I want to take this moment to welcome everyone to Trinity United Church of christ in chicago illinois. We are a church that believes that we are called to be in the heart of this community ever seeking the communities hard and our motto is that we are unashamedly black and christian. We dont think theres any contradiction between routing your self and your culture and also celebrating the christ with whom we serve. We are delighted that you are here for our booknotes. We had a wonderful experience here today. To Worship Services with a magnificent preacher to my left. And none other than the reverend doctor Rafael Warnock who is senator Rafael Warnock, who is the first africanamerican senator from the state of georgia. He has two publications, one being a way out of no way which is a memoir of his experience from savannah all the way to the senate, and a wonderful Childrens Book. He read to a small group of children immediately following the Worship Service today. We recorded that reading that we hope these young people will be able to look back and say they have the first africanamerican senator from georgia to read a Childrens Book to them and that book is a wonderful story that shares the experience of doctor warnock as a child all the way up to being sworn in as senator. Get ready, put your shoes on. Its a beautiful art, wonderful story. We are delighted that you are with us and we are going to have a word of prayer and then begin our conversation. We do this booknotes series weve been doing it throughout the pandemic talking to different authors and having conversations about their work and its exploded here at trinity where we thought we would have a few book nerds to watch. Sometimes we get over a thousand people that watch for the booknotes conversation. Lets have a word of prayer and we will begin our conversation. Gracious and most merciful god, we are grateful for this moment and grateful for this time in history. May you empower us that we may be able to link, love and justice together in all of the work that we do. May your spirit rest, may it rule and abide that we may continue to walk the path that has been laid for us. We thank you, we love you and we magnify your name. The people of god of may collectively say amen. Hello Trinity United Church of christ. Its great to be here with my friend and dear brother. Youre a pastor and a someone that ive known you since we were teenagers at Morehouse College, and its great to be back here. Welcome to all of the folks watchingi us online. I am excited to be here to talk about the latest book, dancing in the darkness, dancing in the darkness spiritual lessons for thriving through Turbulent Times. Thats rich. Theres a lot even in the title. Dancing in the darkness, spiritual lessons thriving through Turbulent Times. I think that is something those are lessons that all of us could use at a time like this. Im going to start with the most basic question what motivated you, what drove you to write to this particular book, to frame it in this particular way you preach every sunday and you also write. I realized several years ago that there was a spiritual edge in our country that people are attempting to scratch in a variety of ways. The sum of three social media and others thinking that if i have enough funds, the market will be able to scratch that itch but we still find that we are spiritually anemic and there is a necessity for us to go back to the values that allow us to flourish as human beings. The two values flowing in the book that haunt the book are the values of love and justice and doctor Martin Luther kingd jr. And Howard Thurman to serve talking about those values. You are driven by that but tell me a little bit more about what is it that you are seeing is a pastor on the ground what are the things as you engage every day people and they make it through their everyday struggles . How hasas that inspired this preaching in a different way . Trying to make sense of our trauma. The experience of trying to make sense of the sun going down in many ways for some in this democracy. R people are trying to really makp sense of what is happening in thisng world. We have been reaching for that which is physical in order to scratch this itch, but Howard Thurman, doctor king, theres so much within the black spiritual tradition that speaks about how we deal with these issues. We both went to Morehouse College. We talk about the candle in the dark and how every morehouse student was told that when you come into the chapel, god places a crown above our heads that we will spend the rest of our lives growing tall enough to where. But we hope that you will be taller after ingesting some of the values. W you do that kind of work at ebenezer where you are calling people to stretch and now as senator you are making these demands. As a matter of fact, you are on the Agricultural Committee and youve done something really interesting that i think people should know. I do a lot of work on the Agricultural Committee. I am proud of being on that committee. Agriculture is the largest business deal in georgia. Weve done many things from helping the Georgia Farmers to get their products to the market when they were dealing with trade barriers. We did to 6 billion of debt relief for farmers on the margins. [applause] its one of the reasons i tolerated politics. I am an elected official, but i am not in love with politics. I am in love with change and i tolerated politics because every now and then youre able to do something amazing like 6 billion of debt relief for farmers. Much of this a long time coming. Wand also this year every five years you do something called the farm bill which interestingly links the concerns of farmers and agribusiness but also Food Insecurity and nutrition, programs like temporary aid for needy families. Us the programs that we used to giveth people basic food securiy in the country they are all a part of the farm bill that gets redone every five years. So im on the committee. In my