A Rare One

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

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

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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!

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

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

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

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” →

Eucharistic conventions: Why we practice these (somewhat) odd manners at the Lord’s Table

SehestedBy 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” →

Only a Love Ethic

WinkAn 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” →