Category: Identity

Relinquishing the Patriarchy

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Identity, Subverting Empire1 Comment

ambLast year, Detroit-based author and activist adrienne maree brown poured out an epic post on patriarchy. The entire post is required reading for men on the radical journey. This is her conclusion, a list of 14 practices.

the good news is, there are practices that work. here are steps i guarantee will help you to relinquish patriarchy.

1. recognize that as a man, you are a part of patriarchy. even if you have made some effort to break out of it, the system/insanity of patriarchy is still there for you to fall back into under pressure or duress.

2. be particularly vigilant about your masculinity growing toxic in your 30-50s age range. those are the years for many of us where the weight of adulting gets real and feels too heavy, and the dreams we had for our lives may not be coming true – hence the pattern of midlife crises. this is when men can become strangers to the women who trust them. yes, change is constant, and we all deserve space to change. none of us deserve a pass to change in ways that make us more harmful to those with less systemic power than we have, especially not those who have carried us. Continue reading “Relinquishing the Patriarchy” →

Belonging

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn IdentityLeave a comment

Brene BrownBRENÉ BROWN, Research Professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, in a recent interview with Krista Tippett:

…true belonging is a type of belonging that never requires us to be inauthentic or change who we are, but a type of belonging that demands who we are — that we be who we are — even when we jeopardize connection with other people, even when we have to say, “I disagree…”

Declaration of Intent

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, IdentityLeave a comment

DSC00576An excerpt from the 2015 poem by Rita Wong entitled “Declaration of Intent,”featured in the upcoming Watershed Discipleship anthology published by Wipf & Stock, edited by Ched Myers and Elaine Enns of Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries:

Let the colonial borders be seen for the pretensions they are
i hereby honour what the flow of water teaches us Continue reading “Declaration of Intent” →

Poetry as Necessity

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Identity, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment
Eileen Myles
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From a recent New York Times Magazine interview with Eileen Myles:

NY Times Magazine: Many people would be surprised to hear that according to you, poetry is alive and well in America. Our national political conversation has recently seen some rather unpoetic lurches to the right. How do you make sense of that?

Myles: Poetry always, always, always is a key piece of democracy. It’s like the un-Trump: The poet is the charismatic loser. You’re the fool in Shakespeare; you’re the loose cannon. As things get worse, poetry gets better, because it becomes more necessary.

Principles of Environmental Justice

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Identity, RaceLeave a comment

environmental justiceDelegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held on October 24-27, 1991, in Washington DC, drafted and adopted 17 principles of Environmental Justice. Since then, The Principles have served as a defining document for the growing grassroots movement for environmental justice. Continue reading “Principles of Environmental Justice” →

Putting your shoulder to the wheel of history

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Identity, Race1 Comment

quote“White people are taught that racism is a personal attribute, an attitude, maybe a set of habits. Anti-racist whites invest too much energy worrying about getting it right; about not slipping up and revealing their racial socialization; about saying the right things and knowing when to say nothing. It’s not about that. It’s about putting your shoulder to the wheel of history; about undermining the structural supports of a system of control that grinds us under, that keeps us divided even against ourselves and that extracts wealth, power and life from our communities like an oil company sucks it from the earth.”

– Ricardo Levins Morales

Fifty Years Later. In Detroit the End of Brown: Separate and Unequal

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Identity, RaceLeave a comment

schoolBy Bill Wylie-Kellermann

The Detroit Public Schools are being dismantled by design and effectively looted. Though Detroiters and the elected school board are consistently blamed for their demise, for twelve of the last fifteen years DPS has been under state control.

Mother Helen Moore, an attorney who heads the Education Task Force has become notorious for her fight on behalf of the schools, and tells the story over and over in community meetings. It’s well documented. Continue reading “Fifty Years Later. In Detroit the End of Brown: Separate and Unequal” →