Living Room Theology

Hosted by theologian Grace Ji-Sun Kim, the Madang podcast features erudite conversations with scholars, ministers, activists, and more. Named after the courtyards found in traditional Korean homes, the show provides an inviting, intimate space to envision a more just world. The Christian Century

WHEN RAHIEL TESFAMARIAM was 5 years old, she and her mother flew from Eritrea to New York City, arriving in the United States with six-month tourist visas to help prepare for Tesfamariam’s eldest sister’s wedding. After the six months had passed, Tesfamariam’s mother began packing clothes for a return trip to Eritrea, but Tesfamariam adamantly refused to leave. Tesfamariam’s brother recalls being at the airport and watching their mother step to the gate; Rahiel stepped back and said, “Bye, Mommy.” And so it was: Rahiel Tesfamariam remained in the United States in the care of her siblings, out of the shadow of the Eritrean War of Independence, with an expired travel visa.

The rest of her story could be told this way: She became a legal permanent resident of the United States, graduated from Stanford University, became the youngest-ever editor in chief of The Washington Informer, received her Master of Divinity degree from Yale University, and launched Urban Cusp, an online community for Black millennials interested in the intersection between faith, culture, and justice. Tesfamariam worked as a columnist for The Washington Post; led #NotOneDime, a national Black Friday economic boycott during the 2014 Ferguson protests; and was named by Essence magazine as one of its “New Civil Rights Leaders.” She got married. She became a mother. It could be said that Tesfamariam pulled herself up into the American dream.

Tesfamariam’s book Imagine Freedom: Transforming Pain into Political and Spiritual Power (Amistad), released earlier this year, tells that story, but with a difference. Telling only that version, like the American dream itself, would be insufficient. Tesfamariam spoke with Sojourners associate editor Darren Saint-Ulysse in April about how she carries Africa within, political power’s ephemeral nature, and God’s command to free the captives. — The Editors

DORCAS CHENG-TOZUN, author of Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul (Broadleaf), wanted to be an “unceasing voice” for social justice. “And while I was busy saving the world,” she writes, “I would also be the kind of person who’d happily sacrifice anything for a good cause.” But 10 months after Cheng-Tozun moved from the U.S. to China to set up an operations office for her spouse’s solar business, thrilled at the possibility of providing affordable electricity to billions of people, she experienced the “worst and longest panic attack” of her life. For more than a year, she could do “little more than sleep and cry and journal.” A crucial, difficult question arose: “Why can’t I handle what everyone else seems to be managing perfectly well?”

For Trish O’Kane, author of Birding to Change the World (Ecco), the breaking point was Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed her New Orleans home and neighborhood. “After a disaster,” O’Kane reflects, “you just can’t do as much. Nor should you. You need time to think, to ponder ... I needed a great slowing down.” She took up knitting, spent long hours outdoors on the ground “watching the clouds change shape and bumblebees loading their back legs with pollen and the yard birds going about their business.

Like Cheng-Tozun’s year of sleeping, crying, and journaling, these months surfaced life-changing questions for O’Kane. “I could feel my question changing,” O’Kane writes, “from What should I do? to How should I be?”

In their respective books, Cheng-Tozun and O’Kane write from the other side of activist burnout — something Cheng-Tozun experienced after working for multiple social justice organizations, and O’Kane after working in human rights journalism in conflict areas, both for many years. Both writers ponder how to change, heal, and move forward. Birdwatching was the gateway for O’Kane, while Cheng-Tozun found herself reflecting on sensitivity, introversion, and the many ways people are wired with different gifts to offer. They have different backgrounds and stories — Cheng-Tozun is now a writer and consultant who most recently worked for a Christian nonprofit that equips BIPOC contemplative activists; O’Kane is an environmental educator who created the “Birding to Change the World” program at University of Wisconsin-Madison — but both authors offer a similar invitation to those who yearn to make a difference: Learn to embody gentler, more sustainable ways of doing so.

THE LAST PICTURE in Richard Avedon and James Baldwin’s Nothing Personal, an exploration of American identity through the photographer’s eye and the essayist’s heart, holds a haunting some 60 years later. Two young boys look solemnly into Avedon’s lens. It is as if they stare into the soul of the watcher. It is as if in their innocence they wonder about the world in their silence. It is the children’s eyes that I can’t stop thinking about.

Their eyes are still our eyes, their gaze, still our gaze — weary, longing, determined, and despairing. Baldwin writes in the 1964 book, “Despair: perhaps it is this despair which we should attempt to examine if we hope to bring water to this desert.”

Baldwin and Avedon’s friendship and work together can be instructive for us because what we face as a nation is not much different from the Civil Rights years. We are presently dealing with a lack of trust; the forces of polarization are deepening within and without. There is, writes Baldwin, an “unspeakable loneliness” that we feel, wondering if anyone can feel what we feel and are angry about what we are angry about and are sad about what we are sad about. Then there is the kind of loneliness that takes root when “we live by lies.”

Early in The Book of Belonging, a long-anticipated children’s story Bible, author Mariko Clark includes this paragraph: “Think about how cozy and special you feel when someone asks you about your day or wants to learn more about your favorite foods or hobbies. God made us to belong with God! That means God wants to be close and cozy with us. So all questions are welcome!”

Following up his overwhelming victory in a rap battle with Drake earlier this year, and the news that he would perform at Super Bowl LIX next February, Kendrick Lamar dropped a surprise single last night, mentioning Christian rappers Lecrae and Dee-1 in the song.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power returned for its second season, bringing viewers back to a sprawling story inspired by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Loosely inspired by the experiences of Latoya Ammons in Gary, Ind., Netflix’s The Deliverance follows single mother Ebony Jackson as she battles demons, her past, and systems entrenched with racism and sexism — all to save her family.

THE VEGETABLES ARE trying to kill me. I am drowning in vegetables. I clock out of my home office, and there are the vegetables. I take weekend trips, come home, and there are the vegetables. I can’t sleep, because deep in the corners of my mind, the vegetables are there — slowly rotting, mocking me, blaming me for their inevitable demise.

This is not a horror movie. This is a CSA subscription.

Short for “community-supported agriculture,” CSAs provide subscribers a selection of farm-fresh seasonal produce every week. They are a sustainable and often cost-effective way to eat local and give back to your community. They are also a terrific way to spend hours chopping vegetables and Googling “kohlrabi.”

In the pre-pandemic years, I, a black-and-white-moral-thinking-trying-to-do-right no-matter-the-cost twentysomething, signed up for a CSA every spring. Rarely have I experienced more anxiety, more rage, and more helplessness than when faced with a brand-new “single-sized” (but still enormous) bag of produce while most of the previous week’s veggies remained untouched and rapidly softening. Yet I, ever the Good Consumer, stressed myself silly over produce season after season, because what choice did I have? I couldn’t destroy the planet.