I sometimes feel like the apostle Paul in Ephesians 5 when he spend considerable time talking about marriage only to say that he is not talking about marriage.

I talk a lot about race and life on the hyphen because jazz is race rich and a result of race.  If there were not the creation of race and the tension that came out of that then there would be no jazz.  This improvisational way of viewing the world came as a result of the tension of having to live as African and/or American, free and/or unfree.

We have much to learn from this when it comes to race relations, racial identity and unity in the body of Christ…but to be honest, I’m not really talking about that!

Rather what I’m trying to explore is Tertium Quid–the third way.

When we move beyond either/or to Tertuim Quid we discover a creative way–the way of improvisation.