With these girls and shes the third person whose name. Sarah good, they deny all intimacy with witchcraft but through the book we offer an extra ordinary kaleidoscopic colorful confession and of course as soon as someone has confessed witchcraft then the witchcraft trial is set in place and fingers to point left and right. Watch the full Program Online booktv. Org. Just search in depth or stacy schiff. We want to take this moment to welcome everyone to Trinity United Church of christ in chicago illinois, we are a church that believes we are called to be a part of this community, ever seeking the communities hard and we are unapologetically christian but there is any contradiction between routing yourself in your culture also celebrating the christ of who we serve so we are delighted you are here for our book notes. We had a local worship experience, to Worship Services with magnificent creature, not other than reverend doctor Rafael Warnock who is the first gafricanamerican senator from the state of georgia. He has two publications, one being a way out of no way is a memoir. Experience from so all the way to the senate. A wonderful Childrens Book, he read to a small children immediately following worship yesterday. We reported that reading we hope that these young people will be say first African American center from georgia to read a Childrens Book to their book is a wonderful story that share the experience of doctor warnock as a child all the way up to being sworn in as senator. And get ready, put your shoes on put your shoes on west and mark put your shoes on and ulget ready and its so useful art, wonderful story so we are delighted you are with us. We are going to have a word of prayer and begin our conversation. We do this series talking to others having conversation their work and it has exploded at trinity where we thought we would have a few book nerds watch that sometimes we get more of people watch live conversation so lets have a word of prayer and to 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 need to link love and justice together in all of the work we do. May your spirit rest, may it by. But we may continue to walk the path that has been late for us. We thank you, we love you and we magnify your name. The people of god will love god collectively say. Doctor warnock. Hello Trinity United Church of christ is great to be here with my friend otis moss the third. Your pastor someone ive known since we were teenagers. At Morehouse College is great to be back here. Welcome to wanting us all live i am excited to be here to talk about doctor moss latest book, dancing in the darkness. Dancing in the darkness. Coalescence for writing through Turbulent Times. Theres a lot even in the. Dancing in the darkness, irritable lessons for writing Turbulent Times i think that is something, those are lessons all of us use at the time like this. Im going to start with the most basic question. What motivated you . What drove you to write this particular book and frame it in this particular way smr you preach every sunday. You also write to us of the inspiration behind dancing in the dark. I appreciate you answering asking that question. I realized it was truly a spiritual edge our country that people are attempting to scratch in a variety of ways. Some through social media, understanding i have enough funds, the market will be able to scratch that itch but we find we are spiritually anemic and there is a necessity for us to go back to the values that enrich us, that allow us to flourish as human beings and the two main values flowing in the book that on the book are the values of love and justice doctor Martin Luther king jr. And our Third Service gauges for talking about those values. So youre driven by that but tell me a little bit more about what is it that youre seeing as a pastor on the ground . What are the things that you carry in your bones as you engage people everyday people as they make their way through their everyday struggles. How does that inspire you as a preacher . The experience of trying to make sense of our trauma. The experience of trying to make sense of the sun going down in many ways for some this democracy. You are trying to make sense of what was happening in this world and weve been reaching for that which is physical in order to scratch this itch. However, doctor king. Theres so much within the black Spiritual Mission that speaks about how we deal with these issues. We go to Morehouse College morehouse i see another runner is the audience. We were always to light a candle. Talk about a candle in the dark every morehouse was told that when you come into the chapel god laces crown of all our heads we will spend the rest of our lives growing all to where i hope that the book teaches people to stretch not that will wear the crown these you will be after ingesting some of the values that you do the kind of work laser where you are calling people to stretch you are you are laying. Youre on the alternate you something really interesting should know. I do a lot of work on the culture committee. Im proud of being on that committee, is one of the largest business deals in georgia. And weve done many things from helping Georgia Farmers to get their crops to market when youre dealing with trade barriers. We did six billion dollars of debt relief for farmers. We are on the margin. Its one of the reasons i tolerate politics. Im an elected official, but i am not in love with politics. Im in love with change. And i tolerate politics because every now and then your evil to do Something Like raise 6 billion of debt relief for farmers. And much of this is a long time coming. Every five years you do something called the farm bill which links the concerns of farmers and agribusiness also Food Security and nutrition. Programs like tanff, those grants need use to get people security, they are part of the farm will gets read on every five years