I keep thinking that I am glad Pat Robertson is quiet, or has been quiet, as part of the country has been ravaged by tornadoes, and now, by floods.

The good reverend has a way of telling the world why certain events have happened. If you recall, he said that the earthquake in Haiti (those people made a pact with the devil, he said)and the hurricane called Katrina that hit Louisiana and Mississippi, were acts of God, punishing those people for their past indiscretions and sins, sins which, by the way, Mr. Robertson declared.

Robertson isn’t the only one who in our history has blamed innocent people for “the sins of the fathers.” He and the late Rev Jerry Falwell blamed “pagans, abortionists, feminists” and others for the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. He and other religious leaders said that the outbreak of HIV/AIDS was God’s punishment for gay people. And, exhaustively, so on …

But Mr. Robertson has been quiet in light of the tornadoes and now the floods in the South. Why whatever for? Who is being punished now? I have not seen any divine pronouncements of judgment and blame from the good reverend. More importantly, however, I haven’t heard any such ignorant and insensitive pronouncements from other people.

It has to be a sin to blame victims for their situations, and to do so, using God as the justification for the pronouncements is heretical. The portrayal of God has been carefully created and that image protected by those who have a vested interest in making sure God is on “their side.” This practice seems to me to expose a complete lack of understanding of God as an entity who loves all and forgives all of His or Her children.

What bothers me about Robertson’s pronouncements is an underlying thread of racism, sexism, and homophobia. There is no consistency to his pronouncements. If God is against evil, and punishes whole communities for the sins of generations past, then why hasn’t Robertson suggested that HIV/AIDS, or the flooding or the tornadoes and hurricanes that have hit the South is God’s punishment for slavery and racism? Robertson and others have a comfortable image of God as a white, male Protestant. His perception of God excludes or omits the notion of God’s omnipotence, that is, God’s power to create all kinds of people. Robertson’s practices also present a God who is selectively punitive. And Robertson’s words suggest that he, not God, has decided which sins are punishable by mass tragedy and which are not. Could it really be that this God would punish the people in Haiti and not the Germans whose leader led the greatest mass murder movement in the world? And seriously, would this God punish gay people with a horrid disease called HIV/AIDS (and heterosexual people as well!) and not punish English people who intentionally gave blankets infested with smallpox to American Indians, causing them to die en masse? Whose God is that, Mr. Robertson? Oh, I know. It’s your God. It’s the God you protect and lift up to defend your “isms.” Is God really just on the side of rich, white, straight Protestant men? And, as statistics show that it is African American heterosexual women who are contracting HIV/AIDS faster and more than any other group of people, what might be their sin?

I am just grateful that I have not heard any such ignorant and insensitive rantings. No matter how horrible certain people may have been, God does not punish innocent people in support of a particular ideology masked as theology. Not my God. Not…my God.

That is a candid observation.

Today, people all over the United States are literally dancing in the streets because the hated Osama bin Laden has been assassinated by the United States military.

His act of terror, which destroyed so many lives and changed the world forever, has now been avenged. The audacity of this one man was an affront from the beginning; the fact that he and his cohorts were able to do what they did and cause so much pain has been a gaping wound for Americans. His periodic videotapes were maddening, seemingly rubbing his “power” in the faces of those he hated. So, when he was reported assassinated, nobody wept in sorrow.

But we have to be careful, and I hope we can use this as a “teachable moment” to understand something critical about human behavior. First, the careful part: Gloating and dancing in the streets is not a good way to live once someone hated or disliked has been “taken out.” I remember when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and some of the white people in my city danced and said, “good!” We, Americans, didn’t like it when we saw people dancing in their streets when the World Trade Center buildings came down. Not even sports teams allow the winner to gloat in front of the team they’ve beat. It is behavior unbecoming to an American. It feeds those who already hate us, who think that we are arrogant and selfish and self-serving. We have a right to be happy that bin Laden is gone, but gloating is not good.

