Journal 10 by Kaylee

Developing Forms of Conversation for Callings

One of the profiles that stood out to me was the one about Reverend Eric D. Williams. He was the pastor that heard about another pastor turning down a funeral because the one who had passed away was gay. Although I am not gay or anything, I do think this is a story that should be shared today. Not only was their a sexuality issue, Rev. Williams even mentioned how black dads did not take their sons being gay very well. With that being said, there was also a little racial issue, although that was not the main focus. A quote that stood out to was "The Bible tells us that we're not supposed to do whatever everybody else does. And the fact that this pastor was so afraid of his own congregation getting up and walking away that he couldn't support this family in their darkest hour of need was wrong. So I did the funeral (Isay 238)." This quote is special. He describes the other pastor and how he could not put away his pride or judgments to help someone else out so he stepped in and took control, and that made me happy.

My active reading really helped me get through the Bar Owner profile. There were words like "audacity" and "arthritic" but with my active reading research, I found out that audacity means "willingness to take bold risks" and arthritic means someone who is affected by arthritis. It also helped me better understand the story. I was not sure of what a rubber worker was, but since I was active reading, I decided to look it up and considering she said that her neighborhood was mostly rubber workers, i figured it was important to understand where she is getting all her business from. A rubber worker turned out to be a factory worker, who actually worked in very poor conditions. One of the best websites for this information that I found was   www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/United_Rubber_Workers. 

"the older guys with the bigger churches were the ones whose voices were heard."