It’s the End of the World as We Know It

On December 3, 2018December 1, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

By Kim Redigan, an Advent reflection on Luke 21:25-28, 34-36 for the Faith Outreach Committee of the People’s Water Board (Detroit, MI)

The gospel reading this first week of Advent is wildly apocalyptic and, ultimately, hope-filled.

Jesus describes a creation in travail. Roaring waves and raging oceans are dire signs of a planet – a people – in distress. Water speaks in the cataclysmic tongues of rising sea levels, poisoned water, privatized water, weaponized water, withheld water. Continue reading “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” →

Loving our Way through the Darkest of Days

On December 2, 2018December 1, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

WWC Advent Week 1 – December 2 – 8

“Each of us is capable of growing our powers and skills in giving and receiving love. Despite this truth many die of thirst in a freshwater lake. All about us are people who can give us what we need; we must only learn to ask and then pay up by receiving. When we lay bare our needs and open ourselves to receive love we move from independence to interdependence, the basis of true community.”
— Gerald and Elisabeth Jud, Training in the Art of Loving

December 2:
Week One’s Skill of Loving is SEEING.

SEEING: I see you in your uniqueness, not how I want or assume you to be, and I allow myself to be seen. Continue reading “Loving our Way through the Darkest of Days” →

The Season of Advent: Loving Our Way Through these Darkest of Days

On December 2, 2018December 1, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

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

NOTE: We will post a follow-up to this intro piece at 2pmEST today!!

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” — Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As the darkest days of the year approach, coinciding with the season of Advent in the Christian liturgical year, we at The Wilderness Way invite you into a collective spiritual practice of LOVING. Continue reading “The Season of Advent: Loving Our Way Through these Darkest of Days” →

We Are Already Related

On December 1, 2018November 29, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

From 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.

Congestion

On November 30, 2018November 30, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

By Tommy Airey

Advent is almost here. As always, she sends us signs from the sun, the moon, the rising seas and the leafless fig tree. This season, she is speaking to me through a cough that won’t give up. The sinus pressure adds insult to injury. I am now convinced that these chronic symptoms stem from my inability to just say “no.” As it turns out, I have long been addicted to “becoming all things to all people, so that I might by any means save some” (I Cor 9:22). I share the codependent affliction of the apostle who confessed that his life was unmanageable too:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate (Romans 7:15).

Continue reading “Congestion” →

Salal + Cedar + Watershed Discipleship

On November 24, 2018November 13, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Just Peacemaking, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

Re-posted from the website of KAIROS Canada, uniting Canadian churches and religious organizations in a faithful ecumenical response to the call to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

While the just transition to a clean energy economy requires new technology and new ways of understanding our planet, it also calls on us to embrace new ways of knowing one another; to living in right relations with each other and with the earth. Salal + Cedar is a ministry located in Coast Salish territory which is supporting Christians on this path. Salal + Cedar is part of a growing movement across North America called Watershed Discipleship. This movement seeks to reconnect people to the creation-values at the core of Christian tradition and explores ways for communities to reconnect with the land and water, and all living things of a particular place. For Salal + Cedar this means seeking transformative encounters with the species and geography of the Salish Sea basin and Fraser River watershed. A watershed is an area of land where precipitation and surface water flow to a single body of water. Because we are all part of a watershed, no matter where we live, we can all have these encounters in our own watersheds. Continue reading “Salal + Cedar + Watershed Discipleship” →

Brave Space

On November 23, 2018November 13, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

Screen Shot 2018-11-13 at 4.31.09 PM — PC: Michael Raymond Smith

By Micky ScottBey Jones, re-posted from her website here

Together we will create brave space

Because there is no such thing as a “safe space”

We exist in the real world

We all carry scars and we have all caused wounds.

In this space

We seek to turn down the volume of the outside world,

We amplify voices that fight to be heard elsewhere, Continue reading “Brave Space” →

We Need a Moral Breakthrough

On November 21, 2018November 13, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

An excerpt from Rev. William Barber’s address presented before the 74th Union for Reform Judaism Biennial convention on December 6, 2017.

We are here tonight, and 62 years ago would have been the fifth day of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Today, when the prophetic actions of Rosa Parks like Shiphra and Puah in the Bible, chose to challenge the Pharaoh of Jim Crow. She sat down and birthed a movement on a stage that produced a prophet like Moses named Martin. She sparked a nonviolent revolution. Continue reading “We Need a Moral Breakthrough” →

Nuestros Sueños

On November 20, 2018November 19, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Identity, and History, Subverting Empire, Uncategorized1 Comment

By Liza Neal

“Nuestros sueños no se detendrán incluso en la muerte.” Our dreams will not stop even in death.

These words are painted on the Mexico side of the Border Wall. It could have been carved on the Mayflower. Half the Pilgrims that traveled to the “new world” died. The rest would have died if not for the mercy of the Wampanoag, who were repaid with disease, indoctrination, and their leader’s head on a spike displayed next to the Pilgrims’ crops. Continue reading “Nuestros Sueños” →

Counter-Recruiting for the Politics of Nonviolence

On November 18, 2018November 13, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

Comments on this week’s Gospel text (Mark 13:1-8) from Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (1988), the commentary from Ched Myers, celebrating 30 years of prophetic utterance.

The images Mark uses in 13:7f.–wars, famines, earthquakes–are all virtually generic to apocalyptic literature. One need only consult contemporaneous apocalyptic literature such as John’s Revelation, 4 Ezra, the Assumption of Moses, or the Qumran war scrolls. At the same time, these events could be correlated to contemporaneous history. “Rumors of war” aptly characterizes and describes the way in which news regarding the seesaw political events of 68-70 C.E. would have circulated around Palestine. Was the siege coming? Were the Romans withdrawing? “Kingdom rising against kingdom” might have referred to the wavering fortunes of Rome in 67, embroiled in a civil war and fearing a Parthian invasion. Major natural disasters were also part of contemporaneous history, such as the famine (which hit Palestine especially hard) of the early 50s C.E., or the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that destroyed Laodicia and Pompei in 61-62 C.E. Both Mark and his opponents could–and did–appeal to the “plurivalent” (multi-referential) nature of apocalyptic symbolics in making their respective cases. Continue reading “Counter-Recruiting for the Politics of Nonviolence” →

Radical Discipleship

Category: Subverting Empire