Don’t Forget to Feed the Loas

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Race1 Comment

The Light of the WorldFrom Elizabeth Alexander’s grief memoir The Light of the World (2015). This is the conclusion of the final lecture she gave to her “African American Art Today” class, just one week after the sudden death of her husband:

“Don’t forget to feed the loas” serves as an entreaty or opening salvo and refrain in Ishmael Reed’s great novel Mumbo Jumbo. The phrase articulates the imperative to remember to honor the deity-like ancestral forces that guide us through our contemporary lives. The offerings on their altars may be fruit or flowers, chicken or wine; when taken metaphorically, offerings may also be found in the form of art and the calling of names that honors our dead and keeps them near… Continue reading “Don’t Forget to Feed the Loas” →

Conversations On The Block: Celebrating Three Years

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Uncategorized5 Comments

RDnetlogo7Lydia Wylie-Kellermann and Tommy Airey are co-editors of RadicalDiscipleship.Net and are both solid INFJs on the Myers-Briggs personality test. When it comes to the Enneagram, Lydia is a 2 with a 3 wing. Tommy is a 3 with a 2 wing. But the similarities may end there. Lydia grew up in Detroit, is in a traditional same-sex marriage (with partner, Erinn), the mother of two sons, a disciple of the Harry Potter series, an avid gardener and knitter. Tommy grew up in suburban Southern California, is scandalously married to a former student (Lindsay), an avid distance runner and starts every morning sipping on home-roasted coffee, journaling and reading the sports page and academic theology. Below is the transcript of a conversation we recently had eagerly anticipating the three-year anniversary of RadicalDiscipleship.Net. Logo above by Sarah Holst.  

LWK: Happy Anniversary, Tommy!

For three years we have been vocationally tangled in this interwebs experiment of radicaldiscipleship.net. We have successfully shared over a thousand posts that come out of circles of communities across North America. We’ve done it without a dollar. We’ve been paid nothing and we have relied on the generosity of writers’ time and work.

I have to say that it has been one of the joys of my life. I have loved working with you, loved creating and visioning the space, and have been so grateful for the ways it has strengthened and made space for my own written voice. Thank you, Tommy, for birthing the idea and inviting me into it. What gave you the idea for the blog? What were your hopes? And how are you feeling three years in? Continue reading “Conversations On The Block: Celebrating Three Years” →

Harsh and Dreadful Thing

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8117HB7WbvLFor love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting further from your goal instead of nearer to it – at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.

– The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

On Revolution and Equilibrium

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Just Peacemaking, UncategorizedLeave a comment

indexFeature by Barbara Deming, originally published in Liberation, February 1968

Do you want to remain pure? Is that it?” a black man asked me, during an argument about nonviolence. It is not possible to act at all and to remain pure; and that is not what I want, when I commit myself to the nonviolent discipline. I stand with all who say of present conditions that they do not allow men and women to be fully human and so they must be changed – all who not only say this but are ready to act.

When one is confronted with what Russell Johnson calls accurately “The violence of the status quo” – conditions which are damaging, even murderous, to very many who must live within them – it is degrading for all to allow such conditions to persist. And if the individuals who can find the courage to bring about change see no way in which it can be done without employing violence on their part – a very much lesser violence, they feel, than the violence to which they will put an end – I do not feel that I can judge them. Continue reading “On Revolution and Equilibrium” →

Wild Lectionary: “Fire in the Earth: Burning but Flourishing”

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed Discipleship2 Comments

imagesThirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 17 (22)

Exodus 3:1-15

By Rev. Matthew Syrdal

“There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it was not consumed… “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your shoes, for the place you are standing is holy ground.”

And we know, when Moses was told,
in the way he was told,
“Take off your shoes!” He grew pale from that simple

reminder of fire in the dusty earth.
He never recovered
his complicated way of loving again

and was free to love in the same way
he felt the fire licking at his heels loved him.
As if the lion earth could roar
and take him in one movement…
-all poetry excerpts from David Whyte, Fire in the Earth

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: “Fire in the Earth: Burning but Flourishing”” →

“Unity” That Is Predicated Upon My Exclusion

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Race, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

sarahBy Sarah Matsui, a re-post from The Mennonite

People pray to each other. The way I say “you” to someone else, / respectfully, intimately, desperately. The way someone says / “you” to me, hopefully, expectantly, intensely…
Huub Oosterhuis

Zach (not his real name) and I are still friends.

When I was living and working as a teacher in Philly, Zach remembered the challenges he had experienced during his one year teaching.

Without my asking, he cooked delicious dinners and invited me to a break from my usual peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and instant ramen. In retrospect, his were among the only nutritionally sound meals I ate during my first year of teaching. He also made a point to ask me how I was doing and how my students were doing, and he prayed for us. Continue reading ““Unity” That Is Predicated Upon My Exclusion” →

Sermon: Power of Names

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Identity, and History, Theological Animation, UncategorizedLeave a comment
10576925_10203724502133713_5217887874462831456_n
My Grandma Bea, me, my mom, and my sister Lucy

Preached by Lydia Wylie-Kellermann at the Day House Catholic Worker
August 27, 2017

Exodus 1:8-2:10
Matthew 16:13-20

As I read the opening piece of the text from Exodus, it feels like I am reading a script from the white men who marched on Charlottesville two weeks ago.

It begins with the Pharaoh naming his fear that the Israelites are becoming too numerous and powerful. He is scared they will out-number and over-take him. He orders that they be forced into labor and when that doesn’t work, he orders murder.

It echoes of the treacherous low-wage labor forced on undocumented folks living in constant fear.

It echoes of a prison industrial complex holding captive more black men today than were enslaved in the south. Continue reading “Sermon: Power of Names” →

To Get There

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Mike Smith
Photo: Michael Smith 

By Ric Hudgens

There was that moment
when all of us
wanted to give up
walk away
leave
without a forwarding number
until we remembered
the place we would run to
was the place
we’ve been working towards
that we only see
when all of us
dream together
so we turned around
climbing back down
into the mud
returning to work
building this bridge
that one day
some one
will be able to cross
to get there.

Naming

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, UncategorizedLeave a comment

index“I think your mythology would call them fallen angels. War and hate are their business, and one of their chief weapons is un-Naming – making people not know who they are. If someone knows who he is, really knows, then he doesn’t need to hate. That’s why we still need Namers, because there are places throughout the universe like your planet Earth. When everyone is really and truly Named, then the Echthroi will be vanquished.”

― Madeleine L’Engle, A Wind in the Door