After The Crash...(you just gotta get up).

Be clear, Life ain't fair.

And that's still no excuse.

Be clear, you may not reach your goals.

And that's still no excuse.

You may never get married, make a million dollars, have the job you want, raise the child, or earn a grammy.

And still, you are not excused.

I say all of this, because some of us are walking through lives, stuck and turned around.  It's like we were in a crash, and we have spun off the road and are in a ditch, trying to live out our lives by pitching a tent where we crashed.  Imagine trying to build a house at your crash site...cooking breakfast, showering up, and getting dressed, leaving your crash site every morning, only to return to it every night.  Doesn't that sound ridiculous?

Sadly, most of us live at our emotional crash sites.  We hear only the negative commentary about our skill sets, and instead of putting our name in the hat, we play it safe.  We remember only the brokeness of being in love/like/lust, and so we never put ourselves in a position to be vulnerable.  We remember only our hardship, never reflecting on our own triumph.  We are always reminded of others best lives on social media and sometimes in real life, and so we live in regret, never creating what we desire.  Instead, its just easier to be envious.

Okay, so let me be real clear.  It ain't easy to recover from crashes.  Losing mothers suck!  Living without fathers suck!  Having to take time off from school sucks!  Being fired from a decent job sucks!  Not getting in sucks!  Breaking up sucks!  Some things are indeed shitty.  And it takes a while to come to grips with loss, hardship, failure, delay, and disappointment.  In fact, some hurt you will just have to live with.  It won't be fair, it's just what has to be done.

The truth of the matter is that you only get one life to live.  So you must make the most of it.  And wherever you crashed, whatever you crashed into, if you survived, you really only have one obligation.  And, this is an obligation to self.  Honestly, no one else can do it for you, because if you decided to try to build a house around the place where you crashed, people will let you.  They will help you move a couch right in the ditch.  Only a few really close friends will ask the question that you need asked, "what are you doing here?" 

There is good news though, even prophets get scared and run from their gifts, and there is a passage of scripture where a prophet is hiding in the caves.  He's worried about being killed by an evil queen. And no matter, how he feels, God asks, "what are you doing here?"

This is an important question, because most of us can't answer it.  We would rather wallow in self-pity, than do the work it takes to get out of the ditch, and get back on track. By this time, you probably really think I'm talking about you.  In all actuality, I'm really talking about me.

I've had the wind knocked out of me more times than I liked to count.  And, I honestly have meandered down paths that almost invalidate every passion or calling I ever had.  I have never gotten over any death of anybody I love, it triggers me...and I know it.  I, especially, find it hard to go to funerals of children burying mothers.  So, please don't think I'm just talking about you.

What I'm saying is that I owe it to myself to get the help I need to get pulled out of my crash site.  I deserve to be lifted from the ditch, and to have somebody help me have my emotional car towed in for work.  I deserve to be in rehab until the scars have dissipated, and the bones have healed.  I deserve my own fresh start.  And so do you.

But most of us can't get there, because we are still so mad about the crash in the first place.  Listen, I'll write it simply; Forgive yourself, get help, move forward.  I know what I'm saying can take time, but you can't heal unless you realize that you have crashed, and that you aren't healthy to do it by yourself.

So, please get up.

Between Prisons, Death, and Every Aspiration I Ever Had

Both of my parents have been to prison.  They both served some form of time in the prison industrial complex while I was in college.  At least 3-4 of my first cousins have gone to prison. One young cousin went to prison the day I graduated from college in 1998.  At least 3 of my six siblings have spent some time meandering through the prison industrial complex.  And just a few days ago, I was made aware that my youngest brother, the baby of our family, is sitting in a jail cell facing a number of charges.

I, of course, have never been to prison.  I am a college administrator and professor who has the luxury of tying bow ties around my neck, putting on fancy socks, and going into my class or office to teach the latest theory around contemporary Black politics and life. I get to inspire a generation of students, supporting both the lucky and the privileged in their pursuit of academic excellence.  I get to teach Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow.  I get to expose students and peers alike to the Ava DuVernay's documentary 13th: I am not severely mapped into the realities of prison life.  You see, I got out...I escaped the trap! At least that's what I think.  Because if I really begin to think about the comprehensive scope of the prison industrial complex, I must admit that I am extremely marred by its influence on my life through its direct effect on my family.

