A Secret Gift Outside the Door is a collection of spoken words from Dr. James Perkinson, who performed them on Sundays at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit, Michigan during the first full year of the Trump Presidency. Perkinson is a professor, theologian and activist in Detroit. He blends the biblical text with critical race theory and wisdom from Black, Indigenous and Immigrant peoples.

A Secret Gift Outside the Door

Perkinson’s poetry has continually demanded that I return to my creatureliness – my hungry, achey, activated, awe-smacking, lusty surges of adrenaline. Spiritual passion (like all great passions) ignites as a chemical reaction inside our bodies, a resonance that changes our material reality – shifting our state and whipping up some internal weather. Perkinson’s poetry is a trigger for my spiritual passion. Beyond the rhythm and flow, he is a theological wizard with spells fountaining from his pen – linking the vines of landlines, showing us the full cycle of decay to soil to root to fruit. (Tevyn East, Founder of Dreaming Stone Arts and Ecology Center)

Lectionary Poetry

For over 20 years, Jim Perkinson has been riffing on lectionary selections in spoken word mode and often presenting the same at worship services of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church just outside downtown Detroit. This is a series of collaborations between Jim and Tim Nafziger putting this poetry in video form.

More Lectionary Poems

The Donkey-Human Rides Again, Lectionary poem delivered at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, originally published on RadicalDiscipleship.net.

seeing the new; seeing news, Lectionary poem delivered at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, originally published on RadicalDiscipleship.net.

the brow of nazareth, Lectionary poem delivered at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, originally published on RadicalDiscipleship.net.

did the psalm get it wrong?, Lectionary poem delivered at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, originally published on RadicalDiscipleship.net.

if the donkey could talk (Matthew 21: 1-11), Lectionary poem delivered at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, originally published on RadicalDiscipleship.net.