From Nayyirah Waheed:
i love myself.
the
quietest.
simplest.
most
powerful.
revolution.
ever.
Let’s Get the Poison out of the Parks
An update from Rev. Billy Talen and the Stop Shopping Choir:
The last ten months we got bizzy, as in show-bizzy: opening for Neil Young, a holiday run at Joe’s Pub at the Public in NYC, recording eleven songs in Avatar Studio, and then my book “The Earth Wants YOU” from City Lights. We can fit or weirdly “misfit” into some entertainment categories. That’s cool, but it means that we are farther from our heart, which is “Nonviolent Dramatic Action.” Continue reading “Let’s Get the Poison out of the Parks”
Spirit
Reflecting on Galatians 5
“It doesn’t saying anything about what you should do, but the spirit in which you do it. It has everything to do with the spirit in which you do the work. It forces us to ask the question, what is our freedom for?” – Liz McAlister
13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh[a]; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[b] 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. Continue reading “Spirit”
The Woman with an Issue of Blood
By Denise Griebler. Part of a continuing series on badass women in the bible.
“If I could but touch the hem of his garment.
If I could but touch a part of his robe
I know I’d be healed, my sins all forgiven.
If I could but touch him I know I’d be whole.”
– the chorus of a gospel song by Rev. George A Rice
Matthew 9:18-25; Mark 5:21-43; Luke 8:41-56
The story goes that while Jesus was walking through a crowd, she touched him and was restored to herself. Imagine that gutsy move.
She’d been hemorrhaging for twelve years. Her search for a cure had bled her of everything she had and after all that, her condition was worse not better. Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza says through this woman we glimpse of the impoverishment of the permanently ill. And she didn’t just suffer an incurable illness, but she was also permanently unclean and impure. Whomever she touched would also be made unclean. Imagine 12 years of untouched isolation. Continue reading “The Woman with an Issue of Blood”
All In
By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson
“When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”
This week’s Gospel offers some of the most challenging, urgently needed by us today messages found in Luke’s Gospel. It is a companion with next week’s Gospel, which directly follows this week’s passage. We will address them as a two-part unit in this and our next commentary. Continue reading “All In”
I Don’t Speak Dari Yet
A report from Christian Peacemaker Teams executive director Sarah Thompson:
Our Christian Peacemaker Team is accompanying refugees in Mytilene, Lesbos, Greece. As Executive Director I have a chance to do a two week team visit. I sat across the table from a man from Afghanistan yesterday. Neither he nor I are from Greece or speak Greek. I don’t speak Dari yet, and he just began the English classes offered to refugees. We don’t know each other’s names and yet we are deeply and violently connected. My village paid for his village to be bombed (through the US led war in Afghanistan).
We say their names again and again…so their lives will not be forgotten
Akyra Monet Murray, 18
Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21
Amanda Alvear and Mercedez Marisol Flores, 25 and 26
Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28
Anthony Luis Laureano Disla, 25
Antonio Davon Brown, 29
Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49
Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24
Cory James Connell, 21
Darryl “DJ” Roman Burt II, 29
Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32
Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 Continue reading “We say their names again and again…so their lives will not be forgotten”
Just Mercy
From lawyer Bryan Stevenson on DemocracyNow.org:
I think that we have too little compassion in our criminal justice system. We’ve been corrupted by the politics of fear and anger. We’re doing harsh, extraordinarily torturous things to people. And I think we’ve forgotten that, you know, it’s not mercy, it’s not justice, it’s not compassion, when we give it to people who haven’t done anything wrong. You earn the right to call yourself compassionate and merciful when you expose people who have fallen down, who have done bad things to your justice, to your mercy. And I see a criminal justice system completely devoid of mercy, which makes us completely devoid of justice. And we’ve got to do better.
*See also Stevenson’s latest project: a museum on slavery.
What is Prayer?
By Eduard Loring, from the April 2016 issue of Hospitality, the newsletter of Atlanta’s Open Door Community
“I will never pray again. I have prayed and prayed and nothing ever happens. I am finished.” So said the 90-year-old grandmother last week when her grandson Mark overdosed on heroin. Mark’s father died 6 years ago from esophageal cancer. Face, mouth, throat deranged. Spoken word distorted. Unintelligible if more than one syllable. Tobacco kills. God forgives a repentant addict; God does not stop the side effects of the sin, though the power of Love’s prayer, and medicine, exercise and nutrition can mitigate the fury of the Evil One and her daughters Tobacco and Heroin. Often heal. Continue reading “What is Prayer?”
Joe Morton Presente!
Today friends in Baltimore celebrate the wonderful life of Joe Morton! Presente!
Radical Discipleship 