Chair praise with hands clapping---Pastor Kalina Malua Katoa

I find Pastor Kalina to have a special gift for creating calm and bringing us peace as she teaches. I hope that this simple exercise that you can do in your chair brings you some joy. I can't imagine being with her, even on the Web, and not smiling. This is part of a series that Pastor Kalina does, and this series and many of her wonderful sermons can be found on YouTube. 

  

When Nothing is Enough | Stop Being Mean to Yourself!

I think that this young woman has lots of wisdom for us. I often post her videos on this blog, as well as videos that she and her sister and her mother do. These are the videos from Celebrating Appalachia and from thepressleygirls that are on Youtube. Please go to their sites and explore.

I know that many of my friends won't agree with everything that is here, but I'm hoping that people will come to this with open minds and take what is useful to them.

Are we drowning, doggy-paddling, or sharing a boat with others?

This is an alarming image from Central Appalachia, where at least 25 people have been killed in the flooding. When I turned in last night the news reports were saying that at least half of those who have been killed are children.

What does this image recall for you?

A terrible storm hit the year that I was born. My uncles had some feed corn and put it out for the deer, but people were so hungry in their coal patch that they gathered the corn for themselves. A car that was swept down the road in the flood stayed on the berm for more than a decade, a silent reminder that a person had died there and a rusting monument to destruction.

There was the Buffalo Creek Flood in West Virginia in 1972. That happened when three Pittston Coal Company dams burst and over 30 feet of water hit 16 coal towns. They say that 125 people died in that flood, and that over 1100 people were injured, but I believe that the numbers had to have been much higher.

There was Tropical Storm Katrina that hit the Bahamas, the U.S. Gulf Coast and Mexico's Gulf Coast in 2005. That took over 1800 lives. I felt my country shatter then. Hurricane Ida, 2021, took the lives of at least 107 people.

I once did a body search and helped with rebuilding after a flood in Appalachia in the 1980s. You don't want to find bodies, but you also do want to because you know that that is someone's family member and that the dead person deserves a funeral and their family deserves some closure.

Some good person or people have the job of compiling the statistics of lives lost and property destroyed with each of these disasters, I imagine. It must be a very long list. It is not to our credit that when we hear of a disaster far away we so often shrug our shoulders or shake our head or say a prayer and move on.

Like I said, I felt my country shatter with Katrina. Tens of thousands of people and entire regions were abandoned. That happened, and we own that as a society.

The Biden administration and Kentucky's Governor Andy Beshear have been quick to promise help to Kentucky and Central Appalachia, and I'm glad for that. I know that there are people who have risked their lives to help others, and the generosity and solidarity of people in the region in helping one another is always extraordinary.

But I have to ask myself and others why these storms and the fires and the excessive heat are here and getting worse.

I know that Matthew 5:44-45 says "But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust." But doesn't it sometimes seem that the order of things is being turned upside down and that the sun is shining and the rain is falling more on the just and good people, or the folks who are poor and defenseless, while there are people in power who can take joyrides into outer space and live in excess?

An optimist may say that the picture above shows America rising triumphantly out of trouble. Another person might say that with every tragedy---every environmental disaster, every shooting, every person made houseless, every person who can't get a decent and living wage or healthcare or help with the kids or reproductive or racial justice---this country sinks a little deeper.

I have a different kind of optimism, I suppose.

We won't get out of this mess by putting loving our enemies first on our agenda. Before that can happen the people who are most affected by these disasters have to discover their collective strength and solidarity and lead fully honest and authentic lives with one another. The system that we live in cannot handle our collective power, our solidarity, and our honesty. Once we're clear on that and have put away this bad business of exploitation, oppression, and environmental destruction "love" and "enemies" will look much different then they do now and other possibilities will open up.

"Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one." (Matthew 5:37) means right now that we have to name what is killing us and refuse to cooperate with a system that puts profits before people.

I believe that we can do this. I believe that these disasters test us and show us where we need to do some tuning up.

