The Twelve Steps to Power Through Spiritual Renewal

Life, even as a Christian, is a journey.  Ahead of us as travelers are pathways, both health and infirmity, difficulties and dangers, highs and lows, joys and sorrows, pain and privilege, success and failure, wealth and poverty.  At the root of every human hope is the quest for the good life, living large.  The Greek word, zoe, means life at its best.  It is actualizing sheer joy, that intangible commodity that overrides the temporary condition of life and transcending it with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  The up side of each of these adverbs is of no problem to us; it is living with the downside that is difficult.  At the moment of challenge and difficulty, we need answers, rapidly to address the failure. To fail is not the same as being a failure, for one will experience many failings in life but still be far from totally washed out.  To fail is not the disgrace everyone has portrayed it to be.  For to err is to do nothing more than be human.  Failure is only a temporary setback, establishing a tremendous set-up for a comeback!  Nothing worthwhile is ever achieved without running the risk of failure or difficulty.  Developing ones spirit is the empowering perspective of human life and the Holy Spirit.  God’s presence is power to brought to bear in the world.

A translation of the Hebrew word ruach and the Greek work pneuma is “wind,” “breath,” or “spirit” depending upon the context.  Both the Hebrew-based and the Greek-based texts (both Testaments) deploy the spirit of both God and of human beings.  In His conversation  Nicodemus sought[i] Jesus said that the Spirit is like the wind in that one cannot see it but one can see its effects. This is true of both the Spirit of God and the spirit of a human being. Christ like or to “put on Christ”[ii] is Christians like everything else need to make a fresh start, refresh, renew, revival, reshaping.  We look at our bodies and believe we need to trim weight, hair, or ____.  Review relationships and decide upon updating old valued friendships that were long forgotten, trading them for damaging friendships.  , Losing, casting away, and saying “no” to someone with whom we believe we are in love is akin to the woeful experience of the “dark night of the soul” in spiritual mysticism. The dark night of the soul in spiritual mysticism is John of the Cross’ thesis of that stage in which the spiritual person suffers great trials, by reason not so much of the aridness that they suffer, as the fear they have of being lost on the road. Dark nights are times in which we do not feel the presence and the goodness of God. This feeling of lostness tricks the mind into believing that all happiness, good fortune, and blessings are gone for them because there is no more pleasure in the remaining pleasures of life as God gives. With the dark night of the soul one experiences an inability to even pray as normally or to pray at all. Separation from that which is damaging provides time to heal and to rebound.

This spirituality is grounded in personal prayer. Personal prayer, not just when things are not going our way, but when they are going our way, has to be a lifestyle if we ever hope to find out the purpose and the meaning of our lives in relationship to God. Without personal prayer, you cannot be an integrated Christian and without personal prayer, you cannot have an integrated family.

What these pilgrims go there for is to ask God, through their prayers, to help them change their attitude about the problems they have. They ask God to give them acceptance of the problem; they ask God to help better their personal situations and their family situations at home.

We, as Christians, have grown up hearing the expression more things are brought about through prayer than this world dreams of. That is true. St. Paul constantly reminded us, as did Christ, the value of praying constantly so that we would receive the insights, through

For the person who forces themselves from a damaging relationship full of futile illicit sex, they feel that there is no good substitute for the mate that they have lost, yet, that very mate was brutal, damaging, exploitative, abusive, and obsessive. Losing you’re a cherished possession upon which you depend can be your dark night of the soul. Even when that possession is money, power, sex, an unhealthy relationship or even a good relationship, when the dependency upon it is ethically unbalanced, The dry spells without this abusive person is good for you, but you still want it, because it is better than the barrenness of loneliness and isolation. You know that you are better without a mate who is damaging to the soul and spirit, but you talk yourself into believing that the injury you experience is not as unpleasant as the terror you fear.

One great approach to abandonment that is helpful is the twelve-step-like approach. The Twelve Step program[[1]] has developed into a method, if followed, of teaching people how to become fully human.   The steps are very spiritual. Each step must be followed. The first step is the toughest of any. You can not move forward without accepting and doing step number one.

