Friday, October 21, 2016

Busted. (The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers)

Tonight, I had the honor of being a featured storyteller at Busted! with The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers.

The written story is below the video.




Two months ago, my family and I moved from LA to Detroit, and it’s been a delight watching our daughters experience their first Michigan October. Daddy, are those trees on fire? They are so beautiful. Palm trees don’t do that! There are so many colors!

We moved here to Pingree Park, between Mack and Gratiot on the Eastside. As we work on launching a non-profit called The Table Setters, I’ve taken up a job as a Lyft driver. It’s helping me to re-learn our city, both the roads and the infinitely interesting stories that are shared about real Detroit. You see, I spent my first 18 years in Beverly Hills. Michigan. You know: 13 and Southfield.

Last week, my Lyft route took me past the Mt. Elliott cemetery, and I remembered burying my great aunt Dorothy there about 20 years ago. That was the day I also learned of the very unique flavor of Detroit bigotry.

“Look at what Black people do to nice things. Look at all these old homes, such beautiful designs, but look what happens when black people live in them. It’s a disgrace,” said someone at the funeral, and though my 17 year old body wanted to have a smart, put-you-in-your-place kind of reply, no words came.

As a Lyft driver these days, I mostly drive people right from our neighborhood on Detroit’s Eastside to and from work, as it’s more affordable to pay for Lyft than it is to have car insurance. Every once in awhile, I get pulled along Woodward past Maple. A few weeks back, I pulled up and stopped at a coffee shop, sat down next to two women with pink-skin like mine. A young brown-skinned family were just getting up to leave on the other side. They had a baby boy, probably 9-10 months who had just woken up from a nap. The two women close to me starting fawning over the child.

“Oh, he’s so adorable. Look at those eyes, look at his little curls. Are you two so happy?” (not really listening for a response)

But when the young family rolled their stroller away, one of the women said to her friend:

“Oh, so precious. Black boys are so cute when they’re babies…….”

My thirty-something Spidey-Senses started tingling, again I wanted to “thwap” something smart and fast at her words, something to make her think, to foil her plans at keeping fear alive and well. Because since that day in the cemetery, I’ve heard that kind of talk almost every day: the coded language behind systemic racism. Neighbors in the suburbs talking about moving further north if “the CREEP got too strong.” Neighbors aghast at my parent’s decisions to take us to Xochimilcho’s or other family owned restaurants downtown after a Tiger’s game. Neighbors that promised we were sure to get shot if we “lingered” too long south of 8 mile. Our recent life in LA these past 15 years had it’s own flavor of this, what with talking about how “nice” Echo Park has become, how our friends living without homes could have any shelter they wanted as long as it wasn’t in MY backyard, how Latino people are really sneaky…..

So I knew the unspoken statement that floated in the air between these two women, the one neither of them needed to say, but they understood the message perfectly: Black baby boys turn into monsters.

I wanted to BUST her! I wanted to muster up my best Denzel Washington and see if she could Remember the Titans! I wanted to ask her exactly at what point does that baby turn into something scary, is it 18, or the gray area of 17, or maybe 14, or maybe 12 if he’s wearing a hood?

But her friend sighed, nodded, and then looked on the verge of tears as she said “so, I think I’m leaving Kevin once and for all. Got the papers ready….”

I put my Micro-Aggression Police badge away. They’re probably not gonna stand for my well-crafted lesson on the roots of the school-to-prison pipeline in the midst of a looming divorce. Sigh. I finished my Almond Milk Cortado, (yes, I’m a sucker for hipster coffee), turned my Lyft Driver mode back on to begin driving South.

Heading along Woodward, no calls coming in, I got to thinking: they really don’t know. I’m angry about the hypocrisy of expecting that young black baby to turn into a monster while one woman was in the midst of describing the cheating and lying monster of a man she had married. My pink skin was turning red. And though we all know there are dangers in Detroit, just like any city, I am so upset about the complaints I still hear about Coleman Young destroying Detroit with “his” drug dealers, these statements coming from people who’s own children were selling all kinds of drugs in their suburban basements back then. Seriously, I knew what parties to go to if I had wanted to get high, on any given weekend.

