This is the cover story in Brooklyn Rail…
On Henry Street just uptown from Foley Square in Manhattan, there is a church called Mariners’ Temple. One Sunday we were among hundreds of folks listening while Mother Henrietta Carter preached. She stood up there, white-robed, and gestured out across the assembled faithful. “We need to see some embracing today,” Mother Carter said, and then she explained that two families were blessed just recently with newborn babies, in the same week.
She boomed out: “I want you two families—come down here and embrace each other! We’ll wait! Oh, you come down here! I know you two families been quarreling about something, you don’t speak much anymore. Oh we all know about it. Now—You come down here and you embrace each other. You bring those babies with you!”
The two families slowly came to Mother Carter and embraced. They were in tears. People called out “Praise!”
Embrace
As you see from the title of my little sermon, I am asking the people from two movements, 350.org and Occupy Wall Street, to do the same. Read on…
Also of interest a review of Nature, the new volume in The Whitechapel’s Documents of Contemporary Art series.