tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72606589788959663502011-12-28T23:57:59.741-05:00For Thinking Women of Faith about matters of church, race, gender, sex, values, culture, justice, spirituality, and, oh yeah, God.Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.comBlogger881100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-28462360489327561522008-01-07T15:18:00.000-05:002008-01-07T15:22:13.053-05:00

We've moved! We've moved! We've really moved!!Here is the new address: http://www.somethingwithin.com/blog/

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-4189961959365013072008-01-05T01:00:00.000-05:002008-01-05T01:13:22.374-05:00

I've gotten letters, phone calls, and emails. It seems that many of you are experiencing withdrawals, demanding that I fire the designer who's working on my new blog or return to blogging here at Blogger.Heck, after speaking the other night at the 2008 Black Student Leadership Conference there in Washington, DC, I was accosted by a disgruntled fan demanding to know when the blog will be back

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-12052835651786781812007-12-18T10:58:00.000-05:002007-12-18T11:26:56.279-05:00

Speaking of Dr. Donda West I was happy to see that as of yesterday most African American bloggers had decided against following the stampede. Posting the morbid audio recording of the 911 call made by Dr. Donda West’s friends just before her death is just too darn tacky a thing to do. Some bloggers passed on posting it probably out of respect for Kanye. Others, like myself, refuse to post it

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-44621288295981555532007-12-12T17:26:00.000-05:002008-01-05T01:09:08.118-05:00

Sociologist Charles Payne talks about the slow respectful, behind the scenes, work that makes the dramatic moments possible. Making the phone calls. Running off flyers. Sending out reminders. Booking the flights. Training new volunteers. Smoothing out differences and navigating turf wars. Passing reminders to speakers about important announcements. Raising bail money. Striking up the right song

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-23061230166750075022007-12-10T16:29:00.000-05:002007-12-12T18:14:30.377-05:00

You don’t even have to be a starry-eyed Oprah follower to know how much medial mogul Oprah Winfrey respects Maya Angelou, writer, activist and poet. She quotes from Maya Angelou on her show and has had the Poet Laureate on many times over the years. Maya Angelou was one of the 25 honorees at Winfrey’s Legends Ball earlier this year, and Oprah has even given her mentor a weekly radio show on her “

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-85382870583558094362007-12-06T14:58:00.000-05:002007-12-12T21:05:57.670-05:00

I have not been able to get the last installment in the NBC's “African American Women: Where They Stand” series out of my mind. You know the one that dealt with black women in interracial relationships.Search and you'll find dozens of websites out there by black women promoting and defending interracial marriages. They exist to encourage black women to exercise their option to broaden their

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-6915660024716896742007-12-04T16:08:00.000-05:002007-12-06T15:07:30.485-05:00

There’s a German phrase bantered around a lot in biblical criticism, Sitz im Leben, roughly translated “setting in life.” It refers to the sociological setting out of which biblical passages emerged. The argument is that taken out of its original context, the original meaning of a passage is often lost. Thus the context of exile is the best way to understand Psalm 137 where the psalmist opens

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-48214221723478504412007-11-30T12:23:00.000-05:002007-12-10T22:52:25.881-05:00

I know as a black Christian woman that I should be grateful that NBC News even bothered to devote a weeklong series to African American women. But I’m not. I have not been impressed. If I were a sister from another planet and depended upon a satellite of NBC’s “African American Women: Where They Stand” to give me my first introduction to the lives of black women I would probably conclude, “I’m

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-26779221688976204322007-11-28T16:45:00.000-05:002007-12-10T23:19:25.138-05:00

I love basketball. Got a problem with that? I didn’t think so.But I knew I had a problem the other night when I got into a shouting match with another parent (a white man, mind you) at a high school basketball game. We were rooting for the same team. It’s just that we had different opinions about why our team was losing so badly. The other team had better three-point shooters, he said. The coach

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-33985405384042923262007-11-26T17:33:00.000-05:002007-12-03T22:41:53.665-05:00

Between the expressway exit and the street I live on are some fifteen restaurants to choose from when I don’t feel like cooking and want something to put on the dinnertable. Each of the fifteen restaurants in my neighborhood is a fast food restaurant. Not one of the restaurants serves healthy food. To get food that’s not fried or swimming in fat, my family and I have to drive to the posh side of

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-20969440460053152832007-11-20T14:09:00.000-05:002007-11-26T18:25:36.251-05:00

I am admittedly addicted to checking my email. Even though I know better. Email is a blessing and a curse. It allows me to stay in touch with folks time and obligations might otherwise rob me of reaching out to. But email has also robbed us as a society of certain manners and expressions of civility in our attempt to stay in touch with each other.For one thing, email has killed the handwritten