But the anger quickly gave way to a profound sadness. They really don’t know. The Detroit I knew had so many incredible people, so warm and funny and generous. So eager to get to know you and share some life with you. These two women really don’t seem to know that Detroit.

And, as it would go, still no Lyft passengers called as I kept rolling along Woodward, past Ferndale, past the place where you have to get off the SMART Bus and walk across the 8 lanes to get on the DT bus stop…gave me time to think back on my sophomore year at the University of Michigan. I signed up for a class with Buzz Alexander as part of the Prison Creative Arts Project. At 19, Something in me wanted to learn more, something in me wanted to hear stories that were silenced, and if I’m honest, something in me wanted to be known as being “bold enough” to go into a prison, to be able to become a MythBuster to all my suburban neighbors.

In this prison program, a partner and I would facilitate improvisational theater workshops at Western Wayne correctional facility near Plymouth. We were not allowed to bring any supplies, no pencils or paper, so we worked with the men to create improvisational plays that would be performed for other guys inside and outside guests. These stories always veered towards personal scenes of regret, redemption, reconciliation, and this came naturally from the guys themselves. My parents were supportive, but other friends at our home church looked at me and scratched their heads when I told them “what I’d been up to at UoM” and asked, “why are you going into a prison every week, Matthew?” I would tell them that Matthew 25 from our Bible talks clearly about visiting people behind bars and then someone said, “but that’s just a metaphor.” For what?

My first day, after we cleared the metal detectors and pat-downs, I learned that we would be working in the maximum security unit with men convicted of murder. Now, that rattled me. I thought I’d be working with drug offenders, but murderers? I walked into day one as a prison theater facilitator on high alert.

And then there was Levi: right after the guards introduced me and my partner to the group of 13 men, Levi, 300 pound African-American guy gets up, walks over to, I go to shake his hand but he picks me up and squeezes me. Oh my god oh my god he’s a giant boa constrictor….

Oh wait, he’s hugging me. He’s hugging me and holding me up high. He put me down and said, thank you, thank you for coming. I’ve been looking forward to this all month.

And that started one of the most important mentorships of my life. While I realized that my brain imagined a room full of Jeffery Dahmer’s and Charles Mansons, Levi and his brothers were deeply kind, deeply wise, and deeply complicated. Levi: Vietnam Vet, honorably discharged with shrapnel damage, addicted to morphine, sold drugs, racked up priors, had a season of being on house arrest. One night his sister called, needing Levi to watch her daughter while she went to the ER to deliver her second baby. Levi thought his parole officer would understand. Except that someone tried to break in through the child’s bedroom in the middle of the night. Levi charged the window, and that men fell 3 stories and died. Levi received a life sentence. Levi was not a monster. He was a little like Detroit itself: loving, protective, scarred, and fiercely misunderstood.

Levi also told me that he was praying for me daily. So I asked Levi: what do you think I should do after I graduate? Levi said: hands down, be a teacher, because if I had had a teacher who listened and respected me like we do in this workshop, I may have imagined more potential for myself.

Armed with Levi’s blessing, I moved to New Orleans after graduating to become a teacher. I was placed in the upper 9th ward, before Katrina, and I was going to look out for all the young Levi’s and make sure they never went down a path that led them to life in prison. I was gonna be Michelle Pfeiffer from Dangerous Minds, I was gonna be Hillary Swank from Freedom Writers, I was gonna be a white Sidney Poitier from To Sir With Love!

My phone lit up, dinged with a Lyft Request in Madison Heights. I caught my breath, but before I had to turn around, they cancelled. Let’s head back to New Orleans!

With my Save-The-World badge at the ready, I mistakenly forgot that Middle School is a whole different place than prison. The men in our workshop looked forward to our sessions to relieve the daily grind of prison. For an eleven year old, middle school IS the daily grind. Also, I assumed that all the kids would be so troubled, but they weren’t. They were looking for a teacher who would, well teach them, give them structure, and not just focus on the kids who “might end up like Levi.”

