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Where MLK Walked

Auburn Avenue and the Privilege of Remembering

A few months ago, I walked through the Atlanta neighborhood where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. grew up. A trip to Atlanta afforded a day to walk down Auburn Avenue, passing his childhood home from the sidewalk, entering Ebenezer Baptist church, pondering pictures, objects and news articles along a “Freedom Road” exhibition which is now a National Park.

Being there in person felt remarkably different than appreciating quotes on social media, watching documentaries, or even reading books. Like all embodied experiences, there was a certain felt something which can hardly be communicated in typed words, but that I now carry with me as I celebrate the national holiday today.

Perhaps most moving was a room filled with Dr. King’s recorded voice — in the church he co-pastored with his father — sitting in the very pews where parishioners would have first heard him, surely fanning themselves as they sounded their Amens in the Atlanta heat. It wasn’t a particular point his voice was proclaiming that affected me, but more that we could no longer hear him today; that his voice of non-violence was so violently silenced, freezing in time his interpretation of the way forward, leaving us to figure out the next move.

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Dan’s 2023 Tops

Obsessions, Albums, and Nerdery

I had some deep dives this year. Turns out, when I get into something, I really get into it (see biking section). If I like someone’s art, I want to learn about the creator from every possible angle (see Little Simz). When I find a new field of learning, I tend to plow it deep (see Data Science).

Here’s a few of my 2023 fixations:

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Call for 2023 Top 5 Lists

What are your highlights from 2023?

Was there a favorite show, book, album, song, podcast, restaurant, or concert?

Annie, at one of her Top 5 Concerts last year

Last year’s Top 5 lists were a bundle of fun to read and gave me a lot of suggestions (Thanks Isaiah for the tip about Skateboarding brands — I now look so dope in my new grey Vans socks).

So sit down and take a few minutes and write down your top 5 of anything.

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Dan’s 2022 Favorites

5 Favorite slices of life from this year

It’s been such a joy to have friends share in this year-end tradition by writing their own lists! Make sure to check them all out at FridaySwell, a Medium Publication I created with hopes of more collaborative writing in the future.  For continuity sake, I’m posting my list again here on weekendswell, but head on over to FridaySwell to read mine alongside others.

World Cup

1.What category is the World Cup in?! It delivered beyond expectations this year, and all the shows listed below pale in comparison. A worldwide, month-long, 64-game event watched live by over half the world (3.5 billion), its massive scale is less important than the way it brought my small worlds together. Reconnecting with friends from college on a group chat, building bonds in the soccer channel at work, and even within my own family: Knowing Argentina was up 2–0 in a quarterfinal, I casually stopped by the store on the way home until all of my kids TEXTED ALL CAPS

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Call for 2022 Top 5 Lists

What are your highlights from 2022?

Was there a favorite show, book, album, song, podcast, restaurant, or friend?

Last year I learned a lot about you from the Top 5 lists you contributed, and my 2022 list now has a few favorites from your 2021 lists.

There were 15 submissions last year, coming in from California, New York, Oregon, and an 11-year-old writer from Seattle who gave an “inappropriate content” warning about one of his favorite shows, The Office.

I’d love to have you join in the fun! Take a few minutes and write down your top 5 of anything. More details can be found here, or just write/comment back to me with questions.

Please submit it by December 23th, and I’ll publish them over the week of Christmas. Reach out with any questions : )

♦ weekendswell ♦

Photo by Gabriel Sollmann on Unsplash

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The Answer is Still No

10 Questions for an LGBTQ-Considering Church

Seven years ago our college freshman surprised us with a letter home, telling us she was attracted to women. Hannah had been a model youth group kid in high school, committed to her small group, working with children, and leading worship. Unbeknownst to us all, while busy pursuing her faith and ministry, she had also been trying to “pray it away.” She was taking the approach prescribed by the church she was born into and raised by, the church that said this  prescription came from the Bible.

For that and myriad other reasons, I left that church about five years ago, and have been worshiping elsewhere in town. Leaving a two-decade relationship with a church where I was a leader for adults and children, for worship and small groups – and where I started and raised my family and was generally “all in” – has not been easy; it’s been filled with deep loss, deep questions, and in many ways a reshuffling of social life in a small town.

My experience, and my daughter’s experience are different, but both have led me to ask these 10 questions of my former church and other churches willing to converse. These questions aren’t easy, nor were they easy to form – I’ve waited nearly seven years to ask them so directly. 

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The Disinherited

It’s said that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. travelled with a copy of Howard Thurman’s seminal book, Jesus and the Disinherited. “Considering the generations-long relationships between the King and Thurman families, Martin likely had the message of these pages etched on his heart,” writes Vincent Harding in the book’s forward.

I’ve been marinating on this book since November’s book club, and keep coming back to its central question, a haunting one which hides itself in the book’s title.

I’ll get to that question in a minute.

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