DEEP WATERS

A day after a grand jury decided not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of an unarmed Michael Brown, I must say -- I am weary.  I am weary of reading and hearing this same news clip over and over again. And I am weary of writing and rewriting the same blog post over and over again. I wrote this same post when Trayvon Martin was killed. I wrote this same post when Mark Zimmerman's trial ended in a not-guilty verdict . And I'm certain I wrote this exact same post when Michael Brown was killed . Maybe you - like me - are ready to discuss a different topic. Maybe you'd like to move on from the issue of race relations in the US.  Maybe you're weary too. But we must speak. We must write. We must persevere despite our weariness and disillusionment. More than anything - we must have HOPE. And it's in the spirit of HOPE that I write today. It's with a heart clinging to hope that I share what I'm hoping for i...

As much as I love movies, I don't write about them very often. Usually, I watch a movie, give it a thumbs-up or down, ponder it for a short while, then go on my way. But... Every now and then, I watch a movie that sticks with me. That's when I HAVE to tell everybody who cares to listen about it. "Belle" was that kind of movie for me. Set in 18th Century England, "Belle" shares the true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, a biracial girl born to a slave woman of African descent and a Caucasian Royal Navy Captain. Wanting a better life for his daughter, the Captain delivers young Dido to the mansion of her aristocratic great uncle, Lord Mansfield, who serves as Lord Chief Justice. Dido must navigate the paradoxes of her life. Her mixed race vs. her family's race. Her legacy of slavery vs. her present wealth. Her social limitations as a Black woman vs. her social privileges as a member of the English aristocracy. She is a woman with a weighty inher...

So... by now we've all seen the video of Ray Rice hitting his wife in an Atlantic City hotel back in February. My initial feelings -- I was offended and shocked. I knew Ray and his wife Janay had a major altercation. I figured he had struck his wife at least once. I knew they'd had a situation on that elevator. When this story first broke months ago, I'd hoped that the reason Ray dragged his wife off the elevator was because she'd had too much to drink. But... the video released yesterday proves Ray guilty. The video proves that Ray and Janay's "situation" was more involved than many of us had hoped. It proves that Ray was abusive. It proves that he used his massive strength - the same strength that helped him run footballs into the end zone - to hurt his then-girlfriend. As I think of this saddening event, I'll share a few thoughts I've got. 1. The NFL finally got it right I refuse to get into a debate over whether the NFL or the R...

It's been exactly two weeks since Michael Brown , age 18, was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri.  Other than a few discussions at home with my family, I haven't talked much about this volatile situation. I've wanted to share about it here in Deep Waters , but I've wanted to speak intelligently about it. There's just so much I don't know about this case right now. And then I received an email from a sweet sister-friend that told me she'd checked my blog for my reaction to the Ferguson crisis. She encouraged me to "weigh-in" here, and I knew I needed to break my silence. I feel like I did when I wrote about the Trayvon Martin crisis back in May 2012 in "Our Sons Are Trayvon." I feel the way I did when I wrote about the verdict in the Zimmerman trial back in July 2013 in "Zimmerman Found Not Guilty/The Church Found Guilty" . I feel like there's so much I don't know. I wasn...

The news is buzzing once again about a life cut short.  Yesterday, 63-year-old actor-comedian Robin Williams was found dead in his California hom e. In a public statement, the Marin County sheriff's office has says that it "suspects the death to be a suicide due to asphyxia ."  They have begun an investigation to determine the official cause of death, but I am already saddened by the possibility... For decades I've enjoyed the talent of Robin Williams. I was introduced to him way back in 19 - shhhh... when he starred in the silly sitcom  Mork and Mindy . I smile when I think of that crazy outer space greeting, "Nanoo, nanoo". I also loved his movies - Good Morning, Vietnam , Dead Poets Society , Mrs. Doubtfire , and Good Will Hunting . Robin Williams was a rare find - a comedian that could also handle his business in a dramatic role. Like the role of Sean Maguire, a Boston-based college professor in Good Will Hunting .  I ...

