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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!”
Proper 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”
An 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”
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”
We are thrilled to announce the publication of Listening in the Dark: Daily Advent Reflections for Radical Discipleship Communities. Just in time for Advent!
Order by November 15 to get your booklets on time for the start of Advent! See below for a Table of Contents. Click HERE to order!
Continue reading “Advent Booklets: Accepting Orders NOW!”
By Ken Sehested, the author/editor of prayerandpolitiks,org
When three of us began daydreaming about a starting a new congregation, during long hikes in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the first year of the new millennium, one of the things we immediately imagined was worship centered around communion, including placing the table in the center of our seating. Every Sunday—which is unusual in Protestant bodies. None of us were raised that way. This tangible ritual act—of re-membering in the midst of a dismembered world—is poignantly expressive of our theological vision. Continue reading “Eucharistic conventions: Why we practice these (somewhat) odd manners at the Lord’s Table”
An excerpt from the late theologian Walter Wink’s “Homosexuality and the Bible,” written more than two decades ago:
The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is simply that the Bible has no sexual ethic. There is no Biblical sex ethic. Instead, it exhibits a variety of sexual mores, some of which changed over the thousand year span of biblical history. Mores are unreflective customs accepted by a given community. Many of the practices that the Bible prohibits, we allow, and many that it allows, we prohibit. The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, or culture, or period.
Continue reading “Only a Love Ethic”
By Jordan Leahy
When I was a kid, I was terrified of thunderstorms. Celestial rumblings and quaking ground elicited great anxiety until much later in life than I care to admit. When I saw the clouds approaching, I’d prepare a makeshift nest in the closest beneath the staircase. I’d take books or a card game and hide out until the storm passed.
In adulthood, I find such storms soothing, a relief from summer heat and time to be close with my family. Storms create a time for various activities of stillness and rest. When the clouds come into view, anticipation builds at the coming refreshment. Continue reading “When it Rains”
By Edward Sloane
Proper 26 (31)
Joshua 3: 7-17
The movement of crossing-over offers a theologically rich metaphor, but one that is not without troubles. The Israelites crossed-over the Red Sea and the Jordan River to establish a Promised Land; Jesus crossed over from death in the resurrection; the colonization of indigenous communities and the exploitation of more-than-human communities are the result of crossing oceans and bioregions; enslaved black bodies in the United States travelled the Underground Railroad to cross over into free territories; migrants cross borders seeking refuge from political, economic, and climate instability. Crossing over suggests a happy ending—we have arrived. Leaving behind a troubling, or unsatisfying, past, we are on our way to something better, perhaps even salvation. Depending on who tells the story and how, it is easy to read such crossings in multiple ways. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Parting the Water or Crossing Over, The Trouble Remains”
By Ched Myers, originally posted yesterday on ChedMyers.org
Right: Fr. Phil Berrigan pouring blood on 1-A draft files at the Customs House, Baltimore, MD, October 27, 1967.
Today, October 31st, we prepare to embrace that great feast of remembering, the “Triduum of Saints”: All Hallow’s Eve, Saints and All Souls Day, or Dia de los Muertos (learn more about the Triduum by reading this blog or linking to this free 2012 BCM webinar).
As I have gotten older this season of the Saints has become my favorite time of year. This morning Elaine and I sat and prayed at our table, pictures of parents and other missed loved ones spread out. We both cried telling stories. Tears always help. Continue reading “50/500: A Season of Protest and Remembering”
Radical Discipleship 