By Charlie King
Original Song © John Lennon, new concept inspired by Will Fudemann
Imagine you have healthcare
It’s easy if you try
Freedom to choose your doctor
Cov’rage money can’t buy
Imagine first class treatment
When you’re unemployed
Continue reading “Imagine (You Have Healthcare)”
This is a mural on the side of a restaurant formerly known as the Calvert Cafe in D.C. It features U.S. presidents from Eisenhower to Obama with Mama Ayesha, who founded the restaurant that is now named for her: Mama Ayesha’s, just near the Duke Ellington Bridge in Adams Morgan. It was originally labored over by Karlisima Rodas.
The recent transformation involves someone having apparently paintballed all the presidents, shooting them in the privates with red paint…It’s a bit messy, but the intent is fairly clear: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton I, Bush II and Obama. Scrawled on the side is “The War Thugs.”
From a NY Times piece on Banksy’s latest adventure in England:
The exhibition includes new and old artwork by Banksy, including a pool with mobile boats full of figurine immigrants in what apparently is the English Channel, and a mural-style work in the his signature silhouette style, which shows a fat cat in a suit gorging himself while a gaunt woman with children stands across from him. One installation on the site — billed as only for children — features a trampoline and a stand offering small loans with interest rates of several thousand percent…
Continue reading “Dismaland”
By Tommy Airey
For Dianne, my soft-spoken spiritual director who calmly and confidently predicted, “I imagine that your trip to Oregon will be even more enlightening that you expect.” And for Peter, an artist, pilgrim and guide whose seven-space opened up for us one vista after another.
He calmly announced that
gratitude unlocks
the fullness of life.
Continue reading “Cape Blanco”
by Mary Oliver, Red Bird
From Coalition of Immokalee Workers, on PCUSA’s eloquent and inspiring statement of solidarity:
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders are celebrating a major milestone in the ongoing campaign to improve the lives of farmworkers. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) announced that Ahold USA became the first major grocer in the U.S. to join the CIW Fair Food Program. Ahold is the parent company of Stop & Shop, Giant Foods and online grocer Peapod and operates nearly 780 supermarkets in 14 states and the District of Columbia.
Continue reading “PCUSA: Long Time Allies of Coalition of Immokalee Workers”
By Langston Hughes
This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.
Continue reading “Kids Who Die”
Thanks to L.A.-based activist Charles Cha for sharing this from the Natural Cures Not Medicine site:
By Kim Redigan
the purple cone flower poking through a bed of basil
stands as a bold rebuke to a world
that loves war.
so much stands in judgment of the course
we have set.
round red tomatoes breaking backs
of rusty cages. Continue reading “Beauty”
By Ken Sehested, of Prayer & Politiks, written for an ecumenical “Service of Lament and Healing” following the August 2014 killing of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, MO. Inspired by Ps 6:6; 42:3; 80:5; 102:9; Luke 7:38
Who among you believe that
grieving and lamentation
are symptoms of despair.
Not so!
Only the hopeless are silent
in the face of calamity—
silenced because they no
longer aspire even to be heard,
much less heeded. The labor
of lament, on the other hand,
is premised on the expectation
that grief’s rule will be bound
by the Advent of Another. Continue reading “The Labor of Lament”
