The Madness of Grace in a Fallen World

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A new online course offering from The Alternative Seminary. Tuesday evenings, July 7-28 (7:00 – 9:00 p.m).

The Southern writer Flannery O’Connor once offered a wry variation on a theme of Jesus: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.”  Her fiction, set in her rural Southern culture, is a world of oddness, weirdness, madness, misfits and murderers, corrupt preachers and moralistic hypocrites.  It is also a world of the sometimes harsh and shocking intrusions of grace into flawed and fractured humanity.

The Alternative Seminary is offering an opportunity to explore O’Connor’s fiction in an upcoming online course.  For four weeks, we will read and discuss some of her most challenging stories. We will pay particular attention to what she might be saying to us in these strange and troubling times – which includes wrestling with her complex views and fictional portrayals of race.  Join us for some provocative (and fun) literary and theological adventures.

The course will be led by Will O’Brien, coordinator of the Alternative Seminary.  The cost for this course is $50 (or whatever you can afford).  To register, go to https://bit.ly/FlanneryOConnor26

For more information contact Will O’Brien at willobrien59@gmail.com or 267-339-8989.

The Alternative Seminary is an informal program of biblical and theological study and reflection designed to foster an authentic biblical witness in the modern world. www.alternativeseminary.net

Always Conditional

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From Nerdeen Kiswani, a Palestinian Muslim and founder of Within Our Lifetime. Re-posted from social media.

The U.S. left really does not understand the damage it is doing to the Palestinian liberation struggle.

No serious Palestinian engaged in the struggle for liberation, whether in Palestine or in exile, would ever condemn or denounce the right of Palestinians to resist occupation, apartheid, and genocide by any means necessary.

Yet we are increasingly told that people who do exactly that are part of the movement, and that anyone who challenges them is divisive, unreasonable, or an “op.”

What this actually does is place Palestinians who remain committed to our political principles in the crosshairs of everyone: Zionists, the right wing, the state, and now even sectors of the left. It marginalizes Palestinians, portrays us as extremists for upholding positions that have always been central to our national liberation struggle, and pressures us to abandon our own political consensus in order to accommodate American political sensibilities.

The result is the isolation of Palestinians from our own movement.

Continue reading “Always Conditional” →

Interfaith Action for Palestine

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The Interfaith Action for Palestine (IAP) is bringing together a coalition of faith-rooted activist organizations for a critical intervention this summer: we’re coming together to counter Christians United for Israel (CUFI) — the largest “pro-Israel” organization in the United States — during their Annual Summit July 5-7, 2026. For more information and to register, click here.

post-evangelical

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By Tommy Airey, re-posted from his Substack newsletter.

Charles Cha and I joke that we were evangelical Christians before it was cool.

In the early 90’s, we attended a bible study for high school students sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ. It was basically a training camp for evangelizing students, teachers, administrators and coaches at our public-school campus in Orange County, California.

During our junior year, Charles and I invited friends to join us in Mr. Leander’s classroom during lunch so we could get them saved. We utilized a tract called “The Four Spiritual Laws,” which was created by Campus Crusade founder Bill Bright back in the 60’s. 

Charles had the whole thing memorized.

He used the whiteboard to scrawl out bible verses from the Book of Romans.

He drew images to show how our sin will send us straight to hell – and also how God’s grace builds a bridge to heaven for those who make a decision for Christ, whose death on the cross makes us clean.

None of our friends bought that bridge.

Continue reading “post-evangelical” →

A Wilder Way

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A Wilder Way: Midwifing the World to Come in an Age of Extinction is a five-day gathering at Dreaming Stone Arts and Ecology Center, August 19 – 23. Together, we will weave skill-shares, song circles, storytelling, faith narratives, and community ritual – all in service to intimacy with the land and community resilience.  There will be plenty of space for rest, reflection, informal connection, and time with (and in!) the river. Meals will weave abundant connections, integrating foraged ingredients with locally grown, storied food. Together we will experiment in creating a new/old bioregional culture attuning to the land, our bodies, the collective, and sacred presence.

Sign up early to get early bird discounts. Work-trade opportunities, partial scholarships, and payment plans are available to make each event accessible. This event will nourish your spirit, grow your skills, and widen your community.  Learn more at – https://dreamingstone.org/wilder-way/

Bones, Beads, Belonging, and the Bible: Just Where are We Standing?

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By Dr. Jim Perkinson, a sermon for St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit (03.22.2026) – pictured above at the annual Nakba Day march in Dearborn, MI (photo credit)

37 The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; it was full of bones. 2 And he led me round among them; and behold, there were very many upon the valley; and lo, they were very dry. 3 And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, thou knowest. . . . 11 Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you home into the land of Israel (Ezek 37:1-3, 11-12).

I’m going to start weird and way out—something new for me, right?  But walk with me for a moment.  We need some background.