So here’s day one: the kids have come in and found a seat. I’m taking roll off a Scantron form, names printed along the edge, space for only 9 letters in each box. It’s going fine until:

“Smith. Deshondal Smith?”

A small girl in the front row whips her head around so quickly that one of her braids flies off her head to snap: “It’s DeshondaLISA. Do not forget it.” As if that weren’t enough, the flying braid was causing complete havoc in the back corner of the room. Her weave is attacking me!

And that was only second period of day one. From my perspective, it only got worse.

“you are so racist, you only wanted to come to New Orleans make life hell for black kids.”

“mr. smitch, stop telling us stories from prisons in Detroit. we don’t even know where Mitchigan is!”

“ooooh, I’m so, you, you the white devil.”


Busted. By Thanksgiving, I wanted to quit, to fly home and never come back. I was guilty of White Saviorism, part of a bigger problem that I like to call Whiteousness, the idea that white people have all the answers, all the good ideas, all the value. White people like me are the standard to measure to.

But sometimes, falling apart is the best thing, especially in front of a community that is paying attention. The upper ninth ward of New Orleans, both the African-American and Vietnamese families, started reaching out to me. Inviting me to dinner. Wanting to see how their children were doing, but also wanting to see how I was doing.

Mr. Schmitt: Cedric said you were a vegetarian, so we made you a special pot of gumbo. (Now, to a black family in New Orleans then, that meant you didn’t eat red meat. My special pot had plenty of chicken and shrimp. Yeah, New Orleans broke my vegetarianism right quick. How could I turn down this special pot, made just for me?)

So to come crashing down on those pink-skinned women in the coffeeshop behind me with my ideas of what they need to do to fix their deeply coded racisms, well that would be it’s own form of self-righteousness, yes? And that’s not how I learned to confront my own bigotry and bias these past 20 years and counting.

Passing by the fiery Michigan leaves look so much like the colors of that gumbo, the still green leaves remind me of the Pho (God bless the patient Vietnamese families who tried not to laugh every time I said “FO”). Before I could be the best Matthew I could be in that community, I needed to eat their soup. I needed to come to the soup kitchens of their community, and I’m looking forward to the soups of Detroit as we turn towards colder weather. The parents, in turn, expected me not to quit, to invest my best in their sixth graders. I don’t have all the answers, but whoever said I needed to? We have more to offer when we come together and combine our ideas at these kinds of tables, often. I’m so grateful for Levi’s prayers, for my many failures, and how God used many families that fed me what I most needed. Grace and love. Grace and love with, you know, a healthy dash of hot sauce.

Ding. A Lyft Request. This time in Southfield from Kendrick. This time, it’s holding, not cancelled.

I do a U-Turn on Woodward and start driving north. We keep driving. We keep listening, and we keep sitting at new tables together to share stories. I pray we have the courage to keep trying each other’s soup.

Keep up with the stories at @matthewjschmitt

Monday, October 17, 2016

The Secret Society of Twister Storytellers: BUSTED!

If you're in Detroit this Friday, October 21, come on out to The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers.  I've been invited as a featured storyteller!  Tickets here: http://www.twistedtellers.org/event/busted/

For those outside the Detroit area, the event will be live streamed at 8pm EST here: http://livestream.com/accounts/15632525/events/6377928




You can always follow us on Twitter at @MatthewJSchmitt and @TheTableSetters





Friday, October 14, 2016

Confessing my Whiteousness, Again

I feel like I'm getting a little self-righteous in my arguments on social media lately...so it's always good to serve yourself a slice of humble pie.

"The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost." 1 Timothy 1:15, NRSV

If I'm understanding my walk behind Jesus correctly, I believe God values diversity and difference, and created a world where we all depend on each other.  And if so, I certainly have sinned and fallen 
short of living into the design that God deems best.


I confess my Whiteousness.

I confess that I have pushed my way to the front of the line because my day and my plans tower in comparison to yours.

I confess that I like "not taking no for an answer" and enjoy the challenge of convincing you to give me my way because I believe I am a good person.

I confess that I have leaned on my own Plan A and have not even considered yours, much less paid attention to God's Spirit.

