By Tommy Airey
A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion…
Mark 4:37-38a
A violent squall came up,
waves of shame-based codependency,
white supremacy,
addiction to efficiency,
fear of intimacy,
lack of emotional competency
flooding my boat. Continue reading “Hovering”
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
“Tell me about Easter, Mommy.” Oh, Shit. Has that time come already? How to explain resurrection to a three year old? How do I tell my kid that Jesus died and came back to life? How do I explain our most sacred story?
We’ve spent the last year and a half learning about death, holding it sacred, singing songs, holding fish funerals, burying my Grandma Bea, and visiting my mom’s grave. We’ve tried to hold the tension of telling him the truth and also being gentle with his heart paying close attention to any moments of confusion or fear. We made a decision to be honest with him about the very earthly reality of death, something that even adults in our culture try to ignore. Death is a beautiful, ordinary, and hard part of life. Continue reading “Learning from Laughter and the Trees: Tell Me About Easter, Mommy.”
revolutionary poets
peel poems
from the scabs
of our existence
clenched tightly
between gums
worn from resistance
we barely exist
through the pain
in our stories
yet embody
the wisdom
of Ancestors
before us
By Cait De Mott Grady, a eulogy for her grandma, Teresa Jane Shaughnessy Grady (right), who died on Sunday, April 10th in her home in Ithaca, NY
I am Caithraoine Jane De Mott Grady, daughter of Ellen Grady and Peter John De Mott, granddaughter of Teresa Jane Shaughnessy and John Peter Grady, great granddaughter to Mary Baldwin and Tom Shaughnessy. Sister to Marie, Nora, and Saoirse. Cousin to Manny, Gabriel, Isaiah, Ana, Leah, Rosie, Oona, Jack (Jass), Thaddeus, Michael, Seán, Ariel, Madailein, and Clare. Niece to John, Laurie, Clare, Paul, Larry, Mary Anne, Teresa, Oscar and Cesar. Continue reading “¡Grandma Teresa, PRESENTE!”
Update from Rose Berger
I’m pleased to share news of our phenomenal gathering this week in Rome. Please read the article from the National Catholic Reporter (below). We have had a tremendous week. Today we were able to deliver the final document to the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace. Marie Dennis addressed an envelope to Papa Francesco containing the statement and a personal letter and it was placed on Cardinal Turkson’s desk for delivery. Continue reading “Landmark Vatican conference rejects just war theory, asks for encyclical on nonviolence”
By Tevyn East, Carnival de Resistance
“So Miriam was shut out of the camp for seven days; and the people did not set out on the march until Miriam had been brought in again.” Numbers 12: 15
In May of 2012, I entered into an artistic collaboration with Jay Beck, my now husband and partner in producing the Carnival de Resistance. We had established that I would come up to Philadelphia and together we would create works of theater that re-contextualize stories from scripture, based around each of the four elements: Water, Air, Earth, and Fire. Immediately upon landing, we discerned that we would first focus on the voice of water and that I would delve into the story of Miriam, Moses’ sister. Little did I know that this choice would throw me straight into the deep end! Continue reading “Miriam”
By Wes Howard-Brook & Sue Ferguson Johnson
As we continue through the season of Uprising, the lectionary pulls a passage from John’s gospel totally out of context (John 10.22-30). It finds Jesus in the temple during the festival of Chanukah, the celebration of the military victory of a guerrilla band of Judeans over their Seleucid (Greek) oppressor, some two centuries before Jesus. It is the only mention of Chanukah in the Bible (the books which describe the battles leading to the feast are in 1-2 Maccabees, which are among the Apocrypha and not part of Hebrew Scripture). It comes after a long series of confrontations and challenges in and around the feast of Sukkoth, aka “Tabernacles” or “Booths,” that fills John 7.1-10.21. Chanukah carried no scriptural mandate requiring all male Israelites to journey to Jerusalem, as did the three torah-temple feasts of Pesach (Passover), Sukkoth and Shavuoth (Pentecost), as found in Deuteronomy 16. Thus, we can imagine that those still in Jerusalem during the rainy, winter season would be the “true” Jerusalemites, those most eager to hear a word about a coming “messiah” who would vanquish the Romans with military power and divine authority. Continue reading “I give them life of the age to come!”
A recent Facebook post from Rev. Nick Peterson, Capital Presbyterian Church, Harrisburg, PA:
As a powerful but vain imagination, white supremacy attempts to imprison God to whiteness. In a white supremacist framework – God has a white sentence without parole. While confined, God must look white, talk white, think white, affirm white, bless white, and value, above all things, “his” own image made in whiteness. White supremacy attempts to hold the very God of the universe in chains – theological, liturgical, spiritual, creedal, geographical, social, emotional, and political. Continue reading “White Ain’t God”
By Joyce Hollyday
On Easter Sunday, during our sharing of joys and concerns at Circle of Mercy, a longtime member reminded us through her tears that her teenaged transgender nephew moved here to Asheville, North Carolina, from a Navy-centric city on the Virginia coast to be in a safer place. I had breathed a sigh of relief when we welcomed him a few years ago and facilitated connections with Youth OutRight, an empowered and empowering local LGBTQ community. Continue reading “Regulation and Resistance in North Carolina”
From producer Linda Midgett, finishing up a documentary on the recent controversy on religious freedom at Wheaton College involving Dr. Larycia Hawkins:
By 
Radical Discipleship 