Second: the education. Whenever people have been wronged, or think they have been wronged, they feel vindication when it seems the chips are on their side. If we go back to the infamous O.J. Simpson trial, black people were glad — no, elated — when the verdict came down because it seemed that the justice system had finally worked for them. For years it had been the case (and still is) that the justice system was skewed against black people, sending blacks to prison even in the midst of compelling evidence as to innocence. Not even the United States Supreme Court, historically, has ruled in favor of black people, so when that verdict came down, it was a gut reaction to a long-held hurt and sense of betrayal of the United States government and justice system. I am not sure that everyone who applauded the verdict believed Simpson was innocent, but they were glad that apparent evidence that pointed to his possible innocence had not been ignored. When people, during the 2008 presidential election, saw black people in Jeremiah Wright’s church “applaud” as they listened to him talk about the injustice of America’s government, they were offended, called Wright a racist, and shrank in sheer horror that black people could applaud “racist” and “hateful” speech. Wright’s words were neither, but were rather a statement of the reality of life black people have lived in this country, an affirmation that what they have felt was and is valid.

It is a fact that since September 11, 2001, Americans have been seething. We have been hurt and insulted and angry and we have wanted justice – i.e., we have wanted bin Laden to hurt, and hurt badly, for what he did to us. We have wanted revenge, this, in spite of our religious instruction which admonishes us not to seek vengeance and which reminds us that God says vengeance is his. Well, so be it. We see this assassination of bin Laden as God working on our behalf, and we are glad about it and we are not shy about making our feelings known …I, too, am glad he was found. I am glad…

But we need to think about ourselves as Americans who believe in God, and think about behavior “becoming to an American,” and also use this as a teachable moment, as we look at our own behavior, and see that what any human being does when he or she feels vindicated, is applaud the breakthrough. Americans (and probably some Muslims as well) are doing that now; African Americans have done it as well, and it means nothing more than people like to get a couple of points on the board when they feel life has beat them down.

Just a candid observation…

I have watched and listened to Donald Trump as he has splashed about in the shallow end of the pool of potential 2012 presidential candidates, and one thing stands out: he is arrogant and unabashed in presenting himself as “the voice” of the “angry white man.”

He is troubling the already rough waters of American racism.

His attack on President Obama has been personal, which is not unusual for politicians, but the quality of his personal attacks has been different. He has pushed the “birther” argument, feeding into the fear and belief of way too many white Americans that President Obama was not born in the United States, and now he is challenging the president to present his academic transcripts, saying that President Obama didn’t deserve to get into Ivy League schools.

Trump said he has friends who have kids who had the grades but didn’t get into Harvard, reflecting the belief of many Americans that African Americans only got into Ivy League schools, or indeed, college period, because of Affirmative Action.

Other potential presidential candidates have skirted the arguments made by racists privately who resent President Obama’s presidency. Trump is arrogant enough to say those things out loud.

Just last week, Republican Congresswoman Marilyn Davenport from Orange County, California, circulated a picture of the Obama family in which they appeared as apes. When there was an outcry, she objected, saying it was a “joke.” She later apologized but refused to resign. She should.

Rush Limbaugh, ever the mouthpiece of and for racists, attacked President Obama’s choice of church he and his family attended on Easter. Apparently, Limbaugh thought it was racist that the family attended Shiloh Baptist Church, an African American congregation. I am sure Limbaugh’s listeners are full with the hateful vitriol that Limbaugh served them.

The president, for his part, has handled these attacks gracefully. As an African American myself, I know when I hear the euphemisms for racism, and how it roils me. Trump and others would like nothing better than to have President Obama lose his cool, show some anger, and become the proverbial “angry black man.” That would do them good, allow them to say, “See. I told you.”

Trump, on the other hand, has been churlish as criticism has come his way, resorting to calling people who challenge him names, and talking about their failures as people and as professionals. In that, he follows a disturbing tendency of too many candidates who resort to name calling when they are not getting their way.

Trump would pooh-pooh what I am saying, saying that I am playing the race card. I am, but that same card has been being played from the time the president took office, and even before. There are a lot of people who never embraced the idea that this country chose a person from America’s historic underclass to live in the White House, not as president, and they have been strategically plotting and planning to get him out from the day he took office.

The president’s policies were bound to come under attack, but these attacks are made all the more powerful because they are being fed by racism, mostly under the carpet, but in the case of Donald Trump, out loud and on Front Street. His arrogance, based on his color and his wealth, is palpable.

When President Obama was elected, idealists thought America had hit a new stride; the country was “post-racial,” they cheered. It was a nice thought, but naive. This country was built with blocks of racism; maybe the whole world was. That African Americans in this country have managed to push through some of that racism is a tribute to our strength as a people, but the fight is not over yet. The sick hatred that made this country sanction racist behavior and policies has not gone away.

