NEW from Bill Wylie-Kellermann and Cascade Books Celebrant’s Flame Daniel Berrigan in Memory and Reflection   After two years in federal prison for his part in an anti-war protest, Jesuit priest Dan Berrigan agreed to teach a seminary class in the fall of 1972.   That’s where Bill Wylie-Kellermann, then a young ministry student at Union Theological Seminary, met Berrigan and where the story of Celebrant’s Flame, Kellermann’s new title from Cascade Books, begins.   Pre-Order Special Offer: For a limited time — now through May 1 — Celebrant’s Flame: Daniel Berrigan in Memory and Reflection is available for a 40% discount when you purchase with a coupon code. Learn more and request the coupon here.   Through a series of essays and personal letters, Wylie-Kellermann explores the many identities of his teacher and friend, Dan Berrigan — from fugitive priest to prisoner-poet to confessor to evangelist of nonviolence to chaplain with the dying.   Celebrant’s Flame is a fond reflection on Wylie-Kellermann’s lifelong friendship with Berrigan and a fascinating, accessible retelling of Berrigan’s life and impact on the church and the world.   Well-researched (including a four-page bibliography), the book covers Berrigan’s journey from young seminarian during World War II, his participation in the civil rights movement, his opposition (and eventual arrest and imprisonment) to the war in Vietnam, his anti-nuclear activism, his life as a poet and scholar, and, at the end of his life, his ministry as a chaplain to New York City’s dying AIDs patients.   In Celebrant’s Flame, Wylie-Kellermann shares reflections and personal letters from his own collection and from other friends of Berrigan. Included in this 174-page tribute are:   – Reflections from author and scholar Eric Martin on the decades-long correspondence that Dan kept with his brother, Philip, and Dan’s insatiable hunger for learning – A personal letter from Dan’s fellow inmate, John Bach, about the Great Books class Dan and Phil led at Danbury prison and the resulting hunger strike and underground newspaper – Peace activist Kathy Kelly’s memories of hearing from other activists – as far away as in the deserts of Iraq – about how profoundly they had been influenced by Berrigan’s message and example – Jim Reale’s recounting of how Berrigan’s deep commitment to friendship transformed Reale’s own life and vocation from day laborer to Plowshares activist to hospice nurse. Plus Wylie-Kellermann’s reflections on his time as Dan’s student, in contemplation and conversation about death and dying, as co-conspirator in activism and ministry, and their connected lives of faith and justice-seeking   Celebrant’s Flame is an inviting read for anyone familiar with Berrigan’s ministry or for those just learning about this remarkable priest, poet, and prophet for the first time. Written with Berrigan’s upcoming 100th birthday (May 9) in mind, these reflections help keep the flame of this beloved celebrant burning for a new movement generation arising among us. (This book is just one of several centennial celebrations: DePaul University’s inauguration of the Berrigan-McAlister Award for Christian nonviolence, and film director Susan Hagedorn’s premier of Berrigans: Devout and Dangerous.)   What people are saying about Celebrant’s Flame:   “Here we have one of the best Christian writers of our time reflecting on one of the best Christians of our time, or any time. Bill has a rare, gentle thoughtfulness and insight that helps us unpack the profound word and witness of Daniel Berrigan. I hope this book inspires many to study Dan’s life and writings anew and to deepen our own witness to peace and nonviolence, that we might become, like Daniel Berrigan, disciples, apostles, and prophets of the nonviolent Jesus to our broken world.” — John Dear, editor of Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings “In these relentlessly compelling pages, Dan Berrigan keeps coming at us. We get Dan’s wisdom, courage, passion, honesty, good humor, faith, joy, and eloquent gracefulness. And besides all of that, we get the imagery and testimony of his wide circle of friends who shared his passionate vocation of justice. We get all of this because of the generous gifts of Bill Wylie-Kellermann, gifts of poetic cadence, good memory, strong imagination, a close friendship with Dan, and a passion for justice not unlike that of Berrigan himself. This deeply moving book consists of poems, memories, sermons, speeches, and testimonies that will keep Dan’s singular legacy alive for time to come. The book is a welcome gift to us. It is indeed compelling in ways that will both unnerve and give nerve to an attentive reader.” — Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary “Beneath all the lives of the saints there lives the mycelium of friendship. In Celebrant’s Flame, Wylie-Kellermann orates Daniel Berrigan’s sacred story. Yes, as Catholic priest, social prophet, and liturgical poet, but first and foremost as friend. Wylie-Kellermann’s intimate and wry turn of phrase allows their holy friendship to again do its alchemical work: transforming readers of the Word into its creative witnesses.” — Rose Marie Berger, senior editor at Sojourners and author of Bending the Arch: Poems Learn more and get 40% off your copy!

