Forgiveness
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 06/27/2015 - 08:17Various friends have been sharing the link to the article, Black America should stop forgiving white racists, with its tag line, “Quick absolution does not lead to justice.”
Since I’m not black, I haven’t felt it was my place to comment on this, until I saw a friend share the link yesterday after President Obama’s Eulogy of the Rev. Pinkney, the same Eulogy where President Obama sings Amazing Grace to the chagrin of his detractors.
After watching parts of the Eulogy, especially where President Obama spoke about the forgiveness shown in Charleston, I added this comment to one of those posts:
Perhaps it comes from my white privilege, but I'd like to believe it comes from my deep abiding belief in God, that I have a very different view of forgiveness. The author writes,
"Yet, the almost reflexive demand of forgiveness, especially for those dealing with death by racism, is about protecting whiteness, and America as a whole. This is yet another burden for black America."
I do not believe this. I doesn't seem like President Obama believed this in his eulogy for Rev. Pinkney. For me, and I believe for many of my devout Christian black brothers and sisters, forgiveness is one of the most powerful tools, not of protecting whiteness, but of challenging it.
If the viral videos of Charleston after the murders had been of rioting instead of family members offering forgiveness, I don't believe we would have seen outcomes we have.
So, to the viral video of forgiveness, watch President Obama speak about this forgiveness:
Grief
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 06/26/2015 - 21:43It’s not just that rain
is an overused metaphor
for tears
or the grey of the sky
often symbolizes grief
The air had a cold clamminess to it
like I imagined a dead body would.
It was like one of those mornings
on vacation
when you knew it was going to rain
but you’d go to the beach anyway.
Balloons
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 06/26/2015 - 21:42After the spectacular celebration
the deflated balloons
hang limply
from the mailbox.
The Blank Page, Again
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 06/25/2015 - 21:40Another night getting home late too tired to confront the empty page, too tired to take some of the ideas I’ve been kicking around and properly develop them into a blog post.
It is a day of rejoicing that the Affordable Care Act escaped unscathed. It is a day of sending positive energy to friends whose mother just died, whose cousin’s son has an unexplained illness, who just had to put down a beloved pet.
I did make some progress in starting discussions that will lead to me getting together with various friends for lunch or coffee to talk about things too deep, too personal, too influx for me to talk about in my blog or in social media yet.
More soon. Buen Camino
#Rhizo15 Theological #WhiteCurriculum
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 06/24/2015 - 20:30Over the past few months, there have been a few things that have captured a large amount of my attention, the #Rhizo15 cMOOC, the Love Bade Me Welcome poetry workshop at Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and the discussions about race, from Rachel Dolezal to the shooting in Charleston.
How do these fit together? I’m not sure, but perhaps the wanderings of my mind can help bring a little focus. I started off this evening, looking at online theological education online. One of my first stops was The Top 20 Online Theology Master’s Degree Programs. There is a lot more out there than I thought there was. So, I started looking for theological MOOCs, but I didn’t find so much there. The little bit that I did find was more on the level of Introduction to the New Testament. From there, I started looking for philosophy MOOCs and other esoteric MOOCs. Anyone up for a Lacan MOOC?
This led me back to the #RHIZO15 group. Even though the MOOC is officially over, the community lives on and recently, one of the posts was to a Google Doc, Charleston Syllabus (by and for Philosophers). It looks like some interesting material. One link was to Why is my curriculum white? In this video there was lots of talk about colonialism and empire.
This reminded me of a book someone had mentioned on Facebook, In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance
It brought me full circle me thoughts about theological education. To what extent is theology education today white? Or, if not white, Laodicean?
