Find a Palestinian

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Biography as TheologyLeave a comment

From Kendra Savusa, a Palestinian-American artist (above) in the US South. This is a re-post from social media (12.18.2024). Follow and support her work here.

I used to think part being a good Christian woman meant holding my tongue all the time, something I’ve never been good at—and in some cases, that is still the wisest thing to do. But this past year, every time I’ve wanted to remain silent, I’ve felt an overwhelming push from God to speak.

So here I am, day 437, still speaking.

To my fellow Christians who have chosen silence, who have clung to what they’ve always been taught, who have stood with the powerful instead of the oppressed—I’m asking you to reconsider.

This week at my church, we reflected on Jesus washing His disciples’ feet—the ultimate act of humility and service. What would it look like for us, as His followers, to lower ourselves in the same way, to serve those we’ve been taught to fear or dismiss?

I pray that 2025 is the year you “find a Palestinian” (in the words of my friend, Amy) and allow yourself to be humbled enough to learn from them.

Continue reading “Find a Palestinian” →

Unwrapped

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Sabbath Economics, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington D.C. (PC: Lindsey Jones-Renaud)

By Tommy Airey, re-posted from his weekly newsletter (12.22.2004)

On the first Christmas day, right after Mary the unwed pregnant teen gave birth to her first child, the Gospel of Luke says that she wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger.

Because there was no room in the inn.

On Good Friday, much later in Luke’s story, a rich man named Joseph took down the body of Jesus from the cross, wrapped him in a linen cloth and laid him in a tomb.

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The Laws of Motion

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

Nikki Giovanni joined the Ancestors last week. She was eighty-one. This is one of her poems called “The Laws of Motion.”

The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as
much as a pound of flour though if dropped from any
undetermined height in their natural state one would
reach bottom and one would fly away

Laws of motion tell us an inert object is more difficult to
propel than an object heading in the wrong direction is to
turn around. Motion being energy—inertia—apathy.
Apathy equals hostility. Hostility—violence. Violence
being energy is its own virtue. Laws of motion teach us

Continue reading “The Laws of Motion” →

To Advance Our Collective Understanding

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

Our friends and comrades at Mennonite Action are offering a great opportunity to learn in community tomorrow night.

Don’t miss Mennonite Action’s next opportunity to be in community together — and to advance our collective understanding of the connections between antisemitism and Christian nationalism.

Join our mass call on Thursday, December 19 at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT to learn more about the history of antisemitism and the rise of present day antisemitism.

We will be joined by authors, academics, and organizers to discuss how antisemitism is deeply interwoven with the far-right Christian nationalist politics of many of our country’s leaders.

We are excited to welcome the authors of Safety through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism, Shane Burley and Ben Lorber, as well as University of Notre Dame Professor Atalia Omer. These speakers will help us think through how we can stand in solidarity with other members of our communities to push back against rising violence toward the Jewish people.

We hope to see you on our December 19 call to learn more about how we can organize against all manifestations of hate and oppression in our work for liberation in Palestine — and continue our work for the liberation of all of God’s children.

No Matter What the Colonizers Say or Do

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation3 Comments

White Christians and Jewish Americans have been socialized to be scared of images like this. But isn’t this is pretty much what Mary the Palestinian Jewish teen mother of Jesus would have looked like?

In the Gospel of Luke, it says that Mary prayed to a God who brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. A God who has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty!

Mary was part of the resistance.

As she called on a Power greater than empire, Mary summoned what Palestinians call sumud.  Steadfastness. Standing firm in the face of occupation. Never surrendering their humanity and dignity. No matter what the colonizers say or do.

Here’s to all the courageous young people on college campuses in 2024 who pitched tents and got arrested as they demanded that their campuses divest from companies profiting off of land theft and genocide.

And Every Mountain Brought Low: The Voice in the Wilderness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

By Jim Perkinson, a sermon on Luke 3:1-6 for St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit, MI (December 8, 2024)

So, we’ll begin way out in left field.  The indigenous teacher my wife and I have been frequenting for more than 12 years now—half white, half Native, growing up among the Pueblo folk of northern New Mexico, adopted into, trained by, and living among the Tzutujil Maya of Guatemala for more than 10 years before being sent back to the States to keep their traditions alive as the civil war there was destroying their culture and indigenous ways—wrote a book a few years ago called The Unlikely Peace of Cuchumaqiq: The Parallel Lives of People as Plants: Keeping the Seeds Alive.  In it, he—Martín Prechtel— recounted his experience of the Feb. 4, 1976 earthquake in Guatemala whose 7.6 rumble on the Richter scale killed more than 22,000 people and displaced some 1.2 million. 

