“You can call me by either name,” said Zoughbi Zoughbi, founder and director of Wi’am: The Palestinian Conflict Transformation Center, introducing himself Wednesday from his home in Bethlehem in Palestine’s West Bank to the national staff of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) during an online all-agency worship service titled “Advent Journeys.”
“Scoot a little closer to the screen,” the Rev. Nannette Banks, vice president for Community Engagement and Alumni Relations at McCormick Theological Seminary said to an online crowd Saturday, “and lean into the power of transforming theological education and the life of Howard Thurman. Lean in and enjoy.”
“How good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by!”
With these words the Rev. Jeff Eddings opened Wednesday’s The Way of Spiritual Fortitude, quoting a mediation from theologian and mystic the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman.
The Most. Rev. Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church, told about 1,700 people who tuned in for opening worship Monday at the Festival of Homiletics something of what he learned during a sabbatical spent learning to play the violin and studying both supporters and opponents of enslaving African Americans during the 19th century — especially from Frederick Douglass, who was himself formerly enslaved.
The Rev. Dr. Gregory Ellison II has discovered heaven on Earth. For him it involves spending time at the Haley Farm in Clinton, Tennessee, with others who admire, as he does, the late Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, one of Christianity’s most celebrated authors, preachers, scholars and mystics — and then being asked to edit a book on Thurman.
The pandemic of 2020 has further exposed disparities in healthcare and social justice and the wealth gap that exists in America. These glaring issues make the works and the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., just as relevant today as they were in the 1950s and 1960s.
