By Paul Laraque (right)
you say democracy
and we know that it’s tin from Bolivia,
copper from Chile,
petroleum from Venezuela,
sugar from Cuba,
raw material and profits.
you say democracy
and it’s the annexation of Texas
the hold-up of the Panama Canal
the occupation of Haiti
the colonization of Puerto Rico Continue reading “Reign of a Human Race”
By Tommy Airey
It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than to be a soldier on the battlefield.
Cornel West
45 years ago, Jim Douglass wrote a little book called Resistance and Contemplation (1972), urging radical disciples to take seriously both the personal and political–what he called “the yin and the yang of the Movement.” In the second chapter, he recounts the last talk that Thomas Merton (photo right) gave, just hours before his death from electrocution in that Bangkok bathtub in 1968. Merton told the story of Tibetan Buddhist monks being driven out of their homeland by Communist revolutionaries. The elder monk tells the fretting younger protege, “From now on, Brother, everybody stands on his own feet.” Continue reading “Standing on Our Own Feet”
From Albert Camus’ essay “The Unbeliever and the Christian” (1948):
The world expects that Christians will speak out loud and clear, so that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could arise in the heart of the simplest man [sic].
The world expects that Christians will get away from abstractions and confront the blood stained face which history has taken on today.
The grouping we need is a grouping of men resolved to speak out clearly and to pay up personally.
A Facebook Event Page for July 3 from the Simone Weil House in Minneapolis, MN:
Uncle Sam is turning 240. In the days of his fathers, this land was abundant with forests and clean water and myriad indigenous cultures. A sad waste of productivity. His fathers, the European nations, subjugated the land and its people, and brought in new labor from across the Great Sea. And thus, when little Sam was born, he received a worthy inheritance…land and labor. Continue reading “Destroying the Golden Calf”
By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson
For Jesus followers in the US, this week’s Gospel offers a powerful counter-narrative to the flag-waving patriotism of the 4th of July. Nearly every detail challenges those of us who live and thrive at the heart of empire to reconsider which “sacred story” binds us together as a people. Continue reading “Hospitality and The People of God”
From the Journal for Preachers:
An update from Rev. Billy Talen and the Stop Shopping Choir:
The last ten months we got bizzy, as in show-bizzy: opening for Neil Young, a holiday run at Joe’s Pub at the Public in NYC, recording eleven songs in Avatar Studio, and then my book “The Earth Wants YOU” from City Lights. We can fit or weirdly “misfit” into some entertainment categories. That’s cool, but it means that we are farther from our heart, which is “Nonviolent Dramatic Action.” Continue reading “Let’s Get the Poison out of the Parks”
By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson
“When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”
This week’s Gospel offers some of the most challenging, urgently needed by us today messages found in Luke’s Gospel. It is a companion with next week’s Gospel, which directly follows this week’s passage. We will address them as a two-part unit in this and our next commentary. Continue reading “All In”
By Eduard Loring, from the April 2016 issue of Hospitality, the newsletter of Atlanta’s Open Door Community
“I will never pray again. I have prayed and prayed and nothing ever happens. I am finished.” So said the 90-year-old grandmother last week when her grandson Mark overdosed on heroin. Mark’s father died 6 years ago from esophageal cancer. Face, mouth, throat deranged. Spoken word distorted. Unintelligible if more than one syllable. Tobacco kills. God forgives a repentant addict; God does not stop the side effects of the sin, though the power of Love’s prayer, and medicine, exercise and nutrition can mitigate the fury of the Evil One and her daughters Tobacco and Heroin. Often heal. Continue reading “What is Prayer?”
An excerpt from Matt Taibbi’s recent Rolling Stone piece “Democrats Will Learn All the Wrong Lessons From Brush With Bernie:”
The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide. Continue reading “The Maddening Thing”