I confess that upon first being heartbroken by the conditions you find yourselves in, I believed I had the power and the intelligence to solve your problems without any input from you.

I confess that sometimes I don't want to think about being white, that I'd rather chill on Netflix with super heroes who usually look just like me.

I confess that when my neighbor said we should move if you move into the neighborhood because of the "element" you'd bring, I pondered if she might be correct.

I confess that I have loved the art of your cultures often more than I have loved you or your bodies.

I confess that I celebrated the election of Barack Obama as an arrival instead of a good step in the right direction, and that celebration made me lazy.

I confess that I have wondered what you're up to, and I confess not wanting to share.

I confess that I have wanted to help you become like me, instead of making more space for you to be you.

I confess that I have tried to be like you, so that you'll like me and forget that I am white.

I confess that I have an addiction to power and that there is no full cure from my Whiteousness, only lifelong recovery.

I confess that I have silently judged your sagging pants, your militant attire, and your unfriendliness as aggressively combative instead of a necessary mode of survival.

I confess buying clothes that I like because they fit well, overlooking where or by whom they might be made.

I confess that I have called you Japanese or Asian before even asking you.

And I confess that on bad days as a teacher, I wished more of you were Vietnamese instead of black.

I confess trying to be like Jesus to you instead of learning how to follow Jesus with you.

I confess feeling like you have been racist towards me when I full well knew that the other job I applied for is just as viable as the one you didn't give me.

I confess that I have hated my own body, the body God has given me, because it must experience uncomfortable feelings when I am around you.


And yet, God is good and true and creative and righteous.


You fed me with stories from the other side of 8 mile, stories of faith amidst despair.

You fed me crawfish and étouffée and teased me when I kept mispronouncing Pho.

You expected me to read your poetry and critique its form but never its subject matter.  

You expected me to trust you.

You fed me fried grasshoppers that she brought back from Mexico, and smiled.

You took me to your church and told me I don't have to close my eyes when I pray.

You told me to let it go, that a party is better at the end than at the beginning.

You prayed for me.

You let me pet your dog Trixie.

You let me in on a secret or two.

You taught me how to make flan and tamales before your car accident.

You helped me load my car and sent me off with Sweet Potato Pie.

Your voices sang to me on the top of Runyon Canyon after I cried out, "God why have you left me on my own?"

You proclaimed joy for your brown skin, your black hair, your way of talking and singing and moving through this world and invited me to love my white skin, my blonde hair, my movements.

You held me when I cried.  You held me when I sobbed.  You waited until I laughed.

You asked me to not forget.

You invited me into your home, to sit at your table.

You walked by my side towards the New Jerusalem, and we could almost hear the singing.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

We. Need. Scaffolding.


In our Detroit explorations, we've come across the Dequindre Cut, a bike and walkway running from the Eastern Market to the Riverfront.  Along the way, there are some amazing moments of art and expression.

All week, I've been moved by the one to the left: We Need Scaffolding.  It's probably no accident that in my conversations with local Christian folks and the sermons I've heard the last two weekends have had to do with the important necessity to ask for help.  To ask for help often.  It may not always feel very "American" to admit we need something and need to rely upon another to get it, but it certainly is resoundingly human.

A few years ago, our Los Angeles home congregation, Hollywood Presbyterian Church, needed to renovate its steeple as it was a safety hazard.  From the outward appearance, nothing looked wrong.  But Rafael, the guy who holds all the keys, showed it to me from the inside.  Plaster and bricks had been crumbling, and without immediate repair it could wreak all kinds of havoc in a moderate to severe earthquake.  Thus started a capital campaign, as the city wouldn't allow the church to take down the steeple without being fined for altering a pending landmark on the register of historical sites, but the federal government would fine us heavily through OSHA if it wasn't repaired.  A huge scaffold went up, skeleton-ed around the entire southwest corner of our sanctuary.

Scaffolds sometimes go up to help with cleaning a facade.  In this case, they went up to hold the building up as it was transformed from within.

We all need friends and communities to scaffold us, as we are all works in progress.  We might become really good at "outward facing" strength, but inside, we all have a bit of a crumble.  Can I get a witness?

