By Wesley Morris
Category: Uncategorized
Suspended
By Denise Levertov (1923–1997)
I had grasped God’s garment in the void
but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
The ‘everlasting arms’ my sister liked to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight
from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummetted.
Passed on by Journey with Jesus
You give
By Talitha Fraser
you give
and you give
the emptying
is what fills you
you give
and you give
stretched and
outstretched and
enfolded
you give
and you give
and there is more
there is always more
Wild Lectionary: Wild Church
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 17: 22-31
The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. Acts 17:24-25
Re-connecting people with an untamed God in our wild homes.
There is a movement happening. From isolation to connection. From detachment to immersion. From dualism to integration. Spiritual leaders from a wide range of denominations are beginning to question the wisdom and consequences of regarding “church” as a building where you gather away from the rest of the world for a couple hours on Sundays.
In Texas, New Hampshire, Ontario, Colorado, Virginia, California, Washington DC and British Columbia. We are a growing network of pastors and spiritual leaders, who have made bold moves to launch new expressions of church outside to re-acquaint, re-cover, and re-member our congregations as loving participants of a larger community. In this age of mass extinctions, we feel burdened by the love of Christ to invite people into direct relationship with some of the most vulnerable victims of our destructive culture: our land, our waters, the creatures with whom we share our homes.
And, there, people remember that they belong to a larger beloved community. Along the way, we have remembered that our Christian tradition of spiritual transformation has always been rooted in the actual local wilderness.
Join the Wild Church Network if you lead or want to lead your congregation out of buildings and into deeper relationship with God through nature in your community.
Wild Lectionary is curated by Laurel Dykstra, Priest in Charge of Salal + Cedar, Coast Salish Territory.
Sermon: Mothering Peace
Reflections given by Halima Cassels, Michelle Martinez, and Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
at First Unitarian Universalist, Detroit, MI
May 14, 2017
Jesus and the Easter Bunny
By Joyce Hollyday
During an overly pious phase in my childhood, my favorite holiday was Maundy Thursday. I had nothing against the traditional favorites of Christmas, Easter, and Halloween. I did, after all, grow up in Hershey, Pennsylvania—raised in the First United Methodist Church on Chocolate Avenue, where the domes on the street lights resemble Hershey’s kisses and the fragrance of chocolate hung often in the air. I had no complaint against holidays that brought bonanzas of candy and gifts. Continue reading “Jesus and the Easter Bunny”
Sermon: That’s Just Love Sneakin’ Up On You
Rev. Rebecca Stelle, Becoming Church
Guest Preacher at New Community Church,
Washington, DC
Sunday April 30, 2017
Luke 24: 13-25
When the anticipation of celebration is upended by grief, people are traumatized. Think of November 9 of last year- Do you remember the emotion which has now largely subsided? On November 8, millions of people were poised to celebrate a win, and the next day, millions were outraged, terrified, offended, bewildered and humiliated. Even if you weren’t one of them, can you viscerally recall the intensity of that expectation gone wrong? Continue reading “Sermon: That’s Just Love Sneakin’ Up On You”
Place-Based Resurrection
By Dr. James Perkinson (right), a sermon on Luke 24:13-35
I want to begin with a word of prayer before we jump into the gospel for today, but to facilitate that, first—a story about prayer and some necessary preliminaries. I have a half-Filipino poet friend in Detroit who tells of his first experiences of the Lord’s prayer, while growing up. Whenever he heard “Our Father who art in Heaven,” his five-year-old vernacular ears could not compute “art” as anything other than what happened when you put paint on paper, so his five year-old mind supplied a little slurred “n” in there, and what he actually thought he heard was “Our Father, who aren’t in heaven.” And it rattled him; he couldn’t figure it out; he says he kept thinking, “Well, where is he then?” If not there, then where? But he gradually came to hear it as a positive affirmation: a God who “aren’t” in heaven, because that God’s “place” is really right here, with us. A deep intuition, I would say, for all—what I would call place-based confession. Continue reading “Place-Based Resurrection”
What they need
Give people what they need: food, medicine, clean air, pure water, trees and grass, pleasant homes to live in, some hours of work, more hours of leisure. Don’t ask who deserves it. Every human being deserves it.
― Howard Zinn, Marx in Soho: A Play on History
Radical Discipleship 