In Praise of Ordinary Days

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Ken SehestedBy Ken Sehested

A meditation on Ordinary Time on the church’s liturgical calendar

“He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.”—William Blake

When people of faith speak of God, and how the love of God leads to the flourishing of souls and soil alike, such language appears on the surface as something being done to us, as from the outside.

Merely being acted upon—being objectified—hints at coercion, manipulation, feeble dependency, indignity. As if we are to be kept in chains and, moreover, taught to love those chains—lovely as they may appear, but chains, nonetheless. As if we are merely utensils in a cosmic drama. As if we are chess pieces on a divine board game. Continue reading “In Praise of Ordinary Days” →

An Exquisite Lesson in Creating Ideology

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire1 Comment

TaylorAn excerpt from KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR’s review of Becoming by Michelle Obama (re-posted from Boston Review, March 2019).  

In Becoming, Obama describes the value of telling one’s story this way: “Even when it’s not pretty or perfect. Even when it’s more real than you want it to be. Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.” For Obama, a person’s story is an affirmation of their space in the world, the right to be and belong. “In sharing my story,” she says, “I hope to help create space for other stories and other voices, to widen the pathway for who belongs and why. . . . Let’s invite one another in. Maybe then we can begin to fear less, to make fewer wrong assumptions, to let go of biases and stereotypes that unnecessarily divide us.” The root of discrimination, Obama implies, including the ugly discrimination she faced as first lady, is misunderstanding. Sharing personal narratives, then, offers a way for people to fully see each other and to overcome our differences. Continue reading “An Exquisite Lesson in Creating Ideology” →

Three Ways Faith and Spiritual Leaders are Shaping Movements Today

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Faith ResistanceBy Carinne Luck, originally posted on the Minds of the Movement, an ICNC blog on the people and power of civil resistance (June 18, 2019)

Throughout history, civil resistance movements in North America have included preachers, healers, spiritual leaders, and creative artists who have helped to rouse the public out of complacency while providing nourishment, inspiration, and consolation to those on the frontlines of the struggle. They have served as living proof that another world is possible even while reckoning with the realities of the world here and now.

Many of today’s movements are no different, serving as both home and laboratory to a new, and newly rediscovered, generation of leaders and practitioners. Despite devastating economic inequalities and the stubborn staying power of white supremacy, corporate greed, and militarism, these individuals are helping make movements more sustainable, impactful, and caring spaces. Through their largely unrecognized and often undervalued work, they are shaping the contours of civil resistance strategy itself, as well as how strategies are brought to life. Continue reading “Three Ways Faith and Spiritual Leaders are Shaping Movements Today” →

A Fool’s Economics

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DollarBy Ched Myers

*Originally posted on the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 31, 2016 (Luke 12:13-21)

In Luke’s gospel, the deep memory of Sabbath Economics is shown in Jesus’ wilderness feedings of the poor (Lk 9:12-17), and told in the central petition of the Lord’s Prayer:

“Give us today enough bread” (Lk 11:3).

But nowhere is the old vision more clearly asserted than in Jesus’ teaching in Luke 12:13-34. Continue reading “A Fool’s Economics” →

Wild Lectionary: Trembling Birds

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3787980398_cbf23f841c_b
 Pigeon Pair by Hal Trachenberg, Creative Commons

Proper 13(18) C

Hosea 11:1-11

By Laurel Dykstra

Today’s lectionary passage from Hosea is a potent cocktail that mixes parental love and anger with political violence and nature imagery. More broadly and more problematically, the prophet’s oracles:

  • imagine religious fidelity and commitment to justice, as sexual fidelity within patriarchy
  • conflate non-monogamy and sex commerce
  • assume that sexual violence (reparative rape) is a husband’s prerogative
  • equate military violence and invasion with divine judgement.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Trembling Birds” →

A Cross of Human Bodies: How 71 Catholics Were Arrested for Protesting Immigrant Child Detention

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Uncategorized3 Comments
aerial_in_rotunda_v.2
Image via Kayla Lattimore

By Rose Marie Berger, re-shared from Sojourners

I spent five hours as a guest of the U.S. Capitol Police last week. It was hot, really hot. And those plastic handcuffs leave bruises.

I was one of 71 Catholics arrested by the U.S. Capitol Police in the rotunda of the Russell Senate building in Washington, D.C., for “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding” while praying the rosary. My prayer was — and is — to end the warehousing of immigrant children in cages — 63,624 of whom have been apprehended by border patrol at the southwestern border between October 2018 and June 2019 and seven of whom have died after being in federal custody since September. More than a dozen Catholic orders and organizations sponsored the event. Seven Catholic bishops sent letters of support. Continue reading “A Cross of Human Bodies: How 71 Catholics Were Arrested for Protesting Immigrant Child Detention” →

Named and Claimed By God

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2019-07Jul-21 Oscars Baptism_0060
Photo by Chris Baker Evens

Katie Aikins is pastor of Tabernacle United Church in Philadelphia. She and her wife Heather Bargeron are parents to their adopted 20-month-old son Oscar Emmanuel Aikins-Bargeron.  Katie preached this sermon on the occasion of Oscar’s baptism on July 21.

Baptism without the church, without the community of faith, would make no sense. One of the promises we make as parents is to raise our child in the community of faith.

This Heather and I know: That though we will make our promises to Oscar and to this church to raise him to follow in the way of Jesus Christ, to show love and justice, to resist oppression and evil, we also know that alone, we as parents will not be enough for Oscar to live into his full calling and identity as a child of God. The community of faith —the place where we are practicing resisting evil together, where we are growing together in our practices of justice and love – this is the context in which baptism unfolds in its meaning and fruitfulness.  Continue reading “Named and Claimed By God” →

Narcissus

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OzBy Oz Cole-Arnal, former professor emeritus at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary

Penned barely two months after “My Prayer” in the same year (October, 1980), the poem below shows how painful is the continuation of forbidden hungers vying against my effort to sustain integrity in my relationships with my dear wife, two boys, students and friends. Above all, although 1980 proved healthier than the next five years when my marriage fell apart, the poem below shows how fragile this “calm before the storm.”

Lonely man sitting by the water—
Transfixed by its mirror image,
Clinging to the pond’s stillness,
Fearful of its changing ripples,
And chained within! Continue reading “Narcissus” →

The 2020 Poor People’s Moral Budget

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PPCAnother compelling resource from the Poor People’s Campaign. Click here for the full report.

In April 2018, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival released a Moral Agenda and Declaration of Fundamental Rights. The demands contained within that document present a comprehensive response to the systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism, and war economy plaguing our country today. For the 140 million people who are poor, or one emergency away from being poor, we know these demands are necessary. This Poor People’s Moral Budget asks, given the resources of our society, whether these demands are also possible. Our answer is a resounding yes. Continue reading “The 2020 Poor People’s Moral Budget” →

My Remorse and Tears

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RubyFrom the Front Porch of Mother Ruby Sales (July 25, 2019).

Feeling remorse!

Yesterday I wrote a very biting critique of Mueller’s testimony and his posture. In retrospect my heart bleeds for him. It is clear as I replay his testimony that he is experiencing a physical challenge that compromises his memory and intellectual reflexes.

I finally understood his unwillingness to testify. What appeared to be his arrogance might simply have been a fear of not being able to testify in full form. Yet , this old marine faithful to the call of duty showed up and exposed his most vulnerable self to the nation to perform what is perhaps his last duty for this country. Continue reading “My Remorse and Tears” →