Category: Cloud of Witnesses

You Will Continue to Inspire

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Ben, RachelBy Ben Wideman, community pastor of the 3rd Way Collective in State College, Pennsylvania

*This piece was originally posted on the 3rd Way Collective blog on May 6, 2019.

Dear Rachel Held Evans,

I’m writing with a long-overdue note of appreciation. Last week’s news of your passing shook me at a deeper level than I anticipated, and I wondered if putting words on paper would help me process some of what I felt.

I think my first memory of you was hearing about your second book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood. I’m guessing that my reaction to hearing about an effort to live according to a legalistic reading of scripture was typical of many short-sighted folks at the time… hadn’t AJ Jacobs already tried that and written a book about the experience a few years prior? Was yours just going to be the female version of that? Continue reading “You Will Continue to Inspire” →

Responding to a Deep, Insistent Sense of Call

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation4 Comments
Chava Redonnet (1)
PC: Lisa, a guest at the Catholic Worker

By Chava Redonnet (right), from the bulletin of Oscar Romero Inclusive Catholic Church in upstate New York (4th Sunday in Lent)

Something I really do not enjoy doing is arguing. It’s one of those character traits that can be seen as either a virtue or a fault, but whichever it is, it’s me. Live and let live is more my style. We don’t all have to agree.

So in recent years I have found myself less and less interested in trying to convince anyone why women should be priests. I figure my priesthood is my argument for women priests. If someone can look at my ministry and say it’s not valid simply because I’m female, I don’t think anything I could say would change their mind. Continue reading “Responding to a Deep, Insistent Sense of Call” →

I Am

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire2 Comments

Aireys, Early 20sBy Tommy Airey

Note: this was homework assigned by Dr. Lily Mendoza to a beloved community of ethno-autobiographical faith resisters in Detroit, Michigan

I am Southern California branded, but DNA stranded in a blue-eyed tribal scandal, maybe Goth or Vandal—or even a Saxon and Celtic quarrel from long long long ago.

I am the wandering whiteness of Cain, against-the-grain Abraham resisting an abiding city, the peregrini pilgrimage, the wonder voyage, the sign of the cross, always in process. Continue reading “I Am” →

Jesus of the Streets: Honoring “Duff”

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duffBy Dr. Oz Cole-Arnal, former professor emeritus at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary

For the last number of years a rag-tag bunch of us have remembered Good Friday by utilizing the Catholic liturgical tradition known as the Stations of the Cross. However the particular form we have employed is borrowed from the radical liberation theologians from Latin America, a practice which departs from standard piety by moving into the streets both to stand in solidarity “for” and “with” those crushed by poverty within our midst and to challenge that imperially driven alliance of corporations and their political sycophants which sustains and undergirds a socio-economic war against the poor. We carry signs, posters, have readings and pass out leaflets. Continue reading “Jesus of the Streets: Honoring “Duff”” →

Rebels and Saints to guide 2019

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allsaints
By Julia Jack Scott

Friends,

In November, we sent out 150 perpetual calendars for children in our communities near and far. Part of that work was gathering dates and people to be remembered and honored. Another piece was collecting books written for kids on these holy mischief makers. That work is just a beginning. We hope to continue to add dates and stories in the time to come.

So, we have posted it on RadicalDiscipleship. You can follow along throughout the year, read some wonderful stories, and also let us know the many glaring holes that are missing. You can write in the comments of the page other ideas of dates/books or email lydiaiwk@gmail.com.

Let us honor these rebels and saints with our lives!

Follow along HERE.

We Are Already Related

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WinkFrom Walter Wink in Just Jesus: My Struggle to Become Human (2014):

In the integral worldview, however, prayer is given the place of honor in the life of the spirit. Since we are all already related to each other, we are immediate to each other. So prayer becomes the most natural thing in the world. We don’t have to pump ourselves up in order to release a charge of healing energy. The other persons don’t even have to know we are praying for them. Because we are already related, and we are one body in God, God’s healing power is already there and here (but there is no distance). Our prayer is simply a matter of opening the situation to God.