5th Principle Project

Since I’m leaving for Salt Lake City in a couple of days, I thought I would write what I’ve been thinking about GA recently.

I am a self-described GA junkie. I work my a** off to get there every year. One of the reasons that GA is really important to me is that it is the one time in the year that it’s guaranteed that there will be more than a couple of people of color at a UU meeting. And as someone who doesn’t live on the east coast (where the majority of UUs of color are), it gets very lonely (and tiring) being one of maybe a couple of persons of color in the room. 

So I’m more than a little interested in the 5th Principle Project. And I have to say that what I’m hearing disturbs me. Mainly because I’m trying to see what benefit there would be for me to go to yet another regional assembly in a region where there are few UUs of color. (For those of you who don’t know, my home is in the Central Midwest District, which includes Chicago, and at our district assembly in April there were 5 people of color. Did I mention that this district includes Chicago?)  The only time that there is a critical mass of people of color is at GA….and now they’re talking about changing it.

This is not to say that there aren’t some things I think need to be changed about GA. I do. I think there are too many reports done and what gets plenary time boggles my mind. I would get rid of the Actions of Immediate Witness (of course, I’m not a fan of the statements of conscience). But on the whole, I think GA works as it is. Any issue I have with it is minor compared to everything I get from going.

So the big thing for me is being in the same place as so many other UUs of color. And I have the feeling that is going to be taken away from me.

The Long, Hot Summer Reading List

Hello again.

I took off the month of May because I was going to take a May Term class that was going to take up most of my time. Plus I had to move out of my Richmond place, so May was really busy. At the moment I’m in St. Louis working on my paper for my May Term class (it’s due on June 19) and preparing to go to GA.

Since I took May off, readers of the blog haven’t heard the big news (at least big news for me)…..one of my favorite professors asked me to be one of his Teaching Assistants this fall. Yipee!!!!!  The class that I’m going to TA in is History of the African American Religious Experience. So I thought I would share the list of books that are required for the course.

__African American Religious History (edited by Milton Sernett)__Black Gods of the Metropolis (by Authur Fauset)

__The Fortress Introduction to Black Church History (by Anne Pinn and Anthony Pinn)

__Varieties of the African American Religious Experience (by Anthony Pinn)

And the optional books for the class:

__African American Religious Thought (edited by Cornell West)

__Risks of Faith (by James Cone)

__Sisters in the Wilderness (by Delores Williams)

__Slave Religion (by Albert Raboteau)

I’m not going to be able to get to all of them before the semester starts, mainly because I will be taking a writing class in August and there’s reading for that too.

___Creating Fiction (by Julie Checkoway)

___Faith Stories: Short Fiction on the Varieties and Vagaries of Faith (by C. Michael Curtis)

___What If?: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers (by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter)

___The Country of Pointed Firs and Other Stories (by Sarah Orne Jewett)

___As I Lay Dying-the Corrected Text (by William Faulkner)

So as you can see, my summer is going to have lots of reading. I’ll write about it when I get the chance