I will never forget the day I truly understood the significance of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. My family had just moved to Franklin, Tennessee and it was election day. I was talking with my mother on the phone, and we were discussing the elections in my new home in Tennessee and the elections in my native Baltimore, Maryland. Our conversation went something like this... "So who were you all voting for this time," my mother inquired. "Senators and City Council members, like us?" "Yeah, Senators, City Council, and some other positions too," I replied. "Oh, so did you already vote earlier?" "No, I didn't vote, Mom." My eyes watered as I fought an impending yawn. "We just moved here, and honestly, I don't know any of these folks running for office." A few seconds went by...  "Hello?" I glanced at the phone, wondering if she'd gotten disconnected. "I'm still here." Her to...

By the time I watched actress Lupita Nyong'o win an Oscar - after watching her dance with grace and confidence in the aisles, give host Ellen Degeneres a tube of her lipgloss and take part in the crazy Oscar selfie that actually crashed Twitter - I was already a huge fan. Her portrayal of Patsey, a slave woman in the critically-acclaimed and Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave  - which I blogged about here  in November of last year - was at once beautiful and haunting. It was a role that Lupita, with dual citizenship in Mexico and Kenya, was born for. She understands the meaning of "beautiful and haunting" first-hand. Her deep sense of Patsey's pain spoke through her portrayal, and I immediately wondered, "Who is this woman?" I screamed when screenwriter John Ridley won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. I screamed when the production team, including Director Steve McQueen, won Best Motion Picture. And I absolutely screamed when Lupita won an Oscar for...

Last night I completed my latest read, a book that I'd been hearing about for months - The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd , author of The Secret Life of Bees . This was a good read - a great one even. The Invention of Wings tells the story of Sarah Grimke, the daughter of Southern slaveowners in early nineteenth-century Charleston, South Carolina and Hetty, a.k.a. Handful, a slave girl owned by the Grimke family. On her eleventh birthday, Sarah receives a special gift from her parents - her very own slave girl. That girl is Handful. This story follows both women as they come of age in the early 1800's, as they share the sense of powerlessness they both feel as women, and for Handful, as an African American slave woman. We dip into the valley-lows with the women as they experience loss, betrayal, rejection, and paralyzing fear. But we also follow them to their mountain-highs as they embrace purpose, friendship, love and courage. We witness them finding their voic...

My first introduction to Maya Angelou was her 1969 memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings . I was a young teenage girl in Mrs. Simms English II class at Western High School in Baltimore, Maryland when I entered the world of this incredible woman - a world that began with pain and disadvantage. Many of us know the statuesque she-ro - the acclaimed poet, author, Civil Rights activist, actor, singer, friend and co-laborer with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. That was Maya Angelou. But she was also the little girl whose parents divorced when she was only 3-years-old. The young child who was then uprooted from her native St. Louis, Missouri and planted in small-town Stamp, Arkansas with her grandmother. The tender baby girl of eight who was raped by her mother's boyfriend and stripped of her innocence. She was also the courageous young child who exposed this crime and her assailant, revealing it to her family. The little girl who refused to speak for six whole years , a...

As promised in my last post, "Shame on Us: Overcoming Shame's Grip on Our Lives" , today I am posting a Part Two on the topic of shame. Part One focused on the research and thoughts of Dr. Brene Brown and her book The Gifts of Imperfection . Today, I want to share some spiritual insight. Earlier this month, I attended the annual conference of the Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO), a nonprofit organization that supports orphan care ministries and advocates throughout the U.S. and abroad. I thoroughly enjoyed the main speakers, workshops and the opportunity to serve on a multicultural panel on the topic of "Raising Children in a Multi-Ethnic Society."  Perhaps the biggest treat was a workshop I attended near the end of the conference, titled "Shame: Healing the Story of our Lives." Dr. Curt Thompson , a psychiatrist in Falls Church, Virginia, led this workshop examining shame and its effects on the human soul. He also revealed shame's...

