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Wild Lectionary: Wild God, Wild Beauty

DSC01830.JPGProper 24 (29)B
22nd Sunday after Pentecost
Job 38:1-7, 34-41

By Wendy Janzen

The the first reading and Psalm for this Sunday are both creation texts – passages that describe God’s amazing work in creating the cosmos. The text from Jobs is part of the longest passage in the bible about more-than-human creation (Job 38-42). It is written in exquisitely beautiful poetry, and it is God’s rhetorical answer to Job’s probing questions about God’s justice – why bad things happen to good people. Continue reading →

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Homoluminous

Website_coverQuick afternoon note from Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

I started some early Christmas shopping a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to share it with all of you. Molly Costello is a fellow graduate of Loyola University Chicago and an incredible artist. She has just released a calendar for 2019. Her art tugs at my heart, gives rest to my soul, speaks to the truth, and summons my hope. I think this calendar is stunning and I encourage you all to enter into the calling she invites of us all for 2019.

Here is her description of the calendar:

Existing within the growing depths of white supremacy, late stage capitalism and climate chaos we are faced with questions around how to reimagine our world beyond the seemingly insurmountable weight of these systems. HOMOLUMINOUS explores the ways we are emerging into a new type of human community, one that is glowing, connected, and more equipped than ever to achieve collective liberation. By practicing empathy, gratitude and grief rituals, growing food and honoring the power of our imagination, we come to realize that we are the resilient body that our ancestors dreamed up to heal this world. We are the living light. We are HOMOLUMINOUS.

Check it out here.

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Meeting the Sacred in Our Daily Lives

IMG_9157By Marcia Lee

Every month, I host a gathering at Taproot Sanctuary, an intentional community of mostly people of color working on living in right relationship with the earth and our neighbors.  These gatherings are Circles of Trust.  They are in the lineage of the work of Parker Palmer through my work as a facilitator with the Center for Courage and Renewal.  The purpose of these gatherings, or mini-retreats, is to create a space for us to listen to our inner voices and to support each other in following the calling of our own souls.  We do this type of deep listening best when we are in spaces where we can trust that our words and actions are not repeated and that the people in the community with us are listening to us not for their own benefits, but to just be a witness and support of us.  We use what we call third things to accompany us.  The third thing might be a poem, song, or something in nature.  These third things allow us to focus in on the issue at hand in a more gentle and circular manner. Continue reading →

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Wild Lectionary: Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees!

shaggy manes

shaggy manes

Proper 23(28) B
21st Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 10:17-31

By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

This week’s Gospel from Mark is a familiar one, in which a rich man comes to Jesus seeking the path to inheriting “eternal life.” As Ched Myers noted three decades ago now (!), the key to the story is the “ringer” command Jesus adds to the familiar ones from Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 6: “You shall not defraud [Gk, apostereō].” Continue reading →

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Blessed are you…

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New Hampshire Public Radio

By Rev. Anna Blaedel
(re-shared from Facebook circulation)

blessed are you who are raging.
blessed are you who are mourning.
blessed are you who feel numb.
blessed are you who feel sick. and tired. and sick and tired.
blessed are you who refuse to turn away.
blessed are you who need to turn away.
blessed are you who keep breathing deep.
blessed are you who are tending to your own needs.
blessed are you who are tending to the needs of another.
blessed are you who have been calling.
blessed are you who have been organizing.
blessed are you who have been testifying.
blessed are you who have been hearing.
blessed are you who have been resisting.
blessed are you who feel broken open beyond repair.
blessed are you who are raw beyond words.
blessed are you who are working hotlines and crisis care centers and bearing witness to the forces of violence and trauma unleashed and unloosed.
blessed are you who are marching.
blessed are you who are weeping.
blessed are you who preach and know that divinity resides in despised, abused, violated flesh.
blessed are you who know deep in your bones that you are good. and beautiful. and beloved. and sacred. and worthy. and believed. and held. and capable of healing beyond your
wildest imagination.
blessed are you who remind others they are good. and beautiful. and beloved. and sacred. and worthy. and believed. and held. and capable of healing beyond their wildest imagination.
blessed are we when we dare to dream of a world without sexual violence, without white supremacy, without misogyny, without police brutality, without anti-trans and
anti-queer violence.
blessed are we when we stay tender.
blessed are we when we stay fierce.
blessed are we when we dare to imagine repair, and transformation.
blessed are we when we labor together to make it so.

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A Reflection on Mary Oliver

mary oliverThis piece was developed during the third Bartimaeus Institute Online (BIO) Study Cohort 2017-2018.  These pieces will eventually be published in a Women’s Breviary collection.  For more information regarding the BIO Study Cohort go here.  

By Kristen Snow

Mary Oliver spends her life offering her view of the world as a gift to anyone, and everyone. She has lived a poor and simple life, not seeing the interest in wealth or possessions, but finding her sustenance in the fruits of the ocean and the earth. Her spirituality and belief in the Creator is deep and wide. She is not framed in the specificities of theology or religion, choosing to see the reality of God in the natural world and through the words of Rumi, a similarly gifted seer. Her poems have reached millions. Continue reading →

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God, we confess…

By Katerina Friesen

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Photo by Tim Nafziger

God, we confess our human struggles before You:

our deflated dreams after years of trying so hard, our uphill battles
against despair. You see and know us, inside and out.
Our cravings for control when chaos surrounds, our burnt-out
quests for justice, our disillusionment with less-than-perfect community.
God, we need a breakthrough of Your Spirit.
We need some juice for the long-haul! Zest us with hope,
and renew us with Your Living Word today. Amen.