By Bill Wylie-Kellermann
For Joanna and Eitan, August 25, 2010
When the half-moon hangs
faint in the mid-day sky
and earth already turns toward dusk
make a wedding
When the city, faint and far, cracks and cries
and blood forgotten runs beneath the streets
make a wedding
When earth and sea gasp for air
when the heat is on
and dread would rise
make a wedding Continue reading “Wedding Poem”
Another compelling post “From The Front Porch” of Ruby Sales, co-founder of The SpiritHouse Project:
During the Southern Freedom Movement we used the term freedom high to refer to participants who flitted from action to action without planting their feet in any community. Instead they sought the thrill of the moment. Therefore their work did not bear fruit.
Today freedom high seems to describe what I am observing as activists move from one action to the next without planting their work in community. Continue reading “Planting Their Work In Community”
Written by Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
with Erinn Fahey, Lucia & Daniel Wylie-Eggert
For the baptisms of Ira Cole and Cedar Martin
June 11, 2017
With the swallows in quick flight
The willows making music in the wind
The movement of the water at our feet
And a circle of people we love
We step into this river Continue reading “Into this River: For your baptisms Ira and Cedar from your parents”
On the Road to Golgotha
Proper 6 (11) B
4th Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 4:30-32
By Anne Ellis
The day was beautiful, the strangely liminal day that is Holy Saturday. Good Friday had come and gone and we awaited the Good News of the Empty Tomb. Knowing it would come made the day of waiting oddly anticipatory, there was an air of excitement and without realising it we instinctively moved towards joy. We don’t like to feel the pain and suffering of Good Friday any longer than we absolutely have too, so it’s easy to slip and forget that those alive and grieving on that first Holy Saturday so long ago had no idea how the story would continue. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Where the Mustard Seed Grows”
By Dee Dee Risher
For her 40th birthday, my friend, artist Michaelanne Harriman Helms asked a group of artist friends to spend a year reflecting on Psalm 90. We all did work—some of it visual art, some of it written. She asked me to write on the themes that came up for me, sparked by the psalm. For me, that became a three-part poem. But for our broad community at Radical Discipleship, I have adapted that poem into this psalm-prayer. I suggest reading Psalm 90, then this redaction of my poem.
To gain a heart of wisdom, I must
no longer
number my days:
release the clock that haunts
my small self,
lusting after illusions of influence
which will decay, scatter, leave no mark Continue reading “What Remains”
By Kate Foran
Dissent without civil disobedience is consent. Philip Berrigan
Our friend Mark sits in a jail cell again
and I stand in the lunch hour line
under fluorescent lights
at the post office with my toddler
to buy a stack of pre-stamped postcards,
the only kind acceptable to mail,
written only in blue or black ink,
no stickers, glue, glitter, or pictures,
no letters or packages. Continue reading “Kings Bay Plowshares- a poem”
Proper 5(10)B
1 Samuel 8:4-20, 11:14-15
Genesis 3:8-15
By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson
Then Joseph said to the people, “Now that I have this day bought you and your land for Pharaoh, here is seed for you; sow the land. And at the harvests you shall give one-fifth to Pharaoh, and four-fifths shall be your own, as seed for the field and as food for yourselves and your households, and as food for your little ones.” They said, “You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be slaves to Pharaoh.” (Gen 47.23-25) Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Imperial Logic and Creation”
By Dee Dee Risher
God, this day,
return me to ordinary time.
Small actions of love:
touching a beloved’s hand,
catching the eye of a stranger,
a pause to contemplate that single violet,
all blooming purple heart. Continue reading “Ordinary Time”
By Kate Foran
For my father at the start of the second Iraq War, 2003
You enlisted thinking
you were protecting something,
thinking maybe even
you were protecting me
when I was just a “twinkle in your eye”
and the crossfire lit the night
and missed you.
You did not know then
that you’d want to protect me
not from some enemy
but from the question,
Did you kill anyone, Dad? Continue reading “Veteran for Peace”
Proper 4(9)B
Second Sunday After Pentecost
By Victoria Loorz
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Psalm 139:6, 13-14
These are the words of a human in awe, trying to respond to an ecstatic encounter…with a reality much larger, an ineffable beauty… It is an open-hearted exclamation of joy, evidence of a moment of mystical glimpse into What Is that can only be expressed through poetry and singing and jumping up and down howling at the moon. These are the words of an ancient ancestor experiencing something from a totally different worldview, experience, culture, orientation than mine, and yet…and yet it deeply resonates. Buildings and jobs and culture and landscapes and governments have evolved and changed. But the embodied sensual ecstasy, the explosive awakening that happens when you are able to somehow have magical eyes that see, a heart that feels, a peek into what Jesus was talking about when he said “I’ve come to bring LIFE and not just life, but LIVES LIVED FULLY ALIVE life.” (John 10:10)…THAT never changes.
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