Photo by Rachel Ramsey 2018 All Rights Reserved Used by permission
The Very Rev. Jeff Paul refers to Robert Leonard Reid’s Bristlecone Mass at the beginning of the message of how to stop looking for the enemy and looking for where God Resides in the connection between the spiritual and physical realm with a little help from his friend White Wolf.
Eduardo Galeano tells of “The Haitian Curse” in a passage from his book Children of the Days shared in the sermon by Father Jeff.
January 14. THE HAITIAN CURSE
The earthquake in Haiti was the culminating tragedy of a country without shade, without water, devastated by imperial greed and the war against slavery.
The dethroned slavers explain it another way: Voodoo was and is to blame for all the country’s misfortunes. Voodoo doesn’t deserve the name religion. It is nothing but African superstition, black magic, a black obsession, the Devil’s thing.
The Catholic Church, which has no shortage of faithful believers willing to sell the fingernails of saints or feathers from the wings of the archangel Gabriel, got Haiti to outlaw voodoo in 1845, 1860, 1896, 1915 and 1942.
In recent times, evangelical sects took up the battle against superstition. They come from the country of Pat Robertson, a country that has no thirteenth floor in its skyscrapers, no row thirteen in its airplanes, where civilized Christians who believe God created the world in seven days are in the majority.
You can read the scriptures by clicking on these references 1 Samuel 3:1-20 and John 1:43-51 or listen to the John reading in our recording below. Click on the white triangle in the black bar-shaped player below to listen to the scripture and sermon now or click on the link labeled: Download below the player to save an audio mp3 file for listening later.
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