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I'm back. I have to say this is now the second time at a Presbyterian seminary that I've had to follow Claudio. I'm not sure God loves me some days, but we press on the music that

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began this lecture switches from R and B to Black gospel. The song the storm is passing over has been a humming tomb of mine for many years. Storm's passing over. The storm is passing over.

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The storm is passing over. Hallelu. The great Reverend Charles Tinley, an early 20th century Methodist Episcopal church minister and gospel music composer and lyricist who is often referred to as the prince of preachers, is

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its composer, Tinley, a self educated man, the son of an enslaved father and freeborn mother. Found it one of the largest Methodist congregations in the country in the 19 twenties, totaling 10,000 members in

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the city of Philadelphia. The collection of his 46 published hymns, Beams of Heaven Hymns of Charles at Charles Albert Tinley. 1851 to 1933 was published in 2006, contains all the verses of his hymns and

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is considered the most comprehensive compilation of his work. I suspect that the storm is passing over has been a humming tomb of mine of late because when you and I look out on the, look out and

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live in a trembling country that is becoming increasingly polarized . It is clear that we are not happy with one another in a variety of our walks in life and living. We're not getting along and we are

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almost surprised when we read about places like Silverton, Colorado, a town that was far from perfect and not immune to all sorts of divides along generations, class jobs, ethnicities and more. But it survived

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two years of death threats and aspersions to realize that when given the place and structure to begin to hear and listen to each other, they had more common ground to build from than what their polarizing rhetoric would

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have. Folks believe you see these lectures don't happen in a vacuum. These lectures are deeply influenced by my growing alarm that we are willing to shape our lives around stereotypes and innuendos rather than doing the harder

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but infinitely more faithful and joyous work of building communities that can only happen with our learning to listen, to hear and to respect one another and get to know one another in the fullness of our humanity.

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This is not about always agreeing. I'm not arguing for a contemporary version of Eden, but I am suggesting that hope is possible if we give ourselves over to God's limitless love and trust for this is the

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power of a robust if not ornery hope that refuses to bend to the weight of injustice. So yes , we are surviving our violence in our houses of worship in our schools, in our malls, in

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our neighborhoods, in our government offices. We are surviving warring political parties that make the majority of us collateral damage in their contest based on winning and losing rather than governing and the common good. We are

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surviving a war between Israel and Hamas that is bringing out the absolutely mean sides of polarization that make it seemingly impossible at times to find a third way that respects and understands the histories that bring us to this

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current moment. And we are surviving our long March as Christians to not fully understanding Judaism or Islam and the ways in which governments can spring from them or not. Our polarized society makes it difficult to keep

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them versus us mentality out of our religious homes and out of our personal faith because we are cherishing absolutes that tell us that there are always winners and losers . And I think that my colleague, Jim Hut

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Nut Boer good Presbyterian said it best in a recent faculty conversation about who we should be as a theological ed ed educators in the face of wars. Jim says the religious and moral problem with violence is often

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perspective, other people's violence is wrong and unjustified, but our favored side is entitled to use force to defend itself. Or restore justice, it obviously gets worse. Once either side is convinced that some kind

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of total or disproportionate response is justified. Close quote . This has me singing, but mostly, I mean, I'm not a singer at home humming. The storm is passing over, not as a pipe

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dream, but as a reminder that it is our responsibility to work for peace and justice in this world as we embrace a hope that can undo the polarizing notions and actions that divide us carrying with us.

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The rest of Tin Le's words, courage my soul . And let us journey on for the night is dark and I am far from home. Thanks be to God. The morning light appears, the storm

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is passing over Hallelu, a great part of our church as people of faith is to do what the great writer James Baldwin called doing your first works over Baldwin, the author of such American classics as go

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tell it on the Mountain notes of a native Son Giovanni's room, another country and the fire next time and many more was raised in the Black Pentecostal Church of Harlem in the 19 twenties and thirties in his

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last collection of essays, spanning nearly 40 years of his nonfiction work, the monumental the price of the ticket. It literally is about this thick. He writes about the church, this in 1985 quote.

