Category: Uncategorized
Offer vulnerable words to one another: A Book Review
A review of The Soulmaking Room by Dee Dee Risher
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
When Dee Dee Risher’s book first came out in April 2016, I quickly posted an interview with her on RadicalDiscipleship.net to promote the book. I was already thirty pages in and in my short introduction, I swore that while reading books had fallen out of my life due to sleepless toddler nights, I would finish this book! Continue reading “Offer vulnerable words to one another: A Book Review”
Wild Lectionary: The Boy with Epilepsy- Listening Again
Lent 2C
Luke 9:28-43
By Lucy Price
Matthew, Mark and Luke all contain seizures and demons in the same sentence and some even translate the word to epilepsy. Lunatic and moonstruck are closer to the original translation, but in any case growing up in the church as a person living with epilepsy, hearing the story of the boy brought to Jesus for healing left me with a knot in my stomach and a lump in my throat. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: The Boy with Epilepsy- Listening Again”
What I’ll Tell You- To My Daughter (in the far future)
By Sarah Brooks
This year they told us “12 good years”.
Will I bring you into this world with that written out before me?
Dwelling on that is new- I don’t have the answer yet.
Part of me mourns the time when the only thing between us were the years I needed,
And the other copes by listing out your name.
So, for now I’ll say,
if this world does end up powering you into existence, Continue reading “What I’ll Tell You- To My Daughter (in the far future)”
Bending the Arch: An Interview with Rose M Berger
Once a young woman asked Rose Berger, out of the blue, to baptize her. I watched as right then and there, Rose summoned sacramental power and beauty pouring water and speaking holy poetry. So, when Rose publishes a book of poetry, I pay attention and call upon all of you to heed her cry. -Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
Bending the Arch, By Rose Marie Berger
RD: It is a heavily annotated poem, can you talk about the relationship between the poetry and the history and information in the back?
RMB: It’s a good question. I just finished reading Micheal O’Siadhail’s The Five Quintets, a 350-page poem examining the Modern era with no endnotes or explanations. It’s a stunning, ground-breaking work. But it requires a lot of work by the reader. Bending the Arch requires a lot from the reader also, but I wanted to lower the bar a little. Make it a little easier and more accessible. There are themes in Bending the Arch that I want readers to explore more on their own. My hope is that the endnotes will encourage readers to dig into the suppressed historical narratives in their own families and regions. Continue reading “Bending the Arch: An Interview with Rose M Berger”
Wild Lectionary: Roots and Stories
Lent 1
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13
By Rev. Dr. Victoria Marie
As I reflected on today’s readings, the theme they seemed to weave together is to begin Lent by reviewing our stories. With the First Reading, in which the writers of Deuteronomy are giving the reader a sort of Last Will and Testament of Moses, God’s people are reminded of their history and God’s presence in it. They are told to recount that history in ritual and celebration. We are also being reminded to reflect on our personal intergenerational stories. Who were our ancestors? How was God with them as they journeyed? How do their stories impact your story? How has God’s presence in all of our stories led us to where we are today: physically, socially, emotionally and spiritually? The First Reading reminds us to ponder these questions as we reflect on our stories. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Roots and Stories”
Third Helpings
By Talitha Fraser
We live in times where the focus is on those things that divide rather than connect us but as Chappo (Peter Chapman) says “You should share communion together, it has a unique power to unite beyond words.”
Sometimes community is a few households sharing life together. This brownie recipe feels symbolic of that as the plate I regularly bring to share at special occasions – birthdays, Christmas, dedications… When I was interning with Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries (BCM) in 2012, my community back in Melbourne sent me their smiling, summer faces into my crisply cold California day so that I might feel ‘at the table’. I made brownies for the Institute that year and we started up an Institute cookbook and I like to think they’re still being made. Taking our recipes with us means we can feel at home wherever we are and share that hospitality with others. Rather than one community here and another there… there’s just one big community. Please join us. Make brownies. Continue reading “Third Helpings”
Out of the Depths I Call
By Nancy Bowker
Kathy Eliot and I were fellow contemplatives at St. Luke’s Cathedral for 20 years. We got together a few months before her death. We agreed I would sing for her while she was alive, rather than waiting for her funeral.
In the dimming light of this vastly silent sacred space she leafed through sheaves of 50 year old hand written Psalms. She was a woman of humble, quiet and private faithfulness.
But one can sense the empowering Spirit behind every word. She would then hand the beloved penciled psalm to me. I sang the whole song in one take, but later edited an interspersed call and response.
This track was later played at her funeral, and given to her friends.
Wild Lectionary: Fully Human, Fully Divine, Fully Trans
By Mary Ann Saunders
Exodus 34:29-35
Luke 9:28-43a
For me, as a trans woman, the Transfiguration feels deeply personal.
It’s not just that the word transfiguration simply means “a change of form”—which is something I know quite a bit about—nor is it simply that my experience and Jesus’ experience are consistent with the natural world. Creation, after all, is full of transfigurations: tadpoles become frogs, seeds become plants, some fish species change sex, caterpillars become butterflies (this last itself being a popular metaphor for gender transitions). We now even know that genetic information—supposedly immutable—can change over the course of our lives.
Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Fully Human, Fully Divine, Fully Trans ”
Winter as Play and Delight
In January, over twenty women gathered for a Word and World weekend of rest and writing using winter as their guide and teacher. This is the last reflection offered which also gives some writing prompts. May it be company in these longer winter days.
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
As we begin this final morning together, I am holding all that we have carried and shared with one another. I am so grateful.
These words come to mind from Arundhati Roy who is an Indian author and activist.
“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
Radical Discipleship 