The Twelve Steps[[1]]:

1. Admit to being powerless over the addiction to the bad relationship, and that your life has become unmanageable;
2. Come to a belief in a power, God, greater than yourself to restore you to sanity;
3. Make a decision to turn your will and way of life to God;
   1. Search yourself and fearlessly take a moral inventory of yourself and your life as it is today;
   2. Admit to God and yourself those wrongs;
      1. Become at a state of readiness to ask and depend upon God to remove the shortcomings of your life;
      2. Now ask God to remove the shortcomings of your life;
      3. Make a list of all persons that you have harmed, and make reparations to those persons;
      4. Make direct amends to the people who you have hurt and injured;
      5. Continue to take a personal inventory and repair the wrongs, promptly;
         1. Seek through prayer and meditation to improve your conscious contact with God, and pray for God’s will in your life—not your own will;
         2. Have a spiritual awakening!

When we are preoccupied with God, darkness becomes light and bitterness sweet. Your faith in God can show you the beauty of life away from even the most bittersweet, gruesome experience. Your faith in God will be your comfort and rescue from that abandonment you experience when you cut your losses. Don’t throw away a good investment to redeem a bad investment. You can only lose more by plunging deeper into the wasteland of the seemingly intoxicating pleasures of an addictive, hot, illicit sexual relationship that is outside of the promised gift of God. This is not in concert with God’s will for your life. It is faith that will lead us out of darkness into the marvelous light with great rewards.

Galatians 5:16 Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.

Galatians 5:22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.

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1[i]

[ii][ii] 1 Corinthians  , New Living Translation (NLT)

[[iii]]The twelve-step program was first published in 1939 by psychologists, Dr. William James, Dr. Carl Yung, and religious leaders, Dr. Frank Buchman and Samuel Shoemaker. The twelve-step program was first used by Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and many others.

[[iv]]Alcoholics Anonymous, First Edition, 59-60.

A Primer on Youth Dating Violence

A Primer on Youth Dating Violence

By Pastor Jacquelyn Donald-Mims, D. Min., Pastor of Imani Community Church

Chaplain, Austin Police Department

written January 24, 2005

Violent behavior is too often one tragic and unnecessary social factor in youthful dating couples.  Most frequently the violence is against young women victims between the ages of twelve and eighteen at the hand of male offenders who are acquaintances, friends, or intimate partners. Dating violence is the perpetration or threat of an act of violence including an intentional sexual, physical or psychological attack, by one member of a couple on another within the context of dating or courtship (D. B. Sugarman, and G. T. Hotaling, Violence in Dating Relationships, New York: Praeger; 1989:3-32.). It includes all forms of sexual assault, physical violence, and verbal or emotional abuse. The prevalence of violence is most pronounced,with 48 to 65 percent of youths, especially females having experienced such aggression.  One’s faith should never be interpreted to imply tolerance, yet Christian and some other religious women are often misinformed, feeling mandated by Scripture to remain in abusive relationships, to “submit” to their man as “head of the relationship” or to “turn the other cheek,” or other inspired texts.

Abusers don’t just automatically and magically stop. Once violent abuse begins in a relationship, it usually gets worse unless the abuser submits to some form of psychological counseling intervention, anger management, and battery control to break their violence pattern. Abusers are not helpless, but highly selective in choosing a weaker, more vulnerable mate as their target. This continuing pattern of abuse from previous relationships spills over into each successive relationship, and usually gets progressively worse. Rather than ending the relationship, young women victims, thinking the relationship will improve, often rationalize that having a bad boyfriend is better than no boyfriend at all. Female victims mistakenly and naively hope the abuse will stop and the boyfriend will change. She tends to blame herself, striving to be a better girlfriend.  Young women are lured by the sweetness of making-up, apologies and boyfriend’s gifts. She often confuses possessiveness and jealousy with attraction.  Parents must act assertively and promptly to remove youth from potentially abusive relationship as a preventative measure at the moment of any evident sign, large or small. The community through relevant forums, the church through sermon teachings, seminars and public prayers against violence, and parents in heart-to-heart talks with their youth can foster prevention of tragedies to sensitize potential victims to heightened awareness of their vulnerability, and to hold perpetrators of abuse accountable.  As a component of school systems’ sex education and other stand-alone programs, socialization skill building should include strong elemental teaching about dating violence avoidance and other prevention of criminal behavior.

