Our hearts are full; this an historic day for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and for tribes across the nation. Native peoples have suffered generations of broken promises and today the federal government said that national reform is needed to better ensure that tribes have a voice on infrastructure projects like this pipeline.
- Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
Category: Uncategorized
Solidarity with Standing Rock
By Nathan Holst
Spirit come alive
Let us follow the current
Trace the sacred sighs
In the call of the earth
With seven generations
Standing before us now
May the Spirit come alive
These words from a song I wrote years ago were ringing in my ears this last weekend as I came with folks from the All Nations Indigenous Center in Duluth to join thousands of indigenous people at the incredible gathering at the Standing Rock Reservation to protect the water (and burial sites) from the Dakota Access Pipeline, slated to run just North of the reservation. There truly was an incredible Spirit coming alive in that space where elders, children, families were all tracing the call of the earth to protect the water for future generations.
An Unusual Wedding Gift
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
I spent the summer building an outhouse.
I spent the summer building an outhouse for my sister.
I spent the summer building an outhouse for my sister because she was getting married.
Forty-eight hours before the wedding as darkness fell and rain poured, even the groom was still drilling and cutting.
Lucy got married at our cabin in a pine grove a short walk from where my mom is buried. In order to accommodate 150 people for the service and thirty campers on our shallow, illegally plumbed crock well, we needed an outhouse. Continue reading “An Unusual Wedding Gift”
10 Years Later: The Greensboro Truth & Community Reconciliation Project
From Nelson Johnson, pastor of Faith Community Church in Greensboro, NC and co-founder of the Beloved Community Center and Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project (which concluded in 2006)–quoted from Ambassadors of Reconciliation, Volume II (2011, Enns and Myers):
A public discussion about a historic event that focuses only on culpability—who was right, who was wrong, or whether the government was involved—isn’t enough. These are important moral questions, and I am fighting to answer them, but at the end of the day the TRC must lead to a therefore: If this be true, what shall we do? People will not rush to embrace something that doesn’t make any difference for their lives. That would be like having a good discussion in church about the Bible, but when the flood comes everybody drowns anyway. If behavior doesn’t change, if people are still starving, if their children are still going to jail, TRCs will not be embraced. In order for TRCs to avoid becoming domesticated, as have so many other great political innovations, they must stay connected to real life. Continue reading “10 Years Later: The Greensboro Truth & Community Reconciliation Project”
Community
Communities are truly communities when they are open to others, when they remain vulnerable and humble; when the members are growing in love, in compassion and in humility. Communities cease to be such when members close in upon themselves with the certitude that they alone have wisdom and truth and expect everyone to be like them and learn from them. – Jean Vanier
Rizpah
This piece was developed during the first Bartimaeus Institute Online Cohort (2015-2016), aka “The Feminary.” These pieces will eventually be published in a Women’s Breviary collection. For more information regarding the Feminary go here
By Adella Barrett
The king took the two sons of Rizpah…whom she bore to Saul…and the five sons of Merab… and gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they impaled them on the mountain before the Lord. The seven of them perished together. They were put to death in the first days of harvest, at the beginning of barley harvest. Then Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it on a rock for herself, from the beginning of harvest until rain fell on them from the heavens; she did not allow the birds of the air to come on the bodies by day, or the wild animals by night.
2 Samuel 21: 8-10
It was during the time of the dry winds,
the barley white for harvest, the apricot and almond trees in bloom.
It was when the land began to ripen,
when the hands of the people were ready for gathering,
that Rizpah lost her sons. Continue reading “Rizpah”
Marry
Readers may not know, but Tommy and Lindsay Airey are ending their time in Detroit this month. It is a serious loss for those of us in Detroit, but we trust it will mean wonderful things for http://www.radicaldiscipleship.net as Tommy and Lindsay continue to write, reflect, and place their feet in new places. This is a goodbye poem for them written by Bill Wylie-Kellermann.
This old world to that beloved Word
this watershed to discipleship
roots, sweet and thirsty, to the road;
in radical vocation, wed disciple to disciple
as time to time
(What kairos is it on the chronos of Detroit?
the nation, the planet, our hearts?) Continue reading “Marry”
A note from Witness Against Torture
Dear Friends,
15 men released from Guantanamo Bay Prison
We celebrate the release of 15 men from Guantanamo last Monday to United Arab Emirates. Read more about their release here. Their names are:
Mahmud al Mujahid (now 36, from Yemen)
Mohammed Khusruf (now 66, from Yemen
Abd al Muhsin Salih al Busi (now 37, from Yemen)
Abd al Rahman Sulayman (now 37, from Yemen)
Zahir Omar Hamis bin Hamdoun (now 36, from Yemen)
Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmed (now 36, from Yemen)
Bashir al Marwalah (now 37, from Yemen)
Saeed Sarem Jarabh (now 38, from Yemen)
Ayub Murshid Ali Salih (now 38, from Yemen)
Mohammed al Adahi (now 54, from Yemen)
Abdel Qadir al Mudhaffari (now 40, from Yemen)
Abdul Muhammed al Muhajari (now 46, from Yemen)
Obaidullah (now 36, from Afghanistan)
Haji Hamdullah (in his 50s, from Afghanistan)
Mohammed Kamin (now 38, from Afghanistan) Continue reading “A note from Witness Against Torture”
Something More of Us is Required
A Facebook post (July 9) from Michelle Alexander, the author of the ground-breaking The New Jim Crow:
I have struggled to find words to express what I thought and felt as I watched the videos of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile being killed by the police. Last night, I wanted to say something that hasn’t been said a hundred times before. It finally dawned on me that there is nothing to say that hasn’t been said before. As I was preparing to write about the oldness of all of this, and share some wisdom passed down from struggles of earlier eras, I heard on the news that 11 officers had been shot in Dallas, several killed from sniper fire. My fingers froze on the keys. I could not bring myself to recycle old truths. Something more is required. But what? Continue reading “Something More of Us is Required”
