Category: Uncategorized

Vine and Fig Tree seeking new members

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Vine and Fig Tree is an intentional Christian community in the  Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia (http://vineandfigtree.wixsite.com/vineandfigtree).  We currently have five households, but one of our units will be opening in the coming months.  We are looking for persons who would be interested in exploring community with us.  Our core commitments are:  support of each other in our lives and vocations; common prayer; living simply and caring for creation; resisting the dominant culture, including our own addictions to militarism, racism, and other “isms”; providing hospitality for persons in need or transition; and fostering a spirit of celebration and creativity.   Our community life includes a weekly meal together, regular optional prayer, bi-weekly house meetings, shared chores and gardening, monthly work days.  The available unit has 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom, and would be ideal for two persons or a couple with a small child.

 

If you are interested, contact Will O’Brien at willobrien59@gmail.com.

Wild Lectionary: Invitation to Humility – Invite Grasses

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Children learning about biodiversity and native plants at New Life Lutheran’s summer gardening camp. Photo by Greg McCord

Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost,
Proper 17 (22)

Luke 14:1, 7-14
By Carmen Retzlaff

14:11 For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
—
14:13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.
14:14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

In Central Texas, one of the signs that a local naturalist has slipped over the edge, into the rocky and nerdy social territory,  is when they fall in love with native grasses. First they will just marvel at the indigenous bunch grasses. They’ll recognize a healthy grassland, where these compact plants take just the compact space they need, and allow for biodiversity, as opposed to invasive grasses, which blanket the earth and keep other things from growing. The grass-enamored naturalist will smile when they see patches of side oats grama or bushy bluestem, knowing how deep the roots extend into the clay and limestone, pulling precious rainwater into acquifers. They’ll be mesmerized by the sight of swaths of purple-tinged seep muhly. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Invitation to Humility – Invite Grasses” →

Salted the Nile with her Tears

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By Kelley Nikondeha, o

Salted_the_Nile_with_Her_Tears_800_533_90
: “Striated Heron,” Nile River, Luxor, Egypt, Becky Matsubara CC, flickr.com/beckymatsubara.

riginally printed in Geez magazine on Mothering.

A cry broke the early morning silence and interrupted the royal daughter’s bath.

Already knee-deep in the river, she knew instantly that it was a Hebrew baby. On the opposite shore a mother, exhausted from the crossing, dragged her wet body out of the river and collapsed – arms now empty.

As an adopted child, I grew up mesmerized by Moses with only a cursory interest in his mothers. Sunday school lessons didn’t help, offering a sentimentalized characterization of these women – the one who let go and the other who saved the boy through adoption. But as I grew, so did my understanding of the mothers. I learned their story existed against a socio-political backdrop complete with hard edges and harder choices. Continue reading “Salted the Nile with her Tears” →

Wild Lectionary: Agency, Age, and Attentiveness to Power

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Photo from Salal and Cedar

Proper 16 C
Jeremiah 1:4-10

By Rachael Bullock

The word of the Lord came to me, saying,
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
“Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.” Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Agency, Age, and Attentiveness to Power” →

The Clothier’s work

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By Keith DavenportBy Ken Sehested,

We are free to act boldly because we are safe.
We are safe because we are at rest.
We are at rest because we have been forgiven.
We are forgiven because we have come to know that the Spirit meets us in our weakness, not our strength.
And in the strength of our weakness we find our security; fear’s fierce grip loosens,
freeing us to act boldly.
Such is the journey, ever onward.
By the Clothier’s hand are we fitted with garments apropos for the Fiesta to come!
So rise up, you pilgrims, whether hale and hearty or flustered and weary.
Be clothed with the sun and with power from on high, robed in righteousness,
shod in the Gospel of Peace.
Round up your rowdy friends,
but especially the lame and all with no claim on the Bountiful Table.
The Banquet beckons.
Your Host awaits.

inspired by Rev 12:1; Luke 14:13, 24:49; Ps 139:2, Eph 6:15

Wild Lectionary: Prophets False and True

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20190810_123639-Turtle-Valley02Proper 15(20) C

Jeremiah 23:23-29
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Luke 12:49-56

By Rev. Dr. Victoria Marie

Recently, I had the honour of participating as the resident elder in the Sacred Earth Camp for youth, a project of Salal + Cedar Watershed Discipleship Community. The lectionary readings, in light of the Camp experience, motivated me to revisit and reflect on certain current truths and issues of concern. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Prophets False and True” →

Indigenous Resistance Lifts the Veil of Colonial Amnesia

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Robert Spence and Lionel Flett fishing on Split Lake. Credit: Matthew Sawatzky

By Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. This article first appeared in Geez magazine’s winter 2014 issue, Geez 36: The End.

It’s always been interesting to me when settlers talk about apocalypse. It reveals a kind of privilege and naïveté that is indicative of how complete the destruction of Indigenous peoples and our nations is in the mindset of most Canadians and Americans.

It seems strange to me that ideas of invasion, attack, occupation, and dispossession are recent fodder for television series such as The Walking Dead. This fictional reality is so strikingly close to the colonial legacy I was born into, at least in concept, it is sometimes difficult to see it as entertainment. Continue reading “Indigenous Resistance Lifts the Veil of Colonial Amnesia” →

Sermon: Let Go of the Branch

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indexBy Kateri Boucher at Day House Catholic Worker August 11, 2019

Luke 12: 32-4
Hebrews 11: 1-2, 8-19
Wisdom 18: 6-9

Some of you may have heard the story about the man who was being chased by a tiger and falls off a cliff. Luckily he catches a branch and is hanging there from it, trying to figure out what to do. In desperation he cries out, “If there’s a God up there, I’ll do anything if you’ll save me!” Suddenly a voice booms down from the heavens, “This is God and I want to save you! All you have to do is let go of the branch!” There’s a long pause as the man thinks that over, then he finally turns back up and says “Is there anyone ELSE up there?”

Continue reading “Sermon: Let Go of the Branch” →

Wild Lectionary: “I do not delight in the blood of bulls!”- God’s Invitation to Participate in Prophetic, Poetic Proclamation

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flock of geeseBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

Proper 14 (9) C

Solomon offered as sacrifices of well-being to the LORD twenty-two thousand oxen and one hundred twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the people of Israel dedicated the house of the LORD.
—1 Kings 8.63

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me.
—Isaiah 1.11-13

I will not accept a bull from your house, or goats from your folds.
For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine.
“If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?”
—Psalm 50.9-13

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: “I do not delight in the blood of bulls!”- God’s Invitation to Participate in Prophetic, Poetic Proclamation” →