Month: April 2008

  • welcome to the world, dear loved one!!

    my best friend of 22 years is a mommy!!!! & i'm an auntie!

  • BULLS vs. CAVALIERS
    mike & i finally went to a bulls game together.  good times!


    the FINAL score:  95 - 100- Bulls WIN!  (and free Big Mac)

  • on the 40th anniversary of his assassination, we remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

    here's the tail-end of Martin Luther King Jr's last speech:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0FiCxZKuv8

    In Ethics class last night, we talked about how America treats our prophets.  40 years after MLK Jr's assassination, here we are threatening and hating on Jeremiah Wright...
    My seminary has a close relationship with Trinity UCC, and everyone who's met or heard Jeremiah Wright recognizes his ability to speak truth to power. 
    But that's the thing about prophets, their society is never really ready or willing to repent and accept their message of truth. 

    by the way, the week before MLK Jr. died, he was working on a sermon entitled: "Why
    America May Go to Hell." sometimes tough (but nonviolent) love is necessary. 

  • The following statement is made by Rev. John Buchanan, the senior
    pastor of the congregation where i'll be serving as a pastoral resident
    for the 2 years of my life following graduation from seminary:

    John Buchanan: “On Jeremiah Wright”
    A statement made during morning worship
    at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago
    on Sunday, March 30, 2008

    I want to take a moment and think together about the continuing
    controversy surrounding Trinity United Church of Christ; its former
    pastor, Jeremiah Wright, a friend of mine; and its new pastor, Otis
    Moss III, also a friend and a new board member of the Christian Century.

    Trinity Church has been in the news every day for the past two weeks
    because one of its members is Senator Barack Obama. Jeremiah Wright was
    pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side for
    thirty-six years. During his ministry, the congregation grew to 8,000
    members, the largest in the United Church of Christ. More importantly,
    the church, under Wright’s leadership, reached out to the community
    with mission programs, education, social services, AIDS education and
    treatment, and health care. Trinity Church shares with us a worldview
    and commitment to mission in the world. When you drive north on Stony
    Island Avenue, from the South Side toward downtown, you pass by a large
    community health center sponsored by Trinity United Church of Christ.
    One way to evaluate and measure a ministry is by the mission it
    generates and the organization that supports and enables it. Among
    Chicago churches and Chicago clergy of all denominations, Jeremiah
    Wright’s ministry is widely admired as a model of what a public church
    can and ought to be, and he, himself, is widely respected.

    I wish he had made his point without saying “God damn America,” but not
    for a moment do I wish he had been less prophetic. In fact, the great
    biblical prophets did and said outrageous, controversial things, which
    consistently got them in trouble and occasionally in jail. One thinks
    of Jeremiah, for instance, or Amos and the Amaziah affair. I wish
    Jeremiah Wright had not said “The chickens are coming home to roost”
    about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, even though he was
    referring to a speech made by Edward Peck, former Ambassador to Iraq
    and President Reagan’s Terrorism Task Force Deputy Director. Wright was
    paraphrasing Ambassador Peck, who went on to list America’s domestic
    and foreign policy decisions that had put the nation in peril. I wish
    he hadn’t suggested that the government were responsible for AIDS. But
    then again, the government never deliberately—and misleadingly—left
    untreated members of my race who had late-stage syphilis simply so it
    could document the disease’s deadly toll.

    Senator Obama’s critics wonder how the senator could have remained in
    Wright’s congregation and under his leadership for twenty years. The
    answer is that Wright didn’t say “God damn America” every Sunday. In
    fact, Wright’s sermons were biblically based, relevant, literate, and
    eloquent, week after week. When the preachers of the land decide whose
    sermons and lectures or preaching they want to hear, Jeremiah Wright’s
    are near the top of the list.

    I’m distressed that the Chicago Tribune continues to regard Jeremiah
    Wright’s sermons as front-page news and led us yesterday to, of all
    things, a report on his retirement home.


    I’m distressed by white people, out of a very different religious, cultural, racial, theological/ecclesiastical

    experience, presuming to judge African American faith practices and religious expression and preaching.

    Most of all I deplore CNN’s and other networks’ decisions to play a few
    seconds out of thirty-six years of preaching, several-sentences-long
    sound bites over and over again. It’s no wonder people who don’t know a
    thing about Trinity Church or Jeremiah Wright come to wrong
    conclusions. I’m not the only preacher in the land who knows how
    vulnerable any one of us is should ill-chosen words lifted out of a
    sermon be played and replayed, over and over again as Wright’s were.

    So let’s all settle down and put the whole matter of Jeremiah Wright
    and Trinity Church and Barack Obama’s membership into the context of
    the 365-days-a-year life of an extraordinary and faithful Christian
    congregation.

    Katharine Moon, a professor of political science at Wellesley, a Korean American, in a
    March 25, 2008, Chicago Tribune editorial remembered the church in which she was nurtured:

        "Churches, synagogues, mosques, prayer meetings are . . .
    communities of mutual help, support, and practical guidance. As social
    scientists know, they     are instrumental to building and maintaining
    social capital. For new immigrants, as well as racial and ethnic
    minorities, they serve a particular purpose.     Often, the immigrant or
    ethnic church is the one public place where a common language, food,
    and humor particular to one’s cultural heritage can be     shared. . . . It
    is through the congregation that we ask for help—to look after our
    children or elderly parents. . . . Often it is the people in the
    worship     hall who . . . help us paint our houses and visit us in
    hospitals. . . . A house of worship is much more than a pastor."

    Sensible, valuable words about pastors and congregations, one of which
    happens to count among its members a candidate for president and his
    family.

    And I ask you to join me in reaching out in friendship to our brothers
    and sisters at Trinity United Church of Christ and to pray for them,
    their former pastor, and their new pastor:

    Lord of the church in all its magnificent expression, the
    body of Christ in all the world, we pray for our neighbors, our
    brothers and sisters of the Trinity United Church of Christ, with whom
    we share a passion for justice and for mission and reconciliation
    across all the barriers that divide.

    Continue to bless them by your own Spirit.

    We pray for their newly retired pastor, their pastor for
    thirty-six years, Jeremiah Wright. We thank you for his strong and
    faithful ministry, his outspoken advocacy for justice, his passion for
    your kingdom. Bless him and keep him in these difficult days.

    And we pray for Trinity’s new pastor, Otis Moss III. Bless and
    keep him and his family. Give him the gifts he needs to serve you and
    his people with love and commitment, patience and good humor.

    And bless us, O God, as we seek to be your faithful church here in this place.

    Startle us again with the news of a risen Lord, of hope and love, not defeated by death, but alive and vigorous among us.

    Amen.