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-48745974553261664192007-11-16T12:59:00.000-05:002007-11-20T14:35:35.151-05:00

Once a year, usually around the holidays, I clear the house of husband and child and spend the day on the couch watching old movies. With butter popcorn and plenty of Kleenex tissues nearby, along with my favorite throw blanket across my legs, I'm in my pajamas or old sweat pants, popping in old movies I got from the rental store or flipping to the classic movie channel for ones I couldn’t find

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-80670775882393694682007-11-13T17:16:00.000-05:002007-11-16T13:33:57.335-05:00

I admit to being fascinated with televangelist Joyce Meyer. Let me point out, however, that my fascination with Meyer predates the spotlight upon her as one of the six televangelists named by Senator Tom Grassley (R-Iowa) last week in a probe into the financial records of mega-ministry televangelists.I first heard Joyce Meyer a few years back while surfing the television one morning for something

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-18350131478566942042007-11-09T12:48:00.000-05:002007-12-10T23:18:39.036-05:00

When your mother dies a whole portfolio of information dies along with her. The family’s medical history. What time of the day you were born. Why certain family members don’t get along with other family members, and how long the feud has been going on. Where the nickname "Skeeter" comes from? A father is important to his daughter’s development, but a mother is usually the one who carries around

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-52456075386485442492007-11-07T16:08:00.001-05:002007-12-10T23:16:50.430-05:00

I'm putting off for another day or so commenting on the senate’s decision to investigate the finances of six well-known televangelists. My hunch is that there’s likely to be far more consensus among us that the notion of megaministers giving each other Rolls Royces and Bentleys as gifts is utterly scandalous and outfitting their office bathrooms with $23,000 marble-top commodes is a crime against

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-28924101409436364932007-11-05T15:18:00.000-05:002007-11-06T20:23:11.593-05:00

Just when I was about to congratulate myself after six months of blogging for raising questions here that prove I don’t mind bucking church authority and poking holes in religious orthodoxy, along comes a topic that makes me question whether I’m really as iconoclastic as my press statement reads.Breastfeeding during the worship service. Gulp.Female metaphors for imaging God. Yes. Gender equality.

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com44tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-80775035797753583192007-11-02T10:17:00.000-05:002007-11-14T14:16:54.506-05:00

Some of you know that some years back I co-wrote with CeCe Winans her autobiography On A Positive Note. In writing the book I got to spend lots of time with CeCe and her musical family and learned a lot about the cruel business of making and selling music in America. I learned how much more cruel the business can be to black women performers. Because I'm a scholar I couldn't just sit down and

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-33054385706148139412007-10-31T10:16:00.001-05:002007-11-06T09:58:20.502-05:00

I'm wearing red today like I promised because I wanted to show my solidarity with women and men everywhere who are committed to standing up to violence against women and speaking out to what’s beginning to feel like open season against women of color.I’m wearing red today like I promised because I am outraged at hearing that just within this summer alone a mentally challenged woman was tortured

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-85426813237715379862007-10-29T15:42:00.000-05:002007-11-06T11:19:59.907-05:00

After speaking in Washington, DC this weekend at a religious ceremony where folks talked a lot about “Spirit” and there was constant reference to “Mother-Father God,” on the plane back home a biblical passage came to mind as I sat processing the experience:"We will not listen to what you say in the name of the LORD. Rather will we continue doing what we had proposed; we will burn incense to the

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-54635141673316194792007-10-25T10:48:00.000-04:002007-12-10T23:14:33.886-05:00

This post can’t be long because I’m here in Hilton Head, South Carolina this morning at The Black Church Institute on HIV/AIDS conference on “Building The Capacity of the Believer to Serve!” It’s a great conference with lots of information about the ways faith based institutions and their leaders can better step up to the plate and respond to the crisis of HIV/AIDS in our communities. After

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-55583067847254584172007-10-23T14:36:00.000-04:002007-10-27T15:31:00.116-04:00

Never fails. I’m driving and a song from my past comes on the radio, and 4 minutes and 17 seconds later I don’t remember how I got to where I am. I don’t remember stopping at any stop lights. I don't remember changing lanes. Certain songs come on the radio and I’m 15 years old again, or 25 years old, or 35 years old again. Back when emotions were high and passions ran deep in my life. "The

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-49082561687552373622007-10-19T09:57:00.000-04:002007-10-24T01:11:00.367-04:00

Bill Cosby is a successful comedian, product representative, television producer, story teller, author, and actor.Bill Cosby is also a village prognosticator, village priest, cultural commentator, and griot.The village prognosticator has an opinion about everything and likes inflaming folks with his opinions.Cosby has certainly accomplished his goal. He's got everyone up in flames talking about

