By After forty days of desert walking
out of the clean baptism waters
of the Jordan, still he
remembered how it was:
to float, to be pushed into the cool deep blue,
to come out caressed
by the words:
Beloved. Blessed. Continue reading “To Be Called Blessed”
Category: Theological Animation
Wild Lectionary: Thoughts from a reluctant farmer
Lent 3B
Exodus 20:1-17
John 2:13-22
By Svinda Heinrichs
I recently moved from southern Ontario near Toronto to a north-ish rural community near Bancroft, Ontario – north-ish because we are really at the southern end of the north. My partner and I live most of the time in the manse in town, where she is the minister, and the rest of the time in the cabin on a 64-acre piece of mostly forested Land which has been deemed “marginal agriculture” by those who are supposed to know these things. I left my congregational ministry position to move here to live and labour on the Land and in this community. It has never been my dream to be a farmer, but I keep reminding myself that the Spirit moves in mysterious ways and that I may just bloom where I am planted. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Thoughts from a reluctant farmer”
Only she can tell her story
This piece was developed during the second Bartimaeus Institute Online (BIO) Study Cohort 2016-2017. These pieces will eventually be published in a Women’s Breviary collection. For more information regarding the BIO Study Cohort go here.
Hos. 1:2-3 When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD.” 3 So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
Hos. 3:1-3 And the LORD said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” 2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley. 3 And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.”
Call for Content: 2 More Days!
From Joanna Shenk, the author of the newly released The Movement Makes Us Human and the co-curator of Jesus Radicals:
In a time when the inhumanity of racism and greed are publicly normalized by the powerful, Jesus Radicals want to share stories of resistance, love, and transformation. The Movement Makes Us Human, the title of a newly released book on the life and thought of social movement veteran Dr. Vincent Harding authored by co-organizer Joanna Shenk, is also the theme of the first issue of the Jesus Radicals’ online journal, Rock! Paper! Scissors! Tools for anarchist + Christian thought .
We believe that involvement in movements for justice — like #metoo and Black Lives Matter and the resistance at Camp Makwa — invites us to embody our deepest humanity. This way of being human connects us across lines of difference and normalizes solidarity in the face of alienation and hate. Continue reading “Call for Content: 2 More Days!”
A Prayer for Migrants
By Katerina Friesen. Reposted from Watershed Discipleship blog.
Christ our Resurrection and Life,
We call to your presence
los desplazados, los desconocidos.
We call to your presence those lost in the desert,
those killed in the name of border security.
Rescue the perishing, strengthen the faltering,
and guide those finding their way tonight. Continue reading “A Prayer for Migrants”
Wild Lectionary: God’s Gonna Trouble the Waters
Lent 1B
Genesis 9:8-15
Mark 1:9-15
Water flows through our ancient Judeo-Christian texts. Righteousness pours down like a mighty stream (Amos 5:24), and Jesus offers relief to those who thirst (John 4:13–15). Before whales or eagles or humans did, God dwelt among the waters (Gen 1). The creation of heaven and earth commenced through a parting of the seas. Rains fell, destroying all creatures except those aboard an ark, awaiting a rainbow covenant that promised an end to the waters of judgment (Gen 9:11–17). The Israelites flee from their oppressors to freedom through the miracle of a parting sea that offered safe passage from empire into the wilderness (Exod 14). In the Gospels, Jesus was baptized into the wildness of the river Jordan (Mark 1:9f), became living water at the well (John 4), and shed tears over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41). From the beginning, water has offered a call to discipleship. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: God’s Gonna Trouble the Waters”
Sermon: Prophet Will Rise Up
By Michael Boucher
Spiritus Christi, January 28, 2018
The year was 1968. Almost five hundred women from the feminist and civil rights movements had gathered outside of Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey to protest the Miss America pageant. The organizers of the protest were opposed to the objectification and mistreatment of women and saw the Miss America pageant as an embodiment of so much that was wrong in our culture. But they also saw the pageant being linked to other major social ills like racism (no woman of color had been allowed to participate), war (the Miss America winner would go ‘visit the troops’ in Vietnam) and materialism (because of all of the products that women were encouraged to buy to be ‘beautiful’). So they literally crowned a live sheep Miss America to represent how women were being treated like livestock, threw objects of female oppression – like girdles, curlers and tweezers – into trash cans (no bras were burned, for the record, but women got blamed for it anyway!), they sang songs, and even secretly made their way into the actual Miss America pageant and unfurled a banner from the balcony that read “Freedom for Women”. Their actions caused quite a stir to say the least. Continue reading “Sermon: Prophet Will Rise Up”
Holding and Looking
The sea holds our sin.
As levels rise,
as ice melts,
as whales and birds wash up on shores
dead from the plastic and metal in their bellies,
as people wash up on shore
dead from desire for safety,
and our refusal to give shelter.
The sea holds our sin. Continue reading “Holding and Looking”
Wild Lectionary: Transfiguration
Transfiguration B
Mark 9:2-9
By Sue Ferguson Johnson and Wes Howard-Brook
“Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves.” (Mk 9.2)
It has been a long, wet, grey, dark winter so far here in the Issaquah Creek watershed. While we have been spared the intense cold and massive snowfalls visited upon our sisters and brothers to the east, the relentless “parade of storms” from the Pacific Ocean (as local weatherfolk like to call it) can wear away at even the most committed pluviophile. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Transfiguration”
No Additional Comments
By Tommy Airey
Lansing, Michigan
Decades ago, Alice Walker suggested that the White House should be run by twelve grandmothers. I spent my Wednesday at the state capital bearing witness to the obvious brilliance of her proposal.
It was almost two years since my first visit to Lansing, days after the Flint water poisoning scandal broke out like an upper respiratory infection. The brutal part: both viruses still linger.
Back then, business brought my friend Mike to Michigan. But his heart and his camera prodded him all the way to Capitol with me to brave a single-digit-wind-chilled protest during the Governor’s annual State of the State address. A year later, the state’s Civil Rights Commission issued a scathing 135-page report naming “systemic racism” as a major factor in Flint’s water contamination. Redlining, white flight to the suburbs, intergenerational poverty and “implicit bias” were all chronicled as contributing to the unnatural disaster. Fifty years after the Kerner Commission report, history came full circle. Continue reading “No Additional Comments”
Radical Discipleship 