Happy Mother's Day

Because I was born of a matriarchy.....

...because I have bi-racial hair and while Nunez Mom is a non-violent mujer, Nunez Matriarch definitely gave me a swat or two with her chinelas get me to sit for its combing....

...because they are the reason for my being....

Happy Mother's Day...to Nunez Mom...and to Cuqui, Ma-ma...to Premonition who is a momi-to-be (in a matter of days)...and to all the other querida blogging and real world mommies, too many to mention.

(Picture Credit: "Hija de Yemaya y Ochun" by Yasmin Hernandez, a super bad, political, activist, rooted in raices y la tierra Boricua artista. Read about her here and support her site here.)

ETA: Took out the italics on my Puerto Rican. So I guess I'll owe a post about why soon. (Evolving Boricua Latina Caribeana mindset is the short answer...)

3 Day Countdown...

And I'm so tired. And the blogosphere is trippin.

Pick me up please.



~*~abap~*~

Oblate Sisters of Providence Invited to Mass with Pope

The group's story dates to the early 1800s.

"It was unheard of -- a woman of color putting on a habit," said Sister Annette Beecham, the superior general of the Oblate Sisters.

"When Mother Mary Lange started the orders, we were not really accepting black people, especially in this area," Sister Reginald Gerdes recalled.
But Elizabeth Lange, the founder of the Oblate Sisters, was determined to answer the call to God, the group told Robinson. She migrated to Baltimore from her native Haiti.

A well-educated woman, Lange wanted to teach children how to read. She started a school in her home and, in 1828, began to study to become an Oblate Sister. Three other women joined her.

"Here's four women who had four strikes against them in 1828. They were women, they were women of color, they were immigrant women and they were Catholic. They followed God's vision for them to teach African-American children. I believe that's why it's survived for so long," Knecht said

Read the rest here.

Visualizing the Black Church

More fantastic images over at Sojourner's Place by artist Annie Lee.

Diaspora Worship: African American Christianity

I've been thinking about faith a lot lately. Below is a paragraph I once did on the history of Christianity and African America. Thoughts?

(Tremaine Combs I'm calling you out....)

"Large numbers of free and enslaved blacks in the United States began to convert to Christianity in the first half of the nineteenth century because of the growth of a new black population, native-born and experiencing new oppressions, and because of this with new needs not completely served by African belief-systems or secular practices. For an increasingly native-born, intergenerational slave and free population in the throes of the Second Middle Passage in the South and experiencing ever mounting racial repression in the North, Christianity provided both an empowering philosophical explanation of their history of enslavement and racial oppression and an opportunity to improve their living conditions. But people of African descent did not convert uncritically and nor was it simply in tandem with the spread of evangelicalism within white society. Increasingly over the first thirty years of the nineteenth century, free and enslaved created and then converted to a particular strain of Afro-Protestantism that designated the planter as pharaoh, Anglo-America as Egypt-land, and elevated black men and women to the status of God’s chosen people. This African-based evangelicalism was empowering, political, holistic, and divisive but in its basic tenets it never lost sight of the peculiar status of blacks in the United States. It also continued to place significance—both positive and negative—on African history, memory and heritage in relation to that status."