For right now, today, I'm asking that you go to the Appalshop Resources Page and figure out how you can be the most help to the people in Central Appalachia who have been hit by the floods. Please make a donation or see if you can help some other way.

https://appalshop.org/news/appalachian-flood-support-resources    

The Appalachian Apparel Company is doing a fundraiser. Go here to check on them.     

 

"What wonders wait for us around the corner of forever?"

"What wonders wait for us around the corner of forever? What sights we could never have imagined seeing? We will find our answers then, the unseen reality beneath the surface of what we think we see. But in the meantime we will live with the ambiguity, the fragility, the transient nature of history in our generation. We will keep our hands on the wheel. We will stand shoulder to shoulder. We will not let fear slip past us. One day we will know: but another step toward that day is enough for now."

---The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, Native American/Indigenous Ministries of the Episcopal Church

"When we allow people of other races, cultures or religions to be oppressed and marginalized we have become the antithesis of all Jesus taught and lived."

Taken from Nazarenes United for Peace:

"One of the most distressing aspects of the current political and social crisis we are experiencing in the USA is the rising passion of White Christian Nationalism. The virulent racism embraced by folks who claim Christ as their savior and lord denies everything Jesus stood for, what he gave his life to overcome, and what he poured out his Spirit to enable in his Church.

White Christian Nationalism is a reincarnation of what the Roman Emperor Constantine foisted on the Church of Jesus Christ 1,700 years ago. He used the Church to attempt to conquer the world, and to eliminate those who opposed him, who were not like those he preferred. It was grotesque, destructive, and utterly unChristian.

 
When Christians rely on any government to give them permission to 'be Christian' something is terribly awry. When we allow people of other races, cultures or religions to be oppressed and marginalized we have become the antithesis of all Jesus taught and lived.

 
To be holy is to be being perfected in love, for all people, living a transparent holiness, protecting the rights and the welfare of others, even if it is not profitable for us, or if we disagree with their choices...

Co-suffering love, selfless service to others, robust courage to live Christlike lives in a broken world, and the refusal to demonize anyone who differs with us — that is holiness!!" -- Jesse C Middendorf

Something to smile on #13

 

Soap and Water

A circuit preacher was asked to come to dinner by one of the ladies in the church. When he sat down at the table, he noticed that the dishes were the dirtiest that he had ever seen in his life.

“Excuse me, M’aam, but, are you sure these plates are clean?” he asked his hostess as politely as possible.

“They're clean as soap and water can get ‘em,” she says.

Uneasy, but not wanting to be rude, he said an extra-hearty blessing for the meal, and ate what was put before him. It was delicious!

After dinner, the preacher started helping the lady put the plates by the sink.

“Oh, I’ll take care of ‘em! You can just sit yourself down and take it easy, Preacher!”

He sat back and watched with curiosity as she took the plates out to the porch and laid them all out one by one in the afternoon sun. She then put her fingers to her mouth, whistled for the dogs and said, “Here Soap, here Water!” —Lauren Lance with Jackie Allmon.

A Dying Man's Last Wish

There was a man who had worked all his life, had saved all of his money, and was a real miser when it came to his money. Just before he died, he said to his wife, "When I die, I want you to take all my money and put it in the casket with me. I want to take my money to the afterlife with me." And so he got his wife to promise him, with all of her heart, that when he died she would put all of the money into the casket with him.

Well, he died. He was stretched out in the casket, his wife was sitting there - dressed in black, and her friend was sitting next to her. When they finished the ceremony, and just before the undertakers got ready to close the casket, the wife said, "Wait just a moment!" She had a small metal box with her; she came over with the box and put it in the casket. Then the undertakers locked it and took the casket down and they rolled it away.

So her friend said, "Girl, I know you were not foolish enough to put all that money in there with your husband."

The loyal wife replied, "Listen, I'm a Christian; I cannot go back on my word. I promised him that I was going to put that money into the casket with him."

