Juneteenth celebration at Myers Park Baptist Church

June 16, 2026 | Events

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Presented by Myers Park Baptist Church

🗓️ June 21, 2026 @ 11:15 a.m. – 12:15 pm ET

đź“ŤIn-person

đź“Ť1900 Queens Road, Charlotte NC

 

To commemorate Juneteenth weekend this year, we are offering a special session of the Faith and Community Forum.

We will host social activist, pastor at Warren Wilson College and author Rima Vesely-Flad, who in 2026 published her third book: The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. She will share with us some of the painful experiences in her childhood, and how these shaped her younger years.

More from Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad

James Baldwin argued that racism is not a “Black problem” but a white fear-driven delusion that scapegoats Black people and evades interior work. Drawing on Baldwin’s essays and testimony, we discuss his critique of white moral pretentiousness, evasion, and the projection of shame and fear—especially the fear of death—onto Black bodies. We also see how Baldwin’s analysis relates to Buddhist teaching on dependent origination from the Rice Seedling Sutra.

 

In this dharma talk, we investigate the role of Sati—which is translated as knowing, awareness, presence, or mindfulness—in the writings of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, in conversation with early Buddhist writings.
In this dharma talk, we understand the weight of suffering through the eyes of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. We learn how Baldwin gleaned the difference between suffering due to the violence of racism, and suffering that is central to the human experience. We learn about Lorde’s embrace of the idea that pain can teach us something important, but that we need not suffer uselessly.

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