Winter’s Coziness

candleIn January, over twenty women gathered for a Word and World weekend of rest and writing using winter as their guide and teacher. This is the second reflection offered which also gives some writing prompts. May it be company in these longer winter days.

By Joyce Hollyday

Guided Imagery

Imagine yourself in a harsh winter landscape. Take note of what is present—and what is absent.

You trudge through deep snow in drifts piled high by a strong and biting wind. Your feet begin to ache. Your fingers go numb. The journey feels endless. Continue reading “Winter’s Coziness”

Learning from Laughter and the Trees: The Child Come to Make Story Sacred Again

20190109_083129By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
January 13, 2019

He wouldn’t get in his car seat. He screamed and arched his back. I felt the exhaustion in my own back with the car filled with groceries. Do I sit down and wait it out? Do I offer him candy? (I didn’t have any) Do I physically force his small body into the seat?

Out of desperation, I said “If you get into your seat, I will tell you the story of what happened three years ago on the day you were born.” Continue reading “Learning from Laughter and the Trees: The Child Come to Make Story Sacred Again”

Death is All They’ve Got to Stand On

Screen Shot 2019-02-15 at 9.26.01 AMBy Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellermann (right)

*This is the 8th installation of a year-long series of posts from contributors all over North America each answering the question, “How would you define radical discipleship?” We will be posting responses regularly on Mondays during 2019.

If you would be my disciples… take up your cross and follow me.

I am so glad for this beloved mosaic, a series piecing together the shape of radical discipleship in our moment (plus the history we stand upon and with). The calls to the discipline of Jesus are here rooted in spirit, heart, earth, watershed, creaturehood, beauty, community and the stories of a Way incarnate. Continue reading “Death is All They’ve Got to Stand On”

Practices Cannot Be Separated From The Bodies That Practice Them

Hara1An excerpt from Tada Hozumi‘s brilliant piece “The Key to Healing Whiteness is Understanding Cultural Somatic Context,” originally posted on the Selfish Activist site last month.

Intellectualism itself is a white colonialist pattern. It’s only natural that whiteness can’t be solved through brain wrangling. Usually what happens is that the intellectual quality of systemic analysis often leads people to burn out, usually with their micro-aggressing behaviors intact. Continue reading “Practices Cannot Be Separated From The Bodies That Practice Them”

We Are the Offspring of the Ignorantly Discarded

Alice WalkerA sample from Alice Walker’s newest book of poetry Taking the Arrow Out of The Heart (October 2018). This is called “I Am Telling You, Discouraged One, We Will Win.”

I am telling you
Discouraged One
we will win.
And I will show you
why.
We are the offspring
of the ignorantly
discarded:
we conjure
sunrise
with our smiles
and provoke music
out of trash.
Who can completely
disappear
such genius? Continue reading “We Are the Offspring of the Ignorantly Discarded”

No words

2017-10-22-10-42-55-1100x825By Kateri Boucher

 

What would the trees say, if we asked them now?
What have we done?
What shall we do?
The Climate Report said 12 years.
Now, even closer to 11.
How is a little body like mine supposed to hold news that big?
The wheels keep turning,
hurtling us all forward, or
backward.
Whatever direction —
unceasing.
And where will this little body be in 11 years?
Will I still be one of the ones who can continue pretending?
The trees outside don’t say a thing.
Or maybe they do,
but I never listen long enough
to hear them.

Wild Lectionary: Parched Shrub and Watered Tree

RDnetlogo76th Sunday after Epiphany C

Jeremiah 17:5-10
Psalm 1

By Laurel Dykstra

Psalm 1 and the verses from Jeremiah 17 are two of many passages where something valued or successful is compared to a tree by water.

For the preacher engaging with ecological themes, reading these two passages together suggests several overlapping subjects for exploration to “test the mind and search the heart.” Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Parched Shrub and Watered Tree”

Winter’s Harshness

ice-formationsIn January, over twenty women gathered for a Word and World weekend of rest and writing using winter as their guide and teacher. This is the first reflection offered which also gives some writing prompts. May it be company in these longer winter days.

By Kate Foran

 

Ceremony

I will tell you something about stories,
[he said]
They aren’t just entertainment.
Don’t be fooled.
They are all we have, you see,
all we have to fight off
illness and death.
You don’t have anything
if you don’t have the stories.
Their evil is mighty
but it can’t stand up to our stories.
So they try to destroy the stories
let the stories be confused or forgotten.
They would like that
They would be happy
Because we would be defenseless then.
He rubbed his belly.
I keep them here
[he said]
Here, put your hand on it
See, it is moving.
There is life here
for the people.
And in the belly of this story
the rituals and the ceremony
are still growing.

Continue reading “Winter’s Harshness”

Anti-Semitism and Hypocrisy at the Top: a Jewish response

OmarBy Wes Howard-Brook

Three, young, powerful, brash women of color have come down upon the Capitol and left the old while folks there sputtering in their wake. The most well-known—so much so that she already can be recognized by her initials, AOC—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY)—has blown the doors off Congress by daring to offer her “Green New Deal” vision. The other two are both Muslim women, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar. Tlaib and Omar have strongly promoted the international “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction” campaign to pressure the Israeli government to withdraw from West Bank settlements. Continue reading “Anti-Semitism and Hypocrisy at the Top: a Jewish response”

For What Do We Hope

Ken SehestedBy Ken Sehested (right with grandchildren), whose fluency tends toward poetic expression, in response to our 2019 question, “What is your definition of radical discipleship?”

 “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone
who demands from you an accounting for the hope
that is in you: yet do it in gentleness and reverence.”
—1 Peter 3:15-16

To your feet, you pilgrims of faith’s long journey! Stand and pledge your allegiance to that nation-supplanting Realm to come.

For what do we hope?

We hope for the Beloved’s Promise to overtake the world’s broken-hearted threat. Continue reading “For What Do We Hope”