"You mean to tell me you put that money in the casket with him?" “I sure did," said the wife. "I got it all together, put it into my account and wrote him a check... If he can cash it, then he can spend it....

From Journey of a Mountain Woman

He was bent with hard work, hard times, and hard aches, and age had little to do with it, although he was old. He sat beside me on the hillside, I was about seven, and we could see cars in the distance through the shedding autumn leaves. He showed me how to whistle through a blade of grass, but I've long since forgotten. He told me, "I've never rode in a car before. Reckon I never will til the day I die." He never did til that one last time, cause he didn't want to do so. He walked up the railroad on election day, marked his x, accepted a pop and a baloney sandwich and then walked home. But he was a good man. He worked the mules in the logging woods, a mule skinner they called him. He had no education but he was smart with common sense. He worked hard. He couldn't read the Bible but he loved Christ. I was his step grand daughter, no kin atall but he loved me deeply and I loved him. When he was so bent and could hardly walk, I'd take him a candy bar for he loved candy. He would put it in his coat pocket and I knew he would find a solitary moment to enjoy it. I called a neighbor every morning those last days to check on him before I went to school. We didn't have a phone either. One day he was gone. I loved that dear old man! Pap.

Chicken and Dumplings

So at Cracker Barrel today I hear a teenage girl ask her mom “What’s chicken and dumplings?” And her mom answers “It’s like a pasta with chicken and creamy sauce over it.”

Lord child, let me just tell you, I ‘bout fell out my chair. What is chicken and dumplings? Soul food, honey. It’s a steamy bowl of goodness that’ll make you wanna slap your momma and believe the south will rise in justice. You’ll be full as a tick and grinnin’ like a possum with a bowl of these. It ain’t no pasta, it’s a southern masterpiece in your mouth! It’s only the greatest thing since sliced bread. Get you some, you’ll be glad you did. Until then, bless her heart

Truths from Patrick Weaver

God gave us a model for helping the oppressed, the abused and those in bondage. He sent Moses to free the Children of Israel from Egypt, He didn’t tell Moses to sit them down with Pharaoh and try to fix the relationship.

And:

Somebody else needs to hear this…Did y’all notice that God used the least likely to be the most favored? Sarah was barren, David was last in line, Esther was an orphan, Ruth lost it all, Rahab was a prostitute, Noah had no Ark building experience, Moses had a stutter…

I need some folks with crazy faith to decree and declare, “My God is able!”

Baptist pastor Rev. David Wheeler speaks at a Portland labor rally

 

Inspiring! The B & H Gospel Singers - Time Belongs to You (7/22/2022) --- in Collins, MS.

 

From the Midnight Mom Devotional

Tonight we pray for the momma whose anxiety makes doing everyday tasks feel overwhelming. Lord, sometimes she sits in the parking lot of the grocery store trying to go in and planning the fastest route to get the things she needs. Sometimes she's wants to attend a wedding, or a party, or a dinner and it feels so overwhelming she finds an excuse to stay home. Sometimes her heart races, sometimes she can't sleep, sometimes she literally shakes with fear. Lord, tonight, she needs Your peace. Please calm her heart. Please bring health and wholeness to her heart. We ask in Jesus's name,

 Amen.

If these posts from the Midnight Mom Devotional speak to you, please go directly to the source and check out their website and consider ordering the book. Go here to get in touch with Susan Pitts and Becky Thompson, and find them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  

The Appalachian Storyteller: Appalachian Granny Witches

This has a little more drama and supposition to it than I would have liked, but I think that it's worth looking at and talking about. I don't know how you might tell a "Granny witch" from other knowledgeable women in Appalachia, and much that is described here existed in Pennsylvania's anthracite mining region until recently and involved men and women healers. I'm not all that happy with people talking about how we're going to survive impending disasters---I would rather we were talking about how to prevent them. But there is something helpful in recalling history and breaking down stereotypes.    

