The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in a love ethic.
– bell hooks
Category: Uncategorized
The Catholicism That Made Pope Francis Possible
By Rose Marie Berger Re-posted from sojo.net.
“Violence only exists with the help of the lie!”
With these words Fr. Daniel Berrigan and I sealed our fate. It was the summer 1995. August sixth. We’d been invited read at the Washington National Cathedral’s service commemorating the 50th year since the U.S. used atomic weapons on civilians in Japan.
The Cathedral was full. Western light filled the rose window. I was supposed to read an adaptation from Thomas Merton’s scathing indictment of U.S. militarism, the poem “Original Child Bomb,” and the Scriptures for the Feast of the Transfiguration (“Master, it is good that we are here”), also recognized on that day. Dan was slated to read from Soviet-resister Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel Prize lecture and from Maximillian Kolbe, the Polish priest who exchanged his life for a fellow prisoner in Auschwitz. Continue reading “The Catholicism That Made Pope Francis Possible”
Welcome the Stranger
By David Blower
“Salvation comes to us in the form of the tired traveller” – Henri Nouwen
In the UK we’re used to hearing news of refugee camps in faraway places. But since camps have begun appearing on our own borders there’s been no small panic. And while our bombs continue to fall on Syria, Iraq and Yemen, our government has closed its borders tight, keeping out many who are desperate to be re-united to family members in the UK. Continue reading “Welcome the Stranger”
Still true?
The worst enemy women have is in the pulpit.
– Susan B. Anthony
Persistent Widow
By Lindsay Airey
2He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 4For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” -Luke 18:2-5
To understand why the Persistent Widow jumps off her small passage in the biblical narrative, startles me into attention, and lovingly beckons me to see and follow her, I first need to give some context. I have been in an active process of 12-step Recovery for a little over a year now. This kind of Recovery is a process that, among other things, encourages me to practice loving myself enough to advocate for myself. It’s the kind of Recovery that’s been helping me to unlearn codependent ways—taking false responsibility for people, only to find myself all dried up at the end of the day. Continue reading “Persistent Widow”
Indigenous solidarity through a Muslim lens: A conversation with frontline defender Anushka Azadi
Re-posted from Breaking the Fast
Thanks so much Anushka for taking the time to talk with Breaking the Fast (BTF).
BTF: Let’s start with introductions. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Anushka: My name is Anushka. I am a frontline defender and legal advocate, broadcast journalist, writer, performer, community organizer and all around bad bitch.
BTF: How did you come to doing work with Indigenous land defenders? When did you start?
Anushka: As an immigrant to so-called Canada, growing up in poverty and fear, in pain and confusion, made me deeply aware of and sensitive to the intersecting oppressions that twisted up, not only my life, but the lives of others as well. I began understanding words like systemic, institutional and I began to understand the horrors that accompanied what was taught to me as the rise of civilization: industrialization, capitalism/free market economies, “democracy”. Continue reading “Indigenous solidarity through a Muslim lens: A conversation with frontline defender Anushka Azadi”
In the Land of the Willing
By Kenneth Sehested, from the new book In the Land of the Willing: Litanies, Prayers, Poems, and Benedictions
This is one of those
old fashioned, free-range,
leap-of-faith callings.
Just when you thought
our climate-controlled,
pension-secured culture
had squeezed all the
chutzpah out of the
believing community-
no more burning bushes,
flaming tongues-of-fire,
scary angelic appearances,
even still-small voices-
the Spirit erupts again
for those with ears to hear
and hearts aligned.
The Color of Orange
By Dee Dee Risher
My son, sixteen, knows her son, eighteen.
My (white) son, sixteen,
knows her (black) son, eighteen.
So we all know that what we are
reading in the paper–
the statement by the school district–
is a lie. I am a poet, so I want to write
something true
even though it is not official and will not be believed.
(I am white, and I finished college on a full scholarship from a top university,
so I have been conditioned to expect that what I say
will be listened to.
This is the background of this poem.
This is the foreground of this poem.
This is why the school district spokesman will be believed
and her son (eighteen, black, five feet four, eleventh grade) will not be believed
even though his body carries the evidence.) Continue reading “The Color of Orange”
A Pentecost Sermon: They become the storytellers
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann. A Pentcost sermon given on May 15, 2016 in celebration of her dad, Bill Wylie-Kellermann’s 10 years as pastor at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit.
It may be a little known fact around here- but I was once in a mime troop. We did the whole thing- white face, bow tie, suspenders. We were invited to events around the area. Christmas was a particularly busy time for us. We put on shows with short skits and we also were able to just mingle in the crowds. I loved it- particularly the wandering aimlessly with no other job that to be subtly funny and of course not speak with our mouths. Continue reading “A Pentecost Sermon: They become the storytellers”
Radical Discipleship 