We were lying on sleeping bags looking up at the stars. Miles away from the nearest electric light, the stars had no competition and dazzled us with clarity and brightness we never experienced at home. "Do you think women can be pastors?" someone asked.

On a mountain in Panama, a diverse group of students from a southern Baptist college were pulled from the never-ending sky into a black hole of controversy.

Years before, I was pulling weeds that had grown through the concrete of a church parking lot. My church youth group had traveled a considerable distance to sing some songs and assist a small church as it struggled to care for its property and minister to a changing neighborhood. So I pulled weeds.

Eve Ensler, who founded V-Day, which works to end violence against women and girls around the world, recently gave a TED Talk. In it, she argues that the fate of women will also be the fate of our world. Here's a taste (from a CNN article on it):

We are so accustomed to prohibiting girls from being the subjects of their own life that we have turned them into objects: commodities in the marketplace, bodies to be bought and sold and plundered and married off or raped in war. Buying a girl is cheaper than buying a cow in many places.

I have been with boys as well, watched as they have been ridiculed, censored and abused for their tenderness, their doubts, their grief, their need for comfort and protection. I have seen how the tyranny of masculinity has forced boys and then men to cut off their hearts and cast them into a brutal, lonely state of disassociation and isolation.

The Faith Lab congratulates the Derek Trucks Band on their well-deserved Grammy Award for their wonderful Already Free CD!

During the Already Free tour last fall, we caught up with the band in Oxford, Mississippi, and sat down with DTB flutist/keyboardist Kofi Burbridge. In honor of their Grammy win, we're pleased to re-post the Kofi interview and Bert Montgomery's article “Makin' a Joyful Noise.”

Click here to listen to our interview with Kofi.

Click here to read “Makin' a Joyful Noise (Experiencing God via the Derek Trucks Band).”