Category: Subverting Empire

Mary’s Promise: God’s Gonna Trouble the Water

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment
Windsock
The Windsock Visitation by Mickey McGrath, OSFS

By Kim Redigan, an Advent reflection on Luke 1:39-55 for the Faith Outreach Committee of the Detroit Peoples Water Board

For a very long time now, I have been on a mission to liberate the white porcelain hands of Mary from clerics and capitalists who have turned our tough sister into little more than a cooing dove. A saccharine symbol of passivity. A willing tool of the patriarchy. A voiceless virgin who is venerated but never listened to, much less followed.

If I had a dollar for every time I squirmed in church pews and internally screamed, “No, no, NO!!!!!” as Mary was hijacked in homilies that completely denied her humanity and political-cultural context, I could pay for several of the exorbitant water bills that have resulted in shutoffs for so many of our neighbors. Continue reading “Mary’s Promise: God’s Gonna Trouble the Water” →

Loving our Way through the Darkest of Days (Advent Week Four)

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WWCFrom our comrades at The Wilderness Way in Portland, OR:

Week Four’s Skill of Loving is HONORING:

I honor your feelings and ideas. I recognize your right to think and feel as you do, as well as my own.

Connection with Christian Scriptures — Luke 2: 1 – 20

This text is the classic “Christmas Story” — the story of the birth of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. The practice of honoring in this story is captured by one simple sentence that comes near the end of the story. “But Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” Continue reading “Loving our Way through the Darkest of Days (Advent Week Four)” →

Strengthening Community, Nurturing Souls, Amplifying Hope

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Caring for Souls, ImageBy Tommy Airey, a review of Bruce Rogers-Vaughn’s Caring For Souls in a Neoliberal Age (2016)

It’s the economy stupid. This was the pundit-driven explanation for Bill Clinton’s victory almost three decades ago. It is also the root of our present crises. What we’ve been hearing is true. Times have changed. Not so much in the past two years. More like the past thirty. Yet as depression, addiction, panic attacks, suicide and debt have all skyrocketed, pastoral attempts to get at the roots of the pain and suffering can tend towards family dynamics, relational patterns and trauma.

These factors are real and important. However, in his recent Caring For Souls in a Neoliberal Age, Bruce Rogers-Vaughn implores readers that there are interweaving socio-political powers that shape us in destructive ways too. We must dismantle racism and hetero-patriarchy. But Rogers-Vaughn writes, “Any form of identity politics that ignores class, therefore, will be fated to support the ongoing domination of neoliberal interests” (216). It’s the profit-driven, wage-reducing, deregulating, free trading economy stupid. Continue reading “Strengthening Community, Nurturing Souls, Amplifying Hope” →

Journaling on the outside of the Jail

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting Empire, UncategorizedLeave a comment

20181211_192911By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

This Advent my dad, Bill Wylie-Kellermann, spent 10 days in jail for an action he was part of in the spring with the Poor People’s Campaign. Each night I journaled and shared them on facebook. It was a practice that held my heart steady in a rather chaotic week and a half.

Day 1 of Dad in Jail for Advent
“But who will….”

My morning was crappy. Both kids with tantrums leaving it almost impossible to get everyone where they needed to be on time. On the way to school, I pulled a completely unnecessary turn around, scraped a log next to someone’s driveway which pulled off my bumper.

So, I am driving down 96 to concerning sounds of things scraping against my tires and wind rushing through the exposed mechanics of my car. I am running late, but trying to still make it to see my dad and Tommy Tackett turn themselves in at court today. I want to get video statements. I want to help alert press releases with on the ground information. I want to say thank you to my dad and hug him goodbye. Continue reading “Journaling on the outside of the Jail” →

Don’t Wake a Sleeping Dragon

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Identity, and History, Subverting Empire, UncategorizedLeave a comment
fritz
By Fritz Eichenberg

By: Anonymous

A few weeks ago I was sitting in Jose’s kitchen, waiting for his monthly phone call. Once a month he gets a call on a voice-recognition system: at some point during a two hour window, the phone will ring. He answers, then has to call back within three minutes. A machine recites a string of numbers, which he repeats, and then he is okay for another month. Since getting Administrative Closure of his case a few years ago, this has been the only contact he has had with the immigration folks. Finally the phone rang. I watched as he called back, heard him repeat the string of numbers. And repeat it again, and again, four times altogether. Finally he turned to me, ashen-faced. “It says it’s going to report me,” he said. Continue reading “Don’t Wake a Sleeping Dragon” →

