Let Justice Roll Like Rivers: A Court Statement

IMG_5916
photo by Kimiko Karpoff

By Céline Chuang

June 12, 2018

My Lord, I thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I want to acknowledge that this courtroom, this city, and all of us stand on traditional, ancestral and unceded territory, that of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh, stewards of this land since time immemorial. I am here today as I was on the day I was arrested for participating, like others, in nonviolent civil disobedience – standing in solidarity with Indigenous people, here on these territories, and across Turtle Island. I mean no disrespect to the court in my actions. I simply wish to live in a way that honours those whose voices, stories, and wisdom predate the court system on these lands, and whose rights remain unrecognized. I hope that one day we will not only adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in theory, but put each of its articles into practice as a starting point for true reconciliation. Continue reading “Let Justice Roll Like Rivers: A Court Statement” →

Abolition Spell (summer solstice)

015D4709-872B-4C04-8011-54999221350C-300x300.jpegBy adrienne maree brown. Re-shared from her blog.

the other small thing i can offer is an abolition spell, for siwatu, for the babies at the border, for their families, for all political prisoners, for all nonviolent offenders, for all those who have caused harm and are not being helped to find a different way.

all that is light
break bars between teeth
grind bricks down to dust
explode a sunscale life force
in each direction
until the cages shed like dead skin Continue reading “Abolition Spell (summer solstice)” →

Why is Grandpa in Jail?

33116241_10214353738810852_6880318968586829824_oBy Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

I wrote this as a children’s book for Isaac during the Poor People’s Campaign. He was very concerned about why Grandpa kept going to jail when we were also teaching about how we dont believe in jails and prisons. So, I wrote this to try to explain it to him. We printed it out and he and Cedar and Ira and their friend helped illustrate it as a birthday gift to my dad.

Why is Grandpa in jail?
We don’t like jails. We think they shouldn’t exist.

If people make bad choices, there are better ways to help them be better.
Talking.
Caring.
Paying attention to what they need.
Teaching.
Loving.

Locking people up for years of their life only….
Takes them away from their families.
Makes people feel lonely.
Takes them away from the sun and the trees.

It is a broken, sad system.

So, why is Grandpa in jail? Continue reading “Why is Grandpa in Jail?” →

Wedding Poem

crescent_moonBy 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” →

Planting Their Work In Community

Ruby SalesAnother 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” →

Into this River: For your baptisms Ira and Cedar from your parents

baptismWritten 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” →

Wild Lectionary: Where the Mustard Seed Grows

IMG_2066.JPGOn 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” →

What Remains

psalmBy 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” →

Kings Bay Plowshares- a poem

cards.jpgBy 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” →