By Ruby Sales, First printed in Geez 59: Powers and Principalities

As a people and as a nation, we are experiencing a deep troubling in the land wrought by the enduring and dehumanizing practice and spiritual malformation of racism. It is a troubling that requires each of us to name and face the lies that we tell about ourselves and others. A country that dines on lies will ultimately choke to death on them.d

To this point, Vincent Harding, a scout and interpreter of our struggle, offered this explanation that explains the heart of the matter. He said, “Race is like a bone stuck in our throat, refusing both digestion and expulsion, endangering our life. […] It is the unmistakable need and desire of our nation to deal with its terrifying and compelling history, to exorcise the demons of our racial past and present, perhaps even to discover the healing possibilities that reside in our many-hued and wounded variations on the human theme.”

Continue reading “The Bone Lodged in Our Throats” →

Dear friends,

I am waking up this morning on the birthday of a project I’ve been laboring and loving into being for several years. Today The Sandbox Revolution: Raising Kids for a Just World takes some baby steps out into the world looking for homes where it can me nurtured, challenged, and grow deeper.

This book was dreamed up in the middle of long nights as I sat rocking and nursing my beautiful babies. I was exhausted and lonely. And I was terrified about the future these children would be walking into. I had so many questions and a deep hunger for community. I wanted to gather a circle of beloveds who were not afraid to tenderly hold, engage, and live into the questions. What does it mean to be human and how do we invite children into this messy, beautiful work?

Continue reading “The Sandbox Revolution: Raising Kids for Just World” →

By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

I long, I pray,
for the days when we step away from these screens
and find ourselves embodied in the great company of humans again.

I long, I pray,
for my senses to be entwined in another
in friend, in stranger, in community.
To feel and smell the breath of another in a casual hug
to taste food cooked by someone else’s loving hands
or pass a potluck dish around the circle

Continue reading “The Great Company of Humans” →

From Rev. Lynice Pinkard, in a sermon on the Mary and Martha story in the Gospels (July 21, 2019)

I hear Jesus saying, “Listen, my loves. Inside of you lives Something that the society that seeks to control you can never know or reach. This Something is an inchoate, largely incoherent, and irrepressible energy which has the power to demolish empires. Every state, without exception, co-opts, corrupts and seeks to destroy all those capable of saying, ‘no.’ All those determined to refuse. But no state has been able to foresee or prevent the day  when their most ruined and abject accomplices…will growl, ‘No. This far and no further.’”

What the times demand—these times—and in an unprecedented fashion, is that one be, not seem, outrageous, independent, anarchical, feral, buck wild. That one be thoroughly disciplined. Steeped in readiness to resist, at whatever cost…This world no longer needs explaining or critiquing or denouncing. We live enveloped in a fog of commentaries on commentaries, of critiques of critiques, of revelations that don’t trigger anything other than revelations about the revelations. We are in a time of unparalleled talking, and I might add, that the only reason to talk now at all is to learn to speak treason fluently.

By Kateri Boucher. First printed in Geez 59: Powers and Principalities

“We might not see the dragon’s teeth
but have surely become its belly.”
– Bill Wylie-Kellermann

Will you join me in this imagining?

We find ourselves together in the belly of a beast. From certain angles – with teeth not in view – it may not look so beast-like. But, like it or not, all of us are caught in its grip.

Continue reading “Dispatch from the Dragon’s Belly” →