Adventures in Recovering the Telos

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire2 Comments

CatonsvilleBy Tommy Airey

It was a cool Tuesday night in mid-June, four hours north of Detroit and forty-five days after the death of Daniel Berrigan. Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellermann gathered an intergenerational group from among original members and friends of the Detroit Peace Community–so named by members of Jonah House back in 1980 during a week of civil disobedience at the Pentagon. This night’s topic was the Catonsville Nine action of 1968, the mid-day, non-violent storming of the Catonsville, Maryland draft board: they took 378 draft files and set them on fire with homemade napalm in the parking lot and then waited in prayer and song for the police to show up. It sparked hundreds of similar actions all over North America. After Bill’s introduction and historical context, we read The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, a reworked transcript of the trial, put to poetry by Berrigan. I was struck by how coherently these nine spoke about the theological and spiritual motivations for their hit-and-stay action. They were all speaking the same compelling language. Continue reading “Adventures in Recovering the Telos” →

Marry

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Uncategorized, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

t and lReaders may not know, but Tommy and Lindsay Airey are ending their time in Detroit this month. It is a serious loss for those of us in Detroit, but we trust it will mean wonderful things for http://www.radicaldiscipleship.net as Tommy and Lindsay continue to write, reflect, and place their feet in new places. This is a goodbye poem for them written by Bill Wylie-Kellermann.

This old world to that beloved Word
this watershed to discipleship
roots, sweet and thirsty, to the road;
in radical vocation, wed disciple to disciple
as time to time
(What kairos is it on the chronos of Detroit?
the nation, the planet, our hearts?) Continue reading “Marry” →

A note from Witness Against Torture

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poster3Dear Friends,

15 men released from Guantanamo Bay Prison

We celebrate the release of 15 men from Guantanamo last Monday to United Arab Emirates. Read more about their release here. Their names are:

Mahmud al Mujahid (now 36, from Yemen)
Mohammed Khusruf (now 66, from Yemen
Abd al Muhsin Salih al Busi (now 37, from Yemen)
Abd al Rahman Sulayman (now 37, from Yemen)
Zahir Omar Hamis bin Hamdoun (now 36, from Yemen)
Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmed (now 36, from Yemen)
Bashir al Marwalah (now 37, from Yemen)
Saeed Sarem Jarabh (now 38, from Yemen)
Ayub Murshid Ali Salih (now 38, from Yemen)
Mohammed al Adahi (now 54, from Yemen)
Abdel Qadir al Mudhaffari (now 40, from Yemen)
Abdul Muhammed al Muhajari (now 46, from Yemen)
Obaidullah (now 36, from Afghanistan)
Haji Hamdullah (in his 50s, from Afghanistan)
Mohammed Kamin (now 38, from Afghanistan) Continue reading “A note from Witness Against Torture” →

Too Big—and Failing! Jesus’ Cure for Affluenza

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DropsyBy Ched Myers, 15th Sunday after Pentecost, Aug 28, 2016 (Luke 14:1-14)

Note: This is part of a series of weekly comments on the Lukan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year C, 2016. This week’s gospel text is related to last week’s; see the background comments for last week here. Much of the post below is adapted from a sermon given at Downers Grove (IL) First United Methodist Church on 10/10/10.

Luke 14:2-6 is unaccountably skipped over in the lectionary. Yet it is profoundly germane to last week’s reading, and moreover introduces the theme of the whole sequence through 14:24: namely, the issue of how social power and privilege is mirrored in meals, and what to do about it. So I strongly advocate re-instating this beginning episode as part of this Sunday’s gospel. Continue reading “Too Big—and Failing! Jesus’ Cure for Affluenza” →

Something More of Us is Required

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Alton SterlingA Facebook post (July 9) from Michelle Alexander, the author of the ground-breaking The New Jim Crow: 

I have struggled to find words to express what I thought and felt as I watched the videos of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile being killed by the police. Last night, I wanted to say something that hasn’t been said a hundred times before. It finally dawned on me that there is nothing to say that hasn’t been said before. As I was preparing to write about the oldness of all of this, and share some wisdom passed down from struggles of earlier eras, I heard on the news that 11 officers had been shot in Dallas, several killed from sniper fire. My fingers froze on the keys. I could not bring myself to recycle old truths. Something more is required. But what? Continue reading “Something More of Us is Required” →

Sr. Megan Rice: People are miseducated about nuclear weapons

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meganBy Janice Sevre-Duszynska Max Obuszewski, reposted from NCR

On July 28, 2012, Society of the Holy Child Jesus Sr. Megan Rice, 86, along with two other activists in the Transform Now Plowshares movement, broke into the government’s premier nuclear storage facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The three were convicted in May 2013 for damaging federal property and obstructing the national defense of the U.S. Rice was sentenced to 35 months and was released May 16, 2015. Continue reading “Sr. Megan Rice: People are miseducated about nuclear weapons” →