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-36432134174347780262007-10-16T15:57:00.000-04:002007-10-24T15:41:21.695-04:00

Twenty-five years ago when I was a young zealous seminarian studying to be a minister I slipped an unsigned piece of paper under a professor’s door that read MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN (roughly translated “You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting"). I slipped the Aramaic portent of doom under my professor’s door because I believed the position he’d taken on a particular issue on

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-16530223099852668302007-10-11T15:38:00.000-04:002007-11-06T11:20:27.997-05:00

I admit to having to resist the urge to snatch the mike from a woman and telling her to sit down when she starts a sentence with “I’m not a feminist, but…” It’s like saying “I don’t believe in equal pay for men and women, but…” or “I don’t believe that husbands should go to jail for murdering their wives, but…” And when church-going Christian women denounce feminism I catch myself chewing on my

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-80531344808329068552007-10-08T14:56:00.000-04:002007-10-11T15:59:14.521-04:00

“Will you help us get the word out to women in the church about our October 31st 'Be Bold Be Brave Be Red Stop the Violence?' campaign?” a young activist wrote me recently.“Of course, but you seem to think that women in the church need special persuading to get them to stand up against violence.”“Well, you know.”“No, I don’t. What?”“If church women see the word “feminist” mentioned anywhere on

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-51778551401738488842007-10-04T15:13:00.000-04:002007-11-06T11:21:05.521-05:00

Perhaps you’re one of the many who have noticed the church’s bumbling silence about many of the sexual issues plaguing our society (e.g., unwed pregnancies, homosexuality, HIV/AIDS, abortion, bioethics and reproductive technology, sexual violence, pornography). If you have, then I should probably point out to you that the church’s awkwardness has a lot to do with the fact that Christianity has

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-26097115183396376262007-10-01T14:54:00.000-04:002007-10-04T16:16:57.580-04:00

I grew up believing that some people had the gift. They could see into your heart. Prophets are what they were called in the church of my youth. Prophets had a special anointing from God that allowed them to perceive your private lusts, sense your darkest secrets, know your deepest hopes, and discern what the future held for you. Prophets were rare individuals who preached once or twice a year at

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-24812529036059542492007-09-28T20:37:00.000-04:002007-12-10T23:23:14.714-05:00

This week's "Within the Quote" features a short media clip by a former student of mine from Spelman College, now graduate student at the University of Chicago. She observed the relative lack of national attention paid to black women who are victims of sexual violence and created this video clip to make sure that in our rush to rescue our men in Jena, Louisiana that we not forget black women who

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-58917576873318803312007-09-26T13:00:00.000-04:002007-09-29T00:44:00.705-04:00

Enough about love. Let’s talk about hate.Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of one of the most shameful days in U.S. history, the day when 1200 members of the National Guard had to be called up to escort nine black teenagers past throngs of angry, jeering whites into their high school. It was September 25, 1957. The six female students and three male students would come to be known as "The

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-42107788220758486322007-09-24T15:11:00.000-04:002007-09-26T13:01:59.373-04:00

The success of television shows like "Sex in the City," "Desperate Housewives," "Wife Swap," and "Trading Spouses" suggests that we are fascinated with marriage. We can't get enough of peering into and speculating about what goes on behind closed doors between a woman and her husband. The drama playing out on our television screens, like the greater ongoing cultural debate on marriage,

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-72206038729435337992007-09-21T10:41:00.000-04:002007-09-24T17:05:52.673-04:00

Our greatest gift as women, our ability to connect with others, can, if not balanced with self-care, become also our worst liability. We are nurturers, but sometimes we overnurture. We reach out when we should sometimes hold back a while longer. We go out of our way to make sure everyone else is happy when we should have let the chips fall where they may and let everyone clean up their own

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-36866400273983666742007-09-20T14:59:00.000-04:002007-09-21T16:41:24.616-04:00

After 4 hours of typing away here at my computer and nothing coming out right, I finally decided to give up on writing the blog piece I had in mind and write the one that wants to be written.Today is Justice Day in Jena, Louisiana. As I type this, thousands of people, mostly black, many of them young, urban, generation X and Yers, from across the country have converged on the racially segregated

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-53584103271871140702007-09-18T09:50:00.000-04:002007-09-24T10:25:07.313-04:00

I had heard his voice before. The man in the third row accused me of being radical. It wasn’t what he said, but how he said it. He had had years experience of using his rich, baritone voice to his advantage. The lecture I’d just given on men and power, women and submission was, according to him, subject to lead women and men away from God. He went on to lecture me about biblical authority and the

