Category: America
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Can We Just Agree on What the Issue is?
Two weeks before the election, I was blessed to participate in a Living Room Conversation with people from across the political spectrum to promote post-election peace. Wherever you are, I encourage you to take part in opportunities like this to help us fulfill the vision of a nation where liberty and justice for all is…
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The Curious Case of Mohamed Noor
Remember when Mohamed Noor was convicted of murder when he mistakenly shot Justine Ruszczyk. I knew he was going to go down because of how it is. And notice that I didn’t define “it”. Because most of us who have to live with “it” know how “it” is. That’s why even though they say their…
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If I Die Before I Wake – A Reflection on the Regal Nature of Chadwick Boseman
I can’t stop thinking about Chadwick Boseman. He’s been on my mind so much that I caught myself shaking my head in the gym on the edge of tears. Now if you know me, you know that this isn’t characteristic of me. So, I had to examine why I was taking this so hard. Even…
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What We Can Learn From George Floyd’s Death
When we realize how much we’ve been failing each other as we have in the wake of the death of George Floyd, we tend to try to close our hearts. We lock ourselves away from the pain by getting into old patterns of thinking. But as Winston Churchill said when he borrowed from George Santayana,…
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Society Unmasked
This sounds like a beginning of an inappropriate joke but it isn’t. It was just an interesting experience. Three Black guys who don’t know each other walk into a grocery store. Two give each other a knowing glance and the customary head nod. They are wearing N95 masks. One is not. As they get their…
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State of Confusion 2020
Sometimes I feel actual physical discomfort when I think about the decisions that are before our world over the next generation or so. I’m the type of person who will choose to try and see where other people are coming from almost to the degree of great emotional risk. I have listened to people of…
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Stop In the Name of Love
If you had the power to end all of the violence in the world with a single action, would you do it? I imagine that most of us would say that of course we would. No one wants violence, right? It is just an unfortunate deterrent that we must use to prevent greater violence from…
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How Am I Supposed To Feel? (After Another Shooting)
Last night when I put my daughter to bed, she told my wife and me that she didn’t want us to worry about her being shot at school. We don’t either. When she said this, I felt my heart breaking and it took almost everything out of me to keep my mind from descending into…
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Communicating to Death (or some better title)
“Urkel is dead and I can’t breathe.” Those were the words Oprah spoke to the interviewer when they asked her about one of the most recent casualties of a senseless shooting. I couldn’t breathe either. How could Urkel be gone? He held the hopes of so many of us. He had achieved the dream and…
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There is No Competition
I might be going through a midlife crisis (MLC). A word that etymologically means, “the point at which change must come, for better or worse.” I remember that whenever I heard about MLCs growing up, I thought that whatever it was, it would never happen to me because the way MLCs are typically characterized, it…
The Roofless Church 