Lyfe Jennings and the Travails of Writing

Hello friends, sorry I haven’t posted in some days.  I’ve been busy trying to finish this chapter in the book I’m writing by the personal deadline I set for myself.  I know it’s sad, but yes, I have to give myself a personal deadline or else I fear I will never see this book materialize.  I like to describe writing as trying to pull your heart out of your chest and share it with others without getting them bloody; meaning, you know that’s its possible, it’s just going to take a lot of work to do it and you might die along the way.  So if I don’t finish, you know I either couldn’t get my heart out or I died along the way.  Whatever the case, I seem to have found a groove and I’ve been trying to dance with it while I have the beat.  So that’s the reason for my blogging irregularity.

Some have asked me what the book I’m writing is about.  Well, I won’t tell the title and concept because frankly it took me to freakin long to get to this point to have it coped by someone else out in blog land.  But I will tell you that it is basically a book engaging in African American Religious & Cultural Criticism.  What I’ve done is take major cultural religious themes from the African American religious experience and basically reflect (and at times rip) on them from some critical viewpoint.   To be honest, it’s kind of like topics on this blog expanded on paper and with footnotes and a bibliography.  

Some of the themes are black Jesus, prosperity theology, asexuality, black church politics, holy hip hop, postmodernism, gender inequality, Jeremiah Wright & T.D. Jakes, R&B singer Lyfe Jennings, Carlton Pearson, and Cornel West and so many more.  I know it seems like an ambitious project (which means either out of my mind or I have a lot to say) but with your prayers and a little discipline from me, I can make it through.  Anyhow just to give you a little idea of the things I’m dissecting and reflecting on in the text I’ve posted this Lyfe Jennings performance of his song “Made Up My Mind”, which really captures the heart of why a book of this nature is necessary.