Author: RadicalDiscipleship
New Paths of Action
An excerpt from Vine Deloria, Jr.’s Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969).
I strongly doubt that American Christianity has the foresight or flexibility to embark on new paths of action. It has always been torn between being good and being real and generally chosen to be good.
Contagious
An excerpt from adrienne maree brown’s article in Yes! Magazine called “Murmurations: Love Looks Like Accountability.”
It’s intentional that we think about internal accountability as a solo practice. So much of being in relationship with another is about being able to have deep awareness of what it is we want and need in a given moment, and what we’re feeling—be it safety or vigilance.
This can be immensely uncomfortable. We might be feeling some combination of vulnerable, insecure, scared, disrespected, angry, or other emotions that we aren’t always raised to hold with dignity. If we can’t be aware of—and responsible for—our own feelings, then anyone else we are relating to can easily become a site of our projections or unharnessed energy. We can have negative and harmful impacts we did not intend.
Continue reading “Contagious”A remembrance of Will D. Campbell on the anniversary of his birth, 18 July 1924
By Ken Sehested
I was a stranger in a strange land, having left behind a Baylor University football
scholarship for the alluring but intimidating environs of New York University’s
Greenwich Village campus in Manhattan. I was so over being who I was, so eager for,
if frightened by, what was to come. Odd that it was there, so far from home, that I
should encounter the iconoclastic voice of a fellow Baptist-flavored Southerner
whose testimony would come to profoundly impact the tenor of my own.
“Here’s somebody you should know about,” said Dr. Carse, my religion department
mentor, as he tossed an open copy of Newsweek magazine across his desk. The
upturned page contained a one-column profile of self-styled bootleg preacher, Rev.
Will Campbell.
Back It Up
By Tommy Airey
The year George Floyd and I were born, Paul Simon came out with a song called “American Tune.” Simon sung it to the melody of a Medieval Christian hymn. It hummed on the heavy, confusing mood of the country, caught up in the Watergate scandal and the bloody Vietnam conflict. It concludes with these verses.
We come on the ship they call The Mayflower.
We come on the ship that sailed the moon.
We come in the age’s most uncertain hours
And sing an American tune.
Last week, fifty years later, “American Tune” made an appearance at the Newport Folk Festival. But this time, it was sung by Rhiannon Giddens, a banjo-playing woman in her forties boasting Black, Native and white ancestry. Simon backed her up on acoustic and she tweaked the lyrics at the end.
We didn’t come here on the Mayflower.
We came on a ship on a blood red moon.
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
And sing an American tune.
Distorted
From the Twitter feed of Rev. Dr. Bernice King, the daughter of MLK (July 15, 2022).
A cartoon about my father from the 1960s. At the time he was assassinated, a poll reflected that he was one of the most hated men in the United States. Today, his message is distorted by many who would have hated him then, but evoke him now to deter justice and truth. #MLK
Like Living Stones
Join the last session with Dr. James Perkinson tonight on Zoom from 7pmEDT! See this to review the first session for a little background. See below for Zoom Link.
| https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89197035463 Meeting ID: 891 9703 5463 One tap mobile +13126266799,,89197035463# US (Chicago) +16469313860,,89197035463# US |
to ensure they never invite you back
By Bobby LeFebre, re-posted from social media (July 13, 2022)
Time for Another Wilderness Vigil
An announcement and invitation from Tevyn East, director of Dreaming Stone Arts and Ecology Center
In early 2020, a group of comrades (Jay Beck, Jimmy Betts, Tevyn East, Tim Nafziger, Jonathan McRay, and Todd Wynward) first gathered together in response to a call from friend and colleague, Dave Pritchett. Sparked by his attendance of a “Vision Fast” held by the School of Lost Borders, where participants experienced a 4 day solo fast, bookended by group process, Dave had a desire to deepen into this practice amongst peers. His call, “to gather a cohort of folks to re-imagine how we can use the wilderness vigil to empower people in our movements, and how we can do so in ways that better pay attention to place, to history, and to the political moment we inhabit.” And thus, the first Wilderness Vigil was born. It was a significant, supportive and meaningful event for all.
Continue reading “Time for Another Wilderness Vigil”A Break
By Báyò Akómoláfé, re-posted from social media (July 12, 2022)
With regards to climate chaos, I find that what is most needed in these moments is more than just political will, new solutions, techno-bureaucratic agency, amplified activism, green legislation, international compliance, indigenous participation, civic education, and intensified philanthropy. We need a break.
Some sort of ontological apostasy is required to compost the human agent, dragging him away from his centralized throne. Something that flashes up, trips up, and offends – like the shaman’s knife poised on the client’s arm. Something that enacts a pause – in the spirit of Wendell Berry’s invitation to consider that “the impeded stream is the one that sings”.
Continue reading “A Break”
Radical Discipleship 