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The Empty Path.

Nonaligned faith and practice in the present

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Teasing the scribes and pharisees

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"Woe unto You, Scribes and Pharisees (Malheur à vous, scribes et pharisiens)," by James Tissot (between 1886 and 1894), Online Collection of Brooklyn Museum [Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons].

Some fun with words that may go deeper than we usually expect to go in reading the Gospels.

In Mark’s account of Jesus’ Temple teaching, Jesus answers trick questions from the scholars and Pharisees and then responds with one of his own, translated in English as follows (Mark 12: 35-36):

How can the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David?  David himself, by the Holy Spirit, declared, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right

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OMGWM Part 3: Teased post-polio sissy

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"Frankfurt am Main - African refugees rallying for the right to stay in Germany" [Demo für Bleiberecht, Bahnhofsviertel], by Picturepest on flickr (1/1/2000)

It astonishes me sometimes—no, often—how every person I get to know—
everyone, regardless of everything, by which I mean everything—
lives with some profound  personal sorrow. – Ross Gay

Fear

I am not convinced that our nation’s racial abuses and obsessions can be changed solely by large scale movements and political reforms, or by publicly challenging denial about America’s culture of White supremacy.

Yes, such examinations of deep-rooted, implicit White supremacy are essential for

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“Anti-paraskavedekatriaphobia” – from October 13, 2006

Tags Mike Shell

Walhydra admits rather sheepishly that she was very much in the closet until around 1973.

It was then, while she was in her first year in Lutheran seminary, that she finally realized she couldn’t lie to herself anymore—and, better still, that the Divine One did not in fact condemn her for her “difference,” regardless of what the Church and most of Western civilization had to say.

Finding her courage, she dropped out, moved back to her beloved college town

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OMGWM Part 2: “Whiteness” as a class thing

Tags , , 8 Comments Mike Shell
"The Teff Harvest, Northern Ethiopia," by A. Davey from Where I Live Now: Pacific Northwest [Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons]

Introduction: In Part 1, I wrote about growing up oblivious to the “white cultural mindset which is my default setting.”  There is much more to this than most of us realize.  I encourage readers to give full attention to the footnotes.  I have used a reference librarian’s “due diligence” to offer relevant background information throughout this article.

Teff

Recently at breakfast, my husband served us his new cooked cereal discovery: teff.  EthnoMed, Harborview Medical

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Old middle-class gay white man: Part 1

Tags , , 5 Comments Mike Shell
"Duo," by Mike Shell (4/29/2021)

Note: I encourage readers to give full attention to the footnotes.  I have used a reference librarian’s “due diligence” to offer relevant background information throughout this article.

  • Part 1 – Old middle-class gay white man
  • Part 2 –”Whiteness” as a class thing
  • Part 3 – Teased post-polio sissy

My life began in a liberal 1950s Ohio preacher’s family.  When I was 10, Dad moved us to Boston so he could earn a doctorate

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Ethan Hawke on John Brown and white guilt

Tags , , , 2 Comments Mike Shell

Excerpts from “The Shape-Shifter: The Protean Career of Ethan Hawke,” by John Lahr in The New Yorker (9/21/2020, pp.44-5) [behind the paywall].

“Black people didn’t need saving.
The affluent white communities were the ones living in sin.”

In 2013, James McBride, author of The Color of Water and Song Yet Sung, published The Good Lord Bird, the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade

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