Loving our Way through the Darkest of Days

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WWCFrom our comrades at The Wilderness Way in Portland, OR:

“They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Jesus stood still and said, ‘Call him here.’ And they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take heart; get up, he is calling you.’ So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ The blind man said to him, ‘My teacher,* let me see again.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.”–Mark 10:46-52

Week Three’s Skill of Loving is RESPONDING TO NEEDS:

“I will respond to your needs and be there for you, within the limits of my value system, when those needs are made known. I also take the responsibility to make my needs known.” Continue reading “Loving our Way through the Darkest of Days” →

An Opportunity to Connect and be Transformed

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

EmpireAnother important offering from The Center of Prophetic Imagination:

This weekend intensive explores the ways in which our society’s systems of oppression are legitimized by an imperial spirituality that we rarely recognize as such. The goal of this intensive is to examine the nature of this “spirituality of empire,” how it shapes our imaginations, why it is hostile to life, and and how we might begin to resist it.

Please note: The lecture portions of this intensive will be filmed, in fulfillment of a curriculum grant from FTE to create an 8-week online course. Our goal is to break the lecturing portion of the intensive into eight 30-45 minute sessions that will be enhanced with additional multimedia elements and turned into the core content for an online course, which will be released in January 2020.

Because of this, we are offering the weekend retreat for free. Continue reading “An Opportunity to Connect and be Transformed” →

From Downtown to the Desert: Voices from the Wilderness Call Out for Water Justice

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MLPBy Kim Redigan, an Advent reflection on Luke 3:1-6 for the Faith Outreach Committee of the People’s Water Board (Detroit, MI)

Today’s Gospel opens with a litany of the strong and mighty – the political and religious powerbrokers of their time. Ruthless men whose cruel governance in partnership with their corrupt religious lackeys oppressed the people in a thousand different ways. A violent alliance based on greed and domination with no tolerance for resistance or rebellion.

Does this sound familiar?

Today’s political and corporate tyrants embrace the same imperial imperative – to crush and control by any means necessary. Here in Detroit, water is used as a weapon in the hands of those who have crafted a well-woven matrix of subjugation and theft that includes water shutoffs and home foreclosures as part of a violent gentrification project that has created a diaspora of displaced citizens and a web of private security and surveillance systems to keep the people in line. As in the time of Jesus, many religious leaders either look the other way or are actively complicit, sometimes profiting handsomely from a relationship based on a mutual love of money. Continue reading “From Downtown to the Desert: Voices from the Wilderness Call Out for Water Justice” →

Loving our Way through the Darkest of Days

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WWC
From our comrades at The Wilderness Way in Portland, OR:

“When we hear, there is something being woven. And what is happening is, I am making a real effort to hear not just your words but what is coming from your other chakras, and you are demonstrably showing that you are seeking to hear what I am saying. And we are in a fluid, almost musical, state in what we are doing right now.  That hearing is love.”  

— Gerald Jud, Love is an Intention

December 9: Week Two’s Skill of Loving is HEARING.

HEARING: I hear what you are truly saying, not what I wish you were saying. I also speak my own truth with kindness and respect.

Invitation

This week we invite you to consciously practice HEARING (and speaking truth) as a way of loving our way through the darkest of days. Share stories, insights and discoveries in this group. Continue reading “Loving our Way through the Darkest of Days” →

The Political Reality at the Heart of the Gospel

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LukeBy Pádraig Ó Tuama, comments on the Gospel reading for the second Sunday of Advent (reposted from Spirituality of Conflict)

Luke’s gospel is an extraordinarily political one. Over and over, the writer mentions the names of people in power, referencing their eras, areas of governance and even some of their policies.

The readings for the past two weeks have been filled with warnings about signs of the times. Now, rather than talking about signs, Luke’s gospel text drops us into the actual events, describing in detail the political landscape of the times. Even a casual acquaintance with the gospel texts brings some familiarity with the complicated dynamics of conflict in the politics of the day — names such as Herod, Pilate, Judea, Pharisees, Scribes, Samaria, Syrophonecia, Gentile, Rome, all trip off the tongue, even though our knowledge about these geographies, groups and geopolitical realities might be patchy. Continue reading “The Political Reality at the Heart of the Gospel” →