or im on the committee tei must say what youre referring to in my sermon i was referring to the fact that when i was capital in 2070 arrested intentionally in the tradition of Howard Thurman and Martin Lutherking jr. , i arrested protesting what they were getting seready to do farm bill to cut nutrition. This year, six years later i get to write the farm bill. [applause] so im struck by this idea that you put forward dancing in the dark. Illo dancing. Theres no question theres darkness. You talk and you can elaborate that if you care to we all have a sense of the darkness. Of course dour thurman talks about the luminous darkness. But you didnt say negotiate the darkness. You didnt say how to grow your way through the darkness. You know, how not to be afraid of the dark. Ive got to little kids that you said dancing in the darkness. Whats the state in that metaphor literally dancing in the darkness . To first bring you to how that idea came about, it starts in 2000. Our church was going through a challenging moment when an individual by the name of senator Barack Obamawas running for president. I had just become pastor at trinity and i remember in being at valleys at hyde park and i was on the treadmill marlon, i was sitting doing my warm down and someone asked me on the shoulder and says it atyour church . Sean the going off about trinity i said got to go. So there began walking through the gauntlet. 40 news outlets showed up to p our church every single sunday. Putting microphones in peoples faces, looking for some type of quote because they had watched a portion of my predecessors sermon and was a very good sermon by the way i, absolutely. They were trying to use that sound because many people have never been in a black church and dont know anything about the black Church Tradition or prosthetic preaching so that started the gauntlet and then from the gauntlet because of the news footage and the attention, we then started getting threats. And some people here remember that we had to have on sniffing dogs show up every singles sunday to make sure that these e sanctuary is safe. His letter my mind was always wrestling and every time i ran up to someone i was running just working out. Wondering if i saw him one coming my way is this it, is this the person fromthe letter . One night i didnt sleep very much for a year. We heard something in the house and monica tapped me and said youve got to check out and said let me do that so i got up and i grabbed my rod and my staff that comforts me. [applause] and that rod and staff was made in louisville, it was a Louisville Slugger and i was Walking Around the house looking for where was this noise coming from and then i heard the noise again the noise was coming from my daughters bedroom. I go into the bedroom and michaela is in the middle of and shes dancing, spinning around saying that, im dancing. Its 3 am have to preach trinity in our low register dad talk, baby, you need to go to bed and she says daddy, im dancing. Then the spirit said stop. Look at her. Shes dancing in the darkness , the darkness is around her but its not in her t. When are you going to learn how to dance and at that moment i trashed my sermon i was supposed to preach and i start writing notes and i stepped in sunday and i talk about the fact that we must learn how to dance in the dark and when we reclaim our dance, the dance of compassion, the dance of justice then we can transform in words web dubois, weve learned how to dance in the darkness of a country that many times marginalizes us, did not see us or set we were only 3 5 of a human being but Sojourner Truth says tie element and Frederick Douglass talks about july4th, thats dancing. These are all of the dance partners our ancestors that we must learn how to navigate these moments that we think are dark. The beautiful thing about darkness is not that the sun has forsaken you, it just means the earth has turned and if you keep dancing, eventually your morning will become dancing but your joy will, in the morning. Because the sun hasnt left, its still there, its just the earth decided to turn in a differentdirection. This is why i listen every sunday. Powerful. Dancing in the darkness. And that darkness you were literally living through it in the moment. And you were inspired by your daughter. And you describe something going on in the country at the time and your church at the center of it but then layered on top of that are the episodes of trauma that we all know individually. So the church is going through what its going through but you still have members who are dealing with whatever theyre dealing with andtheir everyday lives. The person who is trying to understand how to reconcile with their child or the reverse. All of these concerns and the spirituality that speaks to both. Both the individual and the social. That deals with the slavery of sin and the sin of slavery. I think 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, i see both of those things standing up in your work work which is itself a dance to 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, when you say west and mark you talk about living in post ousoul world in some of your other publications. And you are somebody in your preaching and your writing often engages the arts and music. You understand that docile and jazz and the blues and the spiritual all come from the same route, the english rumination and subjugation of people speaking to god in their own voice so the dance you will is syncopated. And you say its jazz like its on the beat rather than the downbeat. Is the beautiful thing about our tradition, the beautiful thing about black spirituality is that we embrace the x essential that we be steamy on. Also we are blues and gospel the same time the beautiful thing about people who may i just listened gospel music gospel music is structured on this scale, this african scale so you can have gospel