-
How Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal Make My White Life Easier
There is a connection between two people who have recently dominated headlines and news feeds: Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal. It’s not the false equivalency between a transgender person and Ms Dolezal’s wrong-headed idea that she, a white woman, can identify as African American. Rather, the similarity that interests me is how these two individuals and their decisions…
-
Fear and Defiance in McKinney, TX
And then there is the young woman, pinned to the ground, the officer’s knee grinding into her back as his hand repeatedly forces her face into the grass. Surely she too feels fear; how could she not? But there is something else that comes through more clearly. There is defiance in her voice, courage in…
-
Assumptions
Originally posted on Intersections: I was walking from my office Friday, coming out of the building just behind a woman, and as I approached the street, I stopped the way I always do. There were cars coming and even though there’s a great trauma one center a block over–one I was heading to it in…
-
Hummingbirds and the Delights of Staying
The hummingbirds should be back any day now. This was my thought a few days ago and a quick search online confirmed it: the first ones had been spotted in Chicago a week or so earlier. So a couple days later I brought out our two feeders, washed them, and added the sugary water they can’t resist.…
-
“Why do we applaud rebellion in film, but not in Baltimore’s streets?”
I posit that the reason audiences fail to see the similarities in fictional uprising (which we love) and what occurs in real life, is the absence of that second element. Excluding the most ignorant and racist in our country, Americans generally get a sense that there is a problem with the unjustified killing of innocent…
David W. Swanson
Pastor and Author
David W. Swanson 