Last year on October 19, Harvard Divinity School hosted James Cone, Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, to present the 2006 Ingersoll Lecture.

What follows is an essay based on the speech Cone delivered. His subject was provocative, as is typical with Cone: the cross and the lynching tree. When I was in seminary, I had the wonderful opportunity to enroll in a summer school class with Dr. Cone. He has had a profound influence on my life and thinking. Watch and read. Don't miss what he says...

How could this be?! This is indeed breaking news, because it may very well be the first time FoxNews has done something right - er... correctly.

This comes on the heals of the CNN blunder in reporting a lot of misinformation about young people and the youth vote in 2008. Add to that Naomi Wolf and Courtney Martin and you're ready for your own nuclear meltdown of frustration.

I haven't done a lot of faith based blogging in a while. Some of that is attributed to the plethora of things I've been wanting to talk about and being overwhelmed - the other excuse is that I'm just too darn lazy.

Its that time of year again, and let me talk to you about my mother's pie making skills. Thus induces the food coma that makes me want to trade in my blogging responsibilities for even more pie and a good KU game.

But, the latest installment of Revolution in Jesusland is by Zack's wife Elizabeth who reviews two new books - Acts 29 and Justice in the Burbs made me think a lot about politicians who give a pretty hefty sacrifice for the love of their districts when they could be playing politics as usual.

Zack and Elizabeth, if you didn't know, just moved to Kansas City, MO so they're local now. If ya'll meet up with them, they are good progressive folk... buy em a cup of coffee, give em a hard time. Elizabeth says:

"The premise of Acts 29 is that Christians should focus on bringing about redemption (defined in the book as including "radical giving", "healing", "astounding community life" and "compassion" for those who are "hurting, confused and unloveable") to a city. How can a single church implement such a radical agenda? Through sacrificial love. Christians can and should learn to lay "aside personal agendas" in order to "see how the Kingdom can be advanced." ...... The idea is that Christians should learn from the first Christian communities (described in the Book of Acts), where the disciples prayed continually so that they could have the power to heal the sick and live in radical community where everyone shared all that they had."

Lee Stuart worked with South Bronx Churches (an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation) before he became Director of Development for The Hunger Project. Overcoming entrenched poverty in entire communities is extremely difficult. If Stuart is correct here, it will only grow more challenging in coming days. I often have the feeling that many folks who drop and read my blog don't understand or think in systemic terms when discussing poverty. To miss this dimension is to miss a large portion of the harsh reality of living in poverty.

I find his insights in the quote below extremely interesting, not so surprising and somewhat alarming...

I like learning new things. I like "a-ha!" moments. I like figuring out how things work.

My latest "a-ha!" moment started when one of the college students came to me explaining that in order to get back into college, he would have to pay for the entire semester without help from financial aid. I already had the feeling that was going to happen.

After the semester had started this fall, I noticed he was hanging out in Dallas an awful lot. He finally explained to me that he wasn't going to school this semester because he had failed some of his classes and his GPA had dropped below a certain level. He tried to explain to me that the school counselor had told him if he just sat out this semester, his financial aid would be reinstated in the spring. From an experience with another college student, I knew that wasn't right, but he chose not to listen when I explained that he would have to pay the school before he could continue. (Don't kid yourself if you think that our government's money is flowing freely to students! If students don't perform, financial aid does not continue paying for the classes!)

We all have to thank our lucky stars we live in a time when it isn't OK to be a racist.

Sure, there's still racism in America- just look at the situation in Jena, Louisiana and you can see that in some places and with some people racism is still a very real part of our culture. But, I believe I am safe in asserting the American people, generally, have decided that it isn't all right to hate someone because of their race.

I say that, though, knowing full well there is a creeping racism in this country that seems to be gaining steam rather than dying out. No, "mainstream America" grabbed a hold of this nasty idea and made it something that's "OK," something "everyone" thinks, so it's fine you do, too.

"But, seriously- who doesn't want all those damn illegals to go back to Mexico? And why, why, can't the ones who stay just learn English!"

Music is power.

Last summer, my friend, Mikey Cunningham wrote a new song he titled "Right Here."

The sensitive and moving lyrics speak to hunger, urban poverty, homelessness and despair.

Even more, the music begs several questions about our inability, our unwillingness to make meaningful human connections to impoverished people in our communities.

Foreclosures doubled this year, surging from 90% to 110% higher in 2007 than in 2006. Nearly 2 million homeowners are in default or will have faced foreclosure in 2007. At least 1.4 million additional homeowners will lose their properties to foreclosure in 2008, while "the property value of U.S. homes will fall by $1.2 trillion," says a new report by the the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Council for the New American City.

"The foreclosure crisis is no longer just about mortgages, entire neighborhoods are being negatively affected on several levels. This issue is now the number one economic challenge of many major American cities." (Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick)

The report predicts "deep economic impact from ongoing housing market problems."

As Simone pointed out last week, President Bush is building a $600 million embassy in Baghdad that will cost us $1.2 billion dollars to run. The new embassy compound in Iraq is the strongest signal yet that George Bush is doing everything he can to ensure that our presence in Iraq remains long after his presidency is over.