A symptom of Whiteousness that I see is the inability to own our internal crumble.  We are either too proud, too scared, or too oblivious to recognized that we, too, need help.  Even if we're not currently on welfare (as my family is: on Medicare and maybe food stamps during this time of income instability).  Even if we're not currently without a job or underemployed (as we are: I'm driving for Lyft while we are waiting on some other potential prospects we've submitted resumes to).  Even if we think we've got all our shit together, we still are not above being the interdependent creatures God designed us to be.  But: White people, even the woke and good ones, forget this far too often.

It was a dear African-American and Vietnamese community in New Orleans that helped me recognize this 18 years ago.  I need to ask for help, I need to ask for help.  I need to remember that isn't a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength in humility.  I have not learned this from modern politics, or even always from the pulpit.  It's from the folks that I have had to ask for help from.  And it's saved my life.  Laying down the pride actually strengthened me.  Laying down the White Savior complex brought me to a more real understanding of my actual purpose and power to play a role in moving the arc of history towards greater justice.  Laying down the "esteemed life" (at least the one always referenced in movies and television shows), I have learned that there is more in embracing reality as an ebb and flow of lament and joy.

I am publically, alongside an additional effort with some very trusted individuals, asking for help.

Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.  - James 3:17-18, MSG

Yesterday, I posted a scathing blog.  90% of it was directly out of the Bible, also written by James.  It was about the power, both the curse-worthy and bless-worthy power, of the human tongue.  It was, directly, a response to the minimizing I keep hearing about nasty, nasty, bottom of the gutter repulsive things a particular person running for a particular office keeps saying.  Sayings about people and sayings about deeds and actions one is able to get away with when one is at a particular level in society.  Immediately after pushing PUBLISH, another verse came into my heart and thinking:

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. - Matthew 7:5 NASB

Here is the log in my own eye.  Here's where I'm asking for a comprehensive scaffolding:

The woman who agreed to marry me 11 and a half years ago, and still mostly thinks that is a worthwhile decision, is in deep pain.  We have just moved our lives across the country: our two girls and two pet mice and roughly 60% of the belongings we held in LA.  It's all rolled along the complicated blessing of our nation's interstate system to relocate in downtown Detroit.  Here we are.

During the 6,000 miles we put on our Honda CR-V, we had many great moments and locked in memories that will permanently be a part of our family story.

But some of those memories are terrible, and I wish I could flip it and reverse it  (Missy Elliott is pretty popular on 101.5 The Bounce, Detroit's new Throw-Back R&B).

Like the screaming fight in Pasadena.
Like the almost getting on a plane in Phoenix, alone.
Like the freak-out moment, in the car with the girls, somewhere in Navajo country between Denver and Austin.
Like the huge war we waged upon the first month in Michigan, one where I had to move out of my parents' home to gather myself.

I am not proud of any of this, but it is true.  One might say: well, you are under great stress and duress with such a huge move.  Yes.  One might say, a road trip, being stuck in the car together for that long is bound to bring up some unique and potent conflicts.  Yes, again.

But here's the rub: I am guilty of verbally attacking my wife.  Now, she is a human being, and she has hurt me in deep ways.  And she is owning that to the best of her abilities and I can see that.  I'm also afraid we'll never quite get to the zenith of understanding and grace I imagine we can achieve.  And that fear gets out of control sometimes and boils over.

However, I am also placing all kinds of pressures and expectations and unclear demands.  And when she doesn't read my mind fully, I have succumbed to screaming at her.  So much so, that she has told me there are times she is afraid to tell me anything.  She is even sometimes anxious when I am coming home, that I might be disappointed with some state of home life and start freaking out about it.  I've never physically hit her, but words, as I reminded you all yesterday, can destroy the entire world, our entire sense of peace at home.

Yes, they really can.

This is horrible.  This is not okay.  Me: the guy who was always seen as a feminist, even as early as middle school.  Me: the guy who claims that Tori Amos' music led him back to exploring the Bible by bravely calling out rape culture and white male hypocrisy in the church.  Me: the guy who fights for space for the unheard voices of our society to be given their days in the sun.  Me: the guy who is so passionate about God's words about the beauty of diversity and community cannot always handle when the strong and sensitive woman who walks this world with him has a different perspective or opinion.  Me.  I just might be the log that needs to be removed.