Physical abuse includes any hurtful or intimidating contact like pushing, slapping, choking, punching, kicking, biting, burning, hair pulling, and threats with and actual use of a weapon, or forcibly confinement.  Emotional abuse is sexual abuse, jealousy, intimidation, controlling demands, stalking, threats, insults, demeaning profanity, terrorizing, property destruction, date rape drug use, isolation from friends, parents, and supportive people.  Perpetrators of abuse undermine the victim to control or create exclusivity in the relationship, ostracize, condemn, and deplete the victim’s self-esteem.  The aggressor’s environment is often alcohol, drug use; the male’s assumption of a power role, requiring inequality in the dating scheme, or modeling unacceptable behavior of fathers or males observed elsewhere (P. A. Gwartney-Gibbs, J. Stockard, and S. Bohmer, Learning Courtship Aggression, Family Relations1987; 36:276-282.).  Violence occurs across national, cultural, racial, and religious boundaries.

The best and most influential teacher of responsible and healthy dating is by parents to their youth in the home.  Parents enunciating clear expectations about dating to include resistance from subjection or perpetration of abuse is a critical prerequisite to permitting their youth to date. Knowing well the parents of your child’s date, their tolerance for abuse, familiarity with the criminal history of your youth’s suitor, and the suitor’s attitude of acceptance or defense of violence, are non-negotiable prior to permitting dating. Teach youths to take all threats seriously, to avoid confusing love with a partner who is obsessed with dominating and controlling.  Modeling healthy relationship behavior that shows respect between dating and married adult partners at home, reinforces correct teaching, and is the most influential.

Our active listening to youth can detect cries for help. At every chance give youth opportunities to freely talk about dating issues and be approachable for questions. Help for victims can come from any observer aware of abuse to obtain flight to safety, effective referrals to the police or legal advocacy, the violence and rape hotline, support groups, and others appropriate service.  Everyone in the process must speak out, seek help, never tolerate the slightest abuse, protect the victim and never protect perpetrators of abuse because it’s a crime.

Inclusiveness Widens the Circle

‘And it shall come to pass . . . I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy’ Joel 2.28.

Tradition of the Christian church with an inclusive Savior has remarkably and unfortunately often influenced spiritual exclusion of others’ divine calling. Women’s religious experience as clergy has represented a growing edge for the church.  God’s calling is a profound, yet deeper, more subtle mystery of power, faith and spiritual journey.

One genuine pioneering soul was Jarena Lee, born in 1783 at Cape May, New Jersey. In 1819, when social and religious custom prohibited women, Lee became the first woman authorized to preach by Richard Allen, first bishop and founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, also the first Black denomination in America. Her authorization did not come easy, for Lee approached the bishop for eight years, often at denominational conferences, before she was granted permission. But she continued to spontaneously exhort, traveling a circuit until she finally prevailed about God’s compulsion that her calling was as authentic as any other preacher. Encountering hostility to her ministry as a black and a woman, in one year alone, Lee traveled 2,325 miles, largely on foot, preached 178 sermons and distributed over two-thousand of her Religious Experience and Journal.

Today, the universal church, not just African Methodists, is witnessing an inversion of church tradition, which has formerly operated in hierarchical patterns with males and clergy at the top and females and laity at the bottom. Dominated by men for centuries, it is now sensing the impact of new models of ministry accompanying the influx of women in the pulpit. Now, women pastor mega-churches, multi-staff churches, small and rural churches constituting over 70% of American congregations and parishioners, and they lead specialized ministries like Christian education.  This turbulent reality promises both rewards and beauty of diversity. Rosemary Radford Ruether poses “…women, by their very presence, reshape the ministry into forms that are more open, pluralistic and dialogic”.

Responding to God’s call is a pilgrimage, for women, with inimitable landmarks involving self-awareness, expectations to male standards, hurts and joys, inspection of her gifts, challenges to her leadership/authority, soul-searching dual workload – rarely being discharged from her servant role of wife, housekeeper and, fulfilling the expectations of a “stay-at-home mom”.  Often the luxury of administrative and emotional support enjoyed by her counterparts escape her. She overcomes barriers to receptiveness among both male and female congregants.  Still, she persists obediently to do God’s will, relishing moments to be appreciated even in her imperfection, by community and congregation – to share their unconditional love.

I was enchanted upon reading Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross; an excellent historical legend about a woman who enters Rome and gains entrance to the papal throne as Pope John for two years, after assuming the identity of her older slain brother after A.D. 800.  Educated, a scholar in Greek, spiritual, intelligent, motivated by ambitious persistence, punctuated with self-doubt, though she would have been forbidden the priesthood, in disguise, she excels in it, in spite of prejudices, problems and pressures.

