Pauli Murray: In & Out of the Pulpit: Comments on the Keynote

Abstract

The Brazilian poet Adélia Prado says that our eyes are our only tiny window to look at and perceive the world in the restricted 24-hour period of each day. This little lens is all that we have to see the world. Therefore, what we fail to see is always far bigger than what we are able to see. Until last year, when I came to Durham to attend the meeting of the council of Societas Homiletica, Paul Murray, this “luminary of the 20th century,” was completely out of my view. By coming here I had the opportunity to get to know her, her story, her struggle, her life … With its profound sensitivity to life and to a theology born from life itself, Donyelle McCray’s paper offered us a brilliant view of this activist, poet, lawyer, professor, Episcopal priest, and preacher.