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And the church I come from, which is not the same as the certain church to which white Americans belong. We were counseled from time to time to do our first works over though the church I come

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from and the church to which most White Americans belong to are both Christian churches. Their relationship due to those pragmatic decisions concerning property made by a Christian sedate some time ago, cannot be said to involve or

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to suggest the fellowship of Christians. We do not therefore share the same hope or speak the same language to do your first works over means to re examine everything. Go back to where you started or as

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far back as you can examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it , sing or shout or testify or keep it to yourself but know whence you came. Although I do

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not completely share Baldwin's pessimism about our church. He is on to something I deeply believe as you know , in the power of lament this giving an account of ourselves. And our situation is the first step

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on the journey to be healthy. Baldwin urges us to tell the truths of our lives and this is not the same thing as clutching so tight to those things. We have learned that we cannot hear God's

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call to us to breathe fresh air. Baldwin is speaking of that space between lament and testimony that is so important in doing the work and joy of living our faith with and immersed in hope. We must

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take an honest personal inventory of the person who we are, the person who we hope to be and the ways that there is something called the holy who asks us to live our lives. Responding with love

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, hope, faith, peace justice. Not just because it's a good thing to do or a pleasant thing to ponder or a r a rapturous paradise with the apple intact and no snake in sight. Now

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we do this because love, hope, faith, peace and justice are absolute requirements for living a compassionate , hope filled life. That is more than a checklist of self absorbed hosannas, courage my soul and

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let us journey on for the night is dark and I am far from home. Thanks be to God . The morning light appears, the storm is passing over Hallelu. When I was a little girl,

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I spent a good deal of time trying to conjure up heaven. I thought that if I could just imagine those angels, those harps, those clouds, then I wouldn't be so scared of this big angry

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, white haired, white, bearded, white furrow , browed God. The minister preach about on those Sunday mornings in Southern Pines, North Carolina. I thought if I could see those fluffy clouds sit on

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those soft with goose down couches smell the tasty because I knew anything that had to do with heaven had to be tasty food. The fried chicken, the hot with butter rolls, the spoon bread, the

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gravy made with chicken grease. The collard greens, the string beans, the big grain rice, the macaroni and cheese, the mashed potatoes, the candied yams, the rib roast the salmon croquettes, the

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salad lettuce and tomato. The cakes pound coconut chocolate , the pies, apple sweet potato, chest pecan , the kool aid the lemonade, the sweetened tea because there was no such thing as unsweetened tea when

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I was growing up and butter, butter, butter , butter. I realize now that I was associating heaven with the way my grandmama's house smelled on Saturday night and Sunday morning. I thought if I could

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hear the good music because even my playmates and I knew that all angels knew the beat could carry a tune and played a mean harp. Then I wouldn't worry so much when the men in white sheets marched

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through the black section of town where my grandmother and all the other loving people I knew lived. I thought if I could just conjure up heaven in my mind and in my heart and in my prayers,

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then maybe just maybe it seems interesting to me now , decades later and living back home in the South that I never once consciously associated paradise with what I s smelled, tasted and felt on earth. When

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I was a little girl. Conjuring, full bodied lives of hope is not quite as ambitious as trying to conjure up heaven, but it's high on the scale of what we might attempt as human beings.

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This is why I so deeply believe that we must begin with ourselves and take that important self inventory of who we are as we begin the journey and return to it from time to time as we stay on

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the journey of discovering what we would or should do and see, hear and feel one another rightly fully and generously, rather than putting each other into categories that we design. This journey invites us to be

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open to who we are and who we've been and how we have come to this place of treating differences as problems rather than the gifts found in our lush and diverse creation. We cover ourselves with human made

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delights to avoid the hard but necessary conversations we must have on this journey of hope. We have sought one too many, an easy answer, segregation, desegregation, integration, separatism, nationalism, gated communities

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, redlining charter schools, apartheid, lynching, stand your ground. Profiling and more to the dilemma of shaping a faith that moves beyond our different cultural versions of shouting that looks feels and sounds like a postmodern

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minstrel show to one that endures and deals with the realities of what it takes to confess our sins in a world. We have helped create. We have tried that one additional quick fix that has pushed us

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into empty, living, empty worship, empty mission , empty, witness, empty spirituality, empty faith . And o the choices we make. The choices we make about living. Often hijack our hearts,

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close our minds, destroy our spirits, mute our witness. We are being tracked down by history with purses filled with kiddie rides and while it's full of trackless trains that neither go anywhere fun because our visions

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of community are little more than beautified boondocks rather than folks formed from the very deep marrows of joy to deal with this kind of premeditated indifference. While also living with deep polarization demands that we remember our faith

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to do. Our first works over, call forth the morning light and not be held captive by the past to speak its truths and realities. Yes, to acknowledge our inheritance of it. Yes, to

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learn from it rather than deny that it does not have any impact on who we are and what we've become in our now. Yes, once again. But for God's sake, we must slip, we

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must not slip into an indifference to it or denial of it. The past is a part of who each of us is, but it does not ultimately determine how we respond to our now, particularly if

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we know that our past is not who we want to be because we see God's possibilities, calling us for the past, present and the future are our heavenly mind benders as well. Premeditated indifference is shaped

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by a kind of complacency and when we have lost or are losing our confidence in God's promises. I suspect that some of us are being shaped in fashion by our notions of success gain. And prosperity.

