Friday Morning Small Group: The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Every other Friday morning, I meet with a small group of folks (all women, currently, but there's no reason it must stay that way) at Clark's Fork, here in Bozeman. Most of us order some kind of breakfast, and I think everyone has coffee or tea. We tend not to arrive all at once - a 7:00am start time means we trickle in.

While we gather, we check in on each other's lives, and sometimes jump start conversation of the chapter or two we've read for the morning's discussion. More often than not, once everyone is there we turn to "highs and lows" before we dig in to formal discussion of the text: we go around the table and each person shares a high point and low point of her life since we last met. And I've noticed a change in our lows over recent months: while they are still sometimes quite personal, it's no longer an anomaly for someone's lows to consist largely of what she's heard on the news - natural disasters, political machinations, wars and the violence of extremist groups, racially motivated hatred. It's all a lot.  Maybe even too much, sometimes.

Our tendency to be "plugged in" most of the time probably doesn't help. This morning one of my friends said that she didn't listen to the radio on her way to small group, so that she wouldn't start the day depressed by the news. And I wonder if a general sense of powerlessness, and of not understanding those who think about and experience life so differently from how we do, contributes, too.

In order to learn from someone with a radically different life experience and history, and to have some likely tough conversations about race and faith (and their interweaving in American history), the Friday morning small group is going to read The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone. YOU are invited to join the conversation. The first conversation, on the introduction and first chapter, will be Friday, April 10th, at 7:00am at Clark's Fork.

Want to learn more? Here's James Cone on Bill Moyers Journal in 2007, a CNN blog post about the theologian and author, and a 2008 NPR "Fresh Air" interview with him. Here, also, is a link to the ELCA Social Statement Freed in Christ: Race, Ethnicity and Culture.