On the Right and the Left

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Binding30 years in and Ched Myers’ Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (1988) is more relevant than ever. This week’s commentary homes in on Mark 10:35-45.

The petition by James and John shows that the disciples are still “deaf” to Jesus’ portents, continuing to understand his talk of the manifestation of the Human One’s “glory” (en te doxe sou) to mean some kind of messianic coup. Convinced their leader will prevail, they are already considering the administration of the new regime; they lobby for “first and second cabinet position.” The image of “sitting on the right and left” could be an allusion to Psalm 110:1, or to places at the messianic victory banquet, or subordinate thrones. In either case, it is an overtly political euphemism. Continue reading “On the Right and the Left” →

Functioning Democracy

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NoamAn excerpt from Noam Chomsky’s brilliant speech “Prospects for Survival.”

Let’s return finally to the main line of defense: functioning democracy. We can begin with the leader of the free world, the model of democracy for centuries.

In a democracy, the voice of the people is heard. Let’s ask what might happen in the United States if this principle were upheld. One consequence would be that the most popular and respected political figure in the country would have an influential role, maybe even be president. That’s Bernie Sanders, by a very large margin. Continue reading “Functioning Democracy” →

A Spirituality of the Feet Moment

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

As a “once upon a time” born-again fundamentalist Lutheran, nurtured and raised in a Pennsylvania steel town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who bought into that epoch’s anti-Catholicism and anti-Communism, I reflected the standard “White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant—Male” (WASP-M) privilege while being blithely unaware of the advantages this reality provided. My intense discovery of the quintessential Protestant core belief that we are made right with God, through no works of our own but solely though divine love manifested through Christ’s cross and made personal through trust in this radical God of love, combined with my academic love and success, led me to the ordained Lutheran ministry and the hope of teaching New Testament after a stint in parish ministry. Such a dream was turned on its head by a more profound conversion on the evening of April 4, 1968 when the blood of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. poured out on the balcony of Memphis, Tennessee’s Lorraine Motel. At the very moment I heard the news of his death, I feel to my knees and through my tears, vowed never to be silent in the face of injustice. Whether or not I have been true to that pledge remains in God’s loving hands, precisely where it belongs, but I highlight here one glorious moment of a fifty-year pilgrimage that I celebrate to this very day. Continue reading “A Spirituality of the Feet Moment” →

Wild Lectionary: Wild God, Wild Beauty

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed Discipleship1 Comment

DSC01830.JPGProper 24 (29)B
22nd Sunday after Pentecost
Job 38:1-7, 34-41

By Wendy Janzen

The the first reading and Psalm for this Sunday are both creation texts – passages that describe God’s amazing work in creating the cosmos. The text from Jobs is part of the longest passage in the bible about more-than-human creation (Job 38-42). It is written in exquisitely beautiful poetry, and it is God’s rhetorical answer to Job’s probing questions about God’s justice – why bad things happen to good people. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Wild God, Wild Beauty” →

An Unbound Spirit

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire3 Comments

JESUIT FATHER DANIEL BERRIGANBy Bill Wylie-Kellermann. A review of Jim Forest’s At Play in the Lion’s Den: A Biography and Spiritual Memoir of Daniel Berrigan (Orbis books 2017). A shorter version of this was published in the November 2018 issue of Sojourners Magazine.

When Fa. Daniel Berrigan and his brother Philip, along with AJ Muste, John Howard Yoder, and a handful of budding Catholic radicals gathered in 1964 with Thomas Merton at Gethsemani Abbey for a retreat concerning the Spiritual Roots of Protest, the intercessions of that meeting, I am convinced, not only seeded a movement, but fell upon me, summoning my vocation.

