What does Pentecost look like when the world is on fire? A rushing wind. Does it blow out the flames or does it whip them into and even more furious inferno?
What meaning does the ancient imagery hold today, human tongues forked like fire? What are those tongues saying? To whom are they speaking? Who can even hear or understand them in the roar of the flames? ...... Read More
Wil
Biblical scholar in Hebrew and Hebrew Bible: special interest in translation textual plurality, (Septuagint, Dead Seas Scrolls, Samaritan Pentateuch, Aleppo Codex, Leningrad Codex); feminist, womanist and post-colonial biblical interpretation; prophets and prophecy in the Ancient Near East and ancient Israel Episcopal priest, product of the Black Church, author, blogger, preacher, teacher, lecturer, public speaker
Three Days Later: A Womanist Midrash
Not every woman was at the tomb. Not everyone was in that locked room. Some picked up the broken pieces of their hearts and went home. Some would have visitors bursting into their homes to tell them unbelievable news. Some would be snatched by the arm in the market and dragged under an archway to...... Read More
Mother of a Movement
Her child hung dying on a cross, Mary the mother of Jesus. Her child was snatched off the road and said to have hung herself, Geneva Reed-Veal the mother of Sandra Bland. Her child was slaughtered in a maelstrom of forty-one police bullets, Kadijatou Diallo the mother of Amadou Diallo. Her child hung dying on...... Read More
Torah of the Earth
It is for you that paradise is opened, the tree of life is planted, the age to come is prepared, plenty is provided, a city is built, rest is appointed, goodness is established and wisdom perfected… 2 Esdras 8:50 Let us pray: In the name of the One who waded in the waters of Miryam’s...... Read More
A Pastoral Epistle on Texts of Terror
Yesterday we covered grotesque violence in Judges in my Introduction to Interpreting the Hebrew Bible in Context course at Brite Divinity School. The texts were traumatizing. I was traumatized. I felt the trauma of my students and held it through the night. This morning I sent them this pastoral professorial epistle. Gentle Students, Yesterday’s readings...... Read More
Holy Blackness: The Matrix of Creation
Let us pray: God of fire and light who dwells in thick darkness,the light and the dark are alike to thee,open the eyes of our hearts that we might see. Amen. In the velvet darkness, darker than a thousand midnights down in a cypress swamp, this luminous darkness, this radiant blackness, the wholly black and...... Read More