What Will It Take to Ban the Bomb?

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Just Peacemaking, Uncategorized1 Comment
ban
A “ban the bomb” sign outside of the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

By Frida Berrigan, re-posted from Waging Nonviolence

When I was a young teenager, I would venture down to the basement where my father had his desk. He’d be plugging away at letter writing, or working on a talk or article. I’d wait quietly by his side for a few minutes before interrupting him to say goodbye, on my way to the movies or to meet up with friends.

He’d look at me with bright blue eyes and say something to the effect of: “You know what time it is, Freeds?” Continue reading “What Will It Take to Ban the Bomb?” →

Here Come the Holy Fools!

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, UncategorizedLeave a comment

CDRHoly Fool Arts, a theatrical production company bridging the worlds of faith, art, and activism, has kicked off their Summer 2017 tour.  They are heading West with upcoming events this week in Kentucky, Colorado and New Mexico and next week in Southern California.  Next month, they will head to the Bay Area, Portland, Seattle and then back through the Midwest.  Check HERE for tour dates and locations.

As faith-rooted artists of the Judeo Christian tradition, spiritual activists, and justice advocates, Holy Fool Arts is inspired by the ancient vision at the heart of the world’s spiritual traditions of human life in harmony with the rest of creation. While they are most known for producing the Carnival de Resistance, they have a number of programs to offer this summer, including pieces of ceremonial theater that re-contextualize stories from scripture in the light of current ecological issues around resource extraction and water. One of these pieces, Wade Through Deep Water, introduces two prophets, Miriam and John the Baptist, whose water-logged lives kept them swimming in transformation.

Weaving poetry from Catholic mystic Thomas Merton and Jewish feminist Alicia Suskin Ostriker with beautiful storytelling, high energy song and dance numbers, live music, dramatic characters, and large silk props, all are invited into the grief of the divine feminine and journey toward reunion with this aspect of God.
Continue reading “Here Come the Holy Fools!” →

Wild Lectionary: She Saw a Well of Water

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Identity, and History, Uncategorized, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment
2272958846_4bf80bc5dd_z(1)
Desert Well by David Winnie, Creative Commons, 2008

Proper 7, Season After Pentecost

Genesis 21:8-21

The biblical portrait(s) of Hagar include surrogacy, power, African identity, patriarchal family, enslavement, physical violence, pregnancy, migration, wilderness, water and the naming of God as one who sees. These are hard subjects and it would be easy to preach on another text. But when migrant bodies, mothers and children, are dying of thirst in the Arizona desert; when African refugees drown by the thousands in the Mediterranean; when corporations like Nestle, Kinder Morgan, and Dakota Access trample Indigenous women’s teaching that Water is Life; when the story of Isaac and Ishmael is used to normalize the Israeli occupation of Palestine; when overt acts of hatred against Muslims are escalating; and when white women’s complicity in criminalizing black bodies and exonerating murderous police is all but invisible, we cannot side-step this heritage that so profoundly speaks to our present. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: She Saw a Well of Water” →

Blessing of the Bicycles

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed Discipleship1 Comment
_1080626
Photo credit: Bayne Stanley

By Laurel Dykstra, Salal and Cedar

On May 29, Salal and Cedar and Fossil Free Faith organized “bike to worship week” and a blessing of the bicycles. Below is an article written by Laurel Dykstra for the Diocese of Westminster. Following the article is the order of service and intercessions.

Vancouver’s Christ Church Cathedral has a new bell tower but the bells ringing in the 120 year old church on May 29th were attached to the handle-bars of bicycles. With sacramental chrism oil, bicycle chain oil, holy water and prayers, Anglican Bishop Melissa Skelton, two priests, and a United Church Minister blessed bicycles, transit passes, and a host of people who are making an effort to reduce the environmental impact of their commute to worship.

