Maurice Broaddus's Blog, page 48

Open Letter to Wal-Mart

Dear Wal-Mart,

It has come to my attention that you are in need of some damage control after a recent unfortunate incident regarding your line of black Barbie dolls. To wit:

Black Barbie Sold for Less Than White Barbie at Walmart Store

March 9, 2010 — Walmart is raising eyebrows after cutting the price of a black Barbie doll to nearly half of that of the doll's white counterpart at one store and possibly others. A photo first posted to the humor Web site FunnyJunk.com and later to the Latino ...

I Suck at Titles

I admit it, I do. I suck at naming things.*

For example, when it came to naming children, I was allowed to come up with boy names, with Sally getting a veto option, and she would get to name the girls, with me having a veto option. When it came to naming my firstborn, I went with what I knew. I named him Maurice Gerald Broaddus the Second (whom we'd call "Reese" as not to confuse the two of us). It worked for a couple of reasons: I got to retroactively declare myself "Maurice the Great" a...

A Day of Day Street With Outreach Inc Part II

Continuing my thoughts from yesterday, it's amazing how little I know about my own city of 30+ years. It's like the city has an entire side to it that we don't realize is there. A learned invisibility as we've trained ourselves to not to see the homeless. We don't want to stare out of "politeness". We try to not make direct eye contact for fear of being hit up for change. We roll up our windows or lock our car doors when they get too near to our cars. It was on another day of day ...

A Day of Day Street With Outreach Inc Part I

Today I found myself under a bridge in near downtown Indianapolis*, my lungs burned with the cold. Winter hadn't quite set in, but a severe cold snap was letting us know it was around the corner and we needed to make preparations. A lot of people have asked what goes on when people talk about Day Street. I will try to paint a picture of a typical day.

Outreach, Inc, as I've written about before, works with homeless and at risk youth and was the inspiration behind my series, The Knights of B...

A Lenten Meditation - Peter Rollins' Finding Faith

Peter Rollins book, The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales, has been supplemented with seven new parables for Lent. In Pete's own words, this collection of original parables, "represents my own attempt to explore and testify to the impossible Event housed in faith. In that sense they are deeply personal and relative to my own life." With permission, I share one of the parables.

Finding Faith

There was once a fiery preacher who possessed a powerful but unusual gift. He found that...

The Deep End – A Review

The television landscape needs its steady supply of the big three shows: cop show, legal show, and hospital show. The cop show is in a curious place. Where not too long ago it was defined by Homicide: Life on the Streets and NYPD Blue, one now has to go to cable to get their fix (The Closer, The Wire, The Shield, even the network show, Southland, is now on cable) or else sift through endless Law & Order and C.S.I. iterations. The hospital show, in the wake of ER has had its void filled w...

The Artist and the Church

So what are the sermons of the artists? As I've been reading great novels, I see the writers, at least, as field reporters sent to cover the human condition. The look, they observe and they have the talent to craft out words to save and share those observations. This is very important. This is why most of the Bible is made up of storytelling and poetry. It has great value and it does not have to come from the hand of a Christian to have value. As I've said before, we were humans first . . ...

A Lenten Meditation - 02/28/2010

""You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best m...

Church Shopping Part II

So I confessed to Sally, aka "teh wife", the other day that if it wasn't for her, I'd be over the whole going to church thing. Part of it is the love hate relationship that I have with the church. Part of it is because I've been patching together what I need spiritually from a variety of sources. My wife, in turn, confessed that the only reason she was still in it was so that the boys have church as a regular part of the rhythm of their lives. For good or ill, we want them to have the chur...

Church Shopping Part I

In response to my vagabond spirituality blog, I was asked what I was looking for as my family "church shops". I thought I'd let my wife respond (her FIRST guest blog!). I'll probably have a few comments to add tomorrow:

What I Want in a Church
by Sally Broaddus

A poster at our boys' school reads "Good Teaching is Loving and Listening, Sharing and Supporting – it is being passionately human. That is the point at which a good teacher begins." I want my pastor to begin with this too.

I am looking ...