Digging

bury-the-deadBy Andrea Ferich. An excerpt from Bury the Dead: Stories of Death and Dying, Resistance and Discipleship

Our bodies and the land are one. Move the earth with your body, dance on it, farm in it, play with it; our final return to it is sacred. The soil is made of clay, like you and me–  hydrocarbon molecules, layers of geological and muscular formations, alive. The soil, mountains, and valleys are layered with time like our layered muscle tissue. We dance on the earth in the face of death, for the healing of ourselves and the healing of the land, connected as farmers, dancers, painters, musicians, and lovers of the goodness of the good green earth moving through lament. Our bodies and the earth are one and their healing and grieving are interconnected. Continue reading “Digging” →

Worship & Power

VernThe legendary Vern Ratzlaff (right), Canadian Mennonite pastor and professor, was sporting his 5-inch beard long before practically every American white guy under 35 started growing theirs. Vern is spending free time at his outpost in Saskatoon reading dense anti-imperial theology and preparing sermons for Sundays at the rural church he’s been the interim pastor for the past decade. This is an excerpt from a paper entitled “Worship and Power” that he wrote for the Baptist Peace Fellowship a few years ago: Continue reading “Worship & Power” →

New Book- Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregional Faith and Practice

wd book.jpgRadical Discipleship is excited to announce a book hot off the press that is an anthology exploring watershed discipleship. Many of the contributors are regular writers for radicaldiscipleship.net. We hope to have a review coming, but for now check out the book. And let us know if you want to review it!

Edited by Ched Myers
Foreword by Denise M. Nadeau

Contributors: Katerina Friesen, David Pritchett, Jonathan McRay, Lydia Wylie-Kellermann, Erinn Fahey, Sarah Thompson, Matthew Humphrey, Sarah Nolan, Erynn Smith, Reyna Ortega, Sasha Adkins, Vickie Machado, Tevyn East, Jay Beck, and Rose Berger.

This collection introduces and explores “watershed discipleship” as a critical, contextual, and constructive approach to ecological theology and practice, and features emerging voices from a generation that has grown up under the shadow of climate catastrophe. Continue reading “New Book- Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregional Faith and Practice” →

Happy Day

chicagoBy Ric Hudgens

Chicago thirty years ago
Hot August night
Apartments stacked close
No air conditioning
Everyone’s windows up
Taverns close at 3 am
Patrons weave their way home
Sound slides through night air
“O happy day, O happy day”
One voice ascends in a boozy baritone
“When Jesus washed . . . “
A one man marching choir
“ . . . My sins away.”
Heat, sweat, volume keep everyone awake
“O happy day, O happy day.” Continue reading “Happy Day” →

Deodorized Discourse

cornelFrom Dr. Cornel West in Black Prophetic Fire (in conversation with and edited by Christa Buschendorf, 2014):

The central role of mass media, especially a corporate media beholden to the US neoliberal regime, is to keep public discourse narrow and deodorized.  By “narrow” I mean confining the conversation to conservative Republican and neoliberal Democrats who shut out prophetic voices or radical visions.  This fundamental power to define the political terrain and categories attempts to render prophetic voices invisible.  The discourse is deodorized because the issues that prophetic voices highlight, such as mass incarceration, wealth inequality, and war crimes such as imperial drones murdering innocent people, are ignored.   Continue reading “Deodorized Discourse” →

Missives of Love and Conscience

book reviewBy Bill Wylie-Kellermann, written for On the Edge, A Detroit Catholic Worker paper

The Berrigan Letters: Personal Correspondence Between Daniel and Phillip Berrigan , arrived here by post unbidden from Orbis, just days before the news of Daniel’s death in NYC (+April 30, 2016+). I carried it east to the wake and funeral. It was soaked with rain in my pack during the procession from Mary House (NY CW) to the church.  Its stiff warp and wrinkle is a sweet remembrance.

The publication was initiated by Dan himself with such events on the horizon.  It is a gift, even if one that suffers from the haste of getting it into his frail and failing hands. Continue reading “Missives of Love and Conscience” →

A Call to Action

bcm-logoBy Tommy Airey

White people: no one is asking you to apologize for your ancestors. We are asking you to dismantle the systems they built and that you maintain. We have no use for your guilt. What we want from you is action.
Sylvia McAdam, co-founder of Idle No More

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Snow came early this year to the Canadian prairies, but there were some logs of hope burning in the fireplace of the soul last weekend at St. Andrew’s College in Saskatoon as 100 First Nations and white settler leaders convened for the Fall 2016 Bartimaeus Institute entitled The Truth & Reconciliation Commission Calls Churches to Action: Building Capacity for Restorative Solidarity.  The seven residential school survivors in attendance served as elders, guiding participants with both historical memory and spiritual anticipation. Continue reading “A Call to Action” →

Praying Ourselves Down From Our Privileged Perch

prayerBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

Prayer is central to Luke’s Gospel. The opening scene has the assembly of the people in Jerusalem praying while Zechariah is doing his priestly duty (1.10). The adult Jesus’s first appearance in the gospel is while he is praying (3.21). Luke regularly shows us Jesus at prayer as he discerns the Way (5.16; 6.12; 9.18; 9.28-29). Continue reading “Praying Ourselves Down From Our Privileged Perch” →

Remembering his Uncle

jerryDaniel Berrigan Memorial
September 30, 2016
St. Thomas More Parish, Kalamazoo
Jerry Berrigan

It is wonderful to be with you all on this last evening of September.  I need to begin by expressing my gratitude, deep beyond words, for this circle and each individual within it and for many more who couldn’t be here tonight.  You are my community and my family, your lives and the friendships we share undergird everything we do at Peace House and not only make our work possible but make our lives rich beyond any measure.  Thank you, for everything.  Continue reading “Remembering his Uncle” →