“otherwise possibility, nancy ambrose’s imagination (number 3)” — ORIGINAL (2017)

Grandmother of Black mystic Howard Thurman, Nancy Ambrose would tell her grandson not to read Paul’s passages about enslavement to her, she didn’t want the words about slaves that were used against her and her people while she lived, to be part of her sacred text. She figured out a way to rip the pages from the biblical text, metaphorically, and thus models for us how to be critical, thoughtful, and how to refuse violent words and messages even when they are included in books thought to be sacred, holy. In this series, I engage the process of such ripping of biblical, hymnal and other materials to comment on them.