Chapter 3: Making Do and Making New
Think about your experiences of home and your experiences of exile.
Soul Food: What connects us to home when we are in exile?
Ingredient 1: Tradition
Proverbs are a way of passing on practical wisdom from generation to generation. Bishop Curry remembers his grandmother’s phrase “We made do.” Like most proverbs, it is an understatement and carries an abundance of meaning.
What does “making do” mean to Bishop Curry?
What proverbs from your family experience are filled with an abundance of practical wisdom?
Ingredient 2: Imagination
In order to move through the “danger waters”, we must be able to imagine potential in the ordinary now that will help us make a way to the other side.
Where do you see potential in the ordinary that could help us make our way to the other side?
Ingredient 3: God
There are times when we look around us and are overwhelmed by the waves of chaos washing over us. And so our imagination for the potential in what we see may fail. When we cannot find the potential in what we see, still God is there. Curry writes: “When God – that loving benevolence behind creation, whose judgment supersedes all else – is factored into the reality of life and living, something changes for the good.” We can, with resilience, “hope against hope.”
What short phrase could you take on as a mantra to remind you to “steal away to Jesus” when imagination fails?
Chapter 4: Desmond and Dolly
Bishop Curry writes that when it’s midnight, dreaming saves (p. 73).
Where do you connect with the stories Bishop Curry tells of midnight in America in 1968?
What evidence do you see that the way of love can work?
Challenge: Meditate on the 10 Commandments of Nonviolent Resistance this week.