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-48331852789821474962007-09-14T10:23:00.000-04:002007-09-18T10:04:27.562-04:00

On Fridays I get to share with readers quotes from some of my favorite writers. I get to talk about songs, books, poetry, and movies that inspire me.This Friday’s “Within The Quote” are lyrics from a folk hymn I heard in the women’s consciousness workshops I was attending a lot back when I was a seminarian in the 80s. From church basement gatherings to large ecumenical meetings, the provocative

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-86925973264484530122007-09-12T17:10:00.000-04:002007-12-10T23:22:25.086-05:00

I don’t want to have to admit that it’s possible for a 20 year old woman to endure week long torture and rape in the country where I live. Those things happen in Bosnia, Peru, Rwanda, Sudan, and are probably going on right now in Iraq. But not in the United States, right? Wrong. It happened in West Virginia.I’ll leave it to others to provide you the barbaric details of what took place, if you

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-47814368212890101032007-09-10T10:36:00.000-04:002007-09-13T13:54:05.683-04:00

Years from now historians will be tripping over themselves to explain how and why the church in America changed so radically toward the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. Three trends of the period will fascinate historians: 1) the rise of radical Christian fundamentalism and its influence upon American politics; 2) the role that Neo-Pentecostalism or the Charismatic renewal

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-6595019311190303352007-09-07T12:11:00.000-04:002007-12-10T23:23:53.409-05:00

Friday is normally “Within the Quote” day here at Something Within where I share with readers a quote from one of my favorite writers. I plan to do that today, but I can’t resist jumping in with a few comments about Evangelist Juanita Bynum's interview this week before the media.The evangelist called a press conference this past Tuesday evening to let her supporters and well-wishers know that she

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-58936735757919795832007-09-06T11:38:00.000-04:002007-09-08T01:05:48.021-04:00

Everything we hear in the media about black women and men loving each other is negative. We hear about infidelity, domestic violence, and disputes over money that plague our relationships. We hear that our divorce rates are so much higher than other groups. We hear about black men preferring women of every race other than their own. We hear that black women are the most unmarried women of all

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-72405098308054241342007-09-04T13:14:00.000-04:002007-09-06T11:49:32.080-04:00

"When Sleeping Beauty wakes up," writes the poet Maxine Kumin, "she is usually almost fifty years old." If not fifty, then she’s definitely over forty. It takes years for most women to wake up and face the truth that’s been staring them in the face. What truth? That Prince Charming isn’t coming. If he is, he won’t be what you’re expected. What truth? That you don’t get what you deserve; you get

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-79691458826542738042007-08-31T09:53:00.000-04:002007-09-10T01:18:52.868-04:00

Back home this morning from New Orleans where I went down earlier in the week to join thousands of others in commemorating the second anniversary of Katrina. It’s a wonder I was able to post the things I did here on this blog on gender, marriage, and the church this week. My heart was on the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region. But I wasn’t sure if those who read my blog had a choice

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-23871075023191670362007-08-29T11:42:00.000-04:002007-09-04T22:41:31.968-04:00

If only King Solomon had had the courage and good sense to marry the Queen of Sheba. If only he’d convinced the fascinating queen from the south to remain in Jerusalem as his wife.If only the Queen of Sheba had let herself be convinced that King Solomon could change and be faithful to one woman. If only the queen could trust Solomon to not try to change her into becoming a conventional wife when

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-83895821074773110182007-08-27T19:12:00.000-04:002007-11-06T11:22:18.229-05:00

Seizing on other women's pain to make a point on my blog is not something I relish doing. But there's a point to be made here as we watch the fall out in the media and blogosphere around the marital crises of Evangelists Juanita Bynum and Paula White. A point that’s been long time in coming. And I am a teacher at heart. So, take out your pencils and let's get started.The marriages of two highly

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-30293358196888843542007-08-24T11:57:00.000-04:002007-08-27T19:23:08.677-04:00

Writing for is me one of those talents that doesn't get easier with practice. Every time I sit down to write I feel as though I have to poke around to find a new vein to slice in order for the words to come. (With all the travelling, speaking and other writing that I do, not to mention the mommie duties that I perform, it's a miracle that I've managed to find the time twice, sometimes three times

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-48205281352129008852007-08-23T15:08:00.000-04:002007-09-08T01:07:18.664-04:00

News of a colleague, a fellow woman in ministry, battered savagely by her husband in a hotel parking lot forces me to get back online here on Thursday, a day when I’d planned to rest from blogging and thinking and bleeding out loud. But every three minutes a woman is battered...and Thursday is no exception.Well-known television minister, Juanita Bynum, became the victim of domestic abuse after

