By Ric Hudgens
This Sunday, May 31, 2020, Christians celebrate the Day of Pentecost. It is a celebration rooted in the Hebrew “Feast of Weeks” (Shavuot). Christians around the world observe it on the seventh Sunday after Easter. The Biblical origin of the sacred holiday is the Book of Acts, chapter 2, which describes the “descent of the Holy Spirit” upon the earliest church. Continue reading “Pentecost as a Riot of the Unheard”
From Mark Van Steenwyk of The Center for Prophetic Imagination, on the ground in Minneapolis.
Here are 10 ways to support the struggle for justice in Minneapolis.
1. Add your voice to this list of demands from Reclaim the Block and Black Visions.
2. Support the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a widely respected bail fund for those arrested in protests against oppression. Continue reading “10 Ways”
a poem for Day House in these days of missing our Sunday evening living room mass
By Kateri Boucher
No churchbells here
this morning
but a doorbell,
yes,
and it sure is
ringing
No wafers,
but hands outstretched
and the five-buck
refrain:
“yeah we got it”
“oh god bless”
And don’t you
smell that Holy
smoke drifting
down the stairs?
Continue reading “No churchbells here”
By Kate Foran
“The pandemic has got me thinking a great deal about how the vulnerability our species is experiencing could be an opening to imagining the threat and constriction that is the reality for so many other species and often at our hand. What about the grief in the chestnut blight or salamander epidemics?”
– Robin Wall Kimmerer
At the height of the viral bloom, our travel circumscribed,
we wander with our girls to the patches of woods that still remain
between the housing tracts and industrial parks of our neighborhood.
In the scrubby, choked lot behind the schoolyard where children never go
even when school is in session, the path winds and we stop short
as the leaf litter gives way to green-gold
spring ephemerals, trillium and jack-in-the-pulpit preaching Continue reading “The Wrong Question”
A word from friends at Christian Peacemaker Teams.
Stand in solidarity with the members of the “Hear Us Now: Stop The Bombing!” campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Sign this open letter to the Kurdistan Regional Government demanding they take action to stop all cross border bombings and respond to the needs of those affected.
A few minutes past noon on 10 July 2019, 18-year-old Zeitun had just begun to serve lunch for herself and her two brothers, Sirwan (16 years old) and Ali (21), when shells began to explode near the family’s cucumber and tomato fields in the area of the Barbezin heights (in the sub-district of Sidekan, Iraqi Kurdistan). The three siblings had stayed behind working in the field after the rest of the family left to attend a funeral in their hometown of Diana. Continue reading “Stop the Bombing”
A word from Dr. Catherine Meeks (originally posted to social media on May 17, 2020).
These days for me are just like yours, some of them are far better than others. Today is a better day. So I want to share out of that space with you this morning.
I have been thinking about Dr. Vincent Harding, historian, speechwriter for Dr. King and all around holy man and his vision of us “building up a new world in this country.” These thoughts have been accompanied by my writing and thinking about reparations and all of these thoughts are contextualized by this Covid-19 era and what seems to be a new wave of white violence against African Americans. Continue reading “Diving Into the Wreck”
A Message from Naming The Lost.
As we approach Memorial Day, Americans are mourning the 80,000+ of our loved ones and neighbors whose lives have been lost to COVID-19 (and the hundreds of thousands more worldwide). They are our siblings, our parents, our children, our nurses and grocery clerks, our first responders and teachers, they are the working people who do the essential work of keeping our families and communities safe. Continue reading “Today: The 24-Hour Covid Vigil”
By Tommy Airey
*Note: I submitted this op-ed to The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Oregonian. None of them printed it. So I submit it to you.
The white Christians marching with their flags and firearms on state capitals and main streets make it clear: they have neither a care nor a clue about how COVID-19 is disproportionately killing non-white populations. While they protest, Black residents in Detroit shelter-in with water taps shut-off, Indigenous peoples attempt to contain outbreaks on reservations with limited access to health care and Immigrants around the country work the front-lines at unsafe meat processing plants mandated to stay open by an executive order. Unfortunately, the spectacle of the fascist few takes the focus off the rest of us white folk—the silent, enabling masses—also careless and clueless. The coronavirus may be novel, but the overwhelming disregard for Black and Brown life is not. Continue reading “A Spiritual Pandemic”
From yesterday’s Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice press conference (Detroit, MI) in response to the white Christian “protest” at the Capitol in Lansing.
My name is Bill Wylie-Kellermann. I’m a United Methodist pastor in Detroit, recently retired from St Peter’s Episcopal Church, and a member of Michigan Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
I speak as a white male Christian outraged at the public display of white supremacy in these demonstrations against the health requirements of Michigan under COVID 19. Continue reading “Racism is a Demonic Possession”
By Ric Hudgens (right)
I just finished teaching a class in Eco-Ministry at Garrett Seminary. My initial (and still favorite) title for the course was a play on John Wesley’s quote, “the world is my parish.” I wanted to call it The Earth is Our Parish. However, the formal title became “CL-621 Earth Ministry for Ecological Renewal.” CL-621 is one of the core courses in the Ecological Regeneration Concentration of Garrett’s new Masters in Public Ministry program.
I’m writing about it here not primarily to promote Garrett Seminary, but because this Eco-Ministry is a growing edge in contemporary ministry. It often has interfaith and eco-spiritual aspects, which are essential. But its placement in Garrett’s new Public Ministry degree gave it a distinctive social and political slant that is sometimes missing. Garrett’s version also featured radical discipleship resources that gave it a particular focused and practical impact. Continue reading “Teaching Eco-Ministry”
Radical Discipleship 