“Why don't cha come with us?” and “Why don't yuns jus’ stay?”---What "simple" conversation can mean

I have been thinking lately about how family members and their friends carried on conversations when I was a child. This was a time when there was much outward migration from the coalfields to the cities underway, and out-migration from Appalachia and the rural south to cities had been going on for more then 30 years. People left their homes for many reasons. For whites and Blacks there were hopes for better paying jobs, security, and better living conditions for themselves and for their children. Black people had additional reasons to leave their homes; discrimination, racist violence, the reality that conditions were not going to change for the better in the south soon.

Don’t confuse people leaving with wanting to leave. Many, maybe most, of the people who left were adventurous, but I think that most of them missed home and were occasionally nostalgic or sentimental. I knew many Black people who returned to their old homes when there were layoffs in the factories or when they got fired or had earned a certain sum of money and then went back to the city after a little while. And I knew many more white people who made the drive home on weekends, kids in the backseat with bread and a loaf of baloney. You can hear these stories in Dwight Yoakam’s late 1980s song “Readin' Rightin' Route 23” and Albert King’s mid-‘70s “Cadillac Assembly Line.” You can also read Isabel Wilkerson’s great book “The Warmth of Other Suns.” In fact, that's a nearly-essential book.

Sometime after I read Wilkerson’s book, I read a biography of the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. I had wondered to that time how it was that the Nation of Islam had worked out its theology, which did not then fully accord with traditional Muslim theology and sounded to most whites and quite a few African Americans like something from science fiction. But Wilkerson’s book helped to give me an understanding of the disorientation that people experienced in moving from the south to Chicago and how strong their desire for community was. An African American friend whose father had been a Pentecostal preacher in Chicago had no love for Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, but he recognized the key role that they had in building community and explaining the new reality to migrants, who he said were ready for nearly any explanation of how they got where they were. We agreed that nothing that Elijah Muhammad preached was any more far out than what the Pentecostals were preaching on the face of things. Taking matters a step further, I came into a different understanding of those majority-white storefront churches and transplanted preachers that I was so familiar with.

It was exactly 99 miles from the house I lived in to my grandparent's house when we all lived in Pennsylvania. That was a long trip at the time, especially during the winter. It was an even longer trip--about four hours--when my parents and I lived in New York. 

I think that there were some important aspects to those visits that showed the best and most interesting sides to people. The old people would stay up late, way past their bedtimes, to welcome everyone when they arrived. Their attentions focused on the children, who they practically smothered with love. There was usually something to eat waiting. They had worried for hours, and if anyone ran late, they got questioned nearly to death.

The next day was for visiting and catching up and shopping. With my father's family word spread pretty quickly that we were coming. The old people went into the kitchen to talk and I fell asleep on a cot in the front room. Saturday, the next day, was for distant relatives dropping by my grandparent’s house and trips from house to house, with meals and gossip at every stop, and going to a local department store or the Kresge store for needed things. We would drive out to a coal patch and see a great aunt, and her sons would stop by. If there was time, my father and my grandfather would drive out to a mountain spring for water or to a place where a relative had died in a mine cave-in or to a grove of fruit trees. My father and grandfather might argue along the way or step around arguing with one another while I sat in the backseat and tried to take it all in. At night we went to a local diner, something beyond my grandparent’s comfort zone. There were Pokeno games and more visiting, and there was Lawrence Welk on the UHF. If it was Christmas, we went from house to house and envied one another’s presents, and quite a bit got broken as we played.

My grandparents went to church on Sunday mornings and my parents and I slept in. Breakfasts were either mush and cheap coffee ground in a very old coffee grinder or diner food. Milk was delivered on a horse-drawn wagon. The other meals were greasy and starchy dishes with their origins in northern Italy but modified for the coalfields.

My father was regarded as kind of a family success story, which meant that he was expected to put up relatives who were looking for work when they showed up and that he was expected to not show off his relative advantages but be gently generous to others on the side. It was a no-win situation for him; someone was going to hold what he was earning against him, or my grandfather was going to complain that he wasn’t really working or was wasting his money on extravagances like an electric stove or a car that was less than ten years old.

