In a diverse multi-contextual world, preachers are challenged in how to connect the Word with a community of people with very different cultural experiences and backgrounds in the same sermon. For example, what does a sermon sound like when you have people from different political affirmation, racial background and economic status listening?
You are invited to join The Rev. Dr. Eric H. F. Law, the Founder and Innovator of the Kaleidoscope Institute, for a weekly Tuesday gathering of preachers in multi-contextual communities. If you are not a preacher, please consider forwarding this invitation to any preachers you know. Come spend an hour each week with Eric to reflect on a lectionary text for the upcoming Sunday and to listen and share with other preachers - ideas, stories, techniques, and processes for sharing the Word in diverse communities. We will use a combination of the multi-contextual preaching model Eric shared in his book, The Word at the Crossingand the Kaleidoscope Bible Sharing process. The gatherings will take place on Zoom at 9am Pacific/12 noon Eastern.
Try it out for February - the dates are 2/7, 2/14, 2/21, and 2/28.
In our polarized world epitomized by the people’s reactions to such events as the killing of George Floyd and the 2020 U.S. election, it’s easy to become paralyzed with fear and hopelessness. RECREATE is a collection of songs that address these divisive events from community, political and spiritual perspectives. Here is the list of song titles:
Recreate
Uneasy Glory
Winner-Loser
Who Tells Us
Hold On-Reach Out
Hand on my Shoulder
I Love-I Am
Slow Me Down
Small Things
RECREATE will be released on December 16, 2022 on all the major streaming services. I will host a listening party that day at 4 pm pacific. My guests include Jeannine Otis, Sandra Montes, Sarah Pirtle, John Carroll, Dave Law, Steve Eulberg and others who will introduce the 9 fully realized recordings. Come and be the first to hear this collection of songs that inspire listeners to slow down and discover a deeper understanding of the divisive events of our time and emerge from this musical journey with hope, courage and grace to “Recreate” a grateful day together.
Worrying about family members and friends at Thanksgiving when politics and hot issues come up? Try this welcome speech I have written for you:
“Welcome to our home. I am so thankful for you, my family and friends, who have so much in common and yet are so very diverse and different. We want our home to be a gracious place where everyone can be who he or she is. Living in an increasingly divided and polarized world, we often avoid sharing who we are and our beliefs during holiday gatherings fearing that we might cause conflict or trouble. But if we don’t share these things about ourselves, we will be further alienated from each other. Having honest conversations is not about winning an argument. It is about achieving understanding without having to agree with each other. So, when difficult topics come up, and they will, I invite you to practice these guidelines: Don't tell them they are wrong; ask them what value led them there. Don't say, "Yeah, but, what about…?”; say "Huh, interesting, tell me more . . ." Don't ask how they could ever believe something; ask when that belief first started for them. Don't interrupt people; let people finish their thought. Don't try to assume you know their motives; ask about their goals and hopes. Don't blame them for your anger or frustration; explain your frustration and take responsibility for it by using an "I" statement. Can we agree on this? Now go and have great conversations and happy Thanksgiving."
This will feel strange and unnatural, but remember you are the host and you set the ground rules in your home.
One of the most important truth-discerning skills I learned as a child was counting. My earliest memory of my mother was her teaching me how to count to 10 using my fingers. That was how I knew I had 10 fingers: I counted to 10. And of course, I assumed that everyone in the world had 10 fingers until I met a friend in grade school who had 11 fingers. I knew the truth, in this case a rare exception, that not everyone has 10 fingers, by counting with my friend. Counting is the first thing we learn that would later help us do more complicated mathematics, which then was a key part of scientific exploration in learning the truth about our world. Knowing how to count correctly in order to learn the truth of the will of the people is how a democratic society move forward in settling our difference without going to war.
When the people of my beloved nation could not agree on the number of people who attended the 2016 inauguration, and then in 2020, many would not accept the final count of the votes casted at the federal election, I know we, as a nation, are deeply unwell for lack of truthcare. Perhaps an exploration on the basic understanding of counting would be helpful in healing our nation, beginning of when the children.
A while ago, I was invited to be part of the For the Know Better, Do Better Project, the mission of which is to create alternative songs to racism-embedded folk and popular songs, especially those commonly sung for and with children. The name is inspired by the Maya Angelou quote, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” I decided to write an alternative song to Ten Little Indians, which is probably one of the most popular songs used to teach children to count – counting forward to 10 and backward to 0.
Most songs that teaches children to count backward in the United States, unconsciously and consciously teaches children about scarcity – if you do something wrong or don’t follow the rules, you will be eliminated. Just like playing musical chair, which I hated as a child because I was never fast enough to get my chair and there were less and less chairs available as we counted down. In the case of Ten Little Indians, the elimination process is so violent with accidents, murders, and suicide, I can’t even repeat the original verses of the song.