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-38425570368999237402007-08-22T14:49:00.000-04:002007-08-24T10:59:18.900-04:00

As a minister I’m expected to know what God is up to.Is God punishing me?How do you know when God is speaking?Why did God let this happen?If I don’t have the answers to these questions what use am I as a minister? I used to wonder when I was younger and demanded answers to everything. Which probably explains why I chose to become a scholar instead of a pastor."This is not a course on what God

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-12465781862794108192007-08-20T16:08:00.000-04:002007-08-22T16:07:24.255-04:00

I could teach a course on how to survive being hated. Especially being hated by other women. Believe me when I say that I’ve been known to walk into a room and make otherwise nice, gentle, sainted Christian women foam at the mouth and rave like maniacs at the thought of my sucking up the same air as them. You step out the box as a woman, and you step on a lot of toes.Go figure.Surviving being

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-30226517296329741872007-08-16T01:55:00.001-04:002007-11-06T11:24:35.873-05:00

My mother tells me that my head was always in a book when I was a little girl. I don't remember, but she must be right since that's how I spend every spare moment of my adult life. I am a bookaholic. My love of reading and of learning helped earn me a place on the honor roll throughout elementary and high schools.While I can’t say that I suffered for being a smart girl, I do seem to recall lots

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-91549946101923156022007-08-14T21:18:00.000-04:002007-12-10T22:53:06.026-05:00

If Hillary Clinton thinks black women are going to vote for her simply because she's a woman, she's wrong. Judging from emails and phone calls I’ve gotten from folks in her office recently, she knows this already. Clinton has figured out that she has to win over black women voters, one black woman at a time.Convincing black women voters that they can trust her as a white woman, however, will not

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-74153652126911067332007-08-07T14:15:00.000-04:002007-08-14T21:58:20.022-04:00

Gina McCauley, a fellow blogger over at WhatAboutOurDaughters is on a rampage about the Dunbar Village rape, and rightly so. Her energies right now are directed at calling our so-called black leaders to task for failing to speak out against the vicious June 18th attack against a mother and her son there in a West Palm Beach housing project.(You should know that Gina is one of those Joshua

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-76277839194545914122007-08-07T13:11:00.000-04:002007-08-08T22:34:22.893-04:00

I confess: When I first heard about it a month ago, I refused to click on the link to the full story. I had no more room for evil that day.A month later, I’m still repulsed. Every time I sit down at the computer to type about it (this is my 4th attempt), my whole body shakes and my mind freezes up in horror. I want to puke. I am not lying when I say, I am having difficulty breathing at this

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-68949309063035959252007-08-06T23:07:00.000-04:002007-08-07T13:44:46.351-04:00

"It's the shame of the nation," my friend Susan Taylor said last month in New Orleans while there celebrating the Essence Musical Festival, "that the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have been abandoned and are suffering without the most basic necessary supports while our tax dollars are directed toward war." Some 250,000 people are yet displaced throughout the nation, unable to return

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-28596877334392663772007-08-01T14:07:00.000-04:002007-08-06T23:34:32.702-04:00

Sometimes you have to go ahead and jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down,” is an apt way to describe what it means to live by faith. I didn’t know a thing about what I’d opened my big mouth and said I’d do, but I trusted God. And I had experience. The experience of once committing myself to something, watching the universe open up and gradually send me the things I needed to do

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-15012807288086392622007-07-30T18:47:00.000-04:002007-12-10T23:10:08.150-05:00

Polls indicate that in South Carolina, a crucial primary state where voters say race plays an important role in how they will vote, Hillary Clinton enjoys a 14 point lead over Barack Obama. Clinton enjoys a significant edge over Obama even among blacks. You wouldn’t know it, however, by the black women that I talk to.One friend caught me the other day with some “Hillary for President” buttons in

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-23174308218546712902007-07-25T11:42:00.000-04:002007-08-01T14:40:52.245-04:00

From time to time God has to remind me.Especially on days when I’m fretting about what’s gonna happen to the next generation when my generation is gone. It seems that a week doesn't go by when I don't stomp around and complain about young people. Lazy, self-absorbed, demanding, loud, pierced, half-clad, tattooed, and overstimulated. Loyal to no one and nothing: not to jobs, family, community,

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-61490694458259590522007-07-23T11:06:00.001-04:002007-07-25T14:30:44.687-04:00

I take my wig off today to Tammy Faye who died this weekend from cancer. The story of the rise and fall of her ministry, tied as it was to her former husband Jim Bakker, is one I've often used over the years as a case-study for women who attend my leadership seminars. Whenever I want to talk to women about what it means to live in a man’s shadow, why it's important to own your own gifts as a