In 1997, I will never forget sitting in Duchess Harris' class about Black Public Intellectuals, when I was at Macalester and discussing the one thing that all Black people have in common no matter how much they (we) hate to admit it.  She said, "the one thing all Black people have in common is that we all have a relative who is either in jail or who has been to jail."  I'll never forget her saying that in a sea of mostly white faces as they pondered Black realities.  The profundity of that statement was so palatable that I sat speechless as I reflected on how my own mother had entered the prison industrial complex in 1995, just as I was starting college.  And, during Christmas that freshmen year, my grandmother had forced me to go up to the jail to see her while I was home on Christmas break.

So you can imagine that I was deeply overwhelmed as I sat in my faculty housing unit watching 13th on Netflix, as my middle brother texted me the news about my youngest brother being confined to a jail cell somewhere in South Carolina.  You see, my middle brother found out right around my birthday, but had sought to wait until after I had celebrated my 40 years of living.  As I sat on the couch reconciling text messages and documentary style visual images, I began to be overwhelmed with emotion vacillating between sadness, anger and helplessness.  And as I thought about all the shit stacked against my young brother's life, I began to cry.  And if I'm keeping it 100, I cried for a complete hour...a complete hour.

I think it was the knowing of the obstacles that really got to me.  I and my siblings' lives read like every vulnerable child's horror story: young dead mother, sickly father, shitty school systems, poverty, limited options, in and out of foster care homes, abuse, homelessness, easy low-level drug access, and the need to be hard in a world that makes your prove yourself.  It's almost cliche its so sad.  Its like Precious meets Color Purple meets Lifetime sad.  And if we really going to be real honest, its not like we couldn't see it coming.  But who am I to tell a father how to raise his son?  Who am I to hop in my Subaru to run down to South Carolina, and pack up bags, and say you are coming with me, all the while knowing I'm barely getting by on my salary?  We had tried it before with two other siblings and it had failed miserably.  So, like a lot of Black people who are striving to be Black excellence personified, I put on my blinders, and tried to just take care of my family...and pray for the best.

Sadly, I am not always so sure that Jesus answers these complex prayers.  I've never seen the end of generational poverty even as I've been faithful to a Black church that has an anti-convict culture, yet sees Paul "jailbird ass" as seminal to theological formation.  And, the inability to make sense of the prison industrial complex at church, makes it even harder to discuss it at Sunday dinner tables.  For the most part, the lucky ones, like me, just run around saying what one of my mentees calls "anything:" "if he had just made better choices," "it really isn't that bad," "you just got to let it go," "you live hard, you die hard." I know I'm not the only one whose heard this kind of respectable, its all your fault rationale.  But the reality is, my brother isn't in jail just because he made bad decisions.  This world is designed for him, and me too, to be commodities of a prison industrial complex.

Coming to that realization breaks my heart.  The prison system disrupts family.  It does not rehabilitate.  It breaks people.  It creates a disenfranchised criminal class, even if you are innocent.  It fosters mental illness.  It turns children into "super predators."  It builds intolerable space between those on the inside and those on the outside.  No one is better because of our prison system, instead it fucks us all.

Right now, I am thinking about the little boy who used to visit me during summers in Atlanta.  I am thinking about how even then you could see that he was brilliant kid, learning Spanish and French at four.  I am thinking about how his mother died when he was 7, and how he was bounced around from home to home.  I am thinking about him being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and how every once and a while he would Facebook message me asking to come live with me...and then change his mind.  I am thinking about how he was enrolled in a community college, after getting out of some form of juvenile detention center.  And, I am thinking about myself...and had I only been independently wealthy or a doctor or a lawyer, I could fix all of this.

I am considering the dissonance between my mentorship of young men in Alpha who will never see the inside of a prison hopefully (but hell, who knows), and my helplessness regarding my own brother.

If I'm honest, I am resentful and hurt and broken because I really don't know what I should do.  So I pray, with the kind of skepticism that says this may be my last time praying.  And right now, the most cathartic thing I have done in the last few days to work through what I'm feeling is to write this post...and to contemplate Prison as a trope of death in light of all the aspirations I've ever had.  And, like my middle brother said, "I close my eyes, kiss my son, and pray to God that he will never see the inside of a prison."

Selah.