The song was written in 1864 to be performed in minstrels shows. A few years later, the word Indian was replaced with the N-word and became a standard in blackface minstrel shows in England and America. Over time, the N-word was deemed insensitive, so it was changed back to Indians, then to soldiers, then teddy bears and then bunnies.
Agatha Christie made the song more famous through her million-seller murder mystery with the same title and later changed to And Then There Was None – the last line of the song. Ten Little Indians, as Christie understood it correctly, was basically a song about death, murder and genocide. I had no doubt that when it was performed in minstrel shows, the audience found it funny.
Even though most teachers don’t use the verses when teaching children how to count with this song, we should know better and do better.
The alternative song I proposed is called Counting Counts. I want a song with a lively beat so children can move and dance to it with pointing gestures. I also want a song that doesn’t teach scarcity or elimination, but about being included and counted. Finally, I want to write a song that has a long life: after the children had learned how to count, they can continue to sing it as adults and be reminded of why counting is such an essential skill for living. Counting minutes help us get to places on time, counting the days and years help us celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. Counting is what makes a democratic society great - we count the votes so we don’t need to go to war to settle our differences. We count who live in our land through the census so we can distribute our resources justly. So let’s make counting counts.
Here is the video of me singing Counting Counts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PplZHuxjnQY
I also included the lyrics and the chords (there are only four chords). Also the song can be touch without accompaniment: snap your fingers to keep the beat. Use it to teach our children to count and why counting is so important. Share it in teachers of your local schools, and Sunday schools. Teach it in children's gathering. Teach it on zoom. Tell Sesame Street that they do should do a muppet video on the song.
Just as healthcare is essential for a person’s physical wellness, we need to provide truthcare to nurture and develop our social, spiritual and economic wellness. In the internet age, when millions of people read and hear the same thing over and over again, over time, they believe that it is true. This is not healthy. When a lie was propagated that way like a virus, it had led to violence and destruction of relationships, properties, communities and institutions.
I did a quick search on hashtags that have the word “truth” in it and many of the posts and tweets were propagating misinformation inciting hate and division. Where are the truthcare providers? How do we provide truthcare in the U.S. today when over 70% of a party did not believe that the newly elected president of the U.S. is legitimate despite verified truth from all 50 States?
Some social media companies finally take truthcare seriously by disabling the accounts of those who spread untruth and incited violence on January 6, 2021. Truthcare providers now have a small window to start a truthcare wave that can flood the internet with life-giving truth-vaccines. I invite you to be a truthcare provider and take a few minutes each day this week and share a truth through your various social media accounts and invite your friends and followers to do the same. Here are some criteria for posting a life-giving and community-building truth:
- Share a truth to build wellness for individuals and communities and not to hurt or judge others.
- If it is a factual truth, cite your source and verification process.
- If it is a personal experienced truth, own it by using “I” statements.
- If it is an interpreted truth, say that it is your interpretation only and invite dialogue.
- Make sure you begin or end with #truthcare. And add as many hashtags that has the word “truth” that you can think of, such as truthwave, truthtellers, truthtelling, truthmatters, . . . etc.
When you got a negative reaction/comment, be kind and respectful in your response. Listen and feedback to let the person know you care enough to try to understand. Ask for clarifying question such as where did you get that information, or how or from whom did you learn that, . . . etc.
When a truth is verified and it is life-giving and community-building, it is worth repeating over and over again so that more and more people will come to live and believe it. For example, if 1,000 of my FB friends share a life-giving and community-building truth today and invite 10 of their friends to do the same, we will have 10,000 truthcare posts. If their friends share it with 10 friends, we will have 100,000 more. You can see who we can distribute our truth-vaccine life-giving to millions upon millions in a very short time.
If we care about the wellbeing of the people in our nation, we must provide its people truthcare: seek the truth, verify the truth, share and teach the truth.
Here are a couple of examples of truthcare posts:
- #truthcare: I have voted by mail in California for the last 4 federal elections. Last November I was able to track my vote and I got a confirmation that my voted was counted. A friend reminded me to make sure I signed it with my full name as it appears in my voter registration or it would not be counted. My experience of voting by mail is safe in preventing fraud and safe from exposing myself to Covid-19. I invite you to share a life-giving community-building truth today and be sure to include #truthcare. #truthmatters#truthtelling
#truthcare: I voted for Biden/Harris along with 63.5% of the voters in California. That’s over 11 million votes. This was verified by the California Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, in the website: https://electionresults.sos.ca.gov/returns/president. I look forward to a peaceful inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on January 20, 2021. I invite you to share a life-giving community-building truth today and be sure to include #truthcare.