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-44706320005609931322007-07-19T07:46:00.000-04:002007-08-01T14:42:08.463-04:00

Are there moments when you've wished you could go back to the woman you were 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago? I have. I think often about the woman I was in my 20's and 30's.Sometimes it's good to sit down and write a letter to your younger self. Tell your younger self what you wish you'd known then but didn't.Mind you, I don't miss being twentysomething and thirtysomething. Reliving those years does not

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-76487662987572889592007-07-17T11:30:00.000-04:002007-08-01T14:44:30.192-04:00

If the woman in Luke 8 who’d been hemorrhaging for twelve years lived in the U.S., she would have been dropped by her insurance company by the time she met up with Jesus. You can bet that she would have been fired from her job for taking too many sick days. And if after her miraculous healing she had applied for health insurance she probably would have been turned down flat. Prior or preexisting

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-48388841934618836062007-07-12T01:10:00.000-04:002007-12-10T23:12:58.671-05:00

I gave up on pop culture when Gladys Knight left the Pips back in 1991.But when you have a teenager in the house you have to pretend to care about stuff you otherwise don’t give a twit about. No matter how much you’d rather sit out on your screened porch with a glass of red Kool-Aid and watch male bees on the outside of the screen work busily to build a nest for their queen, with a teenager

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-64150508262297088822007-07-09T12:24:00.000-04:002007-08-01T14:58:36.708-04:00

I thought I felt a lump in the right breast. My gynecologist was convinced it was the left breast. After scribbling some words on my chart, my gynecologist looked up and sent me scurrying off for a bi-lateral mammogram and ultrasound.When was your last mammogram? November 2006. And before that? Every year for the last 10 years.Does your family have a history of cancer? No. Yes. No. Does an older

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-70470946904154245012007-07-05T15:24:00.000-04:002007-12-13T09:21:54.477-05:00

It's good to know that there was more than one way to be a freedom worker back in the day. Thank God for those whose greatest gift to the movement was their ability to throw their heads back and sing their butts off. They were the songbirds of the movement. (Every movement needs itself some songbirds.) These singers knew how to strike up the right song at the right moment, and with passion and

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-87262607068441398862007-07-03T13:37:00.000-04:002007-07-05T17:31:21.829-04:00

In 1776, when her husband, John, was in Philadelphia writing the Declaration of Independence, Abigail Adams wrote her husband saying, "I long to hear that you have declared an independency—and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generousand favorable to them than your ancestors."History is

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-3013437316067327982007-06-29T13:35:00.000-04:002007-07-13T04:53:11.021-04:00

I’ll pass right now on snatching up one of those Bill Gates’ iPhones that hits the stores today. But if Gates is as serious as he seems to devoting $2 billion dollars from his foundation to saving public schools then I probably won’t delay too long in dropping by the Apple store to check out his latest toy. True, my trusted Motorola does everything I want a cellphone to do. But the last time I

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-55438968554108159972007-06-26T09:42:00.000-04:002007-06-29T14:02:28.183-04:00

As a birthday gift to me today, I relieve myself of the burden of having to find something profound, witty, relevant, or prophetic to write about on my blog this morning.It is enough today simply to be grateful.Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast,

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-87213040773512982352007-06-22T09:05:00.001-04:002007-10-31T11:55:03.331-05:00

This is not about Condoleezza Rice who is an enigma to many of us. (That’s another post for another day.) It’s about putting aside our questions about who she really is and bracketing whatever questions we have about her confounding loyalties to this Administration. It’s about urging the Secretary of State to intervene on behalf of the men, women, and children dying from genocide and starvation

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-2171308927661671882007-06-20T16:28:00.000-04:002007-12-10T23:06:40.057-05:00

On days when the writing is not going well I fill my head with music. There’s the music I listen to when I’m on a plane (gospel and urban inspirational). There’s the music I listen to when I’m working out on the elliptical machine (funk, classic 70s, disco, hip-hop). But when I’m writing – whether it’s writing a sermon, a book, a speech, or a post for this blog– there’s only one kind of music I

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-80518332242888696152007-06-15T15:50:00.000-04:002007-12-10T23:19:58.654-05:00

Although I’ve spent the greater part of my life as a writer, a minister, a scholar, and a thinking woman fighting patriarchy, even I do not believe that fathers are expendable. Neither do I believe that fathers are replaceable, not even by two good mothers. That nearly 60% of black babies born in this country are born to single mothers should make us all pause. Have we come to think of fathers as

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-12195097176447806732007-06-12T12:24:00.000-04:002007-12-10T22:57:09.697-05:00

