Fire and Waiting

Fire.

Fire inside us and fire surrounding us.

Waiting.

Waiting with expectation and waiting with endurance.

Andre Henry’s book All The White Friends I Couldn’t Keep and Dante Stewart’s book Shoutin’ in the Fire, paired nicely as I read them back to back. Reading through what each man felt was a catalyst in their own lives for the fire that burst within them, I was reminded that we each hold within us a flame. And yet, there are also the flames that threaten us from the powers of the empire seeking to control, diminish and oppress.

For many black people in America, there has been an attempt to stifle or even blow out their flame. Dante reminds us of Andre Lorde’s words in A Litany of Survival: “So it is better to speak/remembering/we were never meant to survive.” It appears there is a fear within the white majorty that, by allowing the fire to burn within each person, their own white priviledged flame/faith will somehow be diminished. This zero sum thinking keeps us from living fully into ourselves and fanning the flame that yerns to blaze strong.

In the mindst of serving in white evangeilical churches; preaching and studying white evangelical men; Stewart realized he“needed to give voice to being fully black and fully Christian….Jesus had been weaponized to keep us silent about white supremacy and anti-Blackness. That Jesus, I had to get rid of him.”

I found both Andre and Dante’s books challenging and inspiring— One asking us to face the darkness of our white, simplistic evangelical lives; to resist the violence and oppression it seeks to overtake (Dante Stewart’s Shoutin in the Fire). Another demanding that we fan the flames within our own souls to demand the dignity we all deserve (Andre Henry’s All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep).

There are several words in the Hebrew language for the word wait. One refers to expectation and the other to endurance. Have you ever thought about how you wait?—with endurance or with expectation?

“To believe in the better, to believe in your future, to shout in the midst of a country on fire…to shake the foundations of the empire, to make meaning in the face of death, to fail, to create, to live, and to love—this is the stuff of hope.” —Dante Stewart

There is a blazing fire surrounding us in the darkness of pain, expoitation, power, and privilege in our world. There is another fire burning deep within ourselves. Which fire will we fight? Which flame will we fan?