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February 2, 2013

Coming to the Table: A Community Dialogue about Inequality

On January 25, ” target=”_blank”>Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History (Beacon Press, 2008).  Before the thirteenth amendment was made to the United States Constitution and slavery became outlawed, Tom’s forefathers, the DeWolf family, were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history, having transported around 10,000 slaves during the middle passage.  You can read on Tom’s website, about traveling with nine distant relatives on a life-altering journey through Rhode Island, Ghana, and Cuba to film the Emmy-nominated documentary ” target=”_blank”>OurBlackAncestry.com, a website devoted to helping people appreciate and explore African American family history and culture.  For more than 25 years, Sharon has been researching her family history in Lowndes County, AL and Noxubee County, MS.  Professionally, Sharon is a marketing communications consultant. A pioneer in multicultural marketing, she is a founder of the ” target=”_blank”>Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade.  You can read on their website how over a three year period, the interracial pair traveled thousands of miles through twenty-seven states and overseas, building an improbable relationship.  Using genealogy as an undercurrent, they visited each other’s families, ancestral towns, court houses, sites of racial terror, cemeteries, plantations and antebellum mansions, seeking to come to terms with the history out of which racism evolved. In an article I found online by ” target=”_blank”>Eastern Mennonite University and its STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) and Coming to the Table programs.  

  ” target=”_blank”>Gather at the Table.

  ” target=”_blank”>HERE}

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Talented Redemption

One of my favorite things at Beit T’Shuvah is happening tonight: the Beit T’Shuvah talent show. 

In keeping with the theme of addiction, I want to explain to you why this talent show (which happens every couple of months) is so important.  Residents are allowed to perform whatever they want to, with a full band backing them up, for their entire community.  They get to experience rehearsals, an opportunity to suit up and show up, what a commitment feels like, and then tonight they get the great payoff of performance.  It is so wonderful and rewarding to see how thoroughly people enjoy themselves through this process.  From my perspective, I get to see people who had once been facing life sentences now turning their lives around and singing country with a smile.  People who had attempted to end their lives several times now jamming on guitar, enveloped in music.  To say that being a spectator for an event like this is amazing is quite an understatement. 

It is things like the talent show that REALLY makes Beit T’Shuvah a redemptive community.  It doesn’t matter what your past is…so long as you can figure out what you have to offer the world (and in our philosophy, EVERYONE has something to offer the world), you can really find enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose.  People smile. 

They make other people smile.  People who had previously caused so much damage in their lives that all they did was make people frown.
…and isn’t that the epitome of redemption?

Shameless plug: keep your eyes peeled for a YouTube recap of tonight’s talent show, if you didn’t get to make it out for the actual event.

Shavua Tov.

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