I am an unapologetic fan of Dr. Brene Brown , writer and research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. The first time I heard Brene speak was at the Willow Creek Association's 2013 Global Leadership Summit . I loved her talk so much I even shared about it here in Deep Waters . Since then, I've heard Brene's popular TED Talks and read her book The Gifts of Imperfection . Brene is an expert on some interesting topics: vulnerability, courage, worthiness and shame . I want to camp out on this last topic today. Even before hearing Brene speak or reading any of her books, I was well-acquainted with shame. I couldn't have defined the word (I'll let her do that in a bit), but I knew shame when it came knocking on my front door. Shame is what I felt earlier this month when I was invited to open up a conference of almost 3000 orphan advocates with prayer. I was nervous and certainly second-guessed their choice to have me pray...

Yesterday the doors of the National September 11 Memorial Museum opened for the first time, welcoming President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, along with families of 9/11 victims. This memorial, a 110,000 square foot exhibition built entirely underground, that runs through the 16 acre site known as "Ground Zero", holds within its walls memories of those who lost their lives that day.   On Wednesday, I watched an NBC Nightly News report featuring the museum and its director, Alice M. Greenwald. As my eyes took in the artifacts that tell the story of the tragedy of September 11 , 2001 , I was pulled into the horror once again. A hand rake used by workers to search for human remains Fragments of the aircrafts destroyed during the attack A pair of shoes that a survivor kicked off so she could escape the World Trade Center  A teddy bear collected from Ground Zero after a prayer vigil I wiped a tear as I remembered. I felt like 9/11 had happened yesterday....

The world is outraged.  I am outraged. Twitter and other social media outlets are ablaze with #Bringbackourgirls hashtags. On April 15*, the day we Americans were consumed with getting our taxes mailed out, more than 300 teenage girls were abducted from the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School in northeast Nigeria. Today, it's been reported that 8 more girls have been kidnapped. Like me, you may have wondered how so many girls could have been abducted at one time. According to USA Today , one of the reported 53 girls that escaped stated that the schoolgirls heard gunshots from a nearby town. Uniformed men posing as members of the Nigerian military arrived at the school, instructing the girls to go outside. These impostors were the kidnappers, members of an Islamic militant group named Boko Haram, which means "western education is a sin". Boko Haram's leader, Abubakar Shekau, has admitted to the abductions on video and declared the girls slaves. Accor...

Okay so, if you know me at all, you know I love a good read. AND I love to tell other people about that good read. So today I'm passing on a book maybe some of you have heard about, some of you not. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell is a great read. As a matter of fact, I think it should be required reading for parents of children under age 21. Outliers  details the fastest route to personal success. And by personal success, I don't mean becoming insanely rich and famous. As a matter of fact, Gladwell himself states, "It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether our work fulfills us." Instead, Outliers chronicles those who have found fulfillment and efficacy in life and shows the rest of us how to achieve the same in our own sphere of life. He also shatters the myth of the "self-made man" or the "overnight success." His theory: our background, culture, famil...

My new favorite book series is a popular YA series. I'm sure you've already guessed from my title and the above pic -- it's The Hunger Games . Before the first Hunger Games movie debuted, my teenage son Kalin told me I needed to read these books. Haughtily, I thought, "I'm not into YA books. And I'm definitely not into books that involve children killing other children -- for entertainment, at that." But after watching - and loving - the first movie, I decided to read the series . I've thoroughly enjoyed them. I've pondered much. And they've made me think a lot about leadership. I thought I'd pass on a few of these insights from The Hunger Games regarding SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP: I. Leaders seldom feel qualified The greatest, yet most humble, leaders in history often began their rise to leadership feeling grossly inadequate. In Book Two of the Hunger Games series - Catching Fire  - 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen rejects...