In The Name Of Love
The holiday season can breed mixed emotions. For many, it is a time of joy and giving. For others it is a time of holiday parties and hearing from friends and acquaintances who aren’t part of life’s normal routine. During the holiday season, family gatherings usually become traditions, creating cherished memories.But for some, the season between Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s is often one of the darkest, loneliest and most despairing times of the year.
Whether you’re single or married, you may find that instead of shouting “Ho!Ho!Ho” you may end up sighing, “Bah Humbug!”Whether you’re young or old, rich or poor, married or single, the 2006 holiday season will undoubtedly be one of the most memorable on record. Although your economic status and age will certainly affect your emotional state; whether you are married—happily or unhappily, or single—by choice or by default; this season will likely challenge you to consider the state of your affairs...
After Katrina…Now What?
“Restoration is more than observation. It’s more than looking from the safety of our television into the lives of other people, and assessing their situation from the comfort of our own luxuries and lives.” —Bishop T.D. Jakes
“My first reaction was to get on the phone and start calling several mega-churches pastors [to see] if we could do something collectively,” said Bishop T.D. Jakes, CEO of The Potter’s House of Dallas, Inc., a 30,000-member church. “I thought that it was an opportunity for us to collectively try to impact the nation and people who were displaced. The response was just amazing. I mean, in about 45 minutes, almost a million dollars was pledged over my cell phone before the battery went dead.”
The money, according to Bishop Jakes, was donated to a number of different organizations. Among the recipients was World Vision, “a Christian relief and development organization dedicated to helping children and their communities,” to purchase mattresses, box springs and food; and $100,000, which other organizations were challenged to match, was donated to the Tom Joyner Foundation through Blackamericaweb.com. Those funds went directly to the victims.
Funds were donated to the Black National Bar Association scholarship fund “to provide help for students,” $100,000 was used to support BET’s Saving OurSevles Relief Telethon; and the remainder was used to locate houses and apartments for the victims. “We were able to place [more than] 1,000 people in homes on our own,” said Bishop Jakes.Historically, the African-American church has played a critical role in advocating for black and poor people when it appeared their civil rights were either violated or ignored. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s role as a pastor in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the civil rights marches was critical to the social changes gained by African Americans…
Read more on both articles in GT’s Nov/Dec issue …
Send your questions to Letters@GospelToday.com
courtesy of www.gospeltoday.com
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The Color Purple in Retrospect
Twenty years after the debut, the film’s beauty never fades.
By Bernadette Adams Davis
www.bibookreview.com
Twenty years ago, on December 18, 1985, Warner Bros. released a movie directed by Steven Spielberg based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Alice Walker novel The Color Purple (Harvest Books [reprint], May 2003). Unlike the director’s blockbuster adventure and science fiction films, this one featured a mostly black cast and focused on the story of a woman in the rural American South. It was the kind of story that rarely made it to the big or small screen.
When Walker’s story of Celie, Nettie and Shug—already a best-selling novel—made it to theaters, it captured viewers and, sometimes, critics. The film sent more people to Walker’s novels and poems and was a memorable cultural experience, prompting people to quote lines from Celie or Shug and reference the film’s joy and heartbreak.
The play, which is scheduled to open on Broadway this winter, is not without its critics, who had similar problems with the film as with the novel. According to the most vocal naysayers, the language was insulting to blacks, it was immoral and detrimental to show black women loving each other, and there wasn’t one redeeming black male character through the whole story. Still, the film was commercially successful, as were many who were involved with it, though not one of its eleven Academy Award nominations yielded an Oscar.
One element of the novel—though only briefly revealed in the film—that sparked heated dialogue and accusations was that Walker, Spielberg and anyone associated with the film did not have the community’s interests at heart when representing the romantic relationship between Celie and Shug. Their brief movie kiss and relationship seems almost quaint in our current era of discussions of bisexuality and gay marriage. While same-sex relationships are still a very controversial subject in the larger and black community, the presence of lesbian or bisexual characters isn’t as unexpected as it was in 1985.
Then there are the faces that were not so familiar then, that are artistic and entertainment royalty to us now. Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey have become some of our most famous and recognized performers. Seeing so many black faces featured in one film was still a rare jewel and often received as such.
What Spielberg gave us, from the gift Walker originally crafted, was a sweeping story of a black, southern woman. It was the epic, one of only a few, that we’ve long deserved as founding—though unrecognized, abused and brought by force—members of this nation. It presaged the increased attention society began to pay in the 1980s and ’90s to issues of domestic violence, child sexual abuse and same-sex love. Walker writes that she was so hurt when Spielberg named Gone With the Wind as his favorite film.
According to Evelyn C. White’s biography Alice Walker: A Life (W.W. Norton & Company, September 2004), Spielberg considered that “the greatest movie every made.” That epic paean to a slave-era South had caused blacks so much pain that it was amazing that he could say such a thing. Still, he brought her novel to screen, giving blacks an epic about the descendants of the slaves who supported the opulent South that Scarlett mourns.
Among those descendants were Walker’s family members, including her mother. Walker says she risked a lot by allowing Spielberg to make the film, “But I would have risked even more to wipe away the assault on my mother’s dignity moviegoing had represented in the past.”
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for details go to www.blackamericaweb.com________________________
Being Grown for the Holidays...
While off running holiday errands for the wifey I couldn’t help but to reflect on childhood holidays gone past. Sunrise service that you didn’t want to go to 'cause three days later you were gonna have to go again. Rushing to get back home so you could sneak some food before your Uncle got there and ate it all up. Struggling through that hour long prayer/sermonette where your Grandmother prayed for everything from world peace to world hunger. Hoping to get to the bathroom before your Auntie blows it up. Mom fixed the turkey, Grannie made the world famous candied yams with the marshmallows on top, and Great-Grandma fixed the collard greens with the big chunks of pork in every bite.
Boy have times changed. Now I'm the grown up. And to be honest, being grown around the holidays is way overated. Everybody staring at you while you hack up the turkey. Little nieces and nephews laughing cause now it's you babbling through the prayer, messing up the scriptures. Yes, times have changed. But... at least we have memories. When sharing love, cutting up, and spending time was all that really mattered. And at the end of the day… it's what still does. So... to my friends and family all around the world… from my family to yours... I wish you a blessed day filled with good food, fun, cutting up, and lots of love shared and time well spent.
Happy holidays, David info@davidetalbert.com
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Submitted by: Shelle' - HAPPY THANKSGIVING
****NOTE***
I'm taking a break on this Thursday in observance of "TURKEY DAY" see y'all on Friday!!!
GOD BLESS YOU AND YOURS :)
HAVE A SAFE HOLIDAY - DON' T DRINK (or USE ANY OTHER KIND OF DRUGS) AND DRIVE..... (NOT NECESSARILY IN THAT ORDER - EVEN OUT OF THAT ORDER ) JUST ACT RESPONSIBLY - NO YOUR LIMIT BECAUSE THE LIFE YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN!!!!
P.S. DON'T DO NOTHING BUT EAT.......AND THEN GO TO SLEEP!!!! wake up EAT SOME MORE, JUST ENJOY YOURSELF WITHOUT HURTING YOURSELF OR ANYONE ELSE. (LOL)
with much,
PEACE AND LOVE - from Shelle' & Family
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