A Conundrum of Feelings: On My Last Day in Blue Devil Country

I will never forget the day that I found out that I got in to Duke for grad school.  Both a feeling of wonder and terror filled me.  How wonderful to be considered smart enough to attend a place like Duke, when in fact, the only reason I applied was so that I could be turned down.  And in the same breath, it was terrifying to think that I might be attending a school that had a notorious perception for fumbling with race and class.  Only two years prior in 2006, I and several of my students at Paine College watched from a few hundred miles away in horror at the way in which Duke, with all of its privilege, had reminded us that white men could/can get away with anything.  So it was a little bit funny when I shared with my family that I was quitting Paine to return to school for a seminary education at Duke, to which they replied glibly, "watch out for those Lacrosse players."  It was as if they were talking about a sort of 21st century Klansman.

But my students, classmates, preachers, friends, and family all encouraged me to go, because they understood what "that" kind of credential could mean for my future successes.   My aunts, with their beautiful southern accents, would pronounce every letter when asked, "what is Sean up to these days?"  They would reply with an air of sophistication and pride, "Honey, my nephew is going to DUUUUUUUURKE," as they sat pretentiously waiting for the inquirer's mouth to drop.  Everybody enjoyed announcing that I was headed to a place where any dream I had could be realized.  And if I'm honest, I can admit that I really had only come to be credentialed, so that I could head back to some HBCU.  And if pushed too far by idiocy or black bourgeois tendencies, I too could pronounce that I had gone to "DUUUUUUUURKE"...in hopes that it would shut up the questioner.  

I, with my healthy spirit of distrust for white spaces (mostly brought on and cultivated by my undergraduate Alma Mater), attended Duke with an overwhelming feeling that I would NOT be here long.  But, its almost been a decade.  I am literally two years shy of that.  And, I could have never imagined that when I was coming to Duke and to Durham that I would be here as long as I had lived in Atlanta.  In fact, too much has happened to me at Duke, in Blue Devil country.

In my first year here, I lost my mother, and at the same time reconnected with my father. And since that first year, each year at Duke has teetered between one extreme of despair and another extreme of hope. I've had to witness the burial of two very close friends, even as I was on my way to the altar to get married.  I've had to deal with my disappointments around ministry, even as I found much purpose in unofficial pastoring/ministering to colleagues and students.  I've had to wrestle with my own insecurities as a former foster kid in a place where so many have beautiful and loving families.  And, I've had to deal with a lack of resources, even as I welcomed my son, and started a small business.  For me, the Duke experience isn't all bad or all good. It's probably a bit of both in this land of opportunity/inequity.

When I look back at my time at Duke, I actually find myself wrestling with an honest thought about the place.  I sometimes don't know what to think, because to feel only one way about Duke is...probably to not acknowledge the most complex set of feelings that I've ever had.  Maybe its best to think about it in short memories.  Duke is the feeling of gratitude, when students have shed tears as I packed boxes to embark upon a new journey, promising to never forget me.  Duke is the feeling of shame, when overhearing how some student or administrator made a worker feel during an interaction.  Duke is the feeling of success, when watching a classmate create the #LemonadeSyllabus or get into Med/Law School or run after their dream.  Duke is the feeling of inadequacy, when realizing you aren't one of those people...and that you may not be as brilliant as you think.   Duke is the feeling of love, when you go to or participate in two former Duke students' wedding.  Duke is the feeling of exploitation, when you realize that sometimes peers and friends have no idea who you are...and only want you for the things you can produce.

And, all of this is true in my life.  Duke seems to be a place that doesn't want to be pinned down in my cannon of feelings.  And maybe its this pendulum that made it possible to have more days than I'd like to admit in which I wanted to leave Duke.  Too, there were moments of sublime joy that came at the end of long hard work.  Right now though, I think I'm a little sad.  I am sad that too many black people never get to enjoy Duke, even as they work and go to Duke.  I am sad too many of us experience the traumas of nooses, even as we are told to keep pushing here.  I am sad that Duke's invitation to come, isn't an invitation to be.  I am sad that I am leaving students and peers here to fend for themselves.

I am, though, happy.  I am happy to be able to enjoy Duke as an alumnus.  I am happy to be in a position where I believe I will be able to make changes in others lives.  I am happy to know Duke as my own...and to be able to challenge it, having worked their.  I am happy for the change of pace, the opportunity to be managed differently, the possibility of new growth.

On my last day at Duke, I am reflecting on all of the conversations, all of the struggle, all of the camraderie, all of the brilliance, all of the heartache, all of the tears, all of the joy...

