Poetry as Necessity

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Identity, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment
Eileen Myles
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From a recent New York Times Magazine interview with Eileen Myles:

NY Times Magazine: Many people would be surprised to hear that according to you, poetry is alive and well in America. Our national political conversation has recently seen some rather unpoetic lurches to the right. How do you make sense of that?

Myles: Poetry always, always, always is a key piece of democracy. It’s like the un-Trump: The poet is the charismatic loser. You’re the fool in Shakespeare; you’re the loose cannon. As things get worse, poetry gets better, because it becomes more necessary.

Eating Cookies

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images“When I was four years old, my mother used to bring me a cookie every time she came home from the market. I always went to the front yard and took my time eating it, sometimes half an hour or forty-five minutes for one cookie. I would take a small bite and look up at the sky. Then I would touch the dog with my feet and take another small bite. I just enjoyed being there, with the sky, the earth, the bamboo thickets, the cat, the dog, the flowers. I was able to do that because I did not have much to worry about. I did not think of the future, I did not regret the past. I was entirely in the present moment, with my cookie, the dog, the bamboo thickets, the cat, and everything.

It is possible to eat our meals as slowly and joyfully as I ate the cookie of my childhood. Maybe you have the impression that you have lost the cookie of your childhood, but I am sure it is still there somewhere in your heart. Everything is still there, and if you really want it, you can find it. Eating mindfully is a most important practice of meditation. WE can eat in a way that we restore the cookie of our childhood. The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.”

  • Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step

Empire Cracking: Words from Ruby Sales

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ruby sales geez

This 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: So, 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?

Ruby Sales: Even if we don’t recognize empire cracking, it is. With Black Lives Matter and brown folks responding to the bigotry of immigration, suddenly we are seeing what has always been there. We are putting words to it again. The more we put it in words, the more empire loses its grip. Which has its downside because the more it loses its grip, the more repressive the empire gets. If you want to see where hope is manifested, it’s in African Americans. We have been getting up and doing the work even with no evidence of making a difference- that is hope. The reason we are so feared is that our very essence and resistance threatens white supremacy. We have to ask the question, “Why would the police shoot someone 137 times?” Saying that black people have rights in a society that says only white people have rights threatens the security of empire.

Risky Midrash: The Jubilee Pertains to Our Enemies Too

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NaamanBy Ched Myers, for the 3rd Sunday of  Epiphany (Jan 24, 2016: Luke 4:22-30)

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.

The audience reaction to Jesus’ inaugural sermon in Nazareth is somewhat ambiguous (4:22). Though they “witness to him” (the Gk emarturoun with the dative is usually positive), they also “wonder” about him (ethaumazon, which can connote surprise in a negative sense; see Lk 11:38), no doubt skeptical about how such eloquence can come from a humble construction worker’s son. This explains Jesus’ immediate move to the defensive, then quickly to the offensive. Continue reading “Risky Midrash: The Jubilee Pertains to Our Enemies Too” →

Messianism Against Christology

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

MessianismBy Tommy Airey

…the undercurrent of a conflict between lifeways haunts the text.
Jim Perkinson, Messianism Against Christology (2014)

*Note: an abridged version of this review was published in the December 2015 issue of Sojourners Magazine

Growing up in the conservative white suburban Evangelical Christian tradition of North America, nothing was more important than the Bible & Jesus. Indeed, is there really anything else? Yet, many like me have grown into adulthood and out of Evangelicalism, not because the Bible & Jesus are no longer important, but because the Bible Answer Men have used their interpretations to justify privilege all over the globe. Continue reading “Messianism Against Christology” →

The Yes Men Strike Again!

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People do a demonstration of next genera

From the magnificent site CreativeResistance.Org, covering the latest prank pulled off by the Yes Men:

Masquerading as ‘Global Security Response’, the activist duo unveiled the ENDURAsphere, a ‘sort of gated eco-commune for one’

A group calling itself Global Security Response unveiled this unual-looking anti-terrorism device in a press conference at the European Parliament today. Continue reading “The Yes Men Strike Again!” →

It Was Not Inevitable

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Rebecca SolnitFrom Rebecca Solnit:

Our world is both better (more inclusive, less discriminatory) and worse (think corporate consolidation, ecological devastation, the surveillance state) than the world of fifty years ago. The ways in which it is better happened because people made demands and then acted to realize them. It was not inevitable that Native Americans, women, gays, lesbians, and transgender people would gain rights and respect. The better part of our present happened because of enormous efforts, sometimes over decades or, as with the vote for women, nearly a century of effort and social transformation.

White Owl Flies into and out of the Field

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owlby Mary Oliver

Coming down
out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like an angel,
or a buddha with wings,
it was beautiful and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings–
five feet apart–and the grabbing
thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys
of the snow– Continue reading “White Owl Flies into and out of the Field” →

Empire Cracking: An Interview with the NY Catholic Worker

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire1 Comment

cwThis 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: What is the work that the NY Catholic Worker is doing that is so different from what our culture asks of us?

Joanne Kennedy: Off the top of my head, the paper is different – in the social media twitter-verse the relatively slow nature of our paper and it’s message of more love (and it’s existing for so long) is different. So old it looks new, anyone??

Amanda Daloisio: The work that we do daily- cleaning and cooking; caring for each other’s basic needs, is a gentle reminder of the Little Way. There is holiness to be found in the simplest of tasks and no work is beneath us if it can lessen the burdens of others. We uphold the dignity of manual labor but more than that- we know the joy that can be found there. So often those ideas bump into our upwardly mobile culture! Continue reading “Empire Cracking: An Interview with the NY Catholic Worker” →