Curiously, Prechtel begins that book with stories of Native kids running 15-kilometer races in area high school competitions, through the canyons near the Pueblo, which they almost always won, but refused to win as individuals.  Rather they would wait for each other before crossing the finish line, so only the entire Native group of kids, not an individual, would be crowned winner.  Or not. Running wasn’t about winning.  It was about running.  Being magnificent in your movement.  Interesting, but why begin a book on a mega-earthquake experience by talking about running?  We’ll get to that later.

Continue reading “And Every Mountain Brought Low: The Voice in the Wilderness” →

Arise and Witness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Cloud of Witnesses1 Comment

This is Dean Hammer’s review of a new book edited by Arthur Laffin and Carole Sargent called Arise and Witness: Poems by Anne Montgomery, RSCJ.

Note: Sr. Anne Montgomery was a nonviolent witness in war zones in the Holy Land and Iraq, and endured years of imprisonment due to her involvement in Plowshares actions. Her poems are rooted in her love for accompanying the marginalized, borne out of her experience of religious life and community. Most of these poems, now published posthumously, provide unique and rich biblical insights into what it means to be human and a faithful follower of Jesus. This volume serves as both a powerful spiritual anchor and a source of inspiration for all who seek to be a radical witness of truth and hope. Drawing on her experience as a religious, teacher and peacemaker, Anne’s poetry offers powerful scriptural insights that can sustain people’s hope.

Thanks to the skillful and loving work by the editors of Arise and Witness, we are gifted witha posthumous memoir of Sr. Anne Montgomery: poet, mystic, and witness par excellence. While composing this review, I heard Anne’s voice from the heavenly realm protesting the lauding of her extraordinary life: “the story is not about me,” she insisted. Indeed, her story and poetry portray her hopefulness, undaunted by the chaos and violence of our world. Her theopoetic reflections invite us to share her connection with “the God who proclaims peace: the merciful, the advocate, the restorer” (71). Her narrative reveals a lived profession: “The light shone in the darkness and the darkness could not extinguish the light” (22).

In the prologue, Facing the Darkness, Anne cites Denise Levertov, a sage protest poet and mentor of peacemaking: “A voice from the dark called out, the poet must give us imagination of peace…peace, a presence, an energy field more intense than war.” Anne traveled to places of great suffering (Palestine, Iraq, Bosnia, Guantanamo, and various jails as prisoner of conscience) bearing witness to the Light, the mystical force peace and compassion. She “practiced resurrection” (Wendell Berry).

Continue reading “Arise and Witness” →

An Abiding and Rebirthing Darkness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

From our friends and comrades at Mennonite Action.

This Advent, we are remembering the activist and theologian Barbara Holmes. Over her lifetime, Dr. Holmes dedicated her prophetic voice of contemplative wisdom to call us on The Way with the Incarnate Jesus. Jesus is the one who has come, is always coming, and is ever present, transforming us into the Creator’s image and likeness.

Over the years, we have attended to Dr. Holmes’ voice crying out in the wilderness against the unspeakable suffering of human and non-human creation — suffering inflicted by human hands, heads, and hearts of warring madness. Although Dr. Holmes died earlier this year, her prophetic voice and spiritual wisdom lives on, crying out to be heard and heeded.

She writes, “When there is a crisis, it takes a village to survive” because “it is the village that enters into crisis.” In her book, Crisis Contemplation: Healing the Wounded World, Dr. Holmes explains: “Crises open portals of deeper knowing. When the crisis occurs, the only way out is through, so we take a cue from nature and relax into the stillness, depending upon one another and the breath of life!”

Continue reading “An Abiding and Rebirthing Darkness” →

Quite Literally in our DNA

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire2 Comments

The conclusion of Susan Abulhawa’s epic debate performance at the Oxford Union last week. Please take time to study it in its fullness. Abulhawa is one of Palestine’s most compelling and accomplished novelists.

You will not erase us, no matter how many of us you kill and kill and kill, all day every day. We are not the rocks Chaim Weizmann thought you could clear from the land. We are its very soil. We are her rivers and her trees and her stories, because all of that was nurtured by our bodies and our lives over millennia of continuous, uninterrupted habitation of that patch of earth between the Jordan and Mediterranean waters, from our Canaanite, our Hebrew, our Philistine, and our Phoenician ancestors, to every conqueror or pilgrim who came and went, who married or raped, loved, enslaved, converted between religions, settled or prayed in our land, leaving pieces of themselves in our bodies and our heritage. The fabled, tumultuous stories of that land are quite literally in our DNA. You cannot kill or propagandize that away, no matter what death technology you use or what Hollywood and corporate media arsenals you deploy.

Someday, your impunity and arrogance will end. Palestine will be free; she will be restored to her multi-religious, multi-ethnic pluralistic glory; we will restore and expand the trains that run from Cairo to Gaza to Jerusalem, Haifa, Tripoli, Beirut, Damascus, Amman, Kuwait, Sanaa, and so on; we will put an end to the zionist American war machine of domination, expansion, extraction, pollution, and looting.

…and you will either leave, or you will finally learn to live with others as equals.