Time To Heal

HealAn unveiling from the legendary John August Swanson, posted on his Facebook page (July 28, 2017):

Today, I am happy to share with you my newest poster (right), on healthcare. The central image of this poster comes from my 2016 giclee print, TIME TO HEAL.

The text is taken from Pope Francis and from RoseAnn Demoro, who is the executive director of National Nurses United.

I wanted to share their voices and their messages of the importance of working together, and caring for everyone. There are complicated and difficult problems in the American healthcare system, and we do not all agree on the best solutions. My hope is that we can all agree to work together to make it possible for all people to get the care they need.

If you are interested, the poster is available on my website at this link: http://temp.johnaugustswanson.com/produ…/time-to-heal-poster

More information on the giclee print edition, TIME TO HEAL, is available on my website, here: http://www.johnaugustswanson.com/def…/PID%3d1.2.30.3-11.html

 

Sermon: Nonviolence;“Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of a neighbor” vs “Do not resist the evildoer” and “turn the other cheek”

roseBy Rose Berger
January 10, 2017, Sojourners Chapel

Leviticus 19:15-18; Matthew 5:38-48; 1 Thessalonians 5:12-24

Thank you to Karen and the Chapel Committee for inviting me.

Usually when I preach I like to do a deep dive into scripture that unlocks scripture’s liberating power on us here at Sojourners.

But today we’ll take a different direction. I was asked to speak specifically about the conference I attended in Rome last year on Nonviolence and Just Peace. Continue reading “Sermon: Nonviolence;“Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of a neighbor” vs “Do not resist the evildoer” and “turn the other cheek””

A Rolling Plowshares

DAPLIf you haven’t already, meet Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya, Catholic Workers from Des Moines, Iowa, who secretly carried out multiple acts of sabotage and arson in recent months in order to stop construction of the controversial $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. These are excerpts from a longer interview with Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow.Org:

Ruby Montoya on what they did:

So, on election night, we went to a DAPL easement site in Buena Vista County, and we saw over six or seven pieces of heavy machinery there. And we went with our supplies, and we filled these coffee canisters up with gasoline and oil. We placed those coffee canisters on the inside of the cabs of these heavy machinery, on the seats, and we pierced those coffee canisters so that the flammable liquids would spread. We then lit matches and—in efforts to make those machines obsolete.

We acted after having exhausted all other avenues of political process and resistance to this petroleum pipeline that, to my knowledge, is the largest in the United States as far as the capacity that it is able to carry the oil.

Continue reading “A Rolling Plowshares”

Catholic Nonviolence Initiative

VaticanFrom Ched Myers, who is working with one of the follow up committees working to draft material to give to the Pope in hopes he will issue an encyclical on nonviolence (re-posted from NonviolenceJustPeace.Net):

The following statement, crafted in a consensus process, was released at the end of the Nonviolence and Just Peace conference in Rome, April 2016. We invite individuals and organizations to endorse this statement using the form below. More than 2,000 individuals and organizations have endorsed as of April 2017. Continue reading “Catholic Nonviolence Initiative”

Art of Listening

siddSiddhartha listened. He was now listening intently, completely absorbed, quite empty, taking in everything. He felt that he had now completely learned the art of listening. He had often heard all this before, all these numerous voices in the river, but today they sounded different. He could no longer distinguish the different voices- the merry voice from the weeping voice, the childish voice from the manly voice. They all belonged to each other: the lament of those who yearn, the laughter of the wise, the cry of indignation and the groan of the dying. They were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life. When Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this song of a thousand voices; when he did not listen to the sorrow or laughter, when he did bind his soul to any one particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity; then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om- perfection.
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

Developers Are Trying to Build a Pipeline Through a Watershed. These Nuns Built a Chapel in Its Path.

unnamedBy Rose Marie BergerHeidi Thompson. Re-posted from sojo.net.

LANCASTER, Penn. — More than 500 people gathered in a hot and dusty Pennsylvania cornfield yesterday afternoon to join the Catholic sisters of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ for the dedication of a new outdoor chapel, built on land about to be seized from them by a corporate developer planning to build a natural gas pipeline.