Conversations were usually loud and non-stop. People interrupted one another and ate while they talked. This one or that one would go to the cellar and work on something to show displeasure. But when there was a moment of silence someone would ask “So, did you make good time?” and the story of the trip would be told again, with emphasis on another detail of the trip—the traffic, how the car handled, where we stopped, where the cops were hiding to catch speeders. And at that point it was if the visit was starting over, with more food and more listening and more amazement over the cost of this or that or the time the trip took. How “So, did you make good time?” got asked sent signals about money and poverty, how someone had dealt with the police, and how good a car we had (or didn’t have), how patient my father was (or wasn’t). The way that the question was asked also invited memories and discussions about memories, because people remembered past events differently and were still carrying hurt from arguments that were 30 or 40 years old. Telling the old stories created new stories and gossip about what happened when the old stories were rehashed.

Goodbyes were long and seemed to take forever. Last week I was reading on the Appalachian Americans Facebook page what some people from central Appalachia had to say about their goodbyes on Sundays. What they recalled is a little different than what I recall, but it comes down to this for most of us:

Saying goodbye and leaving could take an hour. Food had to be offered and refused and offered again and then wrapped up and given to my parents. The car had to be loaded just-so. In central Appalachia people would say, “No, it’s fixin’ to leave. We gotta get to the house.” There would be hugs and sauntering to the driveway and “more conversatin’, more hugs. Still conversatin’.” Someone there or on my family’s visits would say, “I was gonna ask ya something” or “I was gonna tell ya something” and there would be more conversation at the car. Someone would say “Oh, did you get everything?” and someone would realize that they forgot something and go back in the house and the conversation and the goodbyes would keep going. In central Appalachia it was often a woman forgetting her purse. “Oh my, I left my purse in the house.”

There were a few common things said as my father started the car. “Don't forget, call me when you get home and let me know you made it!” was one. Another was “Watch out for deer!” Sometimes this was “Watch out for the speed traps!” and in central Appalachia it was “Don’t hit a polecat!” There was also the warning to “Watch out fer that other feller!”

Three endearing things then happened in central Appalachia that did not happen on my family visits. One was someone saying “Y’all come back now, ya hear?!” or the driver saying “Why don't cha come with us?” and someone answering “Why don't yuns jus’ stay?” and someone walking beside the car and everyone saying their goodbyes as the car drove slowly away. But in both cases, in central Appalachia and on my family visits, there was always the goodbye honking.

When I tried to make sense of this as a teenager I was fortunate to find the Young Patriots and Rising Up Angry. You will not learn this history from anyone except those who lived it. There is much in their history to criticize, but there is much more there that should make the people who migrated out and their children and grandchildren proud.   

What is all of this besides just getting along with one another and conversation? Well, it’s history---its people developing in the space that they had. It’s about other times, meaning that it is about ways of getting along with one another and giving one another space and support and working out how to live in a world that gave a few people reason to hope and other people reason enough for despair. It’s also a story about family and solidarity. And it’s a story of lost opportunities. We all would have been better off if the people who did out-migration had stuck together in their new environments and helped one another across racial and occupational lines. We would have all been better off if we had supported people at home with more than a little cash given away behind closed doors.

The beauty here is in the near-miracle that people kept up ties under difficult conditions, liked one another enough to avoid stepping on toes most of the time during visits, loved one another enough to manage being family, and kept talking to one another and telling their stories. Photography---"taking pictures"---became very important under these conditions. There is an art and a science to memory and to telling stories, and I think that we're in danger of losing that. I don't know if folks can be folks without our stories, so please get busy passing on what you remember and remembering what is being passed on to you.  

Rev. Shyrl Uzzell preaching “Lost Can't Be The Last Word?” Luke 15:1-10

I try to say it every week: you can watch the entire service from Greenleaf or you can skip ahead to the hymns or to the sermons, but please give a look and a listen. Greenleaf is an exceptional church, and the messages are inspiring and will give most people a spring in their step and some good thoughts in their hearts and heads. This is the church most people need. There are Black and women dimensions to the preaching and to the work being done at Greenleaf that we don't see in many churches. People get affirmed here, but our lives get examined as well---no shaming, but there is struggle and victory. The Bible stories that we think that we know are brought into present time and interpreted in ways that will surprise and enlighten and strengthen.

