It’s Time to Take Jesus Off the Pedestal

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation7 Comments

Lindsay GreyReyBy Tommy Airey

Like every good Evangelical, my adolescent faith was about giving all glory to the Lord. I sang praise songs to a “high and lifted up” Jesus and always concluded my prayers “in Jesus’ name” (I signed off my emails “Fool For Christ,” but that’s a story for another time). I was taught to utilize “apologetics” to defend the faith and prove that Jesus was, in fact, Divine. I revered C.S. Lewis whose Mere Christianity made a water-tight case for my beliefs. Lewis left readers three choices for who Jesus really was: a lunatic, a liar or the Lord Himself:

Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.

Lewis claimed that, when it came to the people who actually met Jesus, they responded in three ways: hatred, terror or adoration. There was no middle ground. Continue reading “It’s Time to Take Jesus Off the Pedestal” →

Fall Planting

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images.jpgBy Rose Marie Berger (23 September 2017)
A poem on the feast day of St. Adamnan,
ninth abbot of Iona

Today, planted scarpered kale
liberated by Grace. Winter comes
to risen beds. Leafy tough, stolen,
abundant delight! Rogation prayers
go in with roots. Ilhui’s garden blessing
Lingers below purple basil, bible leaf,
Mary’s milkweed (for 3 monarchs,
should they arrive). Ilhuicamina
Long-limbed, beautiful, copal skin,
trusting palms
soles to seal the deal. These child-plantings
uprooted, transported, here.
Now let soil hold you. Continue reading “Fall Planting” →

The Problem is the System Working the Way it is Supposed to

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn RaceLeave a comment

ChokeholdFrom author and legal analyst Paul Butler in a conversation with Michelle Alexander about his recent release Chokehold: Policing Black Men:

My Brother’s Keeper is a program for African-American boys and men, boys of color and men, Latinos and Native-American men as well. And, at this [Obama] White House ceremony, there were people you’d expect to be there, like, the major leaders of the civil rights organizations. And, some people who you might not expect, like, Mayor Bloomberg, Bill O’Reilly, a lot of people.
Continue reading “The Problem is the System Working the Way it is Supposed to” →

A Rare One

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Cloud of WitnessesLeave a comment

BerriganPhoto by Clancy Dunigan, a founding member of the Reagan-era Bartimaeus Community in Berkeley, CA.  Clancy lives on Whidbey Island in Washington state with his partner Marcia and hosts “Clancy’s Bar & Grill,” an award-winning blues radio show, every Thursday night on 90.7 KSER in Seattle.  Dunigan recently explained his shot of the late Daniel Berrigan:

 

For me, a rare one, as he looked into the camera. Usually I found Dan looking away or with eyes cast down.  The luck of the Irish we will call it.  We had just finished listening to Dan’s take on Isaiah in a tent outside the Nev. Test Site, at a Pacific Life Community gig.  Dan suggested we all take a walk into the desert, find a place to sit or stand and consider the Scripture, pray, and listen. This photo was taken after that, as folk returned to the tent.

 

I is not understanding human beans

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images.jpg“Giants isn’t eating each other either, the BFG said. Nor is giants killing each other. Giants is not very lovely, but they is not killing each other. Nor is crockadowndillies killing other crockadowndillies. Nor is pussy-cats killing pussy-cats.

‘They kill mice,’ Sophie said.

‘Ah, but they is not killing their own kind,’ the BFG said. ‘Human beans is the only animals that is killing their own kind.’ Continue reading “I is not understanding human beans” →

Learning from Laughter and the Trees: Under the Apple Tree Again

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Uncategorized2 Comments
IMG_2463
Grandpa, Cedar, and Isaac digging the hole for Scatters under the apple tree.

By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

The rain is pouring down with periodic rumbles of thunder. It is cold and the sun has set, but we can tell that there is a need in Isaac’s heart to make this trek. We put on hats and shoes and give into the rain as we walk down the street and into the backyard of my dad’s house.

It’s too dark to see the loosened soil, but we bend down low and Isaac says, “This is where we buried Scatters.” Cedar, who is almost two, bends down too and after a minute looks up at Erinn and says “Meow” and points to the dirt. Erinn says, “Is this where Scatters is? Did he die?” Cedar responds, “Meow die.” Continue reading “Learning from Laughter and the Trees: Under the Apple Tree Again” →

See our Christmas cards being made!

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, UncategorizedLeave a comment

DSC00970.JPGPurchase Now!
Sales end November 14.

Lucy and Daniel Wylie-Eggert designed the cover for our Advent book and are also screen printing Christmas cards for us. They have the image of the owl over the moon and it reads below “to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.” Continue reading “See our Christmas cards being made!” →

Wild Lectionary: Letting it flow down the creek

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

IMG_4361Proper 27(32)A
Pentecost + 23

I Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25: 1-13

Keep awake therefore, for you do not know the day or the hour. (Mt 25:13)

…so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. (1 Th 4:13)

By Andrew Hudson

I’m an empty-nester, twice over. I sent my son off to college a couple years ago, and I’m still not through adjusting. And just recently, I had a similar experience, sending off a good, small Mennonite congregation to a new location at the end of my being their interim pastor.  Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Letting it flow down the creek” →

Decommissioning Whiteness

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BayoAn excerpt from Bayo Akomolafe’s “Homo Icarus: The Depreciating Value of Whiteness and the Place of Healing.”  Dr. Akomalafe is globally recognized for his poetic, unconventional, counterintuitive, and indigenous take on global crisis, civic action and social change. He is the author of the about to be published These Wilds Beyond Our Fences.

To address Charlottesville is to meet the implosion of white order and normativity. It is to go by way of a prevalent distrust in the political order, a coming to terms with the real limits to the power of neoliberalism to cater to our basic needs and yearnings as an ever-emerging co-species. It is to touch upon the silent racialized class war that is still being fought – only under other names and so invisibly as to now be expected. It is to exorcise the demons of fruitless wanderings and search for land. It is to meet those who are broken, who – like the rest of us who might claim some sanity or goodness to ourselves, who might consider ourselves on the right side of history, who might think of ourselves as progressive and welcoming to diversity – are not yet at home. Continue reading “Decommissioning Whiteness” →

Caring for the Old Woman of Samhain: A Riff on Matthew 22:34-46

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

JPerk
By Jim Perkinson, a sermon (10.29.17) for a turning Season 

In the Lectionary gospel for the day, the stakes are high. Jesus has just side-swiped the annual Passover parade, organized an Occupy-takeover of the Temple the next day, held a teach-in naming the site “Thug Central,” “Den of Robbers,” opened the space to the blind, the lame and children, gone underground in Bethany overnight, come back up to the central shrine, which is also the national bank, begun his word-joust-defense of his action—and the clock is ticking.   The contract has been out on his life ever since the early days of his community organizing in Galilee where he led his inner circle in a civil disobedience action, poaching wheat from fields on the Sabbath. Continue reading “Caring for the Old Woman of Samhain: A Riff on Matthew 22:34-46” →