First, I want to suggest that this story of Ezekiel prophesying to bones is ultimately about bones in the right place of burial.  And its opposite is bones out of place.  If we read just two chapters further on in Ezekiel, we encounter another strange little vignette about bones in or out of place that reads thus:

They will set apart men to pass through the land continually and bury those remaining upon the face of the land, so as to cleanse it; at the end of seven months they will make their search. And when these pass through the land and anyone sees a man’s bone, then he shall set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the Valley of Manon-gog (“Multitude of Gog”) (Ezek 39:14-15).

And what is in view here are the bones of invaders that are not just allowed to lie around wherever they fell but collected and “placed” in a particular domain previously called “The Valley of Travelers,” now renamed “Valley of the Multitude.” In fact, chapters 37, 38, and 39 of Ezekiel are actually one whole piece of interaction between Ezekiel and YHWH concerning a vision of the Great End Times Battle of Gog and Magog, much later taken up in the Book of Revelation as “Armageddon,” the Final Apocalyptic Catastrophe that supposedly ruptures history as we know it (and which right now is being used by U.S. military commanders to motivate their troops to fight Iran as a prelude to provoking the Second Coming of Jesus).  The Valley of Dry Bones episode is actually the Preface to this War scenario.  We’ll come back to that in a bit.  But for now, Ezekiel is wrestling with an implicit question: where do bones belong?

Continue reading “Bones, Beads, Belonging, and the Bible: Just Where are We Standing?” →

The Nakba Never Ended

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From the Apartheid-Free Newsletter put out by the American Friends Service Committee. Subscribe to it here.

May 15 marks the 78th commemoration of the Nakba – “Catastrophe” in Arabic — which refers to the period in 1948 when Palestinians were ethnically cleansed during the creation of Israel. Between 1948 and 1950, an estimated 750,000 to one million Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homeland by militias and the new Israeli army — about 85% of the Palestinian population. Most ended up in refugee camps in the West Bank, Lebanon, Gaza, Syria and Jordan. In addition to mass displacement, forced removal, the destruction of entire villages, and expropriation of over 4 million acres of land belonging to Palestinians, May 1948 marks the beginning of the Israeli apartheid system.Here are some of the early markers of apartheid that Israel would use to tighten its grip through ongoing occupation and erasure:
Creation of the “Transfer Committee” which oversaw the destruction of Palestinian towns and villages, repopulating them with Jews. The Zionist militias and Israeli army systematically destroyed more than 400 Palestinian towns. This map documents them. 

Passage of the “Absentees’ Property Law,” (1950) which granted the government “custodianship” over lands and property belonging to Palestinian refugees, (with no compensation for the owners). An “absentee” was defined as any Palestinian who left his or her home after November 1947, even if they remained inside what became Israel.

Passage of two additional laws — the Law of Return (1950), which still grants Jews from anywhere in the world the right to immigrate to Israel and automatically become a citizen, and the Entry into Israel Law (1952) which was designed to prevent the return of Palestinian refugees. 
It is important framing in this time to name that the Nakba never ended — that it is a structure and a system, not one event in history. You can use this month to raise education and awareness about the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people — a forced erasure which we continue to witness in its most recent and deadliest form in the Gaza genocide.

Splendor Within Humility

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A word from our comrades at Rabbis for Ceasefire. They are posting these everyday during the 49 days of Omer, which extends from the second night of Passover to the day before Shavuot.

When involved in solidarity movements, it is important that those of us who show up as allies defer to the leadership of those most directly impacted by state violence. So, for example, in Palestinian solidarity work, it is incumbent upon those of us who are not Palestinian and not directly impacted by the actions of Israel and the U.S. to ensure that the voices of Palestinians are centered, whether in our meetings, at events, with the press, etc.

This requires humility. The humility to know that your words are not more powerful or more important than those of Palestinians. The humility to recognize that deferring to the wisdom of those directly impacted is a true act of solidarity. I see splendor within humility as a beautiful mosaic of opening the white spaces between the black letters for the voices of the most directly impacted and marginalized to speak and share their truth and stories—stories that are far too often silenced in a society that awards narcissism and charisma over truth and justice.

In the Belly of my Brother

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An excerpt from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essay “The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance” (2022).

As the berries plunk into my bucket, I’m thinking about what I’ll do with them all. I’ll drop some off for friends and neighbors, and I’ll certainly fill the freezer for Juneberry muffins in February. This “problem” of managing decisions about abundance reminds me of a report that linguist Daniel Everett wrote as he was learning from a hunter-gatherer community in the Brazilian rainforest. A hunter had brought home a sizable kill, far too much to be eaten by his family. The researcher asked how he would store the excess. Smoking and drying technologies were well known; storing was possible. The hunter was puzzled by the question—store the meat? Why would he do that? Instead, he sent out an invitation to a feast, and soon the neighboring families were gathered around his fire, until every last morsel was consumed. This seemed like maladaptive behavior to the anthropologist, who asked again: given the uncertainty of meat in the forest, why didn’t he store the meat for himself, which is what the economic system of his home culture would predict.

“Store my meat? I store my meat in the belly of my brother,” replied the hunter.