Wild Lectionary: Tears Cannot Water the Land

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Clancy
Credit: Clancy Dunigan

Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. And Miriam sang to them: ‘Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.’
Exodus 14:20-21

By Tevyn East and Jay Beck

John: “She died in a dry place, yet the spring followed her.
It followed her everywhere 
like a lover, easing us to rest,
springing from hidden places
 in our wanderings.

Always, we were thirsty. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Tears Cannot Water the Land” →

A Surprising Moment of Wonder and Gratitude

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Sabbath Economics, Watershed Discipleship1 Comment

thumb_IMG_0336.JPG_1024By Kyle Mitchell

*This is the second post in a series on Wednesdays exploring components of a mealtime spirituality.  

Cleveland, Ohio

One of the most treasured traditions that I took from growing up in a Christian family is the mealtime prayer. Even now when I go back home for holidays, I know that we’ll gather in a circle before the meal, grasp hands, and ask who’s turn it is to give thanks. My 6-year-old nephew summed it up pretty well last time when he prayed, “Dear God, thank you for everything. Amen.” Continue reading “A Surprising Moment of Wonder and Gratitude” →

Sermon: It’s Like Burning Fire Shut Up in my Bones

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roseBy Rose Berger, preached at St. Stephen’s & The Incarnation Episcopal Church (Washington, D.C.)
June 25, 2017

Jeremiah 20:7-13, Psalm 69: 8-11, (12-17), 18-20, Romans 6:1b-11, Matthew 10:24-39

[Piscataway people on whose land this church stands. Bishop Budde, Pastor Sam, Rev. Linda. The Beloved Community that gathers at St. Stephen’s and the Incarnation.]

The prophet Jeremiah was asked to carry out one of the most difficult tasks ever assigned to any servant of God.[1]

During the last years of the kingdom of Judah, Jeremiah was to prophesy to King and Congress that because of their sin their fragile nation would be subsumed by the Babylonian Empire and they would all forcibly removed to the capital city of Babylon. Continue reading “Sermon: It’s Like Burning Fire Shut Up in my Bones” →

Dan Berrigan: ¡Presente!

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting Empire1 Comment

BerriganFrom the prophetic mouth of the late Dan Berrigan, on the 1st anniversary of 9/11 (An Interview with Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow, September 11, 2002):

An anniversary like this induces—seems to me, induces silence rather than a lot of words, but I’ll try. A few minutes after this horrid event a year ago, the phone rang. I was working at something. And a friend from North Carolina said, “Something terrible is happening in New York City.” And I said, “What?” and so on and so forth. And my first reaction was, I guess, right out of the gut rather than the heart, and I blurted into the phone, “So it’s come home at last.” Sympathy and tears came later, but that was the beginning. And I had a sense that that came from a very deep immersion in what I might call a hyphenated reality of America-in-the-world, hyphen in-the-world. Continue reading “Dan Berrigan: ¡Presente!” →

Another Word is in the Wind: A Psalm of Complaint and Avowal

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Subverting Empire1 Comment

prayer and politiksBy Ken Sehested, the curator of Prayer & Politiks

Have mercy upon us, O Lord.
Our soul has had more than its fill
of the scorn of those who are at ease,
of the contempt of the proud.
—Psalm 123:3-4

In the end, if we are left to our own devices—to our
own amalgam of brains and brawn, of ingenuity and
charisma, sleight of hand and strength of arm, in
mobilizing sufficient force to bend the will of others
to our own, in accordance to self-ordained vision
masquerading as fate’s foreordained history—then
nothing is forbidden. All authority is subsumed in
the will to power. Continue reading “Another Word is in the Wind: A Psalm of Complaint and Avowal” →

New Online Class for Parents-to-be and Seekers

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, UncategorizedLeave a comment

f60ead_73c06bda70bd49c3947f23dc638eaacf~mv2.jpgBy Chelsea Page

Childfree Not Carefree

Years before I created my new online class about the virgin Mary’s motherhood journey and the reproductive justice ethics led by women of color, I wrote to a friend:

My decision not to birth a child and, later, not to adopt a child, has been so lengthy, messy, and labor-intensive that I feel astonished that I have literally nothing to show for it. I hoped that at least I have cleared space for a different kind of family or community in my life. I await it with some of the eager impatience that I imagine my infertile sisters feel when they long for a child. Continue reading “New Online Class for Parents-to-be and Seekers” →

Wild Lectionary: The Riff Raff, the Bedbugs, and the Signs

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized1 Comment

23-PovertyMascotsProper 18(23)

Exodus 7-12

By Laurel Dykstra

Now you know and I know, that lice, mice, roaches, bed-bugs, and rats are no respecters of persons. They invade the house of Pharaoh, the houses of his officials, and of all his people (Exod 8:21, 10:6); they infest the luxury hotels and the welfare hotels. But when the special shampoo costs eight dollars a bottle, and a visit from the exterminator $125, those that can—pay, and those that can’t, or whose landlord won’t—scratch.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: The Riff Raff, the Bedbugs, and the Signs” →

Adventures on the Elliptical, Part I: Where’s the Beef?

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Abundant Table
Walking the Stations of the Cross at the Abundant Table Food Project in Oxnard, CA.

By Tommy Airey, co-editor of RadicalDiscipleship.net

*This post kicks-off a new series on Wednesdays exploring the movement of Spirit during mealtime.  

Give us meat for our food.
Numbers 11:13

Sometimes I sneak inside the local gym here in Ypsilanti and spend thirty minutes on the elliptical. The AC is on and a half dozen TVs are right in front of me.  A few weeks ago, I was sweating to a sports talk show host lamenting his wife’s newfound veganism. It is the oldest, most tiring go-to in the counterfeit masculinity playbook. I knew exactly what he was going to say next: “I just want to go out and have a steak with my guy friends.” And then he droned on about the whole pathetic ordeal for the entire segment.

Seven years ago, Lindsay and I became vegetarians after watching the Academy Award winning documentary Food, Inc. and then reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals.  I attribute this conversion mostly to Michael Smith, a former traveling salesmen now living in Iceland snapping photos of the Northern Lights with his girlfriend Inga.  I was Michael’s freshman basketball coach.  I taught him how to ball fake and skip pass.  Now he feeds me the latest on the state of the heavily corporatized meat and dairy industries.  I got the better end of the bargain.   Continue reading “Adventures on the Elliptical, Part I: Where’s the Beef?” →

Where is the theology that redefines to them what it means to be fully human?

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indexFrom Ruby Sales, excerpt from interview on On Being.

Let me just say something before we have a question. I really think that one of the things that we’ve got to deal with is that how is it that we develop a theology or theologies in a 21st-century capitalist technocracy where only a few lives matter? How do we raise people up from disposability to essentiality? And this goes beyond the question of race. What is it that public theology can say to the white person in Massachusetts who’s heroin-addicted because they feel that their lives have no meaning, because of the trickle-down impact of whiteness in the world today? What do you say to someone who has been told that their whole essence is whiteness and power and domination? And when that no longer exists, then they feel as if they are dying or they get caught up in the throes of death, whether it’s heroin addiction. Continue reading “Where is the theology that redefines to them what it means to be fully human?” →