Standing in the checkout lane at Wild Oats supermarket a couple months ago I was sure I felt a pair of eyes on me. I turned to stare into a face that brought back a flood of memories. The poet and novelist Alice Walker peered out at me from the cover of a Shambhala Sun magazine. I paused to consider the wizened face of the woman on the magazine, a woman whose writings made an indelible impression

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-1716739690501959672007-06-07T15:03:00.000-04:002007-12-10T23:15:18.513-05:00

You may have never sent an instant message, uploaded a video, visited a chatroom, or posted a comment on a blog, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a cool person. It does suggest, however, that you’re probably a technophobe. But, hey, don’t feel bad. You’ll probably find lots of other technophobes in heaven when you arrive. It’s just a shame that you passed up the chance to meet millions of other

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-67003013979481415032007-06-05T12:04:00.000-04:002007-06-07T15:23:55.726-04:00

I thought our friendship would last forever. But it didn’t. What hurt most was the way it ended. I just looked around, and she was gone. No explanation. No conversation. No attempt at resolution. One day she just stopped taking my phone calls. She avoided me at social gatherings. She refused my invitation to talk about it. When I asked what I did to justify the sudden cold shoulder, "Nothing" was

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-47772431458205848942007-05-30T13:03:00.001-04:002007-11-26T21:04:36.639-05:00

Am I the only black woman in America who doesn’t find Tyler Perry’s outrageous “Madea” character funny? It seems so. If “Madea” has wracked up over $150 million at the box office for Perry as experts have surmised, then what’s my problem, you ask. It’s very simple. I am not a fan of stupid comedy. Nor do I find this man-playing-as-a-woman stuff funny. Didn’t like Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie." Didn

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-41757164192652493582007-05-25T12:20:00.000-04:002007-06-28T17:13:14.033-04:00

I have this ritual in the morning.The radio next to the bed comes on at 6:30am, but I must wake fast enough to hit the snooze button before the NPR announcer, in his round-up of today’s headline news, has a chance to announce the day’s total of U.S. soldiers killed in bomb attacks. I must wake up, but I don’t want to know. I can’t face hearing so soon that more innocent men and women, both U.S.

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-26879830873132299072007-05-24T09:19:00.000-04:002007-12-10T23:21:01.063-05:00

For those of us who have had moments when we’ve fantasized about what it must be like to have Oprah’s millions, we got our answer this week.It is great to be a wealthy icon, I suppose, but it’s also lonely and perilous.If you’ve been keeping up with the news you know that Oprah’s dad, Vernon Winfrey, has been withholding an important bit of news, namely he's writing a tell-all book about his

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-12842749756027708142007-05-22T13:09:00.000-04:002007-06-28T17:14:05.623-04:00

Let’s be honest. America doesn’t know what to make of smart, articulate, independent-thinking, professional black women.When 43-year-old Michelle Obama announced a little over a week ago her decision to step down from her job as VP of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals, the Washington Post ran the news as a front page article, as did many other news

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-4235702889216746422007-05-18T12:44:00.000-04:002007-06-28T17:14:41.158-04:00

There were no more seats left at the tables where parents we knew sat. So we were ushered to a table with strangers. Our kids knew each other and greeted one another with giggles and smiles as we took our seats. After all, it was an eighth-grade graduation event, of sorts, and all the kids in the room were thrilled to be at a breakfast held in their honor. But the parents at this table were

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-6203164514381658322007-05-16T13:37:00.000-04:002007-12-10T23:05:47.991-05:00

Speaking of death.She was born just two weeks before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus there, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott spearheaded by her father.She was just 10 weeks old when the King family home was bombed in Jan. 30, 1956, as her father attended a boycott rally. Neither she nor her mother was injured when the device exploded on the front porch.She was 7 when her

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-90094368847373066982007-05-16T12:54:00.000-04:002007-06-26T01:31:44.415-04:00

As a thinking woman of faith I was often repelled and appalled by Rev. Jerry Falwell and nearly everything that came out of his mouth. Founder of the Moral Majority and the face of the religious right in the 1980s, Falwell represented everything I oppose as a woman who tries to pattern her life and her politics after the teachings of the prophets who in various ways advocated that we “do justice,

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-33508492848450406272007-05-15T11:57:00.000-04:002007-06-28T17:15:40.283-04:00

"Don’t waste your moral capital talking about black women and hair," I chide myself.Hair is such a deeply complex and combustible topic among black women that I decided years ago to steer clear of the topic. Its power to divide black women in ways that it’s not always possible for us to find our way back to each other is mind boggling. Besides, hair is not a prophetic issue like, say, sexual

