Taxes Done!

Yay! I just inked my tax returns for 2021! I've been working on them off and on for the past couple of weeks, and yesterday I got serious about it and made a real push. Today, I had to bring the car down to Guilford to Richmond Auto so that Doug could install a new timing belt in the 2011 Impreza. Something that should have been done about 10,000 miles ago. I brought my tax forms with me, walked over to the Guilford Church - which is across the road from Richmond's - and took advantage of my waiting time to finish the forms in pencil and then ink them in. So I can easily get them into the mail before the April 18th deadline. Yesterday was Chicago Theological Seminary Reflections Day. The speaker was Stephanie Crowder, Prof. of New Testament and Dean of Academic Affairs. She is a "womanist" biblical scholar - i.e., she interprets the New Testament through the lens of being a black woman and mother. "Womanism" is different from "feminism." The term was coined, I think, by Alice Walker. At a certain point in the feminist movement, black female theologians realized that the feminist movement was made up almost entirely of white women, and that they didn't really speak for them authentically. Black women typically have very different experiences in life. Their "social position" is different both in respect to race and class. They are much more likely to be oppressed, and white women more likely to be priviledged. So the term "womanist" was coined to represent this different lens. I was first introduced to "womanist" thought when I was Pastor-in-Residence at CTS back in 1999-2001. The womanist theologian I remember most vividly was Delores S. Williams, a professor at Union Theological Seminary and author of Sisters in the Wilderness, which is a powerful study of the figure of Hagar in the Book of Genesis - along with Abraham and Sarah, of course. Prof. Williams does not pull any punches, especially when she deals with Abraham! Stephanie Crowder lives in that tradition, and her talk yesterday was a womanist interpretation of the COVID pandemic and the huge impact it has had on black women. She coined the term "MEdemic" to emphasize the fact that "pan" (which means "all") glosses over the tremendous differences in the way in which the COVID illness has impacted different individuals and groups. by using the term "Me"-demic she zeroed in on the stories of individuals. Potent stuff!

Dean Stephanie Crowder

Prof. Delores Williams*************************************** Tonight is Maundy Thursday and we are singing in the choir at Guilford.