I am your host Tyler Burns. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at BurnsClam. Please follow at your own risk. And join me as always is the man the myth the legend the very

extensive bio of a two time best selling author Mr. Blue check verified himself Dr. Jamar Tisby was going on brother. Hey, I've been looking forward to this episode for a long time. We are blessed to have this topic and this guest today. So I'm thrilled. That's how I'm doing. Listen, let's get right into it. We don't want to waste any time. We have one of the what I could read his bio, but it would it would first of all, we take about 15 minutes for us to get through.

But beyond that, he is simply put one of this generations for most spiritual leaders. He is the pastor, senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and the author of many books, but the book we're talking about today is dancing in the darkness. The Reverend doctor Otis Moss, the third. How you doing, sir?

Hey, I'm doing wonderful Tyler doing wonderful Dr. Tisby. It's wonderful to be on passing the mic. I've been waiting to pass this mic for quite some time.

Well, I want to start here because I think it's so interesting. Um, this feels full circle because years ago, I was watching your lectures at the line in Beecher lectures, your talks of alignment Beecher lectures at Yale.

And if you understand preaching and the craft of preaching, you know that this is like one of the foremost spaces to talk about preaching and talk about communication, spiritual rhetoric.

And you ended one of your lectures by telling the dancing in the darkness story. And I remember saying out loud, this was years ago, I remember saying out loud, now that sounds like a book.

So was it always going to be a book where you just did you know in that moment, this is going to be a sermon series of books, something of that nature.

You know, I didn't, it was, it was a part of, you know, as you said, the lectures, it was a story that I that I had shared numerous times as we were going through the challenges at Trinity United Church of Christ. I had hoped to be able to share that story as kind of a part of the tapestry of of African American communication in terms of, you know, how we look at our children and how our children teach us and how God uses our children.

To be our teachers and theologians and spiritual leaders. So, so no, I did not know, I did not know, but the man, I appreciate that very much.

No, it's interesting. People need to understand that maybe the body of Christ, the kingdom is so broad.

People need to understand that Dr. Moss is one of the greatest living preachers. And that's the floor of the statement of the ceiling of the same as one of the greatest preachers of this century, one of the greatest preachers in recent memory.

And the subtitle of the book is is pushing us towards spiritual lessons or reflections while we're living in turbulent times.

So the implication is times are turbulent. What you even reference in the book is everyone would agree that times are turbulent, but different people would attribute different causes for the turbulence.

So from your perspective as a pastor, spiritual leader, a guide, now becoming a sage, what is causing the turbulence or what are some things that are causing turbulence in these times.

Oh, wow, that's a tremendous question. I think central to American turbulence would have to be the embracing and being inebriated by the poison of the mythology of white supremacy.

And I say that the inebriation is that when you become drunk, your sense and your balance is completely off, and you end up creating other forms of destruction, when you're inebriated. And in the American context, that inebriation of white supremacy leads to other spiritual sociolotism.

So the political economic complications in the collective body of the American democratic project, and until we address that particular spiritual sin, and the original sin in America.

And the only way that you can address certain physical complications is you have to admit that you have them.

So if there is no admission, then there is no restoration. And so we want to move to restoration without admission.

You know, be similar to an athlete saying, I'm not hurt, but you're playing on essentially a fractured ankle. That fractured ankle, it gets worse. Then eventually the fractured angle becomes torn tendons.

And then eventually you have to go into surgery or you can't walk and you say, no, I'm still not hurt. And America likes to act as if it has no issues and wants to be so aspirational and exceptional.

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