Presently, the top ten denominations have over 4,000 ordained women – and more: Vashti Murphy McKinsey, Sarah Davis and Carolyn Guidry, three Black women AME bishops elected since 2000 among twenty worldwide.  Further, in 1984, Leontine Kelly became the first Black woman bishop of a major denomination (United Methodist); now retired and replaced by a second generation of women bishops among fifty. Women can be themselves, “fearfully and wonderfully”, leading through the grace of their differences counted as God’s gifts, delivering God’s kingdom to the church’s diverse humanity.

Yet, the essence of God’s call to ministry is not in being a pope, a bishop, presiding elder, superintendent, or pastor to the rich, famous or big city downtown church, nor are these the marks of success.  Female or male, God’s calling is to convince a dying world about a living Savior.  She is God’s anointed modeling Christ, who was servant of all, filling needs and bringing joy.  She does what Jesus would do; encouraging young people, winning souls, Baptizing into the faith-fellowship, transforming lives and behaviors, seeing the fulfillment of her teachings, nourishing young couples in their marriages, burying the dead, comforting families, and wiping the brow of the sick  – that’s ministry – delivering God’s love.  She brings a different openness, vulnerability, sensitivity, skill and ministry of presence, advocating for others like Jesus who protected and forgave the condemned from a stoning mob, dined at the homes of the sinful, and raised the dead. Black women clergy inclusiveness is yet another aspect of challenge and celebration within the heritage, power and culture of African Americans during Black History Month; an observance initiated by historian, Carter G. Woodson; first slave son earning a Harvard University Ph.D. The delightful intersection of Lent clarifies God’s role as intimate, unique savior and liberator of faithful people who intervenes, as all Christians reflect with a sense of grace upon their mortality and sin, and the restorative, redemptive power of God that saves women and men.

February 11, 2005

“An Amazing Story Worth Knowing”

For thousands of Baby Boomers and Busters,  it was not unusual to graduate from high school having never seen a photograph or read a story of intrigue about an African American in a single textbook. Believing that ‘forgetting ones past, one is destined to repeat it’, my professor, Lula Averhart taught a life-changing high school Negro History course, demanding students receive credit for it. Later, my white freshman American History professor assigned the textbook Slavery to Freedom by preeminent African American historian, John Hope Franklin that wonderfully presented a balanced racially inclusive account.

Today, most mistakenly associate African American History Month only with the two most prominent African Americans who profoundly impacted human rights in this century, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. But the African American History celebration long predated them and there are thousands of others truly worth mentioning. That’s why in 1926, Dr. Carter G. Woodson started the observation of Negro History Week that ultimately expanded in 1976 to a full month and beyond the Black  community. February mark the celebration honoring Frederick Douglass and Langston Hughes’ birthdays whose influence impacted Blacks. After his delayed high school matriculation until age twenty, with a resolve for excellence, Woodson ultimately earned a Ph.D. in history from Harvard. It disturbed him that history books contained no contributions of Black Americans or reflected them negatively. Woodson brought national attention to little known events and people, chronicled Blacks’ surprising survival even strategically engineering their own emancipation from slavery. He noted in his 1933 The Miseducation of the Negro that afflictions shaped this “stormy Monday” people for excellence and with unmerited suffering they “overcome the odds which is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.”

Woodson believed “in the long run, there is not much discrimination against superior talent” in any walk of life including the first 22 Blacks elected to the U.S. Congress that has now grown to 40 representing America’s most major areas. Today, 57.1% of big city black mayors have been elected without a black majority starting from the first Black mayors of major cities in 1967 with Gary’s Richard Hatcher and Cleveland’s Carl Stokes, ushering today’s generation including Atlanta’s Shirley Franklin.

America’s first black Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was meaningful for lawmakers, Judge Constance Baker Motley, Dr. C. DeLores Tucker, Pennsylvania Secretary of State, Shirley Chisholm first black U.S. Congresswoman and Texas’ Barbara Jordan.

