The Silent Cry

DSFrom Dorothee Soelle in her book The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (2001):

At best, what Protestant theology and preaching articulate in what they designate as “gospel” can be summed up as follows: God loves, protects, renews, and saves us. One rarely hears that this process can be truly experienced only when such love, like every genuine love, is mutual. That humans love, protect, renew, and save God sounds to most people like megalomania or even madness. But the madness of this love is exactly what mystics live on.

What drew me to mysticism was the dream of finding a form of spirituality that I was missing in German Protestantism. What I was seeking had to be less dogmatic, less cerebral and encased in words, and less centered on men…

The title of this book [The Silent Cry] is an address to God that is taken from an anonymous letter from the late Middle Ages, presumably from a pastor to a penitent in difficulties and distress. “My child, be patient and leave off because God will not be torn from the ground of your heart. O deep treasure, how whilt thou be unearthed?” This is followed by a series of addresses to God that, as often happens in the language of German mysticism, do not use the traditional personal metaphors like Father, King, Most High, but new, nonpersonal ones like treasure, fountain, radiance, or “security that is hidden” in order to name the deity. In that sequence of metaphors is found the paradoxical expression “the silent cry” that has fixed itself in my mind for years now. It is a mystical name for God, whose divine power is not grounded in domination and commandment. It is a name that everyone can use, everyone who misses the “silent cry” that has often become inaudible among us. May the one who also cries in us help us all to learn to hear the cry in the foundations of the world.

Migration through a Christian Perspective

migrante-bcBy Hessed Torres., re-posted from Filipino Portal in Canada

Psalm 66:1-7, 16-20
Isaiah 66:10-14
Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

When I read the first few verses of Psalm 66:1-7, my initial reaction was to cringe from the disconnection of what it was telling me and what my reality was. How can a migrant worker like me “shout for joy” in the midst of exploitation, vulnerability, precariousness and pain? Is this some kind of joke? One cannot expect a demoralized worker to be joyful and forget their agony. Continue reading “Migration through a Christian Perspective”

Healing as Liberation from Crippling Debt

DebtBy Ched Myers, on Luke 13:10-17, for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost

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 part of Luke’s gospel offers two symbolic stories about the healing of “political bodies” that signify pathology in the body politic: the “bent over” woman (13:10-17) and the “too big” man (14:1-6). Sadly, the second of these is (literally) skipped over by the lectionary. These intimately related healings bracket a series of Jesus’ sayings concerning the Kingdom as surprise and mystery (13:18-21), the “narrow Way” (13:22-30) and the cost of prophetic discipleship (13:31-35). Continue reading “Healing as Liberation from Crippling Debt”

To Connect Our Children to Black Faith

Kelly Brown DouglasFrom Kelly Brown Douglas in Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (2015):

To connect our black daughters and sons to the faith of their enslaved forebears is, therefore, to provide them with a faith that fosters self-definition and self-determination. It is to let them know they are created in the image of a God that is free from anything human beings can conceive or construct; thus, they too are meant to be free. Put simply, to connect our children to the black faith tradition is to give them the tools to know that “what white people say about [them]…what they do and cause [them] to endure, does not testify to [their] inferiority but to [white people’s] inhumanity and fear” (James Baldwin). To connect our children to black faith, therefore, is to provide them with a firm foundation on which to stand in the midst of the absurdities of black life without being overcome by them.

During one of her many speeches in her fight for black freedom, nineteenth-century black female activist Maria Stewart said this to her black audience, “Many think, because your skins are tinged with a sable hue, that you are an inferior race of beings; but God does not consider you as such. He hath formed and fashioned you in his own glorious image, and hath bestowed upon you reason and strong powers of intellect.” Maria Stewart clearly understood that if oppressed people are going to withstand the assaults against their lives and well-being then they must be equipped with the knowledge of their sacred humanity. This is why poet and essayist Audre Lorde says, “The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations we week to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is implanted deep within each of us.”

 

Peace flotilla and nonviolent direct action at Trident nuclear submarine base

GroundZero.2.jpgAugust 10, 2016

Peace flotilla and nonviolent direct action at Trident nuclear
submarine base mark anniversary of atomic bombings

Silverdale, Washington: Local peace activists staged a water-based
nonviolent protest and witness for peace in Hood Canal at the Trident
nuclear submarine base on August 9th marking the anniversary of the
atomic bombing of Nagasaki. The activists travelled along the Bangor
waterfront where nuclear warheads and Trident missiles are loaded onto
submarines and where submarines are resupplied for ballistic missile
patrols in the Pacific Ocean. On August 8th activists staged a vigil
and nonviolent direct action in which some activists blocked the
entrance gate to the same Naval base. Continue reading “Peace flotilla and nonviolent direct action at Trident nuclear submarine base”

The Inevitable

KingBy Tommy Airey, a homily on Luke 12:49-56 (St. Peter’s Episcopal, Detroit, MI)

For all intents and purposes, in the Gospel this morning Jesus is sounding a whole lot like my high school basketball coach, unrelentingly lighting a fire under our asses, telling us that it’s not his job for us to like him, a rant filled with name calling and rhetorical questions. But this is more than a game: “You hypocrites!” Jesus scolds, “You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” We know when the Perseids are going to light up the night in Michigan, but we struggle to respond to the signs chronicled by Dr. King: “when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people.” Continue reading “The Inevitable”

The Ferguson Declaration: A Black Lives Matter Creed

BlmFrom Rodney Thomas, Pierre Keys, and Friends–originally posted at The Christian Century

We, the heirs of Black Churches and their traditions, in the Spirit of the Prophets, the Apostles, and the Early Church

1.1 We believe in God Our Creator and the Father, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, the Source and Fountain of Love (1st John 4: 8) who loves all people from every tribe and nation and who is the same God who appoints seasons of justice and peacemaking (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). Continue reading “The Ferguson Declaration: A Black Lives Matter Creed”

Jesus of Nazareth, Arsonist

FireBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

Jesus, erstwhile proclaimer of peace and love, hopes for fire and anticipates division within households. Was the Lord having a bad day on the Way to Jerusalem in this Sunday’s Gospel? How can we reconcile his word in this week’s lectionary text (Luke 12.49-56) with what we hear in the rest of Luke’s Gospel? Continue reading “Jesus of Nazareth, Arsonist”