Bishop Jones was one interesting fellow and he reminds me how far we are from the Gospel with the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. After doing the icon I became much closer to him and what his life and work represented.
Artist & Priest Robert Two Bulls
Category: Art as Resistance
Self-Portrait
Robert Two Bulls is the RadicalDiscipleship.Net artist of the month. “Self-Portrait” (below) is a piece that Two Bulls utilizes to creatively confront stereotypes. He explained this piece five years ago, “I chose the war bonnet and red blanket images in profile because it’s a well-worn, universal image … an image used famously by Hollywood,” said Two Bulls. Although such images date back more than a century, they persist in contemporary culture “as images most folks will now conjure up when thinking of what an American Indian looks like.”
Continue reading “Self-Portrait”
Is it True?
Written by Osama Abu Kabir, prisoner in Guantanamo,
Published in Poems from Guantanamo:The Detainees Speak (2007) compiled by Marc Falkoff.
Is it true that the grass grows again after rain?
Is it true that the flowers will rise up in the Spring?
Is it true that birds will migrate home again?
Is it true that salmon swim back up the stream?
Continue reading “Is it True?”
Godly Play
From artist Katherine Parent of the Redeemer Center for Life:
These are collaborative icons made by my coworker Helen Collins and I with Sunday School children at Redeemer Lutheran Church in North Minneapolis. We are using the Godly Play method of Sunday school, which involves storytelling and responding to stories through art as sacred practices. Our creative, lively multiracial church is housed in a hundred-year-old building full of stained-glass images of a blond white Jesus–but we as a congregation have many more ways of seeing our savior. Continue reading “Godly Play”
The 38 Tears of Bishop Whipple
Seven or eight years ago when I lived and served in the Diocese of Los Angeles, I began teaching a class on Art and Spirituality and the marketing of Native American Indian Art. From these two experiences, coupled with my own art-making, I found that individual minds are opened by art. Art can transform the individual. When Native artists create art that is not necessarily tribally themed, non-Native viewers often voice surprise. Continue reading “The 38 Tears of Bishop Whipple”
Monday In B-Flat by Amiri Baraka
I can pray
all day
& God
wont come.
But if I call
911
The Devil
Be herein a minute!
Creatively Resisting A Fracked Up California
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”
The E-Dictionary
From literary activist E. Ethelbert Miller, the board chairperson of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a board member of The Writer’s Center and editor of Poet Lore magazine (a recommendation of Rose Berger):
It’s my belief that in order to usher in a better society a new language and vocabulary will need to be created. I’ve slowly started developing my own personal new dictionary. This creation I feel will help add clarify to my understanding of the things taking place around me. Many of the words and terms I’ve coined or have “borrowed” from others can be linked to our technology changing how we live. In my essays and public conversations I try to use these words as often as possible. So far I have 14 entries in my dictionary. Here they are.
Continue reading “The E-Dictionary”
Sacred Jazz As Spiritual Midwifery by Joshua Grace
…moving forward on the journey of being organized agents for transformation…from the inside out.
Warren Cooper (photo right)
During a wonderfully painful & hopeful confluence of the #BlackLivesMatter and #ICantBreathe spotlights on systemic racism and the release of the film Selma, Philadelphia joined many other US cities in the effort to reclaim the MLK holiday as a day of disrupting the status quo. Our church, Circle of Hope, has been making some concerted efforts this month to be shaped deeper by the legacy of Dr. King as well as open our sails wide to the winds of the Spirit.
Continue reading “Sacred Jazz As Spiritual Midwifery by Joshua Grace”
Radical Discipleship 