sermon i was referring to the fact that when i went to the capital in 2017, i got arrested in the tradition of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther king jr. And Morehouse College. I got arrested protesting what they were getting ready to do in the bill to cut the needed nutrition. This year, six years later i get to write the farmville. [applause] so im struck by this idea that you put forth of dancing in the darkness. Theres no question that there is darkness and we can talkk about that and he elaborated that if you care to, but i think that we all havee a sense of the darkness. Of course Howard Thurman talks about. Te but you didnt sayne negotiated the darkness or how to group your way through the darkness. [laughter] how not to be afraid of the dark. Ive got two little kids but you said dancing in the dark. What is the stake of that metaphor ofrk literally dancingn the dark . To first bring you to how that 00idea came about it starts in 2008. Our church was going through a challenging moment when an toindividual by the name of senator barack obama was running for president. I had just become the pastor here at trinity and i remember being in the valleys at hyde park. I was on the treadmill doing my warm down and someone tapped me on the shoulder and he said is that your church. I look up on the screen and a sean hannity was going off about the trinity. I said ive got to go. So there began walking through the gauntlet 40 news arc lights showed up to the church every single sunday putting microphones and peoples face, looking for some kind of quote because they had parsed a firstn of the predecessors sermon. I was a very good sermon by the way i might add. They were trying to use that to soundbite because many people had never been in a black church and dont know anything about the Church Tradition or the breaching so thatt started the gauntlet. But then because of the news footage and the attention we started getting death threats. Doctor wright, myself and at the church and some people remember that we had to have bomb sniffing dogs show up every single sunday to make sure that the sanctuary is safe. After getting these letters, and i read some of the letters. I shouldnt have to be quite honest and i want to thank deacon who sai let me have that you are not going to read anymore. My mind was always raising and every time i ran up to someone or i was running just working out i was wondering if i saw someone coming my way, is this it is this the person from the letter. So one night and didnt sleep much for about a year. We heard something in the house and monica tapped me and said youve got to go check that out. So i got up and i grabbed my rod and staff that comforts me. [laughter] it was made in louisville. I was Walking Around the house looking for where the noise was coming from added and then i heard it again. It was coming from my daughters bedroom. I go into the bedroom and michaela is in the middle of her room andnn she is dancing, spinning around saying look, im dancing. Now its 3 a. M. And i have to t preach at the trinity and several hours, so i got that low register dad to talk you need to go to bed right now and she says look, daddy, im dancing, and was not, then the spirit said stop. Look at her. Shes dancing in the darkness. The darkness is around her but its not in her. When are you going to learn how to dance . And at that moment i trashed the sermon i was supposed to preach and started writing notes. I stepped into the pulpit and talked aboutw the fact that we must learn how to dance in the dark andnd when we re claim tht the dance of love and compassion and justice, then we can transform in the words of w. E. B. Ed du boise of these yet to be United States of america and i think that is especially what people of african descent have learned to do in america that we learn how to dance in the darkness of a country that many times marginalized us, didnt see us or said that we were three fifths of a human being but yet Sojourner Truth says thats dancing. Frederick douglass when he talks about a july 4th, thats dancing. Ida b wells. These are all of the dance partners, our ancestors that we must learn how to navigate these moments that we think are dark, but the beautiful thing about darkness isnt that the sun has forsaken you it just means the earthan has turned. If you keep dancing, eventually your morning will become dancing but your joy will come in the morning because the sun hasnt left. Its still there its just the earth decided to turn a different direction. [applause] powerful. Dancing in the darkness. In the darkness you were literally living through it in the moment. I and you were inspired by the daughter. In that moment you describe something in the country at the time but then laid on top of that are the episodes of trauma that we all know. Individually o the church is going through what its going through but you still have members dealing with whatever they were dealing with in their everyday lives, the person that just got a scary diagnosis, the person that is trying to understand how to reconcile with their child. All these concerns and the spirituality that speaks to both the individual and the social that deals with the slavery of sin and the sin of slavery. I think that that has been part of the genius of the black church experience at its best not that we always do that, but the evangelical and liberationist tendencies both informing and i see both of those things standing up in your work which itself is a kind ofrs dance between a kind of personal piety and the fight for justice. The struggle and the song as i was trying to talk about. And its a particular kind of dance, wouldnt you say . You talk about living in a postal world and some of your other publications. You are somebodyur that in your preaching and writing often engage the art and music and tradition. You understand that gospel and jazz and the blues and the spirituals all come from the same root of the subjugated people speaking