Wild Lectionary: The Secret Place

Los_Angeles_River_Bridge_B&WProper 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.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: The Secret Place”

Sermon: In the water we are whole

31506830_10156277998501963_6189790451906641920_n
Photo credit: Kimiko Karpoff

Acts 10:44-48,
John 15:9-17

By Reverend Clare Morgan
Preached to the beloved faithful at St. Margaret’s Cedar Cottage, Vancouver

Most of you know that last weekend I attended the People of Faith and Friends against Kinder Morgan event on Burnaby Mountain to participate in a nonviolent blockade of the gate onto the work site. It was a truly inspiring act of political resistance that made me proud to be a Christian, especially an Anglican Christian, in the Pacific Northwest at this watershed moment in human history. Continue reading “Sermon: In the water we are whole”

Wild Lectionary: Trinitarian Mindset and Reconciliation

11038279_836774779743215_3040656587224532832_o
Chalice, patten and replica Two-Row Wampum

Trinity Sunday (Year B)

Romans 8:14-17
Gospel: John 3:1-17

By Victoria Marie

Today is Trinity Sunday. Today’s scripture readings provide an opportunity to reclaim or reinterpret these texts using the Holy Trinity as the template for all relationships. And so, today is an opportunity to reflect on the past with an eye on reconciliation between First Peoples and settler peoples of Canada. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Trinitarian Mindset and Reconciliation”

Murder on Shades Mountain

cover-mosm_3-18.jpgBy Joyce Hollyday

Last Thursday in Montgomery, Alabama, the Equal Justice Initiative opened its museum dedicated to racial equality, at the heart of which is a profoundly powerful memorial to the more than 4,400 African-Americans who were lynched in this country between the Civil War and World War II. Three days later Melanie Morrison made a visit to Western North Carolina, reminding us that not all such acts of terrorism and brutality were carried out by white mobs under trees and the cover of darkness. Some were perpetrated in courtrooms in broad daylight. Continue reading “Murder on Shades Mountain”

Wild Lectionary: Proverbial Shelter

Greenhouse aftermath.jpg
Greenhouse where the author works, after Hurricane Irma

Pentecost B
Acts 2:1-21
Proverbs 9:8

By Andrew Hudson

Salvation. I imagine my educated friends skating over the term in today’s reading. After all, Pentecost is an incredible story about harmony in diversity. That is an important theme, and one most educated folks are eager to pick up in these troubled times. Let’s find a way to have that kind of unity, they say.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Proverbial Shelter”

Wild Lectionary: Planted and Watered

IMG_4260.JPG
Author with Forest School Students

Easter 7(B)
Psalm 1

By Laurel Dykstra

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.

The image of large well-watered trees growing larger is used in scripture as a symbol of human prosperity, abundance, and flourishing for individuals (Psalm 92:12-13) and nations (Ezekiel 31). Often the type of tree is unnamed but a significant number are cedars. In an arid landscape shade as a luxury, an association amplified by the biblical equation of cedar wood with wealth. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Planted and Watered”

Rock! Paper! Scissors!

lc7apk0_2_orig.pngWe are excited to share that Jesus Radicals has started a new online journal- Rock! Paper! Scissors! Tools for anarchists + Christian thought and action. The first issue is out edited by Joanna Shenk on The Movement Makes us Human.

In a time when the inhumanity of heteronormative, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy are publicly normalized by the powerful, Jesus Radicals shares stories of resistance, love, and transformation. The Movement Makes Us Human, the title of a newly released book on the life and thought of social movement veteran Dr. Vincent Harding authored by co-organizer Joanna Shenk, is also the theme of the first issue of the Jesus Radicals online journal.

Check out the Journal here!