Kelsey Waldon "Simple as Love" (Lyric Video) - From "No Regular Dog" and with some notes of my own

I am a Kelsey Waldon fan, and I hope that you are also. But sometimes I worry about her and who she is singing to, or who she is singing for and representing. There is a great deal of pain in much of her music, but I think that she frames it as necessary to getting to whatever is on the other side of pain and surviving. You have to be patient with her music and let it work through you, just like you have to be patient with yourself and others when there are hard times. But this song is another step in getting there. I'm happy to hear it and hear the strides being taken. There is much that is subtle here, and one of the subtleties is that people in any kind of loving relationship and the gender identities that I know can sing along with this. "Like a monarch to a mimosa tree" is a genius lyric that throws away the saccharine and gives us something so much better.  

 

From the Midnight Mom Devotional

Tonight we pray for the momma who is a teacher or works in education. Lord, she doesn’t know fully what 22-23 will look like for school with still so many uncertainties. Please help her know that You will help her navigate each change and challenge. We ask for peace and comfort. Please also bless the school board members, superintendents, paraprofessionals, secretaries, principals, school nurses, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, custodians and counselors as they prepare for the days ahead in this new school year. You are with them. Bring them peace.

We ask in Jesus’s name, Amen.

Listen carefully to these Spirit-filled women

Foundry UMC Worship & Prayer with Cassandra Lawrence 7/20/22

Rev. Hanna R. Broome preaching a Special Sermon at Greenleaf Christian Church

Hardly a week goes by that we don't post something from Greenleaf Christian Church or from Bishop Barber, the Bishop and pastor at Greenleaf. I don't know how many people here pay attention to these posts, but I hope that many of you do. You can catch the hymns and praise and most of the service at Greenleaf or you can skip ahead to the sermons. I have never heard a sermon at Greenleaf that I didn't get much out of. Greenleaf is the kind of church that I'm looking for. I hope that someone reading this feels the same as I do. Reverend Broome gets it done this week. She hits it hard over and over again. I think that we badly need her voice and her testimony right now. 

Something to smile on #12

 

From Celebrating Appalachia---one of my favorite blogs.

Knockin' on Heaven's Door | Afro Fiesta w/Twanguero & I-Taweh | Playing For Change
(I know that this may not make you smile. It's somber, or sad. But the artistry here turned the song upside down for me.)

The Delfonics - La-La Means I Love You ~ 1968

The future of the church - Reverend Leroy Cain interview by Joshua Outsey - And supporting Appalshop

The video below came from Joshua Outsey of Appalshop. I cannot recommend supporting Appalshop enough. This is real talk right here, and Appalshop is where you can go to hear more real talk and real music. Appalshop also sponsors WMMT, my favorite radio station.

In a support-raising e-mail Mr. Outsey says the following:

Black churches are central to our communities and cultures here in Appalachia. Some of these churches even predate the Civil War. Through digitally recorded oral histories, photographs and moving images, my goal is to tell their stories--including those of the black coal miner--and through those stories bring more visibility to black Appalachian history.

At age 36, I have spent the last 20 years of my life living and working throughout Central Appalachia. I am an activist, and cultural organizer. Being a Black Appalachian is something I take pride in because that identity challenges what most people think of when they hear “Appalachia.” I intend to use my work to alter the narrative and bridge cultural gaps that exist throughout our region.

I value faith, family, community, diversity and inclusion. My goal is to spread awareness of the similarities and differences that Black Appalachians may share with each other and Appalachian people as a whole. Working with Black faith based communities energizes me. I love learning and sharing historical details of information about these specific people and their lives.