Four years later when the Berrigan brothers with seven others entered the draft board in Catonsville, MD, removed the 1A files (of those eligible for sending to the Vietnam War) and burned them with homemade napalm, those ashes too would eventually anoint my life and pastoral calling. Daniel turned that action toward liturgy, toward poetry. He edited the transcript of their conviction in Federal Court into a play of international repute, refused induction into the prison system, and went notoriously underground for four months writing and speaking from the “most wanted list,” before being captured by the FBI at the Block Island home of his friend William Stringfellow. When he was released after two years in the Federal system, Berrigan came to New York City and taught a course on the Apocalypse of St. John when I was a student at Union Seminary. Full disclosure: Dan Berrigan became to me not merely teacher, but mentor and friend. Continue reading “An Unbound Spirit” →

Homoluminous

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Website_coverQuick afternoon note from Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

I started some early Christmas shopping a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to share it with all of you. Molly Costello is a fellow graduate of Loyola University Chicago and an incredible artist. She has just released a calendar for 2019. Her art tugs at my heart, gives rest to my soul, speaks to the truth, and summons my hope. I think this calendar is stunning and I encourage you all to enter into the calling she invites of us all for 2019.

Here is her description of the calendar:

Existing within the growing depths of white supremacy, late stage capitalism and climate chaos we are faced with questions around how to reimagine our world beyond the seemingly insurmountable weight of these systems. HOMOLUMINOUS explores the ways we are emerging into a new type of human community, one that is glowing, connected, and more equipped than ever to achieve collective liberation. By practicing empathy, gratitude and grief rituals, growing food and honoring the power of our imagination, we come to realize that we are the resilient body that our ancestors dreamed up to heal this world. We are the living light. We are HOMOLUMINOUS.

Check it out here.

Meeting the Sacred in Our Daily Lives

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IMG_9157By Marcia Lee

Every month, I host a gathering at Taproot Sanctuary, an intentional community of mostly people of color working on living in right relationship with the earth and our neighbors.  These gatherings are Circles of Trust.  They are in the lineage of the work of Parker Palmer through my work as a facilitator with the Center for Courage and Renewal.  The purpose of these gatherings, or mini-retreats, is to create a space for us to listen to our inner voices and to support each other in following the calling of our own souls.  We do this type of deep listening best when we are in spaces where we can trust that our words and actions are not repeated and that the people in the community with us are listening to us not for their own benefits, but to just be a witness and support of us.  We use what we call third things to accompany us.  The third thing might be a poem, song, or something in nature.  These third things allow us to focus in on the issue at hand in a more gentle and circular manner. Continue reading “Meeting the Sacred in Our Daily Lives” →

The Eye of the Needle

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

Binding30 years in and Ched Myers’ Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (1988) is more relevant than ever. This week’s commentary homes in on Mark 10:17-31.

Mark’s wry joke about the camel and the needle in particular has received ingenious “manipulation at the hands of bourgeois conscience-tranquilizing exegetes” (Jose Miranda). The famous medieval assertion that the “eye of the needle” referred to a certain small gate in ancient Jerusalem through which camels could enter only on their knees (!) is only one of the more obvious ways devised to rob this metaphor of its class-critical power. The proposition is plainly an impossible one. Bailey points out that the Babylonian Talmud records a similar hyperbole–an elephant going through the eye of a needle–and comments that “the elephant was the largest animal in Mesopotamia and the camel the largest in Palestine.” Mark’s stinging sarcasm is perhaps more recognizable in Frederick Buechner’s contemporary paraphrase: for wealthy North Americans it is harder to enter the kingdom “than for Nelson Rockefeller to get through the night deposit slot of the First National City Bank!”  Continue reading “The Eye of the Needle” →

A Known and Familiar Workplace Hazard

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Bernice YeungAn excerpt from Bernice Yeung’s recent release In A Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers (2018):

After looking at various industries that hire the most vulnerable workers, I’ve been forced to conclude that low-wage immigrants laboring in isolation are at unique risk of sexual assault and harassment. While it is not possible to know how often these abuses happen, they are not anomalies. The federal government estimates that about fifty workers are sexually assaulted each day, and in the industries that hire newcomers to the country in exchange for meager paychecks, such assault is a known and familiar workplace hazard. Continue reading “A Known and Familiar Workplace Hazard” →