I'm reminded of something a classmate said years ago when I first arrived.  He said, "going to Duke as a Black man, is like having dinner at a Plantation."  And I would add, working at Duke, "is like making the food on a plantation."  I am thankful though that my guests were willing to eat what I prepared...even when they didn't know how it was being prepared.  So, when you ask me about this place...I have no idea what I have just experienced. Maybe as my grandmama would say, "I will understand it better by and by."

But it's my last day in Blue Devil country...so maybe its best just to take it all in...and consider "how far I've come from where I started from." Until I can figure this last take home test out, I'll just say that Duke will always be more than I hoped for, and eerily less than I expected.

A Sad but Open Secret: Durham's Black Young Adult Church Community Problem

By the time you read this, another Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance (IMA) City Wide Revival will have come and gone.   For five nights, IMA held revival at Union Baptist Church featuring some of the most well known and respected Preacher/Theologians/Pastors in the country.  I think all of the pastors featured were under fifty, began preaching early in life, and have strong Social Justice ministerial perspectives.  Representing no less than three main line traditions (Baptist, UCC, AME Zion), the preachers featured have been (are) known to draw a large cross-section of Black generations from teens to seasoned saints when they preach.  And for sure, two of the preachers featured, have large cross sections of a very elusive God conscious group - Young Adults (18-40).

However, even at this annual City Wide Revival with three preachers known to "say it," the packed crowd featured mostly Seasoned Saints, with very few people under 40 sprinkled throughout the cavernous Baptist church.  Some would say that this is business as usual for mainline Black church traditions, particularly in a place like Durham, North Carolina.  However, Durham is teeming with young adults who are attending one of the three powerhouse schools: the prestigious Duke University, the large historically Black North Carolina Central University, and the flagship University of the state,  University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.  Again, I say, Durham is teeming with entrepreneurial young professionals and families who have moved to Durham because of its economic development and careers in research, education, sciences, medicine, and engineering.  Again, I say, Durham is teeming with young adults who are creative types, entrepreneurs, social justice advocates, and just really cool people looking to make this city a unique and innovative community.  If I'm honest, I run into them all the time...out for dinners, at concerts and plays, at my job, in Greek life...they have even lived next door to me.  And if I'm really being honest, most of them are having a hard time finding a place to practice and share their faith.  If I had a nickle for every time somebody asked me about where to go to church in Durham, I'd be a rich man.

One would assume that since I had gone to divinity school at Duke and thus know quite a few seminarians, that we would all have the answer about where to go to church in Durham.  Unfortunately, for most of us, just like our non theologically trained counterparts, we are all having difficulty finding church homes in a city packed with churches, with few options actually available.

It goes a little something like this.  If you go to, let's say, Church A, that is theologically sound, meaning the pastor/congregation is studied, you will not see a single young person for the rest of your young adult life. There won't be any young adult programs at Church A (because you are it).  You will never hear any music that is remotely connected to where you are...or message about where you are.  Contemporary music is defined as hymns...and Richard Smallwood...seriously, Richard Smallwood!

If you go to say, Church B, and be clear, there is only one Church B, you will be in a sea of young adults (7-10K of them).  But, the church will not have a clear polity or theology, different from those of us raised in say a Baptist, AME Zion, or UCC church context.  You will not be connected to actual Durham, because Church B is situated on the outskirts of Durham, and the pastoral leadership of the church is not involved with the city, outside of the concerns of Church B, which seem to be only aimed at recruiting students from the local colleges.  Church B also has a horribly sexist reputation in dealing with women...so there's that. But in Church B's defense, the music is really good contemporary Praise and Worship.  If you are looking to see elder saints, they won't, in the main, find them at Church B.  Also, I would like to note that all of the other churches hate this church because they feel like it has created Young Adult drain (taking Young Adults, like a theological Pied Piper from all of the other churches in the city).  So, you will never see Church B's pastor in the company of Church A, C, D or E's pastor.

If you go to Church C, you will hear the thickest most problematic prosperity theology you will have ever heard in your life.  Let's just call it the church strip club because there will be $25, $50, and $100 lines.  Worship will be charismatic, but you will feel like you are constantly being hustled to keep the doors of the church open by giving resources that you might want to go elsewhere.  And, there will never, ever be a word or mention from the pulpit of Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, The Charleston 9...nothing.  There are lots of these types...so be careful.

