Salal and Cedar did a bike blessing last week! The bishop blessed sacramental oil and bike oil to be used for the bikes. Laurel Dykstra describes the spirituality of biking in this video by Metro News.
Hospitality and The People of God
By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson
For Jesus followers in the US, this week’s Gospel offers a powerful counter-narrative to the flag-waving patriotism of the 4th of July. Nearly every detail challenges those of us who live and thrive at the heart of empire to reconsider which “sacred story” binds us together as a people. Continue reading “Hospitality and The People of God”
Because of Fear
From the Journal for Preachers:
TO: CHRISTIAN LEADERS IN THE UNITED STATES
Solid Footing
By Joyce Hollyday
It was a rainbow more spectacularly breathtaking than any I had ever seen. Bill, our dogs Micah and Tasha, and I were taking our nightly twilight walk down our rural mountain road on Friday evening. Emblazoned over us was a complete arc of brilliantly vibrant color against a sky that glowed with electric pink and fuchsia.
We weren’t alone in our awe. At Circle of Mercy two nights later, I discovered that my seven-year-old friend Abby was riding in the car when she saw the rainbow and couldn’t take her eyes off it. “It seems like it’s following us home,” she said to her mother. “Is it solid enough to stand on?” Continue reading “Solid Footing”
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).
