Words from the World

WEEK 2

Monday

Creation

George Tinker, of the Osage Nation, spoke to the delegates of the 2012 United Methodist General Conference during “The Act of Repentance toward Healing Relationships with Indigenous Peoples.” The following is part of his statement.

We’re all a part of creation. You’re no more than anyone else in the world. As Indian people, we live in harmony and balance with all our relatives. I call you all my relatives. But my relatives include buffalos and squirrels, eagles and sparrows, mountains and rivers. All are my relatives.

If we’re going live in harmony and balance, we’ve got to give up some things that Americans hold dear. It’s hard to be in harmony and balance when you’re constantly competing to see who can get the most riches out of the world.

The problem is, once we’re competing to see who gets the most riches, we’re making sure that some people get a whole lot less. Harmony and balance means seeing that somehow we all have genuinely equal access to the world’s riches in order to sustain our lives and maintain our human community.

By George Tinker. From “Act of Repentance toward Healing Relationships with Indigenous Peoples,” 2012 United Methodist General Conference. View the video.

George “Tink” Tinker, of the Osage Nation, is a member of the faculty at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. He teaches courses in American Indian cultures, history, and religious traditions; cross-cultural and Third-World theologies; and justice and peace studies and is a frequent speaker on these topics both in the U.S. and internationally.

Tuesday

Praise

This reading is from William Moore, reflecting on his time as a slave in the United States, 1800’s.This story appears in the book, In Their Own Words: Slave Life and the Power of Spirituals.

Some Sundays we went to church someplace. We always like to go any place. A white Preacher always told us to obey our masters and work hard and sing and when we die we go to Heaven. [Master] Tom didn’t mind us singin’ in our cabins at night, but we better not let him catch us prayin’;. Seems like [we] just got to pray. Half [our lives are] in prayin’. Some [of us] take turns … to watch and see if [Master Tom was around], then they circle themselves on the floor in the cabin and pray. They get to moanin’ low and gentle. ‘Some day, some day, some day, this yoke [gonna] be lifted off our shoulders.’

From In Their Own Words: Slave Life and the Power of Spirituals by Eileen Guenther. Norman R. Yetman, ed., When I Was a Slave: Memoirs from the Slave Narrative Collection (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2002), 94-95.

Wednesday

Covenant

“Crazy Quilt” by Jane Wilson Joyce

The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia
is cracked. California is splitting
off. There is no East or West, no rhyme,
no reason to it. We are scattered.

Dear Lord, lest we all be somewhere
else, patch this work. Quilt us
together, feather-stitching piece
by piece our tag-ends of living,
our individual scraps of love.

“Crazy Quilt” by Jane Joyce first appeared in The Quilt Poems (Mill Springs Press, 1985). Copyright © by Jane Joyce. Reprinted by permission of the author. In Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women’s Spirituality. Edited by Marilyn Sewell. Published by Beacon Press.

Thursday

Exile

‘The World Is Watching’: Justin Jones’ Comments on His Expulsion from the Tennessee House
April 7, Capital B News

Justin Jones made it clear that “there comes a time when people get sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

During an emotional seven-hour session on Thursday, Jones didn’t mince words. He was the first of two Black Tennessee lawmakers, both Democrats, to be expelled from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Hours later, his colleague Justin Pearson met the same fate. Jones and Pearson are part of a growing movement of grassroots activists turned politicians determined to create real change as some legislators roll back hard-fought victories for voting rights, gun reform, and police accountability.

Jones’ comment, made prior to his expulsion, captured the Fisk University graduate and powerful orator’s defiance — his refusal to bow to injustice.

The 27-year-old joined a gun reform protest in the aftermath of the deadly school shooting in Nashville last week — and Republican members of the chamber punished Jones for his solidarity with the students who crowded into the building to demand that something be done.

“What we did was act on our responsibility as legislators to serve and give voice to the grievances of people who have been silenced,” he said on Thursday. …

Following the House’s act of retaliation, Jones made plain to reporters that his dedication to protecting his community hasn’t weakened.

By Christina Carrega and Brandon Tensley. April 7, Capital B News.

Friday

Promise

Trailblazing Episcopal priest Pauli Murray to be featured on US quarters
By Yonat Shimron, Religion News Service, 02/14/23

The first Black woman to be ordained in the Episcopal Church, who was also a trailblazing lawyer, civil rights activist and writer, will be honored on the U.S. quarter next year. Pauli Murray, whose 1977 ordination to the priesthood was just one in a long series of firsts, has been chosen by the U.S. Mint as one of five honorees for the American Women Quarters Program.

… Many scholars now recognize that though richly deserving of the honor, Murray, who died in 1985, was also gender-nonconforming and may be the first such person to appear on a U.S. coin. Murray sometimes presented as a woman and sometimes as a man. Feeling trapped in a woman’s body, Murray begged doctors to prescribe hormone therapy. They refused.

“We know Pauli did not conform to gender norms,” said Barbara Lau, executive director of the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice in Durham, North Carolina. “So we feel very comfortable saying that Pauli was gender-nonconforming.” …

Murray may be best known as a civil rights activist who helped shape the legal argument for the1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling. In a final law school paper at Howard University School of Law, Murray wrote that “separate” could never be “equal.” …

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, before she became a Supreme Court justice, … credited Murray’s arguments in a legal brief she wrote while arguing a 1971 Supreme Court case that banned gender discrimination based on the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

At age 66, Murray was ordained a priest and celebrated Holy Eucharist at the same Chapel Hill, North Carolina, parish where Murray’s grandmother, a slave, had been baptized. In 2018, Murray was added to the Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints, with a July 1 feast day.

Saturday

Hope

“Dad” by J. Reed Banks

When I was nine, he bought the World Book Encyclopedia, on installment, from two young men in white shirts and ties working our street door to door. It’s for you, he said. It has everything you need to know, he said. He said it with certainty and no little pride, with that purse of lip that always betrayed to me his unabashed self-satisfaction.

Even then, though I know better ... poised as I was to be suspect of most of his promises – even then, how could I spoil his complete giving ... wrapping it as he did – all the world’s knowledge – in this bequest, though he himself could not read a word of it.

Here in poverty of word and resource he bequeathed to me his package of mystery bought with his toil at a dollar fifteen an hour. Gratitude comes after the fog of white shirts and ties: He gave what he could, more than he could, what even the poorest of us may hold and give, indeed, everything there is to know.