Shoutin' in the Fire Quotes

“Serious love. We need what Jesus called neighbor love. We need what Martin Luther King, Jr., called redemptive love. We need what Toni Morrison called self love. We need what bell hooks called committed love. We need what Kiese Laymon calls responsible love.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Writing was a way for me to stop running and stop wounding and start healing.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“As I read the Hebrew Bible, I am struck by two main verbs that refer to waiting. One is to wait with expectation; the other is to wait in the tension of enduring. It is not passive. It is an active struggle to live in the face of despair.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“to fail, to create, to live, and to love—this is the stuff of hope. It is not an assent to nostalgia or myths or lies. It is the audacious belief that one’s body, one’s story, one’s future does not end in this moment.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Nostalgia is a powerful tool of ignorance and retrenchment of the social order.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Their faith was not a destination; it was a discipline.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Jesus stands as one who knew economic, political, and religious violence but also as one who formed people in the way of resistance, dignity, power, justice, and love.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“We speak. We write. We do language. That is how we heal when our bodies bend and break. That is how the world heals when it is bruised. That is how I healed.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“I felt that the only way I could make sense of my feelings was to begin to do what so many Black people before me did: write. Writing became a way for me to feel free and a way for me to feel like I wasn't crazy and a way to feel like what I was doing was contributing to the struggle. I knew that I couldn't be out on the streets and I knew that I couldn't change any legislation, but what I could do is give voice to our suffering.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Rage has a way of making us stand up. Of freeing us from fear. Rage made me stop running, and it made me stop lying. Soon, rage would put my faith bath together in all the ways it was shattered.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Rage liberated me from my lies and gave me the courage to see anew the preset and the future.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Black rage is the work of love that protests an unloving world.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Truth is the beginning of liberation. It is the beginning of what we really want for ourselves as humans. It is what we are encouraged to be and become in our faith traditions. It is the beginning of life. Giving up our lies so that we can really love.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“I also see people who know what it means to live with deep trauma and still love themselves enough to believe in their future.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“I didn't want to feel anything. But I knew I must feel everything.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“I began to see that being enraged becomes dangerous when it is not channel through love.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“To believe in the better, to believe in your future, to shout in the midst of a country on fire, to stare down lions, to shake the foundations of the empire, to make meaning in the face of death, to fail, to create, to live, and to love—this is the stuff of hope. It is not an assent to nostalgia or myths or lies. It is the audacious belief that one’s body, one’s story, one’s future does not end in this moment.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“And the fact that we are still here is no testament to the goodness of the country. We are not here because our country, and the people of this country, have been exceptional at becoming more loving, and more honest, and less violent. No, we are here because we refused to believe their lie that our lives don’t matter, and that we should accept our suffering, and the best parts of ourselves are what can survive whiteness and terror.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Being terrible is not the only way of being American.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Children have never been good at listening to their elders,” James Baldwin writes, “but they have never failed to imitate them.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“And then Jesus leaves. After all of that, he leaves. And they go back, at once to Jerusalem, never the same. They now understood that they needed to lose hope in order to gain it. The hope was not in a theory or in a specific kind of event, but in a person, in the living, in the struggle.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“saw why they insisted on saying Jesus was Black. Of course they were not talking about his skin color, though he definitely wasn’t white; they were talking about his experience, about his solidarity with the oppressed, about his universal love, about his commitment to God’s just future, about his healing of wounds, and his good news that Black life does not end in this moment but will forever be beautiful, worthy, and loved. They knew Jesus knew what it meant to live in an occupied territory, knew what it meant to be from an oppressed people, and in a place that does not care about your religion—at least not the way they practice it—but does care to remind you of its idea about your place in society. The threat that you pose to their lies. They knew Jesus knew what it was like for people who looked like him to care more about being in proximity to those in power, and he knew that those in power did not care about people that looked like him.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“To affirm one’s personhood, to affirm one’s Blackness, in a society that terrorizes both the individual and the community, is to affirm that our lives matter to God and should matter in our society. It is a push against systems of dominance that assault the Black body and soul. White rage, which we have known all too well, has been a way of rolling back civil rights, voting rights, human rights for Black people in America and across the globe. It has opposed any aspect of progress, not just for Black people, but for any who are forgotten in society. One of the big differences is how Black rage and white rage imagine and envision the future. White rage imagines a future where white supremacy rules. And it has killed for it. Our rage envisions a future where all people are free, loved, and worth something. And we have died for it.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“As I read the scriptures and the history of our people, I saw rage not as just a good idea but the right of a people who have had their bodies devalued, abused, and oppressed. It is constant and it is conscious. Black rage is the work of love that protests an unloving world. It is the good news that though our society has often forgotten us, there is Someone who loves us and believes us worth fighting for.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Even today, white bodies with badges get paid administrative leave while Black bodies receive the reward of burned metal and hot lead,”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“The hope was in the struggle, God was in the hope, and these bodies will not always suffer. These bodies will not always tremble. These bodies will live. I saw these beautiful black bodies.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“At that moment, I had become sad. I had become sad because I knew that no child should have to use her lungs to scream to live and for those who look like her to breathe. I had become sad because it was a familiar story. I had become sad because I wanted to see her run and dance and play and grow up and get old and find love and find faith and find hope.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Isabel Wilkerson likened this country to an old house. "When you live in an old house, you may not want to go into the basement after a storm to see what the rains have wrought," she writes. "Choose not to look, how every, at your own peril." Ignorance is not protection against the rot—it gives the rot its power and longevity. The rot forces us into resilience. It is not normal. No people should be forced.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“One bird was free; the other bird was bound. One is trapped, only able to see freedom in the distance; the other is free, flying in a world that works in its favor. In its weakness, the caged bird opens up his throat still. It gathers courage, strength, power, the will. The bird must sing in a world that has him bound. He must open up his throat, flap his tender and broken wings, and gather itself to travel far beyond the cage, the rough terrain, the terrible pain of its losses.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“If there is anything exceptional about our country, it is the exceptional ways we have avoided being honest with ourselves...It is the exceptional ways the country has failed at loving us and reforming itself...It is the exceptional way the country has identified with Jesus while ironically crucifying those whom Jesus would stand with and linking arms with those whom Jesus would stand against.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle