Category: Uncategorized
Migration through a Christian Perspective
By Hessed Torres., re-posted from Filipino Portal in Canada
Psalm 66:1-7, 16-20
Isaiah 66:10-14
Luke 10:1-12, 17-20
When I read the first few verses of Psalm 66:1-7, my initial reaction was to cringe from the disconnection of what it was telling me and what my reality was. How can a migrant worker like me “shout for joy” in the midst of exploitation, vulnerability, precariousness and pain? Is this some kind of joke? One cannot expect a demoralized worker to be joyful and forget their agony. Continue reading “Migration through a Christian Perspective”
Peace flotilla and nonviolent direct action at Trident nuclear submarine base
August 10, 2016
Peace flotilla and nonviolent direct action at Trident nuclear
submarine base mark anniversary of atomic bombings
Silverdale, Washington: Local peace activists staged a water-based
nonviolent protest and witness for peace in Hood Canal at the Trident
nuclear submarine base on August 9th marking the anniversary of the
atomic bombing of Nagasaki. The activists travelled along the Bangor
waterfront where nuclear warheads and Trident missiles are loaded onto
submarines and where submarines are resupplied for ballistic missile
patrols in the Pacific Ocean. On August 8th activists staged a vigil
and nonviolent direct action in which some activists blocked the
entrance gate to the same Naval base. Continue reading “Peace flotilla and nonviolent direct action at Trident nuclear submarine base”
Freed from Fear to Shelter the Vulnerable
By Elaine Enns
Scripture: “Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear… For God will hide me in a shelter in the day of trouble.” Psalm 27:3a, 5a
As babies, both Moses and Jesus were hidden away from danger during times of war and oppression by courageous caregivers. This archetypal script is also found in my family story, and perhaps in yours. My grandmother grew up in the Mennonite village of Osterwick, Ukraine. As a result of endemic injustice under the Tsar, the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917, and civil war raged through the country. In Ukraine, a peasant army arose to fight for independence, but their methods were often brutal, including home invasions. In December 1919, my great-grandmother Anna Schulz’s house was commandeered for two weeks. The males of the house had to flee for their lives into the nearby forest, while my fifteen year-old grandmother, along with her sister and girl cousins, were hidden up in the attic. Anna proceeded to feed, clothe, and nurse the rough soldiers. In the face of terror, she committed her life to her Divine protector, and practiced non-violence. Continue reading “Freed from Fear to Shelter the Vulnerable”
The Moral Revival
By Will O’Brien
Several of us attended the “Repairers of the Breach” Moral Revival Tour with Rev. William Barber when it rolled into town on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention on July 25. Will O’Brien write the following short reflection (originally published on the Red Letter Christians blog.)
The Friends Central Meeting on Cherry Street in Center City Philadelphia has probably never reeled and rocked like it did on Monday night. Rev. William Barber from the Moral Mondays campaign in North Carolina brought his Moral Revival Tour to our city, slyly scheduling it just as the Democratic National Convention was starting to convene a few miles south at the Wells Fargo Center. Lots of spirited singing, praying, and mighty preaching, all geared toward the prophetic vision of justice. Continue reading “The Moral Revival”
Period of Struggle
“We are in a period of struggle with a movement spiritually deep and broadly connected – and a movement that knows it has to go deeper and broader yet. And we need to keep connecting across barriers of faith and ideology. Many of us understand that a deeper resistance is summoned of us. We are trying, praying, working to be strategic, to be faithful, to be human. And we know that we must keep at it: conspire the next steps, be in conversation, be in community, be in the streets, refuse taxes, refuse to fight, disrupt business as usual, prefer poetry to ideology, pray for victims before nations.
The powers of death and destruction appear to reign. But they are undone. In short, dear friends: Be not awed by the mayhem with which the powers of this world would bamboozle us. When you light a candle let it mean intransigent resistance. When you pray imagine a new world is possible. And then live it.” -Elizabeth McAlister
Lamentations’ call to arms
A poem inspired by the book of Lamentations (especially chapter three)
by Ken Sehested
Turn off (what passes for) the news.
Boycott the season’s electoral charades.
Don’t give in to Pokémon’s promise of
“augmented reality.” Attend instead to
unmitigated reality: bloodied, stricken
and strewn. Offer grief the hearing it
demands, the voice it obliges, and
the risk it assumes. Continue reading “Lamentations’ call to arms”
Guns for Tots
By Frida Berrigan, Re-postd from TomDispatch
I remember well going to the rodeo at Madison Square Garden in New York City with my six-guns proudly strapped to my hips. I was probably eight or nine years old and those two ivory-handled — okay, undoubtedly plastic — revolvers were probably from a Hopalong Cassidy line of toys. That cowboy character was a favorite of mine on TV and, of course, with my friends I regularly played “cowboys and Indians.” But far more of my war play — we’re talking the early 1950s — came out of World War II, my father’s war, even though the country was then involved in a bloody stalemate of a conflict in Korea. Continue reading “Guns for Tots”
Orlando
A song from Ontario-based musician Joshua Weresch, remembering the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting 50 days ago:
This is the lever that moves a world.
This is the fist that packs a glove.
This is the tear that floods a town
And this is a heart without love. Continue reading “Orlando”
Radical Discipleship 