Though I am not saying statements like our billionaire-du-jour (IRS classification pending), that does not mean that I'm not complicit in the misogynistic culture that belittles women and expects something from any other person without a sincere plan to meet them with an equal effort.  Rape Culture is an evil bedfellow with White Elitism, or Whiteousness, and when myself, a quasi-straight white male, decides to wield anger to gain power over a situation when I feel weak or scared, I am a participant in both rape culture and Whiteousness.

I am guilty.  You might not have been able to see that from my steeple, but inside, I have some real decay that needs tending.  I am working with a counselor to find better ways of expressing the way my wife has scared me, has disappointed me, and has left me feeling insecure in our marriage.  I must find those ways soon, or this all might topple down in our next earthquake, with great danger for our daughters.

I need any of you who feel me to hold me up in prayer, in solidarity, and in person when available.  I need the best of the Church, right now.  I need to ask for forgiveness constantly, as my fears are springing up way more often than I'd care to admit, and I need accountability.   Because this whole Table Setters venture doesn't amount to a hill of beans if I can't trust the beauty of the diversity I am preaching.  My new brother-in-activism, Abraham Lateiner, recently wrote this: "Donald Trump is a good illustration of why men should be willing to risk everything in the struggle to end toxic masculinity." 

This is my agreement with that statement, and this is my risk.  If I'm not willing to own my own toxic masculinity and really work on making changes with the help of caring and loving and committed friends, then how could I advocate you do the same?

So I'll end with this: I am filled with a tentative hope.  I have been in similar messes before: in Ann Arbor, in New Orleans, at Lake Winnipesaukee, in West Hollywood, in Reseda.   I have come to terms with my own awfulness, which is, to say, I have named and worked on the damaging outward behaviors of allowing fear to hold sway in my heart.  I did this with admission and asking for help.  I reach out now.  I ask for scaffolding as I work to reshape the stability of my faith to better handle my joys and fears.

And I also challenge all you men out there to own your own "locker room banter."  If you are suspecting you might be abusive to someone in your own life, admit it.  Stop.  Ask for help.  Don't pride yourself on thinking, "well, at least I'm not as bad as him," if you're not willing to first ask the women in your life for their opinion of how you treat them.  Because it does matter.  It should.  We should all be accountable to one another, especially those we have chosen to share life with.  And we should all ask for help with dismantling our internal infrastructures that tend to prefer domination over collaboration.  I need help dismantling my toxic, man-splaining, Whiteousness.  You might need help as well.

So I ask for your prayers.  And I will pray for you,  too.  To all of you who know who you are: thank you for supporting us thus far.  We press forward with greater and greater recognition of our shared humanity at more and more beautiful and interesting tables, on and on.  Now Erykah Badu is playing....

May fear never be on the menu, and when it finds its way in, may we hold hands, link arms, listen and lift each other up, until the temperature is just right to cook the fear right out of the meal and make room to really enjoy the different flavors we all bring.

I am afraid.  I am also encouraged.  Men of all skin tones: let's actually answer this very particular call to be men.  The kind of men we know we ought to be.  The kind of men we know we could be.  If only we could just admit that sometimes we need help from one another to hold each other accountable, that we don't have to get it all right all the time, but that when we falter, we need strong support to pull us back up.  And sometimes, we need to admit that women are stronger for having had to endure all the insults and abuse we've hurled on them all these years.

May the strength and scaffolding of the incredible women in our lives be an inspiration for us to become stronger men, from the inside out.

Humbly,
@matthewjschmitt
 +Matthew John Schmitt
www.TheTableSetters.com







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The Tongue

Dear Christian friends who minimize "offensive things" people say, especially people who are running for high office, please be careful. Remember what James says about the tongue:

A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it!

It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.

This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can’t tame a tongue—it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!


For the record: the person I have in mind right now.....I've never heard ANY blessings out of that mouth.


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