Third Helpings

talitha3By 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


frogBy 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

20181109_110011In 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.”

Continue reading “Winter as Play and Delight” →

Questions for Christian America From Your Sibling in Christ

immigration
By Julia Jack-Scott

By Liza Neal

“Do you think they will believe me?”
He asked with desperation, scars visible and invisible.
How do I answer such a question?
“I don’t know.”

“Do you think they will separate me from my child?”
She asked clutching her sleeping 2 year old.
How do I answer such a question?
“I don’t know.” Continue reading “Questions for Christian America From Your Sibling in Christ” →

Wild Lectionary: Whose Power and What For?

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7th Sunday After Epiphany
Genesis 45:3-11, 15

By Rev. Miriam Spies

Some commentators read this passage as a moment of reconciliation and forgiveness between family…or a story of redistributing food and wealth based on need, but the misuse of power and thinking we know the mind of God has harmful effects for Joseph’s family and for generations of people to come.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Whose Power and What For?” →

Winter’s Coziness

candleIn 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 second reflection offered which also gives some writing prompts. May it be company in these longer winter days.

By Joyce Hollyday

Guided Imagery

Imagine yourself in a harsh winter landscape. Take note of what is present—and what is absent.

You trudge through deep snow in drifts piled high by a strong and biting wind. Your feet begin to ache. Your fingers go numb. The journey feels endless. Continue reading “Winter’s Coziness” →

Learning from Laughter and the Trees: The Child Come to Make Story Sacred Again

20190109_083129By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
January 13, 2019

He wouldn’t get in his car seat. He screamed and arched his back. I felt the exhaustion in my own back with the car filled with groceries. Do I sit down and wait it out? Do I offer him candy? (I didn’t have any) Do I physically force his small body into the seat?

Out of desperation, I said “If you get into your seat, I will tell you the story of what happened three years ago on the day you were born.” Continue reading “Learning from Laughter and the Trees: The Child Come to Make Story Sacred Again” →

No words

2017-10-22-10-42-55-1100x825By Kateri Boucher

 

What would the trees say, if we asked them now?
What have we done?
What shall we do?
The Climate Report said 12 years.
Now, even closer to 11.
How is a little body like mine supposed to hold news that big?
The wheels keep turning,
hurtling us all forward, or
backward.
Whatever direction —
unceasing.
And where will this little body be in 11 years?
Will I still be one of the ones who can continue pretending?
The trees outside don’t say a thing.
Or maybe they do,
but I never listen long enough
to hear them.

Wild Lectionary: Parched Shrub and Watered Tree

RDnetlogo76th Sunday after Epiphany C

Jeremiah 17:5-10
Psalm 1

By Laurel Dykstra

Psalm 1 and the verses from Jeremiah 17 are two of many passages where something valued or successful is compared to a tree by water.

For the preacher engaging with ecological themes, reading these two passages together suggests several overlapping subjects for exploration to “test the mind and search the heart.” Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Parched Shrub and Watered Tree” →