to god in their own voice. A beautiful thing about black spirituality is that we embrace the existential but we keep looking. We are blues and gospel at the same time. The beautiful thing about people who make the claim i just listen to gospel music, that gospel music is structured on this scale. This africanan scale. You cannot have gospel music unless you note blues accords it. Or in other words you cannot have resurrection brickwork say that again. N. Does it. So in order to sing gospel youve got to know the blues courts in other words the anguish and the pain in order to get the celebration of the resurrection. In a modern society we want to cast aside the blue notes and resurrection if that happened forgot to talk about prosperity . It is problematic. Because it is, it is not christianity. Its capitalism with ecclesiastical garments. We have witnessed c so much of e market centeredness. But our tradition is a jazz tradition brother is doing a research on blues and whatnot. But jazz teaches america about democracy before america knew what democracy was all about. The fact jazz is born in new orleans first off. The space where you have Indigenous People in america along with spanish, along with the french and long people of african descent but do not forget a good portion of black people in new orleans were free blacks from haiti. They understood this idea of freedom they come and infect new orleans with that. The congo square was the space where on sunday people are catholic sunday you had off they could hear these different rhythms on these different rhythms come together jazz it does something no other music it done in history it takes whats not supposed to play together and they played together. You have a saxophone that is for the marching band but it plays with the piano which is european classical. Then the piano place with a trap drum set. Instead of using eight a syncopatedmarching rhythm thae pentatonic and then you have a base someone says let me play with my fingers. Everyone has the right toor sol. In other words i can bring my own cultural narrative to the table my own experience and i can solo but the saxophone never tells the piano you have to sound like me. And the piano doesnt have to tell the drum you have to sound like me. It does not everybody gets a chance to sing their song. As you said this morning in a unique way. And when america learns how to operate with a jazz democratic ethic is her new seat love supreme it. Cracks are right that is good stuff, right . Get the book dancing in the darkness. Spiritual lessons for thriving from Turbulent Times good stuff. This dancing and music you talk about is also improvisational. Each of the instruments they each play in their own way. They dont go off anywhere they are variations on a theme. So there is a theme and improvisations are variations on the theme there is a style and a friendly rivalry going on sometimes. A good jazzz musician like a god preacher they have a manuscript but they are going to see what the power brings. It might be a little different. How are we doing around improvisation in this moment . The church in particular . The church is struggling with improvisation. Ny its looking to be a symphony directed by people who do not care for the folks in the church. Symphony has a director and says play just like me. But when we moved to the jazz narrative we begin to look inwardly. Ro we draw from our tradition. The ministry and the framings its about the dollar and thats how you will be set free. Word to say it ministry must be solely individualistic. We dont talk about stuff that goes on in the world. I am blessed and highly favored. Theres nothing wrong with the phrase but the idea blessing within the framework blessing within the black church you cannot be blessed until other people are blessed in the processo there is a connectiviy to the idea of blessing. But our country is struggling with this. On multiple levels. So when we add to the curriculum black history, the conductors say you cannot do that because that is something that is not necessarily patriotic. Some states have said you cannot have ap africanamerican history projects have no Educational Value . Which iszi amazing you can have italian history japanese history, ap french history but there is no Educational Value to ingenious that help build this country. That is problematic because forcontinuing his headset, needs and education. Absolutely absolutely. But this idea of improvisation im struck by that premiere on the other side are we are still going through pandemic. In the church is being forced to rethink how it presents familiar themes of her toy about love and justice in theot book for you tk a lot about love and justice. You insist we have to have them both. You cannot have one without the other the first chapter is linking love and justice which are two important spiritual values we need that would personally but in the arena. We would make our policies rooted in a love and justice we have different policies. So in america we have sentimental love. Justice without love is legalism he walked down the aisle you mentioned two children one liberation one transformation when they gethe together. Imagine we think their policies based on love and justice. That is the pulpit of ebenezer has been about. Linking lovehe and justice you cannot disengage. That is with the ministry of jesus was about. Redemption over retribution. We have a retribution with incarceration. Not eight redemption. Not an education systemun we hae pure punishment vengeance system love and justice linked together raises the question what will our society be . What do we leave for children have not been born . What are the spiritual dragons me too slay in this moment. Talk about that in the book brickwork cynicism. The idea i have no power. Not able to change what is going on in the world. Slaying goliath dragons and reworking your origin stories. Im a comic book geek i admit it. Buter the reason we love heroes, the reason we