The existence of Black communities in Central Appalachia has largely been ignored and erased from the mainstream narrative.

Now, I do not agree with Mr. Outsey's views on capitalism expressed in his interview with Rev. Leroy Cain. I can see that people struggling with planned underdevelopment and economic and political abandonment, a situation faced by many Black communities, might gain from capitalist development in the short-run. I can't see capitalism as a long-term solution to anyone's problems. But I also think that both Mr. Outsey and Rev. Cain hit some major points on faith, community, and history. There is an urgency to their conversation that we all need to hear and take to heart and put into action.

Don't forget---Please support Appalshop!

You Are Not Worthless - Marz and a few words on Genesis

Marz with a great word for all of us

Part of the text (Genesis 3: 15-17)

15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
They will strike at your head,
while you strike at their heel.

16 To the woman he said:
I will intensify your toil in childbearing;
in pain (see below) you shall bring forth children.
Yet your urge shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.

17 To the man he said: Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree
about which I commanded you, You shall not eat from it,
Cursed is the ground* because of you!
In toil you shall eat its yield
all the days of your life.

Some common mistakes to avoid in our reading:

1. God did not curse the woman

2. "Painful child-bearing" is not in the Hebrew text

3. "Pain" is not a good translation. "Effort" would be a better translation. And the good word here is that children are coming.

4. "Urge" or "desire" are hard to understand here. The Hebrew word can have many meanings and is not sexual in all cases (Genesis 4: 7, for example). But the important point here is that desire is not bad.

5. Read "rule" as a warning and not as a command and think about how that changes your understanding of what is happening. The order of things has changed quickly from the Garden to a state of despair, and now something else is occurring. People are beginning to live in history and the contradictions that drive human development forward are appearing. This is the beginning of time, not the end-point or an all-times-and-forever sentence.

6. The man is not told to rule over the woman.

Genesis is important to how we see ourselves and our world whether we are believers or not. Particular understandings of Genesis have come into many of our cultures and impact everything. This is where many of our self-doubts and our work ethics, and often our sense of doom, comes from. The most dismal views predominate because those views serve certain political and economic and social interests, and perhaps these are being put aside and something even worse is taking their place for many of us. It doesn't have to be like this.

More from Marz

I got lots of help for this post from a few sources but I lost the citations. I hope that I can find them and post them. 

"The elders say our ancestors are a double blessing..."

 

"The elders say our ancestors are a double blessing: they are behind us in our past and before us in our future. They are the spiritual bookends to our lives. In the past, their experience teaches us the skills we need to build a life in the here and now. If we learn from their example we will find their wisdom. In the future, they show us the visions we need to go beyond what we think is possible. If we see through their eyes we will discover their imagination. So when you say a prayer of thanksgiving for the ancestors in your life, be sure to face in both directions."
---The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, Native American/Indigenous Ministries of the Episcopal Church

"Rest" - Rev. Beth Dana

I think that many working-class people may miss the point here, but please give a listen to the very end. This sermon helped e put some issues in perspective. 

Two from Rev. Steven Charleston: "Are there some people you just cannot talk to?..." and "The threshold on which you stand is the mystery of an infinite love..."

 

"Are there some people you just cannot talk to? Especially about certain political issues? Many of us feel that way. We live in a fractured society where parts of our national family feel estranged from other parts. Communication seems impossible. Into this reality, I offer a simple question: what can we do to change this situation? How do we reverse course to reach common ground? One place to begin might be a charter of civility: an articulation of the basic principles on which we can all agree. Can you name a principle that you feel we can all uphold? To get us started, I would say one of mine would be: all human beings deserve to be treated with kindness."
---The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, Native American/Indigenous Ministries of the Episcopal Church

And...