Just ask Donald Trump.

Were Trump to be elected president, what would this country look like? How would “the blacks,” as he referred to African Americans, fare? I shudder to think of it. But many others smile at the thought.

That would be a candid observation.

I had the most delightful conversation with myself today.

I am an African American woman, living in a world where the Eurocentric opinion of beauty has been dominant. As such, African Americans grew up talking about “good hair” and “bad hair.” “Theirs” was “good,” because it was silky and straight, or so we were told. Ours was “bad” because it was nappy.

Well, today I was looking at my hair and complaining that it didn’t look right …and then I laughed. “Girl,” I said, “you’ve got some good hair!

Because of the distinction between “good” and “bad,” African American women (and men) grew up doing the most dastardly things to make our hair “good,” like “theirs,” which meant putting horrible chemicals on our hair to straighten it out.

It has taken a long time, but “we” have finally gotten it: chemicals are NOT “good” for our “bad” hair. Chemicals make it break off and get brittle and stupid looking.

So, more and more of us have opted for “bad” hair, meaning “natural” hair. What I have preached is that we have been confused; any hair on one’s head is “good.”

Ask someone who is bald, or is balding. They’ll tell you.

Well, I am moving from having chemicals on my hair to not having them. Oh, I’ve done it before, but this time is the deal breaker. No more of that stuff for me. When I look at my hair now, and smile as it puffs up from moisture from natural humidity or from the steam in the shower, I just smile.

That’s some good hair! When it looks stupid, meaning it’s not going the way I want it to go, it’s still good…because it’s mine! Having “good” hair is as good as having one’s own teeth! And, being free enough to look like I am, instead of how someone thinks I ought to look, is so liberating it makes me giddy!

Getting older is about getting wiser; the things that used to stump us when we were younger ought not have the same power over us as we get older and are able to put things into perspective. I am who I am; I look like me, and nobody else …and it’s good enough. I’ve got hair on my head, and therefore, I have good hair. I don’t have to look European to be beautiful. I am beautiful as I am, even on bad hair days… At least, the problem is “good” hair not behaving, as opposed to “bad” hair being a badge of shame.

I had to write this, because it hit me that I am so getting free of pro-scripted definitions of what is “right” and “good.” When God made me, foibles and all, He/She, “it is good.”

And I finally agree with God, on all counts …including my hair.

It’s a personal, candid observation.

Last Sunday I preached a pretty stirring message, I think, on the fact that we all have demons and that part of the process of repentance involves knowing our demons, calling them out by name, and then kicking them our of our spiritual space.

I wish it were easy to do.

All my life I have struggled with insecurity. Part of it is due to the fact that I was adopted into a family which didn’t particularly care for me, and before that, was a foster child in homes where I was taken care of but was always aware that I just “didn’t belong.”

I went into myself, and, frankly, have stayed there …which does nothing to help rid myself of the demon of insecurity.

The craziest thing is that I know the demon is there. I can and do call it by name. I invite it out.

At best, it leaves by bits and starts, but, as I admonished my members last week not to do, I leave the door ajar, and the demon seems to come and go at will.

Why in the world would any of us hold onto something that is not good for us, especially when we KNOW it isn’t good for us?

I think it’s because we get comfortable with who we are and who we have always been. It is a stretch, and a scary one at that, to push a demon out, slam the door and bolt it, and begin making a new life for ourselves.

I am writing this today, because my demon is sitting next to me, whispering “sweet nothings” in my ear, playing to the sore spot which absorbs the nuggets “insecurity” always deposits into me. I am determined to get this one out of me, to send it into waiting swine who could then run into a lake and drown, my demon with them.

In the Bible passage I used to preach last week, I noted that it was the demon who spoke to Jesus, begging to be saved, not the man in whom the demon rested. The demon said its name was “Legion, for we are many.” The demon within, or this demon within me, is like a glioblastoma, a tumor with many parts, inoperable, spreading everywhere so that it cannot be pinpointed, isolated, and extracted.

So, the work of getting it out is more difficult.

But if I am to do what I was sent to earth to do, I have to get this thing out of me. Yesterday is gone. I have today, and prayerfully, tomorrow as well. I feel like I am in a battle for my spiritual life. But I want to be healed. I want the tumor out, so that I can pour water on it and watch it disintegrate, like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz.

I don’t know if anyone else understands what I just wrote …but for me, it was a candid observation…about me.