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And others of us may have a faith crafted out of illusions and spectacles and still others of us only think to thank God when we get what we want and what we have prayed for, but never turn

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to God. When life says no, what premeditated indifference suggests is that we are all human folk. We are all trying our best to live our lives of faith, but sometimes failing to remember the important

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word from Hebrews that we must have endurance in our faith that we must work at having a hearty hope filled faith persistently and stubbornly far too often. We are living in a world of deadly theme, parts

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of parts of our own making places that seemingly give us respite or comfort in our strivings to bring in God's new heaven and new earth in our midst. But they are not built for the long journey of

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crafting a more just witness. I believe that we can and must tackle polarization that divide us. I do not believe that this is a pipe dream or something that can only happen in an indeterminate future.

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I say let's roll up our sleeves. Now, let's say enough is enough. Now let's get moving into the pathways of hope that give us the guide posts to be downright persistent when it comes to taking

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on those things that we find when we do our first works over for. It is then friends that we can move through this dark light night as we take stock of the fact that we may be far

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from the home we seek. But this is a storm that can and does pass over, we can see the light, but we must take courage and journey on. So how do we get, how

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do we begin this journey to unhinge our polarization if we are not already doing so? So let me suggest seven things I love Liz. Sometimes let me um suggest seven things that I have adapted from an

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unconscious bias workshop that we had at Vanderbilt a few years ago. I can't see the screen has it flipped first, does it say recognize? Thank you , recognize and accept that you have bias. Thank

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you, David. We've all got it. Bias is something that we can't live without. It is part of one of our fundamental survival mechanizes mechanisms. But to deny that we have it gives it more

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power to affect us and to do so in negative ways. If we cannot understand and accept that all human beings have bias, it can help us be more compassionate with others. Let's do away with a

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good person, bad person paradigm and instead begin to see the humanity in each other and in ourselves. It's also important to remember that some groups of people have suffered a great deal more on a societal level

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because of the institutionalization of systems of bias that have negatively influenced darker skinned people, women LGBT Q I A plus folk aged folks, people with disabilities and the list goes on and on recognizing that we all

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have bias and that some suffer more of institutionalized. Bias is only the beginning but rather than slipping into guilt or self recrimination or doubt or self justification, all of which keep us further away from God's New

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heaven and new Earth. I urge us to choose to take responsibility rather than guilt, self justification or the other members of its unholy crew guilt, renders us powerless. Choosing to take responsibility, gives us

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agency and hope self justification, renders us impotent. Choosing to take responsibility, gives us agency and hope in a word empowerment. Second, develop the capacity to do your first works over. Sometimes we assume

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the worst about ourselves, the worst about our history . Our past stop that we are wonderfully made. And our challenge is to live into the wonderfulness to do this by admitting the truth of our lives,

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the highs and lows and in betweens the times we realize that we are headed down a problematic track as well as the times when somebody points this out to us. In my first lecture this morning, I

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talked a good bit about the power of lament to tell the truth of how the community got to the place where they are and realize they must turn to God and confess the realities, the history and hopes

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they have. This is the power of a lament done in community because everyone gets to tell the story , all are needed to add to the call to God, but each person must do their internal work

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to get there. And this is why Baldwin's notion of doing your first works over is so helpful in laying out how to do this. He says, re examine everything, go back to where you started

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or go back as far as you can examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it, sing or shout or testify or keep it to yourself. No, from Wince UK

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. This deeply confessional work is our interior spiritual work and no, we are not receiving an a plus for doing the righteous thing. What we do get is a bit more humanity. A tad, more

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compassion, a drop of justice and well springs of salvation. This is and will be hard work. But I like to remind myself from time to time that the only place that success comes before work is

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in the dictionary. I like that one third practice , constructive uncertainty. We love certainty and unfortunately, we tend not to have very much patience for thoughtful reflection. I've noticed that when reporters talk to me

