mortgage lender…and you know the rest of the story…

This is a nice example of how the Lord has worked in my life. But as people are losing their homes all over the country, I wonder, if they, too, felt the Lord had blessed them with their homes in spite of unfavorable circumstances…I also wonder in light of “The Prosperity Gospel,” have many of us thought we heard from God when it was really just wishful thinking? Read this article below. It appeared in Time magazine on Oct. 3.

Maybe We Should Blame God for the Subprime Mess

Has the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants — and hence, victims — of the current financial crisis? That’s what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity’s central promise — that God will “make a way” for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe “God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house.” The results, he says, “were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers.”

Others think he may be right. Says Anthea Butler, an expert in Pentecostalism at the University of Rochester in New York: “The pastor’s not gonna say, ‘Go down to Wachovia and get a loan,’ but I have heard, ‘Even if you have a poor credit rating, God can still bless you — if you put some faith out there [that is, make a big donation to the church], you’ll get that house or that car or that apartment.’ ” Adds J. Lee Grady, editor of the magazine Charisma: “It definitely goes on, that a preacher might say, ‘If you give this offering, God will give you a house.’ And if they did get the house, people did think that it was an answer to prayer, when in fact it was really bad banking policy.” If so, the situation offers a look at how a native-born faith built partially on American economic optimism entered into a toxic symbiosis with a pathological market.

Although a type of Pentecostalism, Prosperity theology adds a distinctive layer of supernatural positive thinking. Adherents will reap rewards if they prove their faith to God by contributing heavily to their churches, remaining mentally and verbally upbeat and concentrating on divine promises of worldly bounty supposedly strewn throughout the Bible. Critics call it a thinly disguised pastor-enrichment scam. Other experts, like Walton, note that for all its faults, the theology can empower people who have been taught to see themselves as financially or even culturally useless to feel they are “worthy of having more and doing more and being more.” In some cases the philosophy has matured with its practitioners, encouraging good financial habits and entrepreneurship.

But Walton suggests that a decade’s worth of ever easier credit acted like a drug in Prosperity’s bloodstream. “The economic boom ’90s and financial overextensions of the new millennium contributed to the success of the Prosperity message,” he wrote recently on his personal blog as well as on the website Religion Dispatches. And not positively. “Narratives of how ‘God blessed me with my first house despite my credit’ were common. Sermons declaring ‘It’s your season to overflow’ supplanted messages of economic sobriety,” and “little attention was paid to … the dangers of using one’s home equity as an ATM to subsidize cars, clothes and vacations.”

With the bubble burst, Walton and Butler assume that Prosperity congregants have taken a disproportionate hit, and they are curious as to how their churches will respond. Butler thinks some of the flashier ministries will shrink along with their congregants’ fortunes. Says Walton: “You would think that the current economic conditions would undercut their theology.” But he predicts they will persevere, since God’s earthly largesse is just as attractive when one is behind the economic eight ball.

A recent publicly posted testimony by a congregant at the Brownsville Assembly of God, near Pensacola, Fla., seems to confirm his intuition. Brownsville is not even a classic Prosperity congregation — it relies more on the anointing of its pastors than on Scriptural promises of God. But the believer’s note to his minister illustrates how magical thinking can prevail even after the mortgage blade has dropped. “Last Sunday,” it read, “You said if anyone needed a miracle to come up. So I did. I was receiving foreclosure papers, so I asked you to anoint a picture of my home and you did and your wife joined with you in prayer as I cried. I went home feeling something good was going to happen. On Friday the 5th of September I got a phone call from my mortgage company and they came up with a new payment for the next 3 months of only $200. My mortgage is usually $1,020. Praise God for his Mercy & Grace.”

So this article,  I think, can lead to some interesting discussion at our churches…How do know that we have truly heard from God? Does God “bless our mess?” Does God call for us to throw reason out of the window when He has revealed something to us? For goodness sake, why do people always say they are “blessed and highly favored,” when life is really sucking for them – at least at the moment – I swear…Does getting blessed by God always follow a large donation to our church? I’m sure that you can think of your own questions. Let the commentary begin…

Any thoughts?

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I’s Married Now!!!

Hello World!!!

I’s married now…Just Kidding! But I got your attention, didn’t I? Since Shug Avery shouted those words in one of my all-time favorite movies, “The Color Purple,” I have been waiting to say them. Maybe I will have the opportunity one day to shout those words about me and my huzzband! But for today, that hasn’t happened…

But nevertheless, it gives me great pleasure to say that on Saturday, Oct. 18, I will have the pleasure, God willing, to watch one of my dear sorors and friend, Renee, and one of the luckiest men alive, Lincoln, be joined in holy matrimony. Marriage is, indeed, a gift from God, and I’m glad that my girl is finally ready to receive her gift!

It is with her permission that I dedicate today’s post to my friend and her upcoming wedding and marriage. I met Renee about 10 years ago….I cannot really remember exactly when I met her, but from the moment I saw her effervescent smile and heard her high-pitched, raucous laugh, I knew she would be my friend.  She is one of the few people that I know that “to know her is to love her,” and I know why Lincoln was immediately smitten with her when he met her at a speed dating event some years ago. (Yes ladies, it can happen anywhere…)        

I almost have never seen her without a smile on her face, and she is an attorney of all things! In fact, my father, who has noticed her natural agreeableness, said her joy is a gift from God, and I believe that is true. A friend once mentioned to me that she had seen Renee cry once. My eyes widened and my mouth fell open in amazement. Apparently it took a few minutes for my friend to actually notice she was crying though because even as she cried, she was smiling. Ain’t that somethin’?

I know Renee is getting married not dying, but I will miss her on the single girl jaunts to Old School Second Saturday, Agave, Omega (Gotta Love the Bruhs!) cookouts and anywhere we darn well pleased…Oh well…I wonder if she will still be available to ride out on our vacations. At one point, we had a crew of five that vacationed together. Now that number has dwindled down to two (at least as of Saturday)…the rest are married…I wonder if she will still send out frantic e-mails at the end of her workday asking folk to meet her for an after work drink or will she have to head immediately home to her huzzband….I wonder if I will be able to call her late at night or will that now be couple time…    

Okay, you’ve probably guessed it…I’m elated for Renee and Lincoln, but I’m a little sad for me…But thankfully, I’m mostly elated for them. In fact, I want to share a poem I once read in a wedding program that I think applies here.

Love One Another

Love one another, but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup, but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone.
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together.
For the pillars of the temple stand apart.
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

Khalil Gibran

 

Also, I wanted to insert a video of a love song I hope we get to dance to at their wedding reception – probably not, but that’s okay.  I know this is a song I hope to lip synch with my huzzband on our wedding night.  Of course, I will be Margie and he (where are you?) will be Ray Charles. I hope y’all enjoy it….

One time for Renee, Two times for Lincoln, Three Times for Renee & Lincoln. If you know the happy couple, feel free to wish them well here. If don’t know the couple but are a fan of black love, drop a line.

Any thoughts?

P.S. For the rors that will be in the house on Saturday, you may want to brush up on this song…