Lord of the harvest, Grain-sower, Bread-giver, Life-sustainer:
We are astounded by your bounteous love, filled to the brim
with good things. You give us enough, and then some!
Bread of Life, we love You. Though You were pounded down,
You rose up again, broken so all may be fed.
Breath of Heaven, Spirit of All-Things-New,
with You, we are carried through the fire and we rise up,
we rise up again! So we praise Your name, Holy Trinity of Love.
We continue our every-Sunday-celebration of the 30th anniversary of Binding The Strong Man, Ched Myers’ political reading of Mark’s Gospel. This portion is excerpted from the book’s “Aftermath” entitled On Continuing the Narrative of Biblical Radicalism.
The empty tomb at the end of Mark’s Gospel symbolizes that his story, like its subject Jesus, has not ended but lives on. Just as Mark reached back across the centuries to bring the “old story” of Hebrew prophetic radicalism to life again in a new story about Jesus of Nazareth, so does he reach forward across the ages to us, challenging us to continue the story by “returning to Galilee” (Mark 16:7). But how is it that an invitation to “reread” this story is politically subversive? Does not the circle of narrative actually lead the reader away from practice, shutting out the real world and seducing us with one that exists only in our imagination? This is certainly what those who dismiss the fictions of apocalyptic narrative as the wish-dreams of the alienated would have us believe. Continue reading “Our Script”
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 16 (21) B
Psalm 84:1-3
How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts!
My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God.
By Celina Medrano-Miller
As I write this, I sit on the earth, of the traditional and ancestral territory of the Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Musqueam Nations.
I was born on this unceded territory, under the name for the new city which was built, called Vancouver.
My parents both migrated here separately… Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Nature as Divine Dwelling Place”
An excerpt from Bayo Akomolafe’s These Wilds Beyond Our Fences (2017). Dr. Akomalafe is a self-proclaimed “walkout academic,” globally recognized for his poetic, unconventional, counterintuitive, and indigenous take on global crisis, civic action and social change.
The world does not careen toward progress, and human improvement and well-being are not matters owned by the practices of economic development and growth. There are songs that trees know that we haven’t heard; there are alliances that termites and the pheromones they secrete forge that we can learn from; there are wild things that do not know the moral discipline of purpose or the colonizing influence of instrumentality; and then there are murmurations—the waltz of wind, sky, starling, and ground—which are not meant to be spoken about but merely to be seen and appreciated. In short, there are other powers, other agencies, and other clocks. And, perhaps, we release ourselves not only to the performance of our many colors, but we free those in the posh parties that have somehow denied us entry from their secret fears of losing their own seats at the table, when we say, “there are other clocks, and we will not be on time.
God, did you see the news today?
We’re killing one another.
We’re killing in places killing has gone on so long we don’t know how to stop…
We’re killing next door.
We’re killing one another. Continue reading “God, did you see the news today?”
We continue our every-Sunday-celebration of the 30th anniversary of Binding The Strong Man, Ched Myers’ political reading of Mark’s Gospel.
…we should instead be about understanding how myth functions as political discourse–in antiquity and today.
Another term for symbolic discourse about social realities and conflicts is ideology.
…There is consensus among both Marxist and non-Marxist scholars that ideological discourse functions in one of two basic ways. It either legitimates or subverts the dominant social order: Berger calls these the “world maintenance” and “world shaking” functions. The legitimizing function seeks to lend plausibility to social reality, “giving normative dignity to its practical imperatives.”
…Ideology can also function to subvert the dominant order pursuing one of two general discursive strategies. The reformist strategy will usually argue its case from reference points within the dominant order, trying to give new meaning to established symbols. These appeals may be for purposes of retrogressive change, as for example in the New Right’s nostalgic call to return to the “traditions of the founding fathers of the USA.” Or the strategy may be progressive, in the sense that the system has yet to realize its own ideological commitments. An example would be Martin Luther King’s appeals to the Bill of Rights in order to attack racial segregation in the USA. Continue reading “Ideology”
Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Proper 15(20)B
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58
By the Reverend Doctor Victoria Marie
There is a disconnect between my Roman Catholic tradition’s interpretation of today’s gospel and an interpretation that would be more indicative of the inclusive holistic teachings of Jesus. I think the second reading from Ephesians gives us an insight to the gospel, including today’s passage. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Be Careful How You Live”
By Ric Hudgens
When it comes to apathy
it’s not the whether but the where,
not the if but the when,
not the can but the must.
It’s the antonym of focus,
the essence of overlooking,
purposefully not seeing
what demands recognition. Continue reading “The Opposite of Apathy”
By Nancy Sehested
Holy Light,
We stand somewhere in the shadows, in-between the battlefield of our struggles and the sanctuary of our souls.
Shed a little light on our way. Keep your lighted sanctuary within us portable, able to see clearly, to walk courageously, to withstand the forces that corrupt the truth of our belonging to your one world-wide family. Continue reading “Holy Light”
By Kim Redigan, a reflection on Exodus 16 for the St. Peter’s Episcopal community in Detroit
Today’s reading from Exodus is one to I turn to often. Not because it brings me comfort or consolation but because it so often mirrors my own spiritual condition. I am so like the disgruntled Israelites cursing Moses and Aaron for leading them away from the known, the familiar, the place of their oppression and into the desert where they would have to confront their own personal and communal demons. They are my people – I know them and their circuitous journey well.
For the past several months, I have been wandering in the desert of depression and grief related to some tough inner work that is part of my recovery. Although, I have been sober for 28 years, I reached a point last year where it was either grow or go. It was either stand up to the pharaohs of the past and say good riddance to Egypt or sit around a campfire ringed with barbed wire and eat to my heart’s content. All of us come to these turning points in our lives when we have to make the choice: Will it be bring on the Egyptian dessert or bring on the desert? Will we opt for fleshpots or what feels like famine? Oppression or liberation? Continue reading “Of Deserts, Drunks and Too Much Doing”
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Radical Discipleship 