Historians began to document observations of African Americans thrust into the forefront in the arts, sports, education, politics, business, religion, medicine, the judiciary, government and social justice. From abolitionist Denmark Vessey, Fannie Lou Hamer, Phyllis Wheatley, Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, Sojourner Truth, who conducted the Underground Railroad and W.E.B. DuBois, the first black to earn a PhD from Harvard. William Dawson, in 1931 organized the School of Music at Tuskegee and Fisk and wrote for the Negro Symphony and Thomas Dorsey created Gospel music.  We appreciate Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Women, one of many women Civil Rights movement leaders and Medgar Evers, a martyr. Mega preachers surfaced including “Black Harry” Hosier, AME church founder Richard Allen, and Biblical scholars Charles Copher, Cain Hope Felder, Jacquelyn Grant and Renita Weems. Unique and prestigious in the arts were musicians Count Basie, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, songsters Billie Holliday, Lena Horne, Mahalia Jackson, contralto Marian Anderson and hit recording producers Barry Gordy, Quincy Jones and Russell Simmons. Harlem Renaissance geniuses Zora Neal Hurston, Paul Robson, poet laureates Amiri Baraka, Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Gwendolyn Brooks influenced the world, and in movies Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Portier paved the way for future Academy Award conferrals to Denzel Washington, Halle Berry and Jamie Foxx. Students Artherine Lucy and Vivian Malone risked their lives, leading to Brown vs. the Board of Education, impacting public schools and higher education.

In business centigenarian millionaire A. G. Gaston in insurance-banking, beautician Madame C. J. Walker, attorneys Willie Gary, Johnny Cochran, publishers Earl Graves, John H. Johnson and though never wealthy, genius inventor George Washington Carver influenced the world.  In 1943, Mary McLeod Bethune joined Dr. Frederick D. Patterson in urging fellow black college presidents to raise money “appealing to the national conscience” and incorporated the 39-member United Negro College Fund.

The tragedy of African Americans being omitted from historical records worked in God’s divine providence, transforming weakness to strength. Everything has purpose; “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, and are called according to His purpose” Romans 8:28. Respectable recognition of a storied Black people has enabled the world to share our rich heritage. To God’s glory, the real beauty is that whites and Blacks learned and grew closer together – and that’s good news worth sharing.

Written February 21, 2006

“Continuing the Dream, Continuing the Fight!”

Midway through the spellbinding seven hour November 2^nd Rosa Parks funeral litany of notables’ testimonials, eulogies and prayers, giving praises to God for her landmark life, Mary, my former coworker and beloved friend from Houston telephoned me to say, “Thanks, for your friendship; I never realized someone paid such a costly price”.  At 42, Parks placed her life on the line in the dawn of Advent 50 years ago, that Thursday, December 1, 1955, in her innocuous refusal to relinquish her seat to a white male on a Montgomery public bus amid the tumultuous era of white terrorism.  With the gender bias of that day, that sole event catapulted, not Parks but Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into the forefront of the debut of the Civil Rights Movement and its inaugural thirteen month bus boycott. With only minutes to construct his first speech to a church mass meeting, King moved from prolific theological reflection to praxis. Both King and Parks profoundly impacted life, not only for millions of Blacks, but for whites, too. Their genius enabled us to enjoy life’s simple pleasures, friendship, bridging the divide of white America’s severe misunderstanding of God’s divine plan of community.

Would Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. be pleased with the progress towards a beloved community fifty years after the launch of the Civil Rights Movement? African Americans and women still have yet to see our brightest day. The nefarious nature of a separated community impacts every aspect of existential reality – poverty, employment, career advancement, unfair housing, denied credit, police brutality, racial profiling, escalated prison rates, inadequate education, a bruised outlook and self-esteem of Black youth, political under-representation and an endless race to deny others of that which God grants freely, as if it is possible to deplete God’s supply of everything that is good. So King’s dream and his fight must continue in order to build the “beloved community” of universal, unconditional love, forgiveness and nonviolence. Yet, the velvety voice of legendary crooner, Sam Cooke sounds a guarantee, “It’s been a long time coming but I know, a change is ‘gonna come…Oh yes it will.”

We therefore arrive at a distinctive burning question of Dr. King’s birthday: how can Americans and Austinites break down the “dividing walls of hostility”  Dr. King says, “Change only comes by . . . persistently rising up against evil.”  People of color still endure the “double identity” that DuBois described in 1908; viewed with suspicion about ability, character and intelligence, often inflicted with the police’s explosive brand of justice that condemns them to deadly sentencing on city streets, racial epithets, hate speech, lynching, and likely to be devalued when considering the “brightest and best”. Today’s experiences are slightly more subtle than King’s trials of billy clubs, police attack dogs, fire hoses, nuisance incarcerations and ultimate martyrdom.

