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!”
From 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.
by 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”
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: 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”
By Tiffany Ashworth
For my first two years out of high school, I read N.T. Wright at every opportunity. People close to me, starting on the road to seminary themselves, introduced him and other authors to me that I had never encountered in my conservative evangelical upbringing. A new world of theological possibilities opened to me, further igniting yet significantly shaping my passion for ministry. Continue reading “The Spirit in “Worldly Things””
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann.
It has been eight wonderful years being with Erinn and as I look back I am struck by the trees. Leaves and branches and carpets of needles weave together our love story. At twenty-one, we climbed up an old tree laughing as we listened to the bells ring from the Taize monastery at the top of the hill. That tree led us to the hillsides in Palestine where we fell in love with the Olive trees as we watched them go up in flames from the Israeli-shot tear gas canisters. Soon, we lay together in a hammock beside my mother’s grave held in a circle of cedars imagining a life together. Then we committed our lives to one another under a red maple on the banks of the Tahquamenon River as we broke bread and shared wine. Soon, on a cold April day, we stood in a foreclosed yard covered by budding fruit trees staring up at a house where we would build a life. In that yard, the peas now climb the handcrafted cedar and grapevine arbor that canopied our vows. It was an apricot tree I was pruning when contractions began with Isaac. Continue reading “Learning from Laughter AND THE TREES”
By Ric Hudgens, January 27, 2015
Last night at Northwestern
Michelle Alexander wielded words
like swords slicing
shrouds of persistent illusion.
#ReclaimMLK.
Not MLK the reformer
pushing legislation
only making things “better”
never making them whole.
Rather the Rev(olutionary) King
preaching the words of Jesus,
setting the captive free,
overturning the tables,
the first last the last first.
The charter of liberty for
an America that does not yet exist.
University admins, Gov officials,
parents and children of privilege,
ovate her celebrity before and after,
but don’t feel the shaking
of the foundations. When
such words scare them,
when they feel their threat,
when they hear the storm
rattling the windows,
see waves crashing at the door,
then we will know
they truly understand.
From Dr. King’s last public speech (“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop“) in Memphis, TN on April 3, 1968:
We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That’s power right there, if we know how to pool it.
We don’t have to argue with anybody. We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles. We don’t need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, “God sent us by here, to say to you that you’re not treating his children right. And we’ve come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God’s children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.
From Dr. King’s last sermon “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” March 31, 1968:
We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.
——————–
Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
