I'm reading a book for class called "Black Theology and Black Power" by James Cone. It was written in the 60s and includes a large section critiquing the white church's response to slavery, segregation and civil rights. Cone is adamant that white churches remained neutral on all these topics and were useless in securing rights for black people. At many points in his argument, I wanted to say, no! Not the United Methodist Church! But everytime I felt this way, Cone rebuffed me.

For example, he wrote about how Methodist ministers held slaves in the 1800s. He even gives a scary statistic: in 1844, 200 Methodist traveling preachers owned 1,600 slaves. He writes that this alone indicates the white Methodist Church's tolerance and propagation of the slave system. When I read this, I said to myself, "Yes, but that was the southern Methodist Church. The church split on this issue and the northern Methodist Church (called the Methodist Episcopal Church) did not tolerate slavery.

And then Cone came back at me with the fact that at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philidelphia, a church I visited two years ago and have a picture of on my desk, they pulled a group of black men from their knees as they knelt in prayer at the altar and kicked them out of the church. Yikes.

This and other examples have made me seriously ponder the United Methodist Church's position today. The civil rights movement is in our past and we think we are living in a society of racial equality. But, do we continue to remain neutral and silent on the issue of race relations? Are we truly advocates for social justice, or are we content to maintain the status quo? And especially on the current topic of healthcare, are we doing anything to advocate for those who are voiceless, for those who are oppressed by the current system?

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Something I learned today in class:

Psalm 150, the final psalm in the psalter, is all about praising God. This should be obvious to anyone who looks at this psalm - it says the word praise 13 times in 6 verses. It is also psalm that is read every morning by monks and nuns. They gather at daybreak and open their day lines of praise from this psalm. In class today Dr. Craven, my professor, asked us what it means, according to this psalm, to praise God.

If you've never thought of that before, think about it. What does it mean to praise God? Google Psalm 150 if you want.

Dr. Craven gave us time to think too. Then she told us to look at the final verse, verse 6, which says: "Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!"

According to this psalm, to breathe is to praise God. You can be at the lowest point in your life, but you can still praise God if you can still breathe. Our days are spent in praise to God.

Another interesting factoid: in ancient Hebrew (and current Judaism), the name of God was unpronouncable. Maybe you know this. The name was never written out with vowels, but was only indicated by four consonants: YHWH. Many people think this could be pronounced Yahweh, but no one can be sure.

There is another way to interpret God's name. The four consonants can also be understood as breathing sounds - inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Dr. Craven related that the name of God can be understood as the sound of breathing.

What if we lived as if this is true? What if with each breath we take, we say the name of God, we praise God? What if, like monks and nuns who begin each day with Psalm 150, we start our day with the knowledge that we each breath we exhale, we praise God?

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In honor of Labor day, enjoy this video about avoiding work. It's in Russian, so I don't know what it's saying, but it is funny all the same.

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

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