Decolonizing Watersheds: Foodsheds, Faith, and Resistance

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

Eloheh FarmsBy Dave Pritchett, Wilderness Way Community, Portland, OR

NOTE: This is the first part of a two-part series from Dave.  Part Two will be posted tomorrow.

“I am a settler in this land, too,” Randy Woodley says, sitting in a talking circle on the back porch of his farmhouse.

When Randy and Edith Woodley purchased their current Oregonian farm, the first thing they did was visit the elders of the Grand Ronde, a reservation that is now the living place of many tribes of the Pacific Northwest dispossessed of their homelands. They asked how they could honor the Kalapuya people. “Plant huckleberries,” the elder said. And they did. Since then, Edith and Randy have worked hard to restore the farm, growing vegetables and medicinal herbs with the methods of their own people. Continue reading “Decolonizing Watersheds: Foodsheds, Faith, and Resistance” →

Collecting Healing

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology2 Comments

This WomanBy Grace Aheron

I address the crowds within me:
Rustling robes of people I know only from dreams,
Childhood friends with small hands,
My parents–
One who left his body behind.

When I take steps in this world,
They slosh within me.
Sometimes, a bit of my mother
Spills out
When I take a turn
Too quickly.
The heart of a beloved
Sails forth through a cage of ribs
When I raise my arms in praise. Continue reading “Collecting Healing” →

Empire Cracking: Reflection from Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

jonathanThis interview was taken by Lydia Wylie-Kellermann as part of a writing project for Geez Magazine entitled “She is Breathing: Listening for Another World and an End to Empire.” It was published in the Winter Issue.

Lydia Wylie-Kellermann: Where are the moments for you where you are beginning to see a crack in the empire? Where is resurrection alive and being practiced? What is the story that lingers on your heart and keeps you moving forward? Is this the moment we’ve been waiting for? Is another world being birthed before our eyes?

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove– One of the young people who’s led the Black Lives Matter movement here is running for City Council. I see hope every time I talk to him. Continue reading “Empire Cracking: Reflection from Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove” →

Unless we turn around from Empire, the victimization will continue

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological AnimationLeave a comment

Fig TreeBy Ched Myers, for the 3rd Sunday of Lent

Note: This is part of a series of Ched’s occasional comments on the Lukan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year C, 2016.

Somewhat strangely, the RCL reading this week moves backwards, from the end of Luke 13 on Second Lent to its beginning this Sunday, leapfrogging the poignant story of the “Bent Over Woman” in the middle of that chapters (which we’ll look at on the 14th Sunday after Pentecost, Aug 21st). Continue reading “Unless we turn around from Empire, the victimization will continue” →

Alone

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Uncategorized1 Comment

2cBy Tommy Airey

Born
on the edge of reservation
genocide, son of an old working,
smoking, drinking, distancing
immigrant. You were robbed of
intimacy, emotion, left with
nothing but the counterfeit world of
patriarchy–hiding, achieving,
planning, controlling. You were trained to
not take up too much space, to
stay out of conflict, to
play your role, dad hiding,
mom never confiding, neither
ever fighting. Continue reading “Alone” →

Lent with Howard Thurman

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Identity, and History, UncategorizedLeave a comment

thurman.jpgBy Will O’Brien, Alternative Seminary, Philadelphia, PA

This Lent, I have using as a meditation guide Howard Thurman’s classic Jesus and the Disinherited. This book and other writings of Thurman, an African American scholar, theologian, and activist whom Vincent Harding called our “Black prophet-mystic,” were a spiritual taproot of the civil rights movement and continue to animate many people of faith who hunger and thirst for justice. Just in the first pages, his writing has revealed itself to be an unsettlingly relevant text for this season of repentance and metanoia.

Early in the book, Thurman recounts a visit to India in 1935 – a delegation of American students on a “pilgrimage of friendship.” One day, the principle of a Law College in Ceylon personally asked Thurman to have coffee. He posed a pointed question, addressing Thurman as an African American Christian: “What are you doing here?” Continue reading “Lent with Howard Thurman” →

Justice For Peace

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment
Black Angel
Enter a caption

By Ric Hudgens

[My remarks at the opening of the art exhibit “Justice for Peace” curated by Fran Joy at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, Evanston, Sunday, January 31]


I’m grateful to Fran Joy (right: “Black Angel”) for the invitation to speak at the opening of this exhibit “Justice for Peace”. Please consider this my little square to the freedom quilt we are sewing this afternoon.

Everything I write and speak about when I’m given the freedom to do so is what I describe as “creating spaces for God’s freedom dreams.” The God I believe in is a God who dreams dreams. These are dreams for the fulfillment, liberation, and freedom of humanity and indeed of all God’s creation. They are God’s freedom dreams.

Our calling as inhabitants of this planet, as creatures in the midst of this wondrous creation, is to create spaces where God’s freedom dreams can come forth and unfold to their fullest. Too much of human society and civilization is given to frustrating and upsetting these dreams. However (and this is a statement of faith on my part) God’s dreams are more persistent, relentless, and even inscrutable than any force that can be brought against them. As the Christian New Testament reminds us “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.” The fulfillment of God’s freedom dreams is envisioned by the Hebrew poet in Psalm 85 as a time when “justice and peace will embrace.” It is that image that I want to work with a little in what follows. One of the first things I had to learn entering a Black Baptist Church was the importance of hugging. Everyone hugs! I wasn’t used to it and I soon learned to love it. Hugging is not only good for feeling welcome but scientists tell us that it has innumerable benefits. Hugging has an impact upon our neurology increasing our production of oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin. Well-hugged babies are less stressed than adults. Hugging lowers our heart rate, improves our immune system, and balances out the nervous system.

Continue reading “Justice For Peace” →