By Ched Myers, First Sunday in Lent (Mark 1:9-15)
Note: This is an ongoing occasional series of Ched’s brief comments on the Markan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year B.
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In Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism, the narrative is suddenly invaded by dramatic imagery. Jesus rises from Jordan’s waters to a vision of the “heavens rent asunder” (1:10). This is an allusion to Isaiah 64:1f:
Continue reading “Jesus On A Vision Quest”
By Tommy Airey
For this I will lament and wail;
I will go barefoot and naked;
I will make lamentation like the jackals,
and mourning like the ostriches.
Micah 1:8
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
Virginia Woolf
*This is the first in a series of seven pieces on Micah posted every Wednesday during Lent.
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Like us, Micah was living during imperial catastrophe and, like us, the reasons for the destruction and dysfunction were contested. In this prophetic leaflet, what Dan Berrigan calls “a torrid, icy mix of threat and promise,” Micah does what prophets do: he comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable in pointed, specific ways. To reclaim a phrase from the Religious Right who hijacked it from Gandhi who resurrected it from Augustine: “He loves the sinner, but hates the sin.”
Continue reading “Full Frontal Prophetic Nudity”
Pope Francis’ press conference on the plane returning from the Philippines was lively as usual. Regarding the Charlie Hebdo murders, he elaborated on the nuances of “freedom of expression” tempered by the virtue of prudence. He also expanded his comments on “responsible parenthood” and what it means for Catholics today. As always, he set the “birth control” issue in the wider context of certain prevailing spirits of the age, in this case Neo-Malthusianism (whaaaa?): population control that is enforced or overly encouraged by governments or corporations.
However, what jumped out to me was his response to a question by La Nacion’s Elisabetta Pique:
Elisabetta Pique (La Nacion): … This was a moving voyage for everyone. We saw people crying the entire time in Tacloban [Philippines site of the Supertyphoon Haiyan], even we journalists cried. Yesterday you said, the world needs to cry. … What was for you the most moving moment, because the mass in Tacloban was such a moment and also yesterday when the little girl started to cry?
Continue reading “Pope Francis: What is your Capacity to Cry?”
I can pray
all day
& God
wont come.
But if I call
911
The Devil
Be herein a minute!
From Miroslav Volf in Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (1996):
All sufferers can find comfort in the solidarity of the Crucified; but only those who struggle against evil by following the example of the Crucified will discover him at their side. To claim the comfort of the Crucified while rejecting his way is to advocate not only cheap grace but a deceitful ideology.
What we would like to do is change the world- make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying our unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute- the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words- we can, to a certain extent change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in a pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, ad dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to loveour neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”
Dorothy Day
S. Lily Mendoza is a native of San Fernando, Pampanga in Central Luzon, Philippines. Lily is especially known in the Philippines and beyond for her pathbreaking work on indigenization and indigenous studies. She is a scholar and associate professor of Culture and Communication at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.
RD: What is the crocodile’s belly? Where does the title come from?
LM: I don’t know if I should even dare tell you what our original title was. But it was Towards a Postcolonial Indigeneity: Babaylanism as Critical Pedagogy for Diasporic Struggles (laughter). Continue reading “Back from the Crocodile’s Belly: Philippine Babaylan Studies and the Struggle for Indigenous Memory”
By Ched Myers, for Transfiguration Sunday (6. Epiphany)
Note: This is an ongoing occasional series of Ched’s brief comments on the Markan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year B.
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Without wildness, civilization could not survive. The converse does not hold.
Evan Eisenberg, The Ecology of Eden
The Feast of the Transfiguration probably dates back to the late Roman period. A major feast in the Eastern Church, it was not widely practiced until the 9th century by the Western Church. August 6th was designated as Feast of the Transfiguration for the whole church in 1456. The Roman Catholic Church today also commemorates the Transfiguration on the second Sunday in Lent, but the Revised Common Lectionary puts the story at the last Sunday of Epiphany, just before Lent. This is done in order to recognize the Transfiguration’s close relationship in the synoptic gospel narratives to Jesus’ journey toward Jerusalem and the Cross.
Continue reading ““God is Like a Mountain” (Mk 9:2-9)”
From Ken Sehested on his wonderfully illuminating Prayer & Politiks site. Subscribe to his weekly e-newsletter here.
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Every year, prior to Valentine’s Day (celebrated in a surprising number of countries), children in our church create homemade Valentine’s cards to send to inmates, observing St. Valentine’s Day as the occasion to remember those in prison. Here is a little background.
While the existence of St. Valentine is not in doubt—archeologists have unearthed a chapel built in his honor—reliable accounts of his life are scarce. Which is why, in 1969, the Vatican removed St. Valentine from its official list of feasts.
Continue reading “The Real St. Valentine”
Excerpts from a piece by Sarah Lazare of Commondreams.org, reporting from the big climate justice action in San Francisco this weekend:
More than 150 protesters on Friday blockaded the California State Office Building in downtown San Francisco and erected a 16-foot fracking well in the middle of an intersection to demand Governor Jerry Brown cease all drilling and fossil fuel extraction and respect climate justice (photo right from Steve Rhodes).
Campaigners—who hail from labor, indigenous, student, and community organizations—were awaiting arrest at the time of publication…
Continue reading “Creatively Resisting A Fracked Up California”