"The mystery will not be solved, the power of the mystery will not be denied, for the transcendent presence of the holy surrounds us, will always surround us, and the greatness of the Spirit will endure forever. Be not afraid or anxious. The threshold on which you stand is the mystery of an infinite love, and an intimate love, a love that beckons you into its peace, that welcomes you with a limitless compassion. Be not afraid or anxious. Close your eyes. Open your heart. And you will know what I mean."---The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston

From the Midnight Mom Devotional

Tonight we pray for the momma struggling with anxiety. She isn't talking about it because she feels like she's said it before so many times. Lord, we ask that You fill her heart with Your peace and bring her calm like a warm blanket. You are so good and so kind to us. Help this momma to find the resources that she needs for healing. Help her to rest tonight. We ask in Jesus's name, Amen.

We Will Overcome · The Mighty Clouds of Joy

 

Don't you let me sleep too late!

Five Blind Boys of Alabama - Swingin' On The Golden Gate

 

The Swan Silvertones---Oh Mary Don't You Weep

It's a reassuring testimony that tells a story that you probably know, but with a joy and a beat that still move us.  

 

The Staple Singers - Uncloudy Day

There is depth here in this short recording. It was 1956 and no one knew what was coming next. Something great was stirring in the people. We needed to hear these voices. People were talking to another, face-to-face, coming out of a hot war but deep in a cold war. We were not a nation at peace, internally or externally. Would it be permanent and escalating war or would it be peace and justice? Would Roosevelt's New Deal continue and be fixed, or would it be Truman's and Eisenhower's permanent warfare economy?

There was prosperity, but it seemed to make people uneasy, and it often served to highlight the situations of those who were being left behind. People had every reason to expect more and better, but there were powerful interests in the United States who dug in and resisted change and used violence. 

I think that you can hear the stirring of the times in this music.
 

From "Journey of a mountain woman"

This comes from the "Journey of a mountain woman" Facebook page. I think that many of us can fully identify with it. I do worry about the children who are growing up in environments where manufactured games and tech are the first go-tos for fun and attention. Here is the post:

Good morning! My great grand daughter is eighteen months old and loves anything electronic. She also loves empty plastic bottles, puzzles, her shoe, and a myriad of other things that have nothing to do with today's modern world of computers. I think about that. She is not capable at this age to make a good decision so we do it for her. I try to make my own decisions to be good ones but I often fail. I have messed up many times in life but I keep trying. There's a lot to be said for 'trying' so this Sunday morning don't beat yourself up for failure but thank God for the strength of trying. We are so hard on ourselves, more so than we are to anyone else in the world. Think about it. When you wake up at three in the morning do you count your blessings or think of the failures? So for today be kind to yourself...give yourself kudos for trying. Love you my friends. Have a happy Sunday.

 

From the Midnight Mom Devotional

Tonight we pray for the momma who needs You to step in. Lord, she needs You to make a way. We don’t know what she is asking You to do, but You do. You know that one thing in her life where only You can come to her rescue, provide a solution, bring an answer. It might be relational, or financial, or emotional. It might be something with her family or her marriage or her job. It might be something she hasn’t even whispered out loud. But You know all about it, Lord. So we ask for a miracle. We ask You to do what only You can. You are able and we trust You.

We ask in Jesus’s name,

Amen.

"Our struggles are many, but against the energy and expanse of the Spirit, they are only ripples in a pond."

"When I see the first light of dawn breaking on distant mountains, I know the Spirit is with us. When I hear the wind flying through the branches of forest trees, I know the Spirit is with us. When I feel the strength of ocean waves pushing me back to shore as if I were a toy, I know the Spirit is with us. The power of creation is all around us. It is proof that a strength greater than ours holds life in hands both immense and yet sheltering. Our struggles are many, but against the energy and expanse of the Spirit, they are only ripples in a pond. Trust in the reality of the Spirit: a presence you can see, hear and feel."

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, Native American/Indigenous Ministries of the Episcopal Church

Things to smile on #11

 

Boubacar Traoré & Ali Farka Touré - Duna Ma Yelema

Bella ciao

Flashmob Flash Mob - Ode an die Freude ( Ode to Joy )

Beethoven Symphony No.9 classical music

Mario Incudine | Italia Talìa videoclip ufficiale