We are now in "Ordinary Time." Yet, we're clearly living in an extraordinary time of global outrage about police brutality and anti-black racism. All in the midst of a global pandemic! As you may know, ordinary time is the ordered life of the church. A season in the Christian church calendar it is time that is outside the two great seasons of church celebration. It usually last for about 33 or 34 weeks, beginning with the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, skipping Easter until Pentecost and ending before Advent. So, right now, we're in the second period of ordinary time, during the time of the Pentecost, a time of holy fire and power. *You* are a vital part of the good changes happening in our world. I thank you for your faithful witness and highlight a few materials from our library. May they help to fuel our collective imagination and individual actions towards dismantling racism, and ushering in the order and harmony of our Holy God.
E.M. White Library: We've recently added an open access undergraduate textbook on anti-racist writing to our eBook collections. You can access it through Morgan/Discovery (our library catalog).
Inoue, A. B. (2015). Antiracist writing assessment ecologies : teaching and assessing writing for a socially just future (Ser. Perspectives on writing). WAC Clearinghouse. https://lpts.on.worldcat.org/oclc/927141387
Anti-racism Digital Library: The new Louisville, KY collection currently contains four richly detailed educational resources about redlining, racial capitalism, and the history of slavery in Louisville, to help guide our reflections for strategic action. The Louisville Seminary collection has 13 items including recent #BLM writings by the Rev. Dr. Alton B. Pollard, III, Prof. Debra Mumford, Prof. Shannon Craigo-Snell, Dr. Steve Cook, and me. Other materials include a paper on Race by Prof. Reed and links to related Spring syllabi by Prof. Pauw, Prof. Garrett, etc. For now, I especially want to highlight Dr. Cook's reflection on a passage from Genesis and using "The Creation" art by Aaron Douglas. Here's the closing excerpt and you can find the art and the full reflection here:
For our moment, we must recognize how “The Creation”
bears witness that Black Lives
Matter in the cosmic order of God’s creation. To name Black Lives as integral to the goodness of God’s creation
does not deny that all humans are made in the image ofGod.
Rather, it recognizes the destruction to God’s good creation done by
generations of racist actions,
policies, ideologies, and structures. Generations of white silence, ignorance,
and apathy, too. To say Black
Lives Matter calls us, members of the Episcopal
Church, to commit to anti-racist
practices and the dismantling of white supremacy to honor all that God has
made. May our generation be
the one to celebrate finally the full and awesome goodness of God’s creation. Amen.
May it be so.
