JAMYE

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The Need to Take Spiritual Inventory

The Need to Take Spiritual Inventory

  In her sermon, “Prophets for a New Day,” the late Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon writes that from time to time, we have to take a “spiritual inventory;” i.e., we must review what we are doing and if what we are doing is the will of God.

  Taking such an inventory is a risk if we are truly serious, because so often, what we are doing, and what God wants us to do, sent us here to do, are…

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Faith Leaders Breakfast

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Believing We Can Do All Things

Believing We Can Do All Things

By Susan K. Smith,

Sometimes, we struggle with believing in the capacity of humans to transcend obstacles which pop up in the journey of life.

People born without arms and hands learn to eat and drive with their feet. I recently watched a video of a teen born without hands or legs dance.

Beethoven was reportedly deaf; Handel went…

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Rev. Sekou And The Seal Breakers

Rev. Sekou And The Seal Breakers

The horns burst, the voices wail and, as if about to launch into a sermon, this author, activist, intellectual, pastor and singer introduces himself: “My name is Rev. Sekou and these are the Seal Breakers, now they from Brooklyn.” He points to his band and continues, “but I was raised in in a little old place called Zent, Arkansas that’s got about 11 houses and 35 people, and they’d work from…

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Womanist Taught Us: Episode 1 – Rev. Dr. Velda Love JOIN THE MILLENNIAL WOMANIST PROJECT AND HOSTS, MIN. GABBY CUDJOE WILKES AND MIN. ESTEE NENA DILLARD FOR 

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When You Are At the Bottom of the Well

When You Are At the Bottom of the Well

By Susan K. Smith,

In his 1992 book, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism, the late legal scholar Derrick Bell, the first tenured professor at Harvard Law School who gave up his position to protest that institution’s hiring practices, presents an intriguing story.

Bell objected to Harvard’s not having a black female on its tenured faculty. In 1990, he took an unpaid leave of…

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Recognizing our Unconscious Bitterness

Recognizing our Unconscious Bitterness

By Susan K. Smith

  In spite of the power and necessity of the “MeToo” movement, I have found that I am wrestling with what Dr. Martin Luther King called “unconscious bitterness” toward white women. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. King writes about he realizes that his children, as they learn how this world regards them because of the color of their skin, their personalities…

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Using Love to Fight Fear #TuesdayMeditation

By Susan K. Smith,   A natural answer to the question, “What is the opposite of love?” would be “hate,” but the Rev. William Barber says that the opposite of “love” is “fear.” The two concepts of love and fear are juxtaposed in 1 John 18. The writer makes it clear that the two cannot exist in the same space; if one fears a person, one cannot love that person and if one cannot love another person,…

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Walking with Our Eyes Clenched Shut

Walking with Our Eyes Clenched Shut

By Susan K. Smith, There are some things in our lives which are so traumatic, so painful, and so uncomfortable to even think about, much less look at straight-on, that many of us simply refuse to look at them. We in essence walk through life with our eyes clenched shut, refusing to deal with our own issues, and in so doing, we rob ourselves of the liberation which comes when we see what God has…

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Issues of Faith: Dr. Teresa Smallwood Activist, scholar Teresa Smallwood leads Public Theology & Racial Justice Collaborative @VUDivinity Upcoming Events Mobile Course in Public Theology and Activism Summer Institute: Public Theology, Racial Justice, and the Fight for Democracy

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African Cosmologies: Spiritual Reflections On The ‘Black Panther’ Movie

African Cosmologies: Spiritual Reflections On The ‘Black Panther’ Movie

By Yolanda Pierce, Yes, Wakanda is a fictional place and “Black Panther” is “just” a film, but the spiritual imagination that undergirds the movie can be an opportunity for learning, and even a fostering of faith in the idea that we can build a better world, if we are willing. In a real world that has so maligned black peoples and the continent of Africa, and questioned if any good can ever come…

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Rev. Dr. Heber Brown, III discusses Russia and Social Inequality as an Issue of National Security Rev. Dr. Heber Brown, III, pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church and co-founder of Baltimore United for Change…

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The Gift Given Through Suffering #TuesdayMeditation

By Susan K. Smith, There are times when the personal suffering endured by people is so immense, so deep, that it violates our limited capacity to comprehend. We don’t like to suffer and we don’t like to see others suffer. It is comforting, in a way, to distance ourselves from the suffering of others because, from a distance, the suffering of others is watered down. We can minimize the pain of…

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James Cone’s answer to the blue-eyed Jesus

James Cone’s answer to the blue-eyed Jesus

By Carl W. Kenney II, The painting of Jesus hung on a wall in the hallway between my bedroom and the bathroom. The eyes of the blue -eyed Jesus glared at me as a reminder of submission. He wasn’t there to evoke images of my liberation. He was there to symbolize white supremacy. Most black people my age remember that picture. It was part of the trinity – Jesus, President John F. Kennedy and Dr.…

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Bennett Ave. by Sharon Irving Singer | Songwriter | Worship Leader | Poet | Rapper | Actress | Voice Over Artist | Spreader of Holy Mischief Connect with Sharon: Instagram – @sharonirvingmusic  Twitter – @sharonirving

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The Power of Embarrassment #TuesdayMeditation

By Susan K. Smith,   When I was a child, I think I went overboard in trying to be “good.” I had lived in foster care for a while, and after whatever it was that had caused that situation was corrected, my mother came and got me, married, and we began a new life. I never felt “good enough.” The man my mother married adopted me so that I would at least have the same last name as did my other…

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I Will Not Be Silent – Rev. Dr. Linda Thomas

I Will Not Be Silent – Rev. Dr. Linda Thomas

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is being remembered today – on this, the national holiday that bears his name – and among his many gifts that I hope to lift up today, that of ‘truth-teller’ is one of the big ones. In a day when thirty-year-old men stalking teenage girls isn’t sexual abuse, where racism isn’t racism, and where a sitting president of the United States makes an average of 5.6…

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