The Cost Benefits of Healthy Children

marian wrightFrom Marian Wright Edelman in a recent article on the Flint water scandal:

Children and families everywhere would benefit immediately from stronger, clearer and consistent national standards for measuring, monitoring, and reducing lead exposure that are enforced. The incalculable child harm from lead poisoning should be reason enough to act now with great urgency and persistence. And the nation’s bottom line would benefit too. Every dollar invested to decrease lead hazards yields an estimated return of $17:1 to $221:1. These cost benefits exceed the return on vaccines long considered one of the most cost-effective public health interventions.

Practice Resurrection

fox.jpgManifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
By Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know. Continue reading “Practice Resurrection” →

Witnesses to the Resurrection

100_4998.JPGDuring Fridays in Easter we will be sharing reflections on where folks are seeing resurrection today. Please consider contributing and email it to lydiaiwk@gmail.com

By Kyle Mitchell, Cleveland, OH

I see resurrection happen as the silver maple in the front yard begins it’s spring ritual. Cold nights and warm days produce the mysterious freeze and thaw cycles that allow the sap to flow during the day. Participating in a tradition that began with the indigenous people of North America, I make a small hole in the tree which allows the sap to flow into my bucket during the day. When the buds on the tree “pop” and the sap stops flowing, I take what I have, make a little fire in the backyard, and boil it down to make maple syrup.

Continue reading “Witnesses to the Resurrection” →

My Lord and My God!

Thomas

By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson, Commentary for April 3 (John 20.19-31)

Today, as we continue through the season of Uprising, we encounter a character often known as “doubting Thomas.” Looking closely at the scene, though, we hear no doubt in Thomas at all. Having missed the other disciples’ encounter with the Risen One, he proclaims: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not [Gk, ou me] believe” (John 20.25). Put a bit more colloquially, one could render his words, “No way I’m going to believe!” Continue reading “My Lord and My God!” →

Discerning Resurrection in Our Lives

stringfellow.jpg            The gift of discernment is basic to the genius of the biblical life style.

Discerning signs has to do with comprehending the remarkable in common happenings, with perceiving the saga of salvation within the era of the Fall.  It has to do with the ability to interpret ordinary events in both apocalyptic and eschatological connotations, to see portents of death where others find progress or success but, simultaneously, to behold tokens of the reality of the Resurrection or hope where others are consigned to confusion or despair.  Discerning signs does not seek spectacular proofs or await the miraculous, but, rather, it means sensitivity to the Word of God indwelling in all Creation and transfiguring common history, while remaining radically realistic about death’s vitality in all that happens.                            – William Stringfellow

Where do you see glimpses of the Resurrection? Where do you see life where tehre was death? Where are the places that death does not have the final word? Throughout the Easter season, we will post short reflections from folks who name the places they see Resurrection happening. We would love to include your voice in that. Send a sentence, a paragraph, a short reflection to lydiaiwk@gmail.com.

Witnesses to the Resurrection

tombLuke 24:1-12

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

A Good Friday Homily

Miserere-Plate-LVII
“Obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” Georges Rouault 1948

By Tom Cornell, Co-founder of Catholic Peace Fellowship

After the Last Supper, Jesus and his companions walked across the Kedron Valley to Gethsemane, the Mount of Olives.  If you visit Israel today, you will surely want to see the Mount of Olives where Jesus suffered his Agony in the Garden.  You come to a little stream at the bottom of the valley on the way.  The guide tells you, “This is the Kedron River.” You are surprised.  It’s not much of a river now, just a little stream, not much more than a trickle.  You can hop over it.  It was broader then, the guide tells you.  Jesus and the apostles took their sandals off to wade across.  Imagine it. Continue reading “A Good Friday Homily” →