Another compelling event from Will O’Brien of the Alternative Seminary in Philly.
Dear friends,
I am reaching out to many friends and colleagues of the Alternative Seminary with a request that you help promote our upcoming program.
We are once again doing the special Advent program, “The Cross of Christ: Justification for Redemptive Violence or a Call to Gospel Nonviolence?” on Saturday, February 25.
As those of you who have participated in the past know, the program offers a critique of how atonement theology has bred terrible suffering by offering a vision of sacred violence that justifies actual violence, especially again women and minority communities. Starting with resituating Jesus’s crucifixion in historical context, we explore how the cross can be seen as a symbol of nonviolent resistance to oppressive powers. The themes continue to be urgent, especially with the rise of Christian nationalism, in this country and around the world.
The birth of Aya – Harbinger of Lent’s staggering promise Reflecting on the implausible news of finding an infant—alive, literally born amid the earthquake’s rubble
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Invocation. “When in the dark orchard at night / The God Creator kneeled and prayed / Life was praying with the One / Who gave life hope and prayer.” —English translation of lyrics from “Wa Habibi” (performed by Fairuz), a Christian hymn of the Syriac/Maronite rite. Also known as the Mother’s Lament, the hymn has been performed every year on Good Friday.
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It is staggering news: The birth of a baby girl, born as her mother, father, and four siblings lay crushed among the earthquake rubble of a five-story apartment building in northern Syria. When rescuers found her, they had to cut the umbilical cord attaching her to her mother, who died sometime in the 10 hours between the building collapse and the rescue.
This is a powerful statement from the friends and family of Jen Angel who was tragically killed last week. Thank you to longtime RD.net contributor Nichola Torbett for posting on social media.
It’s with very heavy hearts that we announce that Oakland baker, small business owner, social justice activist, and community member Jen Angel has been medically declared to have lost all brain function and will not regain consciousness. Her official time of death was 5:48pm (PT).
Friends and family of Jen hope that the story of this last chapter of her brilliant, full, dynamic life is one focused on her commitment to community, on the care bestowed upon her and her family by the people who loved her, and on the generous and courageous role of countless health care workers and public servants who fought to preserve her life. We know Jen would not want to continue the cycle of harm by bringing state-sanctioned violence to those involved in her death or to other members of Oakland’s rich community.
As a long-time social movement activist and anarchist, Jen did not believe in state violence, carceral punishment, or incarceration as an effective or just solution to social violence and inequity. The outpouring of support and care for Jen, her family and friends, and the values she held dear is a resounding demonstration of the response to harm that Jen believed in: community members relying on one another, leading with love, centering the needs of the most vulnerable, and not resorting to vengeance and inflicting more harm.
I am someone who spends a lot more time casting a vision for what’s coming next than composting what’s already happened. It is both a gift – and a growth edge. I am learning that the more I slow down and process the particulars of my suburban past, the more I can subvert the sources that scripted my supremacy. One of those old sources was Gene, the father of one of my best friends. He was a passionate and playful pillar of the community. He was also a purveyor of patriarchy – and he had a profound impact on my early years.
Gene dismissed the perspectives of women with a warm smile and a witty joke. He made it clear that he believed that women were the weaker sex. Why? Because the bible says so. One time, when we were teenagers, Gene read us the passage from I Peter that says that wives must accept the authority of their husbands and that real women – biblical women – should stop obsessing over outward appearances, and instead embrace the lasting beauty of a meek and quiet spirit.
When I started studying the original languages of the bible in seminary, I learned that the word meek, in Greek, is praus, pronounced prah-ooce’. It is a divine strength soaked in gentleness, confidence, humility and open-heartedness. The irony is that Jesus used it to describe himself, not women. Jesus was a Palestinian Jewish rabbi who empowered people who were oppressed by professional religion and Roman culture. Jesus preached that God reigns not from the perches of the powerful, but from within the hearts of weary and burdened people.
The message of Jesus, according to Howard Thurman, focused on the urgency of a radical change in the inner attitude of his people. They had access to divine power and agency. It was rooted in how they responded whenever provoked by their oppressors. Thurman wrote that humility – not fear, hypocrisy or hatred – is the best defense against everything intended to humiliate. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,” Jesus said, “for I am praus and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
From John (Fire) Lame Deer, Sioux Lakota (1903-1976). Thanks to Lorna Standingready for posting.
“Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn’t have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents. Without a prison, there can be no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn’t afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn’t know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don’t know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society.”
It’s Black History Month, something we celebrate all year long at RadicalDiscipleship.net. This is from the conclusion of bell hooks’ classic essay “Killing Rage” (1995).
Rage can be consuming. It must be tempered by an engagement with a full range of emotional responses to black struggle for self-determination. In mid-life, I see in myself that same rage at injustice which surfaced in me more than twenty years ago as I read the Autobiography of Malcolm X and experienced the world around me anew. Many of my peers seem to feel no rage or believe it has no place. They see themselves as estranged from angry black youth. Sharing rage connects those of us who are older and more experienced with younger black and non-black folks who are seeking ways to be self-actualized, self-determined, who are eager to participate in anti-racist struggle. Renewed, organized black liberation struggle cannot happen if we remain unable to tap collective black rage. Progressive black activists must show how we take that rage and move it beyond fruitless scapegoating of any group, linking it instead to a passion for freedom and justice that illuminates, heals, and makes redemptive struggle possible.
From poet and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs, re-posted from her website. Thanks to Kateri Boucher for the recommendation.
Last night the moon was a bowl again, almost half full out my airplane window. Slightly tilted so maybe moonlight, if it could spill would offer the contents of its light one drop at a time.
Last night, the moon in my airplane window and Tyre Nichols mother’s face on all the airport TV monitors. I can’t hear what she’s saying for all the amplified systemwide announcements, so I just look at her round face and wonder how she’s saying anything at all.
Audre Lorde published the poem “For Each of You” in 1973 for her children who she said were black “in the mouth of a dragon who defines them as nothing.” Like Tyre’s mom, RowVaughn Wells, Audre looked to the heavens. Here is Audre’s astronomical offering:
Remember our sun
is not the most noteworthy star
only the nearest
Audre’s clarification of what space means has trailed me since I was a teenager. I couldn’t grasp the meaning of this stanza until at least a decade after I read it. And then I shook my head. All this time I had believed the colonial education that taught me it was my brightness that mattered above all else. No. Audre clarifies while her children get death threats at their Staten Island grade school, it is where you are that matters. The sun is close enough to make all this photosynthetic life on Earth breathe.
Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries will, once again, be hosting its annual Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute (BKI) next month in Southern California. See below for details. See this for BKI Covid-19 protocols.
“Just Community”
Begin your 2023 Lenten journey with kindred spirits at the 2023 BKI
Registration closes Feb 3rd, 2023
February 20-23, 2023, in person at Camp Forest Home (Ojai), Oak View, California
Why: We are mindful that political and personal landscapes have changed since we last convened in the Ventura River Watershed… What hasn’t changed is our deep need for ekklesia—kindred spirits committed to faith and justice who gather for discernment and reflection, support and solidarity, nurture and remembering, courage and joy… [more]
Radical Discipleship 