The first enslaved Africans on the English North American mainline arrived in 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia. They were from Angola, and were stolen from a slave ship in the Gulf of Mexico by a group of “privateers,” more commonly known as pirates. Twenty to thirty of these people were bought from those pirates in 1619 in Jamestown in exchange for

Yellow leaves dotted the canopy as I walked the dog with two of our children – walking three abreast and surrounded by the smell of fall leaves it reminded me of all of the hikes we have taken together over the years – marking the time against the trunks of oaks and maples. It brought to mind that passage from

The pictures from Haiti these days are, unfortunately, familiar ones. Folks are marching in the streets, setting up blockades, looting. This time, the reported cause is the shortage of fuel, but the problems that Haiti faces are longstanding ones—corruption and poverty, hunger and insecurity. “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18), which really means that when there