If you go to Church D, it is literally DEAD.  The pastor might be well meaning, but his/her church is on life support.  And at these kinds of churches, their are usually many reasons why a church would be on life support...and all of them amount to a mix of inhospitable behavior, worship clashes, and church politics.  Again, there are no young people here...because young people's lives are messy enough that most of us don't want to go to churches like that.

If you go to Church E, you will be an ornament.  They will have 10 young people (who visit church B on occasion), which sit quietly biding their time to lead or sing or pray.  But ultimately, you haven't been in town long enough to do anything there.  To be fair, there are quite a few E's around town.  Too, you will notice something off that will make you question your membership...like an over the top theology of hell, or only a few people are favorites, or lack of pastoral leadership, or you are in church for 4 hours regularly...etc.

Then, if those don't work, there is always Church X, the multicultural/multiracial church...filled with a multicultural/racial congregation...but...most (if not all) of the staff are white.  Most of the traditions are culturally white.  Most of the songs are culturally white.  Let's just be honest and call it what it is....it's a church plantation.  So there's that.

And after you visit those churches for a few weeks/years/months, you are either resigned to fill your car with a tank of $2.50/gallon gas to travel to Raleigh, or to sit at home and stream your pastor from another city.  You could also accept defeat, and thus sit and whither away any life you have in A, B, C, D, E or X's congregation...ultimately hoping that God moves you to another city where the church culture is "poppin!"  

Now from the established Durham church community, they are going to say that you are looking for too much -  a perfect church.  When you run down what you are looking for in a congregation it doesn't appear to you that it is lofty:  Tradition and Innovation, Clear Polity/Theological Framework, Inter-generational, Youth/Young Adult/Family Programs, Music for a Variety of Age Groups, Regular Sermons that acknowledge the need for Personal Holiness and Black Liberation, Pastoral Mentors, and Connection to Durham.  In all honesty, its really not a challenging list of things that you are asking for.  Now people will say that it is, but you will have the experience of living in other parts of the state/country...and thus you can create a laundry list of churches from Winston Salem to Augusta, GA, to Atlanta to Philadelphia to DC that meet these basic criteria - and thus flourish because of it.

But just maybe established Black Durham churches have given up trying to provide opportunities for new comers who want an IPod experience in a haven of "record player" kinds of churches. It also could be that there is no major pastor under the age of 40 who is a part of the black church landscape creating a voice and visual for those of us wanting more from our Durham community.  Maybe, people have grown accustomed to really bad church, because they don't know any better.  Or maybe the seminaries in the area, who provide the lion share of education to preachers/pastors in the area have mis-shaped the theology of a community leaders who do not benefit from having young people in any of the churches, unlike the Durham community. Who knows.  

The sad reality is that there are quite a few people who live in Durham looking for church homes only to realize that what is here is ultimately toxic to what they've been given in other spaces already...and so they resign themselves to drift.  The real question is what would it take for Durham to have an actually dynamic and engaged Black church community?  A lot of my friends believe that we need to start more churches.  But I don't know if that's the answer.  Some people I know think that we will just have to be patient, until some pastor dies or is put out of his/her pulpit?  But, what about the myriad of young people grappling with spiritual crises now. 

I don't know the answer, but my thought is for Durham churches (and their leadership) to evaluate their strategic engagement plans (hoping they have some) for reaching the people who are charged with keeping the doors of the church open in only a few short years.  Moss, during the revival, mentioned how churches might need to adjust the way in which they engaged younger generations.  I'm personally thinking this is overdue, because even though we like vinyl for its nostalgia, the technology that produces the Ipod is the environment that we live and work in.  That's simply my way of saying that it is time that Black Church Durham engage its community...not as it was in 1990 when John P. Kee still lived here.  Instead, Black Durham must seek to push ahead sharing its legacy with new people who have a new way and bring with them all of the innovation that their work week requires of them.  From my eight years of living here though, it seems like Durham's old vanguard may simply be bent on standing alone in legacy...as it dies a slow and painful death. 

Until then, a few young people will wait patiently until the next IMA revival to be fed by pastors whose sermons speak and resonate with where they are.  Until then, seminarians will dream about when they are pastoring and how they will change things.  Until then,  Black Young Adults will have to make choices that are all...well...underwhelming.  What's more unfortunate is that the Black Church community really could do a great work by forming Black Young Adults at a time when quite a few are now giving up on the church altogether.  And, Black Young Adults could create the dynamic church environments lacking in much of Durham's Black Church landscape.    Maybe this is a great time to place a scripture.  Jesus said it best, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few."