Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of Settler Privilege

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Identity, and History, Uncategorized2 Comments
post
Samoset comes “boldly” into Plymouth settlement. Woodcut designed by A.R. Waud and engraved by J.P. Davis (1876).

By Dina Gilio-Whitaker. Reposted from Beacon Broadside.

November is Native American Heritage Month, when we as American Indian people get to have the mic for a little while. So, I’d like to take my turn at the virtual mic to talk about settler privilege, something you likely have never thought of, or have never even heard of. What you have undoubtedly heard of, however, is white privilege.

Peggy McIntosh first popularized the concept of white privilege in her now-classic 1989 essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” The impact of her essay was due at least in part to its clarity and readability; it broke down into a list of easy to understand ideas why white people have unearned advantages in society based on their skin color. Not that it was necessarily easy for white people to accept that they are in fact “more equal” than others, but the essay opened up a conversation that has gained serious traction in our social discourse, especially now when racism is on full, unobstructed display in this Trumpian moment.   Continue reading “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of Settler Privilege” →

the gold loses its lustre

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, UncategorizedLeave a comment

talithaBy Talitha Fraser

the gold loses its lustre
candlelight yields
a warm reflection
but these are
sacred and ordinary things
fabric, candleholders, cross
they aren’t imbued with any
special strength of their own
how then shall I love You?
the dust motes suspended
in light from the window
they are golden too
and the fine
sunlit hairs of my arms
they are golden too
let me love You on
the ordinary and extraordinary days
let me love You in
ordinary and extraordinary ways
let me love You

Impoverished By Her Obligations

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

BindingComments on this week’s Gospel text (Mark 12:38-44) from Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (1988), the commentary from Ched Myers, celebrating 30 years of prophetic utterance. 

The last episode in the temple is a story of a widow being impoverished by her obligations to the temple cultus (12:41-44). Long mishandled as a quaint vignette about the superior piety of the poor, Wright has shown that Jesus’ words should be seen “as a downright disapproval and not as an approbation”:

The story does not provide a pious contrast to the conduct of the scribes in the preceding section (as is the customary view); rather it provides a further illustration of the ills of official devotion. Jesus’ saying is not a penetrating insight on the measuring of gifts; it is a lament….Jesus condemns the value system that motivates her action, and he condemns the people who conditioned her to do it.

Continue reading “Impoverished By Her Obligations” →

We Must Begin Feeling Our Grief

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Watershed Discipleship2 Comments

PrechtelAn excerpt from an old classic: The Sun Magazine‘s interview with Martin Prechtel.

To be at home in a place, to live in a place well, we first have to understand where we are; we’ve got to look at our surroundings. Second, we’ve got to know our own histories. Third, we’ve got to feed our ancestors’ ghosts, so that the ghosts aren’t eating us or the people around us. Lastly, we’ve got to begin to grieve. Now, grief doesn’t mean sitting around weeping every day. Rather, grief means using the gifts you’ve been given by the spirits to make beauty. Grief that’s not expressed this way becomes a kind of toxic waste inside a person’s body, and inside the culture as a whole, until it has to be put in containers and shipped someplace, the way they ship radioactive waste to New Mexico. This locked-up grief has to be metabolized. As a culture and as individuals, we must begin feeling our grief — that delicious, fantastic, eloquent medicine. Then we can start giving spiritual gifts to the land we live on, which might someday grant our grandchildren permission to live there.

Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Cloud of Witnesses, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

Aireys, Early 20s.jpeg (1)By Tommy Airey, a homily for Day House, a four-decade Catholic Worker experiment wedged between casinos and stadiums a stone’s throw from downtown Detroit

I am new to the traditions of Celtic Samhain and Christian All Saints. I grew up in the world of white suburban Evangelical Christianity. I attended a private Christian school that was part of the movement sparked a decade earlier as a response to the Civil Rights Movement and the racial integration instituted by the Supreme Court (and resisted by Governors who were enabled by Presidents). My pastors and teachers taught me that Catholics were going to hell and that Halloween was the devil’s holiday. Continue reading “Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone” →

Wild Lectionary: Snow and Sunshine

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IMG_2188.jpgProper 27(32) B
25th Sunday after Pentecost

Hebrews 9:24-28
By Jamie Johnstad
The darkness of winter seemed to come early this year, where my family lives along the Catfish Creek Watershed, about two miles upstream from where the creek connects with the Mississippi River in Dubuque, Iowa.  The days many people here describe as their favorite time of the year — those sunny, crisp, fall days — were few and far between, as the rain fell heavy and often.  The fall leaves seemed to move from green to brown quickly, with too few of the stunning colors in between, then to fall to the ground as compost.  Our frequent hikes down the trails are muddy under cloud-covered skies, making the early dusk of November seem especially dark.  The only things that seemed to hold onto their leaves are the invasive shrubs that permeate our woods.  Last year at this time, the beauty of fall made me forget about the invasive species removal we need to do, the prairie we need to restore, the buckthorn growing under and hiding the beautiful oaks in a field of ours.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Snow and Sunshine” →

Hidden Beasts

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

OzBy Dr. Oz Cole-Arnal (far left in photo), former professor emeritus at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary

I was visiting my oldest son Bill and his partner Darlene when I heard the awful news of the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I felt gut-punched and burst into tears. With so much hatred in the world, with the “othering” of all God’s vulnerable—Jews, blacks, women, Muslims, immigrants, LGBTQ– reaching new heights of murderous invective and hate as the wave of neo-Fascism arising throughout the western democracies, this attack in Squirrel Hill struck me exceedingly close to home. I am an ex-American from Western Pennsylvania, roughly an hour by auto to Pittsburgh, yet the emotions involve a deeper gut-wrenching connection than the thirty-mile jaunt by car to that city. Continue reading “Hidden Beasts” →