DAY 39ish i saw this prayer/poem/reflection? on my friend Conso's Facebook wall and thought it was too good not to share... Task: Mediate and reflect on the following words as they have meaning for you: Until i encountered the CROSS... i knew confession but did not know repentance, i knew ritual but did not know true worship, i knew guilt and shame but did not know redemption, i knew judgement and condemnation but did [...]
Where on earth do I even start with this topic? “What I want my white friends to know” seems like such a direct attack to some of my closest friends and those who I am still to meet. I absolutely love my friends so how could I write this? Then I thought about how much I really want to say some things and I sat down to type this. First of all I come [...]
"I did not benefit from apartheid, therefore why should I be held liable" # this is just one heck of a common statement that I hear from a lot of my white friends and I find it unwarranted because it lacks intellectual credibility, empathy, responsiveness and a sense of self awareness - "white privilege" is the damn elephant in the room -# as a black man I'm always an immediate suspect, thanks to this stereotype caricature that [...]
so i got a little silly today and i can't even remember why - someone's #firstworldproblems hashtag triggered a Will Smith response version... which then became a 'being spun in a huge circle by someone really strong' version and of course a 'surfing in the ocean when the first wave arrives' one... 8 attempts later and i had a bit of a list... what world problems did you experience today? After Earth, Wild Wild West, [...]
The country where I was born. The ethnic composition of my parents. My gender. What do these things have in common? None of them are sufficient to describe who I am. As human beings, made in God’s image and likeness, we consist of body, soul and spirit. Being a Trinidadian born female whose parents have Indian, Portuguese, Chinese, Spanish and Caucasian ancestors are all factors which impact my body, but not my soul and spirit, [...]
my friend Tsholo had a bit of a p.s. to her first share on racism and i felt like it warranted a post of its own so it didn't get lost - this is a 47 minute video but i encourage you to make some time and watch it because it is so powerful. i am a little scared that the choir will get it and everyone else will make excuses so try and watch [...]
DAYS 36-38 i know, i know, you got me on this one - definitely bitten off more than i can chew... so another weekend Lent Observance to give me a chance to breathe in deeply and spend some more time reflecting than simply writing about reflecting - also i have two preaches on Sunday so it's a bit of a crazy busy weekend... and we're about to run out of 40ish days of Lent but [...]
i wasn't originally thinking of this as a Taboo Topic topic. but then when i started looking on the book of faces for people to write for me and had friends using terms like 'can of worms' and 'Pandora's Box' to describe what i was suggesting, it made me wonder if that is not exactly where it needs to go. is no one speaking about this? having lived in Americaland for the last three years [in diverse and mixed [...]
This is perhaps too long, but I've just been given a platform to vent out years and years worth of frustrations and I'm jumping in head first. But before I begin, let me say that I have way too many white friends to think that white people as a whole are racist, and I don't know if all of what I'm about to say applies to my friends cos I think (or hope) my friends [...]
DAY 35 John 11.35 is often quoted as the shortest verse in the Bible - 'Jesus wept' - but in actual fact that honour should really go to Job 3.2 which simply states, 'He said' [less strokes on a keyboard!] However, 'He said' is a lot less interesting. Task: Take some time to consider this story where Jesus is moved to tears. Take some time today to express some grief for something. It might be [...]