Rather than responding to the two-thirds of Americans that want us out of Iraq, or even negotiating his strategies with the members of Congress that represent the citizens of America - Bush is instead negotiating his long-term plans with the puppet prime minister of Iraq...

Newsflash: Homeless people are not criminals, nor are they deserving of the treatment they usually receive.

What people who lack homes need is decent, permanent housing.

As I've related here before, lots of national research and numerous case studies document the fact that once given a place to call home, an overwhelming majority of formerly homeless persons manage their lives very well without much additional intervention (87%, to reference one major study).

The Washington Post ran an interesting article about the impact of climate change on our food supply. The concern is that new plant varieties must be cultivated to withstand the havoc that global warming is expected to wreak on agriculture, namely plants that are tolerant to drought, flooding, etc. Skip to the end and they reference the doomsday plan, a vault housing endless seed types for use in the event that plants do not survive future weather patterns. The vault is in Norway, embedded in a mountainside (much like the geologic cocoon afforded America's most precious commodity, nuclear waste).

"It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him."

J. R. R. Tolkien

Life will do everything to destroy your soul, art will remind you that you have one.

My goal through dance and choreography is to take everything experienced in life, the many spectrums of existence, its ugliness and its beauty, its suffering and its joy, and transform it into something that everyone can understand.

The process of observing, digesting, and transforming the myriad of life's experiences is what, to me, makes art interesting.

From suffering and ugliness, can we create healing and beauty? Can we collectively feel and be affected by life through art?

Traffic was pretty bad on my way to Oklahoma. At 2:00 in the afternoon, I sat in lines of traffic just trying to get out of Dallas. Then, when I got to the Indian Nation Turnpike they only had one lane open that made change. Since the toll was $1.75 the majority of the cars on the freeway didn't have exact change. So, we sat... in line.... waiting. In addition, there was a lane coming from another highway that fed directly to the toll booth line. More waiting.

3,875 soldiers dead and more than 28,000 wounded Americans, plus more than 1,000 private contractors killed and many more injured.

The costs of the invasion and occupation seem to have no end. This endless war was the result of a wrong turn. We've been stuck slogging through the results of the mistake for almost five years now.

How did all this happen anyway? How did President Bush move our country from a strong dollar, decent gasoline prices, a strong jobs market and a surplus in our national treasury into a situation where now we have the largest trade deficit, biggest national debt, fastest wage reductions, highest gas prices and a declining dollar?

I finally see a flickering light at the end of this long and dreary tunnel. It gives me hope. Filled with the spirit of the Thanksgiving holidays, I wish to offer gratitude to those holding up candles for us. Held up as beacons by a few brave members of our Congress, the lights at the end beckon us. So, let's dust ourselves off and walk in their direction. On the way, of course, we can talk more about how all this happened and what we can do to prevent it from ever happening again. C'mon, come with me....

N. Gordon Cosby founded The Church of the Savior in Washington, DC. Here's a bit of his prophetic wisdom for this Sunday:

We see the realities of our world and recognize that the church has not become a strong and mighty witness for scores of displaced refugees and starving ill, ignored, assaulted masses. We are not calling the nations to bow before God in recognition of systemic oppression of the poor. We are not demanding that practices of reconciliation and justice be at the heart of national and global policies, nor even at the heart of our own schools, work places and neighborhoods.

The most exclusive community in South Florida was invaded by ordinary activists hoping to stand up for the rights of ordinary workers.

Off the coast of Miami last Saturday, decorated boats ferried more than one hundred activists as close as possible to the shore of the ultra-wealthy Fisher Island to protest discriminatory and abusive treatment of the workers that clean, maintain, and protect the island. The activists then swam the rest of the way to shore.

"Because they are so isolated, Fisher Island residents think they can wall themselves off from the poverty they create," said Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 11 Political Director Hiram Ruiz. "We set out to make a point, that there should be only one Miami, not one Miami for the wealthy and another for the rest of us."

The following opinion column was brought to my attention recently:
We have to tackle education's urban crisis

Here is my commentary to Ms. Creighton's opinion:

Anyone who really cares about people, urban areas and the future needs to read Bill McKibben's essay:

"In the end, global warming presents the greatest test we humans have yet faced.

Are we ready to change, in dramatic and prolonged ways, in order to offer a workable future to subsequent generations and diverse forms of life?

If we are, new technologies and new habits offer some promise. But only if we move quickly and decisively - and with a maturity we've rarely shown as a society or a species." - Carbon's New Math, by Bill McKibben, National Geographic)

Last week I was sitting in a poetry workshop while on a residency at St. Mary's College of Maryland, and the professor prompts us to start writing a poem of thanks... sounds easy enough right? Well, lets just say the page is still blank. These types of writing prompts just shut me down because of the expansiveness of such an idea. How do you reduce everything you are thankful for to syllables? What algorithm do you use to query memory to try to recall all the times the fatal news story could have been you or a loved one?

I could go on... but as my family and move through this day (and season) of thanks, mourning (for our Indigenous brothers and sisters), harvest, giving and receiving. I will be collecting words and memories in an effort to create a body of work that always speaks to this spirit of gratitude.

In the poem below Yusef Komunyakaa examines thanks in the language his experiences has given him, check it out....