music unless you know lose cords you can have resurrection. Youve got to sanctify first. Can have gospel music unless you have lose cords. In order to sing gospel got to know both lose cords so in other words you got to know that anguish and the pain in order to get to the celebration of resurrection. In our modern society we want to cast aside the blue notes and only want to do resurrection and celebration. Im talking about prosperity ipreaching. Prosperity preaching is problematic because it is not christianity is capitalism with ntecclesiastical darts. And we had witnessed so much of this market centeredness but our tradition is a jazz tradition. Hes doing research on went and marsalis and the blues but jazz teaches america about democracy before america what democracy was all about and the fact that jazz is born in new orleans, first ofall. The space where you have Indigenous People in america along with spanish, along with french people of african descent and a good portion of black people in new orleans were free blacks from haiti so they understood this idea of freedom and then they come and sat at new orleans with that. So the square was the space where on sunday because there were so many people, sunday you had off you can see all these different rhythms of these different rhythms come together and jazz does something no other music have done in history. It takes whats not supposed to play together and play together so you have a saxophone for the marching band but then it plays for the piano which is european classical and the piano plays with a trap drum set instead of using a single opeuropean market rent uses polymorphisms r. Then you have the base that youre supposed to play with although but somebody says let me play with my fingers and everybody has the right to solo. In other words i ran my own cultural narrative to the table, my own experience to the table and i can solo but the saxophone never tell us the piano you have to sound like me the piano tells the drama you have to send me the base doesnt tell the piano you have to sound like me. Everybody gets a chance to sing their songs in a unique way and when america learns how to operate with a jazz democratic epic, thats when in the words of john poultry you will see a love supreme. [applause] get the book dancing in the darkness. Spiritual lessons for writing through Turbulent Times. This dancing and this music you talk about is also improvisational. Each of the instruments, they each play in their own way, but they dont go off anywhere. They are variations on a theme. So theres a theme and the improvisation are variations on the theme and theyre the kind of style and friendly rivalry mesometimes going on. And good jazz musician like a good preacher they might have a manuscript theyre going to sing each time what the spirit is going to bring. How are we doing around the question of improvisation in this moment, the church in particular . Church is struggling with improvisation is looking to be a 70 by people who do not necessarily care for the folks in church. The 70 as a director says way just like me when we to that jazznarrative , we begin to look inwardly. We began to draw from our traditions. I would use the example that Prosperity Ministry in these heframings of its about the dollar and thats how you will beset free. Thats kind of symphonic in the way a director is playing or to say that ministry must be solely individualistic, well talk about stuff that goes on at work, we want to talk about me myself and i phrase i am blessed and highly favored. The idea that blessing within the framework, blessing within the black church was you really cant be blessed until other people are blessed in the process but theres a conductivity 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 cant do that because that is something that is not necessarily patriotic. As some states have said you cant have add African American history. Which is amazing you have 80 italian history, 80 japanese story, 80 french history but there is no educational out to the labor and genius that help build this country. Thatsproblematic. Anybody whos saying that the education. Absolutely. [applause] but this idea of. Improvisation im stuck with it because were still going through apandemic. The church is being forced to rethink how is prevents those familiarthemes. Talk about love and justice in the book. You insist that we have to have themboth. You cant have one without the other. The first is linking rob and justice which are two important values that we need not only personally but also the civicarena. If we would make our policies rooted in love and justice we would have different policies in america we have the sentimental love love without justice is sentimentality. Justice not love because the brutality will you marry love and justice and walk down the eventually children. When they get together imagine when we think through policies based on law and justice. Thats what the portables campaign was about. Thats the kid of ebenezer, linking love and justice. You can be and that is what the ministry of jesuswas about. Meeting i read emu. This idea of redemption over retribution. We have a retribution system when it comes to incarceration, not redemptions, not. We of your punishment vengeance system, law and justice late together raises the question what will our society be and what do we were children . What are the spiritual dragons we need to slay in this moment . You talk about that. Cynicism. The idea that i have no power, that im not able to change what is going on in the world. This chapter on slaying dragons and another chapter the ideal holy reworking your origin stories about the facts that youve got to know your origin stories i like and it but the reason we love heroes, the reason we love the stories whether its marble , whether youre reading about storm or luke page or whatever it maybe we lo