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about an event or issue, they want a sound bite more than a thought. Now, some of my colleagues are able to do both, but this is rare. It often seems like we are happier

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when we quickly get on to the wrong answer than when we are taking a. Let me try this again. It often seems like we are happier when we quickly get to the wrong answer than we are

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when we have taken too much time to ruminate on the right one. Our biases are generally fast, reflective reactions that are automatic and it makes it easy for us to follow them. Constructive uncertainty means that

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we hit the pause button. See, did I put this? Yes, pause. Pay attention to what's happening beneath the judgments and assessments slow down look and feel a acknowledge your reactions, interpretations and judgments

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. This is where we have the opportunity to recognize our interpretation as an interpretation. You understand the other possible reactions, interpretations and judgments that may be possible . A search for the most constructive empowering or productive

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way to deal with the situation and e execute it is OK. Not to know everything. This is what faith is all about. What constructive uncertainty encourages us is not paralysis by analysis rather, it encourages

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us to refrain from being so certain of what we think, feel and know and instead becomes more open to others who are thinking, feeling and knowing as well. We pause to engage to be more thoughtful

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, to open ourselves to differences of all sorts to live our faith force, explore awkwardness and discomfort. This is a natural dance partner to constructive uncertainty. Because when we explore these times, when we have

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felt awkward or discomfort we can be honest, we are doing our first works over as we look for the morning light that when certain types of people trigger feelings or discomfort within us, rather than withdrawing or

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getting defensive, we can use this as a learning opportunity, having a strong emotion, particularly one like fear is a sign that something in our past experience has triggered and we are reacting out of it.

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So rather than move away physically, emotionally, spiritually from folks who have touched off the discomfort or awkwardness . Take this as an opportunity to ask, why am I reacting to what is happening now? Am

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I feeling threatened? Is there any immediate action that needs to be taken? How do people or situations like this affect our behavior? My behavior on a regular basis. Is there somebody who might, whom

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I should talk to about this? Fifth, engage with people. You consider others. One of the best ways to unhinge ourselves from our biases is to get to know the people and groups we harbor biases

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about. In other words, rather than let our stereotypes and assumptions guide us. We choose to get to know people for who they are and not in terms of who we think they are to get to

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know each other means that we get to live into the fullness of who we each are. As human beings begin to explore the art and culture of groups . We do not know well and get to know

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as well as we can, more than one person or one family from that group getting to know one is the beginning. There's a whole community of folks that is diverse, just like the communities we come

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from. It is important to remember that we are welcome. We are to welcome the stranger at our gates to begin to unhinge our polarized selves living in the either ore does not offer us the grace found

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in the both. And but we must also keep in mind that living in the both and requires more work and more determination. Six get some feedback. I think sometimes the reason we don't ask for feedback

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is that we are hanging our hats on the gates of certainty. And the fear of being wrong to lean into hope means that we have to give up a good measure of our drive for certainty. And

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our fear for being a fear of being wrong, asking for feedback can help us become aware of the ways that we are unconscious of the biases within us . Asking can also help us see the spaces where

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we are growing and in compassion and where we are getting things right and finally repeat. Although I gave you a numbered list, this is not a 123 prescription enter wherever you are. What is important is

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that although we may get weary to take a break , recharge and then get back to it and keep working the steps however they go in your life. The world does not need any more people who live

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their lives by playing it safe, going along to get along or squandering their God given talents by trying to be the$500 jeopardy pick Tinley song reminds us that we must journey on because we often live in

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times of the most bleak and opaque night so far from home. It is the step by step. determination that you and I are well. Oh sorry . It is a step by step determination that you

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that we all are being called to by continuing to journey toward the dawning light. This is more than a sentimentalized campfire. Instead, we take the challenges of living, living a deep hope filled faith in

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small ways and large for it is in the small ways that I often call the everyday everydayness of living that we find our greatest challenges for in the everyday that you will see and feel the ways in which

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it's far too easy to acquiesce to grossly inadequate status quo. Yes, the storm may be passing over but do not let folks believe that they or we should hoard our comfort when the world is in unholy

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chaos, encircled by them versus us. Polarization. And it has us walking across the rim bones of nothingness. Oh yes, the storm may be passing over but it cannot happen without joining with others who

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stand at the gates of righteousness and peer into the night to help bring in the morning light. This may sound like a daunting task because it is, that's why you don't do it alone. Look around

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you, look above you, look below you look into you and then begin this journey on. Thank