Never a millionaire or mega-pastor, the embattled preacher, husband, father and Nobel laureate did narrate the sufferings and pain of African Americans to effectively prick the consciousness of white America and “his voice and his vision filled a great void in our nation, and answered our collective longing to become a country that truly lived by its noblest principles.”[1] King’s strong Christian faith ensured him of a transformation in the world and within us; a new world order returning all of humanity to God’s original design of love for God and for one another through a new heart; not the old cold heart of stone. He expected God to deliver on God’s promise of Zoë[2] –”life at its best” via the end product of agape’ love and profound compassion, the ability to “suffer with” the hurting, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Without seeing the whole staircase, a hopeful ‘first step’ has emerged with Austin’s racially diverse clergy uniting to stimulate racial justice, reconciliation and build this beloved community. Clergy will harmonize the richly diverse textures of their ethical voices, grounded in the truths of their collective faiths to resound the hymn d’jour; God’s singular design at creation to love God and others.  King’s reminiscent open letter to “my dear fellow clergy” in his “Letter from Birmingham City Jail”[3], challenges clergy there yesterday and here today, to “create the kind of tension in society that will help [people] rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood”.   The measure of humans “is not where we stand in moments of comfort and convenience but in times of challenge and controversy”, thus clergy can shape enslaved minds and spirits for emancipation from the quixotic systems that cripple quality of life, equity and the reality of caring in this city.   Community is born when each realizes that embodied in others is the numinous, the mystery of the deity, a sui generic to be valued with a certain sense of awe, reverence, substance, and grace.

When? Dr. King’s answer to, “how long” is “not long”. Not as humans measure the stress creating, toe-tapping, impetuous standard of chronos, or calendar time, but in God’s own time, kairos, in the fullness when the time is ripe and right, we anticipate our gaze at a new world order, in faith that “we do not see and the reward of this faith is to see what we do not believe.”[4] Transformation will be in God’s own time and way. Just as Jehosaphat’s singing choir defeated a huge army;  Gideon’s three hundred with trumpets and lamps overtook an enemy of hundreds of thousands; Joshua took Jericho with the ram’s horn and a great shout, so too, a crippling bullet so changed Governor George Wallace to appoint more Blacks to top executive, university and state office ever in history; Vince Young’s tossing and running of a ball changed unlikely hearts to brandish his name on burnt orange shirts; Rosa sat down and Dr. King’s stood up in non-violent marches and inexhaustible speech accomplished the most significant revolution in history – all and more God will use to shake the foundations of the world’s living and thinking.  An era of a total reversal of usual patterns will restrain the strong from overpowering the weak and allow “The wolf to live with the lamb …and a little child shall lead them.”[5] We will learn that each is incomplete without the other, for “we are all one, in Christ Jesus”.[6] Kingdom living moves our center from self to other. “It does not yet appear what we shall be.”[7] Then Dr. King will say as songster, Marvin Gay, “Oh! Mercy, mercy me, things aren’t like they used to be”.

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[1] Martin Luther King Center for Social Change

Born to Rebel

[2] Greek

“Letter from Birmingham City Jail”, 1963

[4] Augustine

[5] Isaiah 11:6

[6] Galatians 3:28.

[7] 1 John 3:2

Written January 9, 2006

Holy Land Spiritual Introspection

My mind races in a different direction this forty-day Lenten season since experiencing my Holy Land spiritual pilgrimage just after Easter last year.  Normally, I’m craving for home during extensive international travel. But not this time. No telling what this trip might unearth. Why shouldn’t I expect it to completely transform my life since the short-lived holy journey of Jesus’ especially his final week on earth revolutionized the world so significantly?  And it was, for me, life-altering just to live to witness Israel in my time and be awarded the precious commodity of time to reflect. Touching the soil of Israel seemed like coming near to God; to taste, to see and to be at home with Jesus, even though I know God is mysteriously omnipresent, having repeatedly tracked me down wherever I am with visitations, especially the encounter of the divine call. Pardon my personal story; but it is impossible to talk about God independent of our own history and context both past, present and cultural.

