Peter Kerry Powers > Recent Status Updates

If the first 54 pages are an indication, it will be a centrally important book on the relationship of literature and religion in African American culture

Smiling and laughing my way through the first 24 pages. Grimly.

Revisiting this complex and important book.

Began rereading this classic tonight for what must be the fourth or fifth time. If the definition of a classic is a book that whose news does not grow old, this is both true of souls, and terribly sad since we currently are given cause to wonder whether the problem of the 21st century isn't also, again, the problem of the color line in America.

"I saw that there also exists the freedom to refuse to obey anything, even self-imposed duties. For the first time I faced the possibility that even duties such as these can disintegrate and I realized that no habit would be strong enough to take their place. Ah. How joyously would I move toward a goal, without ever drawing any closer.

"But how could I move without a goal." (24-25)

The most interesting things about this book continue being at odds with its overt intention and realization. Good stuff about how some work of some contemporary women writers of color use spirituality to critique separateness and identity politics, and looks for ways of creating alliances across difference, an insight buried by large an uncritical generalities about history and about women and about ethnicity.

It was when the trees were leafless first in November And their blackness became apparent, that one first Knew the eccentric to be the base of design

It was when the trees were leafless first in November And their blackness became apparent, that one first Knew the eccentric to be the base of design

Too early to tell, but as I read I keep saying, " Blindness and insight. Blindness and insight". A lot of good stuff going on but the unrecognized implication in what is effectively the spirituality of postmodernity makes nearly every other sentence unknowingly ironic. She slams my own book, or rather a book I do not remember writing but which she seems to have read. Yet I'm still working to keep an open mind.

Perhaps it's the lunch that we had Or the lunch that we should have had. But I am, in any case, A most inappropriate man In a most unpropitious place.

Nota: his soil is mans intelligence. That's better. That's worth crossing seas to find

"Through the discipline of solitude we discover space for God in our innermost being. Through the discipline of community we discover a place for God in our life together. Both disciplines belong together precisely because the space within us and the space among us are the same place."

Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses--
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon--
Rationalists would wear sombreros.

'Henri Nouwen focuses our attention on the fact that we can claim our woundedness as our "unique way to glory" and make our brokenness into 'the gateway to joy'. Quoting the great Augustine who remarked, 'In my deepest wound I see your glory and it dazzles me,' Richard Rohr can only conclude that 'Our wound is our way through.' Indeed, the path toward our eventual wholeness is precisely through our own woundednes'

Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink, Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

You know you're getting old when the fascinations of your early intellectual life are now the subject of historical inquiry, even while you sit there and say "Wait a second, I still haven't figured this stuff out."

Nota: his soil is mans intelligence. That's better. That's worth crossing seas to find

Mostly making the case that America became hyper individualized in its economic and intellectual discourse during this period. I'm not sure this is a new insight, but intelligently stated.

Mostly making the case that America became hyper individualized in its economic and intellectual discourse during this period. I'm not sure this is a new insight, but intelligently stated.

Like a dull scholar,i behold,in love an ancient aspect,touching a new mind It comes,it blooms,it bears its fruit and dies This trivial trope reveals a way of truth Our bloom is gone.We are the fruit thereof Two golden gourds distended on our vines Distorted by hale fatness,turned grotesque We hang like warty squashes,streaked and rayed The laughing sky will see the two of us Washed into rinds by rotting winter rains