The Left Cheek

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

BayoBy Bayo Akomolafe, Nigerian author and “walkout academic,” [re]posted from his blog

Through this year, my explorations into new materialisms possessed me. In talks and text, in teachings and learnings, I dived into the queerness of seriously rethinking the boundaries I had been conditioned to erect between me and nature. I asked the question: what if we really took seriously the idea that the world is alive, that nature is more mind-like, magical and incorporeal than we know how to speak about, and that humans are more animal-like, embodied and carnal than our stories of centrality allow us to see? My book, These Wilds Beyond our Fences, struggled with these ideas and their implications for the ways we understand race, social justice, culture, loss, environmental degradation, and our perennial fascination with scaling heights. Continue reading “The Left Cheek” →

Sermon: Becoming my Body

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Uncategorized7 Comments
thirdtrimeseter
Third trimester By Julia Jack-Scott

By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
Day House, Detroit Catholic Worker, January 14, 2018

Psalm 40:2, 7-10
1 Samuel 3: 3-10, 19
1 Corinthians 6: 13-15, 17-20

I am not a body person. I feel my identity rests in my head and my heart and far too often, I think of my body only as a tool. A means to an end. It helps me get me where I want to go, but it is not….me.

Lately, I’ve been sitting with health fears for loved ones as tests are done to see if there are things growing in their bodies. And I realized the fear that swells up in me. I don’t understand the body. How could something be killing someone I love from the inside without us knowing?

I grew up along Michigan Avenue where, even as a child, cars pulled over or hollered or followed. I learned what it was like to be a woman in this country and to be seen only as a body. And there is outrage in that rises up, for I want to be seen for the workings of my mind and not the shape of my body. Continue reading “Sermon: Becoming my Body” →

Prayer for the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Race, Identity, and History, UncategorizedLeave a comment

USMC-09611By Bill Wylie-Kellermann

Spirit of the Universe, whose moral arc you make to bend toward justice,
thank you for birthing our brother Martin, right on time, into our history, into the journey of transformation for which we yearn. For uttering him in the Word, and forming him in the womb.

We lift him up this day in the communion of ancestors, summoning him from among all who have ever interceded and struggled for justice. Continue reading “Prayer for the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.” →

The Story of How Humanity Fell in Love with Itself Once Again

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Cloud of Witnesses3 Comments
Lyla JuneBy Lyla June Johnston (right), a Diné singer, writer, and activist specializing in intergenerational and inter-ethnic healing, as well as Indigenous philosophy. This essay is [re]posted with permission from her Facebook page.

I spend a lot of time honoring and calling upon my Native American ancestors. I am keenly aware that my father’s people hold a venerable medicine as well. He has ancestry from the Great Sacred Motherland of Europe.

I have been called a half breed. I have been called a mutt. Impure. I have been told my mixed blood is my bane. That I’m cursed to have an Indian for a mother and a cowboy for a father.

But one day, as I sat in the ceremonial house of my mother’s people, a wondrous revelation landed delicately inside of my soul. It sang within me a song I can still hear today. This song was woven from the voices of my European grandmothers and grandfathers. Their songs were made of love.
Continue reading “The Story of How Humanity Fell in Love with Itself Once Again” →

Wild Lectionary: Woven in the Depths

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment
Womb_2_Kovil_BG
Womb 2 Kovil BG Photo Credit: Fillipov Ivo, Creative Commons

Epiphany, Year B
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

By Ragan Sutterfield

E. Stanley Jones once wrote that if there is an instinct in the human heart to conceal there is also a deeper instict to reveal” (Victory Through Surrender). And yet, our culture keeps from authentic disclosure. We are invited, instead, to a kind of performative exposure, a way of revealing that also hides. We want to be known and seen but we do not trust those who might see us. We are afraid of what might happen if we are known, fully, authentically. So we manufacture disclosure on Facebook, hoping that in the commiseration of comments or praise of likes we will achieve what we are afraid to risk through a real openness. It is disclosure at the surface rather than at the depths.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Woven in the Depths” →

What I Would Do and Say the Next Time

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, UncategorizedLeave a comment

AlexieFrom Sherman Alexie, “On The Amtrak From Boston to New York City:”

The white woman across the aisle from me says ‘Look,
look at all the history, that house
on the hill there is over two hundred years old, ‘
as she points out the window past me

into what she has been taught. I have learned
little more about American history during my few days
back East than what I expected and far less
of what we should all know of the tribal stories Continue reading “What I Would Do and Say the Next Time” →

Lost in Translation

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Uncategorized1 Comment

By Joyce Hollyday

Old womanThe woman on the phone, speaking heavily accented Spanish, introduced herself as Consuela to Rebecca, the coordinator and translator for our bilingual group Mujeres Unidas en Fe (Women United in Faith). Consuela said that she wanted to visit the group and offer a Medicaid presentation. Continue reading “Lost in Translation” →

Lead Us Home By Another Way

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Uncategorized7 Comments

Cambria RoadBy Lindsay Airey

Spirit who animates All Things,
help us to listen now.
May we abandon our many pursuits
keeping us ever-busy and never listening
to your gentle,
fierce proddings.

Guide us in the way(s) of life.
Help us release:
our addictions,
superiorities,
certainties,
white-knuckling, fear-suppressing
blame,
shame
and deep-seeded
hatreds.
May we find something more reliable
to keep us warm
these
long
winter nights. Continue reading “Lead Us Home By Another Way” →