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-10091346999494671962007-05-14T16:10:00.000-04:002007-06-28T17:15:55.571-04:00

Several of you have written asking me to comment as a black woman in ministry on the “nappy headed” portion of Don Imus’ derogatory remarks of a few weeks ago. Of course, I thought I had done just that when I spent that week signing every petition that came across my desk and dashing off emails to advertisers and media executives calling for Imus’ removal from the airwaves. “But protesting a

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-16250027520650840082007-05-11T13:30:00.000-04:002007-06-28T17:16:48.219-04:00

Some mothers give birth physically. Some mothers give birth from the heart. I am eternally grateful to all the wizened women whose paths I crossed over the years, who upon recognizing the signs in me stepped in and offered the nurturing and mentoring I craved as someone suffering from mother-hunger.A couple of the women who mothered me were childless women, and I became the daughter they never

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-80890289775202070652007-05-09T07:58:00.000-04:002007-06-28T17:17:32.964-04:00

My mother did me a favor when she walked out on our family when I was young and left us kids in the care of our father. She taught me that there is no such thing as the perfect mother. It took me years to figure out what she was teaching me, of course. Having a child of my own helped. But I learned from years of conversations with mothers that caring for children leaves mothers torn, anxious,

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-55106271645978439042007-05-07T13:24:00.000-04:002007-06-26T01:50:40.062-04:00

Last year when I spoke at her church she came up to me afterwards to say that when she grows up she wants to be a writer, minister, and scholar like myself. This year when I return to her church I look around hoping to catch a glimpse of the fifteen year old young girl with the gold extensions in her hair and pretty dimples. When I don’t see her, I lean over and ask someone about her. “She had a

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-61797449412872046172007-05-02T11:43:00.000-04:002007-09-08T01:06:45.854-04:00

Mother's Day is a little more than a week off, and I should wait until then to pay tribute to my grandmothers. But I can't wait.Having listened to me lament over the years about never having had the opportunity to know my grandmothers and not owning a picture of either one, and complaining that I miss having older women in my life to look up to, a friend sent me a link this morning to quiet my

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-76419387281957652702007-04-30T14:51:00.000-04:002007-12-10T23:03:47.676-05:00

There are things we know that we don’t know we know. It’s called instinct, intuition, a hunch, gut feeling, or sixth sense. It’s a gift that God gives to each of us. With this gift, this intuition, people have been known to make split second decisions.Tracie Dean drove 300 miles out of her way in January 2006 to follow up on a gut feeling she had about a little girl she happened upon at a

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-10238608901878038122007-04-25T16:44:00.000-04:002007-12-10T22:59:29.991-05:00

Historians have always paid more attention to the lions of a movement. Very little interest is paid to the lionesses even though they are the more agile of the species and tend to be the ones who do much of the hard work.Judging by the comments of some, you would think that black women have been silent about being called out of their names. As far back as the early 90s the late C. Delores Tucker

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-1846042296426158642007-04-24T11:12:00.000-04:002007-12-10T23:08:52.986-05:00

Which candidate gets my vote in ’08? Obama or Clinton. Dunno. I’m what you call a fence-sitter. My heart is definitely with the senator from Illinois. But my mind keeps trailing off to hear the latest stump speech by the senator from New York. It’s actually a great place to be right now as an African American woman—on the fence, that is. With two candidates on the ’08 ballot with whom I have

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-58344216472036553412007-04-19T16:41:00.000-04:002007-04-24T11:12:17.316-04:00

While we spent the last two weeks railing at each other about racial insults, sexist jokes, hip hop music, apologies that won’t fly, and weighty matters related to the First Amendment, a deranged college student sat plotting the mass murder of his classmates along with his own suicide on the idyllic campus of Virginia Tech.Now that the fog of horror is beginning to lift everyone is scrambling to

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-86229765853315283012007-04-18T01:41:00.000-04:002007-12-10T23:03:09.884-05:00

It's being called the deadliest school attack in U.S. history. Plastered all over the news are pictures of prayer vigils on the campus of Virginia Tech Univeristy in Blacksburg, Va. in the wake of a shooting melee the other day that left 33 people dead. As a mother of a child who will be taking off for college in a few years and as someone who has spent the greater part of her adult life studying

Also A Quilternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7260658978895966350.post-65723814624470333632007-04-18T01:17:00.000-04:002007-06-28T17:21:59.772-04:00

Many of you have written in the past months wondering what's taken me so long to update somethingwithin.com. You missed reading my inspirational editorials. To tell you the truth, I missed writing them.But it dawned on me at the close of last year that it was time to make a change. It was time for me as a woman in ministry, a scholar who's written about religion, gender, and pop culture, and as

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