My reflective trek took place in historically spiritual locations in the forefront of the biblical narrative starting at the Church of the Immaculate Conception of Mary and at Joseph’s church in Nazareth. Then, eating the St. Peter fish of Galilee by day, beholding the breath-taking sights from the heights of Mt. Arbell and Carmel, peering from below the lights of the “city on a hill” by night and communing with the local Yarden, Gamla and the wines reminiscent of the wedding at Cana – I trudged through all of this in search of a word from the Lord all over again. Culminating in the holy city of Jerusalem my emotion was uncontainable in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre within the Old City’s Christian Quarter and the alternate place, the Garden Tomb further east in Jerusalem. The twenty-two fellow pastors’ voices resonated in the Upper Room and in the dungeon or sacred pit beneath Saint-Peter-in-Gallicantu (Cock Crow) Church where Jesus was condemned by the high priest Caiaphas, lowered and held in custody until crucifixion. Journaling, preaching, celebrating baptism renewal in the Jordan and praying enough prayers I hoped for discernment to earnestly resolve anew the tension between clarity and mystification of the awesome divine direction. I stuffed the prayers written on little note papers of my parishioners and my own into the crevices of the women’s prayer section of the Western Wall (the Wailing Wall) that once enclosed Herod’s Second Temple. It became for me, uniquely sacrosanct for inquiring prayer.

Years ago I responded to God’s call as “one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” Luke 12:48.  The pilgrimage magnified the reality of the very diminished impact I could ever have had in comparison to the profound walk and purpose of Jesus.  Fortunately, it is too early to settle the score or measured success. Maybe my story has a happy ending. Maybe it does not. I’ve discovered that’s beside the point. The relevant point is that based on the “substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen”, today, my renewal in Israel has me believing so much in those promises of a prophet’s reward to continue a feeble effort of recommitment.  Yes, I have the audacity expect a reward even in view of my miniscule impact.  If nothing else, my spiritual walk in Israel has magnified the kindness, the generous mercy, the grace and the abounding love of Jesus. So I am trusting God who owns both the happy endings and the undefined outcomes to place my tomorrow in God’s hands.

Dr. Jacquelyn Donald-Mims is the pastor of the Imani Community Church, Austin Texas.

Written 3/27/2009

“One Down, One Big One to Go”

Written 4/13/2007 2:41:00 PM

One down, one big one to go! Now that Don Imus has been silenced, it is high time that the same voices of protest call into accountability popular culture, rappers, and rap / hip-hop production companies which are increasingly enriched by degrading our women using the “B”- word and “ho” in their lyrics.   The rap and hip hop industry’s license to call African American women “hos” should never have been granted.  I still flinch when I hear these disgraceful utterances anywhere; that used to be real fighting words.  My father, a real man of distinction, taught me that his daughter is somebody. So I have a new rap song: “No, I’m Not a Ho” It’s time to demand that our women are respected and sexist, misogynistic language removed from all forms of music and speech within our own Black community. At the same time, we continually wipe the egg off our faces defending this indefensible contradiction to white America. Evasively, we say these degrading words become “affectionate” when used in within the race and in entertainment. Get real! The Imus issue gave focus to a greater Black community problem.

Somehow, Black men in our community calling its women “hos” sounds far from the “Talented Tenth” W.E.B. Dubois projected in 1903when he said, “The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.” DeBois was talking about proud exceptional Black men who through education lead and elevate the own race of people and the masses.  Increasingly, over the last 15 to 20 years, our young Black men in the rap music industry have enjoyed our community’s popular endorsement purchasing thus escalating this music to the top of the charts and gold record status. At the expense of African American woman, it rather than elevate, it has degraded.  Language is power, thus we now experience its conversely disempowering effect. Young pubescent, teen-age and college Black women have been socialized to now expect this moniker as normative. Tolerance of this demeaning language has in effect caused them to lose respect for themselves. It is unnatural to hear young Black women say, as the young Rutgers sophomore basketball player Kia Vaughn said, “I’m not a ho”.  We must teach young black women to rediscover her power to insist she be respected by saying, ‘No”!  Sticks and stones can break our bones, and words really do hurt. Our community has become desensitized to this filth.

So, at least for now Don Imus’ tongue shall cease as a shock jock and trash talker in the mass media.  Both his CBS radio and the MSNBC television simulcast have been cancelled. Senior management of both networks correctly responded with assertive action, albeit a week late and only after the heavy influence of a torrential blast of national outrage for Imus’ scathing insult to ten accomplished young women collegiate basketball players (eight of them were Black).  Everybody knows that money talks.  The green power of leading advertisers shouted the loudest, as consumer products advertising sponsors abandoned their high dollar commitments to Imus’ show; sponsors bolstered by the black special market.