While light from the stained glass windows colored their faces, a congregation of about twenty-five listened to a passage from Ezekiel about the prophet’s vision of a wheel within a wheel and they prayed for the safety of cyclists, fossil fuel divestment and the victims of climate disasters and wars for oil.   Led by a cross and banners and the bishop with miter, crozier and cope, cyclists and pedestrians processed out of the church to a hospitality station on the street where they offered coffee, snacks, bike maps and “ride-by blessings” to commuters on the bike route outside. Continue reading “Blessing of the Bicycles” →

Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

Vern RAnother short and sweet book review-summary from legendary pastor Vern Ratzlaff, posting up on the Canadian prairies, pouring his heart and mind into anti-imperial theology and soul-tending.  Vern turns 80 this week.  As Ched Myers noted a few days ago: “in his long ministry he has opened so many new ways of being Anabaptist in a pluralistic world, ways that many of us try to walk with him.” We honor this elder for his service and way-of-Being in the world–a model of radical discipleship.

Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed. William Herzog, Westminster, 1994.

Herzog focuses on the parables from the social/cultural analysis of Freire, Brazilian educator, whose work with the poor brought new attention to what could help people accept a perspective that would move beyond the immediate poverty and loss of hope. Herzog traces carefully the shifting interpretation systems of Jesus ‘the Parabaler’ and presents an interpretational approach that compares it with Freire’s methodology. Continue reading “Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed” →

The Mushroom Hunters

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, UncategorizedLeave a comment

mushroom.jpgBy Neil Gaiman
Listen hear read by Amanda Palmer

Science, as you know, my little one, is the study
of the nature and behaviour of the universe.
It’s based on observation, on experiment, and measurement,
and the formulation of laws to describe the facts revealed.

In the old times, they say, the men came already fitted with brains
designed to follow flesh-beasts at a run,
to hurdle blindly into the unknown,
and then to find their way back home when lost
with a slain antelope to carry between them.
Or, on bad hunting days, nothing. Continue reading “The Mushroom Hunters” →

Book Announcement: Where the Water Goes Around: Beloved Detroit

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed Discipleship1 Comment

dads bookNew book by Bill Wylie-Kellermann. Where the Water Goes Around: Beloved Detroit is a biblical and political reading of Detroit over the course of three decades by an activist pastor.

Detroit is a place where one can take the temperature of the world. Think on the rise of Fordism and auto-love, the Arsenal of Democracy, the practice of the sit-down strike, or the invention of the expressway and suburban mall. Consider more recently the rebellion of 1967, the deindustrialization of a union town, the assault on democracy in this Black-majority city, the structural adjustments of municipal bankruptcy, and now a struggle for water as a human right. Continue reading “Book Announcement: Where the Water Goes Around: Beloved Detroit” →

From a Black Mother to Her Son

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn RaceLeave a comment

KBDBy Kelly Brown-Douglas, originally published in Sojourners Magazine (03.20.17)

My son was about 2 years old. I had taken him to the park to play in a Flintstones-like car that was in the park’s playground. This particular park was next door to an elementary school. After being in the park for about 15 minutes, what appeared to be a class of first graders recessed into the park. Two little boys, one blonde-haired the other redheaded, ran down to the car where my son was playing. Seeing them coming, my son immediately jumped out. Soon the two little boys began fighting over who was going to play in the car. My son looked on with the fascination of a 2-year-old. The little redheaded boy, who seemed to be winning the battle for the car, saw my son looking. He suddenly stopped fighting for the car and turned toward my son. With all the venom that a 7- or 8-year-old boy could muster, he pointed his finger at my son and said, “You better stop looking at us, before I put you in jail where you belong.” This little white boy was angry. A black boy had intruded upon his space. My son was guilty of being black, in the park, and looking.  Click HERE to read more.

 

Wild Lectionary: Beware the Cataclysm!

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment
19024614_10154383615946567_367044656_o
Photo by Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson, Abide in Me

For readers of Wild Lectionary, there is hardly a Scripture passage more fitting than Genesis’ account of the Flood. The powerful, terrifying narrative is often reduced to a kids’ story, replete as it is with “cute” animals in the Ark. But, of course, beneath the surface is a story of divine near-omnicide, revealing a deep rift between the Creator’s vision and humanity’s response to God’s gift of the earth. In combination with the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 7.21-28), this week’s texts offer a sobering reminder of the cost of human violence to the earth and its creatures, including sapiens. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Beware the Cataclysm!” →