01

PEOPLE: Mom and Auntie

These two women are the direct

links to my reverent irreverence! 

 

02

BOOK: The Prophetic Imagination

Walter Brueggemann introduced me to the strident voices of the biblical prophets and their poetic, expansive language used to puncture numbness and invigorate hope in a God who rejects the empire while hanging out on the margins with the least, last, lost and the left behind. 

 

03

 BOOK: Wounded Healer

Henri Nouwen gave me a vocabulary and new moniker - wounded healer. It describes the calling to pull up your sleeves and tell the stories behind your scars. Our stories are sources of healing for others.

 

04

PEOPLE: Anne Lamott

Anne is EVERYTHING! My kindred spirit in rawness and revelation, my fellow wounded healer. 

 

05

BOOK: Rainbow Jordan

Author Alice Childress captured my imagination in this YA novel set in Harlem about a girl whose mother was a go-go dancer. She is the writer who pulled me into the world of books. I hope to do the same with my books.

 

06

PEOPLE: Maya Angelou

Maya's entire biographical series speaks fluently to my angst, insecurities and ratchet choices as a woman prone to angst, insecurity and, well, ratchetness. Love her!!!

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07

ARTIST: Maze featuring Frankie Beverly

Anyone who makes music telling the truth about how "joy and pain is like sunshine and rain" and through all the harshness of fighting for love - in partnered and communal relationships - we declare, in the end, "no matter what we do, we are one/our love will see us through, we are one/and that's the way it is, we are one", they're my peeps!

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08

MOVIE: Claudine

Tina and Lester Pine were on some next-level stuff when they penned this script! "Claudine" is a palatable story about the harsh realities of love and systems. Welfare, child support, love and "cat naps" - damn.

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09

FABLE: "The Naked Truth"

I took a storytelling class and was introduced to this fable about Truth living in a village where everyone ran from him. Mothers would hurry their children into the house, and the men would laugh and mock him. But when Truth runs away he meets Story.  When Truth began to dress itself in Story suddenly he could be heard by everyone, for in the end he realized no one likes a "naked truth." SOOO my signature story!

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10

Jesus, a revolutionary peacemonger

Since taking  the class "Prophecy as Literature", I've reread Jesus' words through the lens of the biblical prophets. He doesn't look like Greek Jesus who's popular in American Christianity. He's also not quite like Black Jesus from the 1970's show "Good Times", who bore a striking resemblance to Ned the Wino and brought good luck to the Evans' family. Jesus, the man courageous enough to say "things gotta change" and then recruits 12 ride-or-dies but tells them to put down their swords even though EVERYBODY ELSE got a sword - him. Different. Yes.