Imus’ remarks were most devastatingly sexist.  Had Imus called his powerful executive level mega-media mogul female boss a “ho”, he would have been fired within nanoseconds that very day he uttered it, rather than a full week later.  But down through the years, Imus has become comfortable and safe as he has strewn sexist insults at Black women, including Gwen Ifill who journalistically covered Bill Clinton when he said: ” “Isn’t The Times wonderful…It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.”  The community voice has finally objected – successfully.

But now, with this new community voice that we’ve discovered, a strongly African American voice, has the power to make things happen like fire a major media talk personality, let that voice now demand that the men in our own race respect Black women.  If it is reprehensible for whites to make sexist insults against our Black women, neither will Black men be permitted to proliferate the exact same filth under the guise of “art”.

This common trend for African American women to be trashed in the mass media is so pernicious and disempowering, especially in the last twenty or so years. MTV aired one Saturday in July 2006, an animation of two Black women clad in bikinis, walking on all fours, dog collars around their necks attached to leashes held by a caricature of Snoop Dogg. The women defecate on the floor. Initially justified as “satire, this piece, “Where My Dogs At?” was only pulled from the airwaves after public outrage.

So what are we as Blacks thinking to allow it?  Perhaps we are so happy that our young black men are making it rich and making it big selling something, anything, even if its offensive trash, that we believe it’s okay. In truth, only in rare exceptions have these young men accomplished college or the aspiration for higher education. A few of these young rappers oscillate between the vulgar music video taping set and the prison cell.  With severely truncated educations and extreme poverty as their backgrounds, they sing about being “locked up.” Their new found ability to make money can’t be allowed to exonerate them to live on that higher plateau by globalization of this demeaning epithet.  W.E.B. Dubois warned us of profiteering; “If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily men…” DuBois, calling education a “difficult and intricate task” insisted that it is the lever to uplift people. He warned “If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down.” Pulling us down is exactly what is happening.

Therefore, in the meantime, while we tackle this major issue of education of our young black men and man-training, let us insist they clean up the language.  Little will be lost in a rapper’s career or in the pop charts with these offensive sexist soubriquets deleted. We must also remember that far at the top of the pipeline are the rap industry owners, people who look most like Imus, who are really the ones getting more filthy rich than the rappers. The wealthy people high in the pipeline that look like me, Black, who perpetuate this ignorance and abuse on Black women do it because they truly enjoy being the first generation beneficiaries of riches and rewards. They are my color but not my kind, so he’s got to be more than Black to be my brother. They could care less about respecting me, my daughters and my sisters; so they get rich at the expense of us African American women.

C. Delores Tucker, America’s and Pennsylvania’s first African-American woman Secretary of State and founder of the first Commission on the Status of Women, was first to distinguished herself in the fight to arrest the proliferation of sexist and misogynistic  lyrics from rap and hip hop music. Tucker’s voice was lonely, joined by only a few including Calvin Butts.  Filthy-mouthed comedians including Red Fox, Richard Prior, Eddie Murphy, Dolomite and others paved the way for this horrific trend when they made big money degrading women as an easy path to success in the otherwise difficult, segregated entertainment business. In 2007, it is time for a revival of Tucker’s advocacy, which died in October 2005. We’ve won very little if we’ve only won the Imus battle. We need to press on to win the bigger sexist, misogyny war within our race.

Ironically, I really like rap and hip hop music, at least the ones that don’t sizzle the earplugs of my IPOD. In some cases the music strongly and correctly protests the injustices of the existential condition of African Americans. I congratulate the extemporaneous poetic talent of the artists.  But, as a self-respecting woman, I am unwilling to tolerate this hate speech as a cheap vehicle to make anyone rich. Especially when there are clean, respectful and moral ways to get rich – it’s called get a job.

Proud black women in volumes from every quadrant of society need to step up and say, “I’m not a ho.” Womanists, Black women theologians, pastors and preachers of every variety must shout “No”! Black sororities must say, “No”! Mothers and educators have to say, “No.” It is a moral issue that African American clergy men must propel to the forefront of protest in defense of its women parishioners, just as rapidly as these men undertake the race issue.  Our entire community must scream loudly and insist that these words go. I have a new song to popularize that’s headed to the top ten record charts: “No, I’m not a ho or a “B”.

Written 4/13/2007 2:41:00 PM