The chapel is an outdoor arbor built by a local craftsman, Jon Telesco, and contains an altar surrounded by wooden benches. (The tradition of building “booths” in the wilderness to mark prophetic presence has a long history in biblical tradition, including the “brush arbors” used by enslaved African Americans for worship.) The sisters dedicated the sacred space on Sunday by reading from their community’s land ethic adopted in 2005. Continue reading “Developers Are Trying to Build a Pipeline Through a Watershed. These Nuns Built a Chapel in Its Path.”

Wild Lectionary: Kingdom Like a Seed

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wild mustard (public domain)

Eighth Sunday After Pentecost
Proper 12(17)

Matthew 13:31-32

This week’s Wild Lectionary offers two different but complimentary takes on the seed parables.

The first is a host of resources –devotions, bible studies, children’s curricula, adult education material etc. prepared by A Rocha Canada for churches that are new to engaging with creation care. The free downloadable materials are focused on Good Seed Sunday, celebrated the Sunday after Earth Day, but are also relevant for the Season of Creation and this summer stretch of Year A in the Revised Common Lectionary where we visit the seed parables in Matthew.

The second offering is excerpts from an essay by Jim Perkinson: Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Kingdom Like a Seed”

An Introduction to the Prophetic Imagination

LogoA message from Mark Van Steenwyk of Twin Cities-based The Center for Prophetic Imagination, who is offering two compelling courses this Fall, as well as “An Introduction to the Prophetic Imagination” weekends in August and September:

The Center for Prophetic Imagination is a member-based nonprofit. We offer education, arts, and activist initiatives to help people turn from the false promises of empire and embrace God’s vision for the world.

Will you join us in working to co-create a world where all walls of alienation are torn down and all people live justly with each other, with the land, and with the Spirit of Life?

By becoming a member, you will:

  • receive a 10% discount on all events and training we offer (workshops, conferences, retreats, and more)
  • receive a special quarterly newsletter with links to free resources.
  • have access to our fee-based webinars for free.
  • be invited to nominate/approve board members, approve our annual budget, and ratify any amendments to our bylaws.
  • feel warm feels for helping us do important work in the world.

Find out more here.

Peace and Resistance,


Mark Van Steenwyk
Executive Director 
The Center for Prophetic Imagination

Sermon: The Wheat and the Weeds: A Riddle of Love?

index
Photo by Jessica Rose

By Jim Perkinson, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Detroit, July 23, 2017

Such a rich lectionary offering this morning, I am hard put to choose among the Hebrew scripture, the Greek epistle, and the Aramean gospel.  I could easily focus on Jacob’s experience with a dreaming-stone, propping up his tired head on his way upstream from Isaac’s abode in Canaan, charged with not taking a wife from among the indigenous Canaanites, but going north and east to Aramean kin, from whence his ancestor Abraham had fled originally (Gen 28:10-19a).  The stone, likely a meteorite, births vision—Jacob seeing a ladder like a cosmic tree, granting movement between this world and the Spirit-World for angelic folk, the Powers in their proper role, and hears, speaking from the rock, the same great I AM that Moses will hear much further down the road speaking from a bush.  Continue reading “Sermon: The Wheat and the Weeds: A Riddle of Love?”

The Flesh

AORAn excerpt from Ambassadors of Reconciliation, Volume I by Elaine Enns and Ched Myers of Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries:

Therefore, from now on we regard no one from a human point of view. Even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away. See, everything has become new! (II Cor 5:16-17) [1]

The apostle urges disciples to view the world no longer “from a human point of view”—literally, “according to the flesh.”   The “flesh” (Gk sarx) does not refer to our bodies or our sexual passions, the widespread misunderstanding of Christian pietism. [2] Rather, it is one of Paul’s favorite metaphors for the deeply-rooted, socially-conditioned worldview we inherit from our upbringing. It is the sum total of personal and political constructs and conventions that define what it means to be a member of a given culture—in other words, the way most folk think and act. A key example of the perspective of the “flesh” that we raise throughout this project is the dominant assumption that the “moral” response to violation is punishment. To challenge this cultural conviction quickly engenders passionate and often irrational resistance that is both broad (i.e. the majority opinion) and deep (welling up from the core of individual psyches). This is the power of the “flesh” in Paul’s sense. Continue reading “The Flesh”