Category: Subverting Empire

It’s Not Part of Our Vision

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RamseyThanks to Detroit-based law student Cait De Mott Grady for passing along this profound interview Derrick Jensen did with former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark way back in 2000. His reflections are more relevant than ever. This is an excerpt, but the entire interview deserves a read.

Jensen: So how do we maintain our national self-image as God’s gift to the world, the great bastion of democracy?

Clark: But we’re not a democracy. It’s a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy. Wealth has its way. The concentration of wealth and the division between rich and poor in the U.S. are unequaled anywhere. And think of whom we admire most: the Rockefellers and Morgans, the Bill Gateses and Donald Trumps. Would any moral person accumulate a billion dollars when there are 10 million infants dying of starvation every year? Is that the best thing you can find to do with your time? Continue reading “It’s Not Part of Our Vision” →

Wild Lectionary: Who do we say…

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dear-tree-combo17th Sunday After Pentecost
Proper 19 (24)B
Mark 8:27-38

By Rev. Dr. Victoria Marie

The concrete and asphalt jungle of the Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill sections of Brooklyn are where I thought my heart and emotions were nourished. I thought my city dweller life and lifestyle defined me. It wasn’t until in I was in art therapy grieving the loss of several family members that I discovered the longing in my heart for nature’s spaces and places. Buildings, streets and other signs of city life were nowhere in my art works. Rather, they were of the sea, rocks, flora and fauna. It was self-discovery—a deeper look into who I am. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Who do we say…” →

All The Work

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SerenaA timely word from Brittney Cooper, Rutgers professor of women’s and gender studies, from her Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (2018):

Watching Serena play is like watching eloquent rage personified. Her shots are clear and expressive. Her wins are exultant. Her victories belong to all of us, even though she’s the one who does all the work …That’s kind of how it feels to be a Black woman. Like our victories belong to everyone, even though we do all the work.

The Cornerstone to the New Social Order

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

BindingWe continue our every-Sunday-celebration of the 30th anniversary of Binding The Strong Man, Ched Myers’ political reading of Mark’s Gospel. 

The story of the Syrophoenician woman bears certain affinities with its counterparts in the Jewish cycle. She, like the hemorrhaging woman, demonstrates inappropriately assertive female behavior that is vindicated. The parallel with the Jairus story goes beyond the common petition on behalf of ailing daughters at home. Both these episodes articulate feeding-symbolics that are carefully correlated to Jesus’ feedings of the masses in the wilderness. Jesus’ somewhat anticlimactic instructions in the aftermath of his dramatic raising of Jairus’s daughter were for those present to “give her something to eat” (Mk 5:43). In like fashion, Jesus instructs his disciples in the first feeding to “give the crowd something to eat” (Mk 6:37). Similarly, Jesus tell the gentile woman that “the children must first be satisfied” (Mk 7:27 chortastenai)–which satisfaction has indeed already been reported in Mk 6:42 (“they all ate and were satisfied,” ephagon pantes kai echortastesan)! This is how Mark prepares the way for the fulfillment of the Syrophoenician woman’s request–the feeding and satisfaction of the gentiles–which will indeed shortly take place (same verb, Mk 8:4,8). Continue reading “The Cornerstone to the New Social Order” →

Gentrification 101: A Practical Guide

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire1 Comment

SFFrom the introduction to the fabulous resource “How To Be A Less Shitty Gentrifier,” compiled specifically for the Bay Area, but applicable in just about every city in North America.

This document is for you if you are planning to be a new renter in the SF Bay Area and you have race and/or class privilege, or recently became one. This document is for you if you are moving by choice, and have the means to support yourself in the Bay. Maybe you are moving for a job, or for school. Maybe you’re escaping a hellish situation and you hope here will be less hellish. Maybe you grew up here, but you’re ready to live on your own. You know that there’s a housing crisis. You understand that your moving will exacerbate an already dire situation. This is not a “how to move to the bay” guide, but a “so you’re moving to the bay, nothing will stop you, here are some tips on how to be a less shitty gentrifier.”

I am a wealthy white person who moved to Berkeley by choice in 2014. This document is the sum total of what I’ve learned from people of color (queer women esp.), orgs like Causa Justa Just Cause, born and raised bay area folks, and the internet. Here you will find information on how the housing crisis came to be, and how to play your part to fight back against the rampant forces that are, and have been, killing or forcing out black, brown, and indigenous residents of Ohlone Land/ the San Francisco Bay Area since 1542.

For more click HERE.

 

Backpacking With Hope

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Ruby SalesBy Ruby Sales, Another Love Letter From The Front Porch, August 31, 2018)

Have you ever had to navigate the waters of systemic trauma of White supremacy and find ways to swim without drowning? How do we name the trauma that we endure from White supremacy without becoming the trauma that we endure? How do we speak the truth of our lives without being silenced or demonized by the tyranny of White denial? How do you stand tall as a European American without being pulled down by the seductive drug of Whiteness? Continue reading “Backpacking With Hope” →

Wild Lectionary: Today, Know This

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Identity, and History, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment
2674246387_1631a0e665_o
Photo credit: Kit Ng

16th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 18(23) B

Proverbs 22

By Robert O. Smith

Proverbs of the elders. Received wisdom. The common sense of the ages. Men speaking to men, warning of loose women. Disjointed aphorisms, speaking against the Other, made know to us today.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Today, Know This” →

One Broken Body is Enough

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

Sonny GravesFrom Rev. Sonny R. Graves, pastor at New Spirit UCC, who posted this on Facebook last week during a pilgrimage to the U.S./Mexico border with the Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans. Sonny draws from the writing of Mary Luti.

Early morning over here in Arizona. The sky is lighting behind the range of majestic blue outline of the mountains. The summer night is warm, deep, and dry just like this Californian loves it to be. The systemic racism and anti-immigrant violence of my country and government further revealed here is feeling beyond words right now. It is heartbreaking. And we have been reminded many times throughout the trip it is also our responsibility that if our privilege or ignorance or unknowing has been disturbed – it is up to us to change it together. Continue reading “One Broken Body is Enough” →

Attacking Their Ideological Foundations

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BindingWe continue our every-Sunday-celebration of the 30th anniversary of Binding The Strong Man, Ched Myers’ political reading of Mark’s Gospel. This week, the lectionary gifts us with an episode from Mark’s Gospel where Jesus deals with obstacles to an integrated community.

This episode resumes Mark’s polemic against the Pharisaic movement, begun in Mark 2:15, over the issue of the purity code as it defines the propriety of table fellowship…The issue at hand is maintenance of strict group boundaries, represented here by practices of ritual purity and dietary restriction. The Pharisees defend the purity code as fundamental to the ethnic and national identity of the people; Jesus repudiates these exclusivist definitions by attacking their ideological foundations… Continue reading “Attacking Their Ideological Foundations” →

The Humanity That is Being Caged Inside

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BorderThis week Rev. Traci Blackmon offered this prayer on the Mexico side of the U.S. border wall with a group of about 80 sojourning with the United Church of Christ’s Faithful Witness at the Border.

We come to this Border Patrol station, not as an enemy but as friend, because we are all connected by God. As you go about your jobs of border enforcement, as you go about guarding the border, I pray that you guard your hearts, so that you don’t lose touch with the humanity that is being caged inside; so you remember to treat those who are being detained with the same care and dignity that you would treat your own family. You must guard your souls, just as we must guard the soul of this nation.