By Solveig Nilsen-Goodin, Wilderness Way Community, Portland, OR
“I heard something…” she said.
I had just spoken the final, “Amen,” closing the prayers at our weekly gathering as the Wilderness Way Community on a sunny Sunday afternoon in early June. But she had heard something. And she needed us to hear it too.
It was a message from the bees.
Continue reading “When Bees Talk…We Listen”
Reflections on the road with NAACP from Selma to Washington, DC by Phil Dage, life-long Detroiter, works to integrate music, social activism, historical studies, and faith in the pursuit of peace.
August 4, 2015:
My involvement with the NAACP began in Rosebud, MO. Driving my car in Detroit, last December, I heard an interview with the president and CEO of the NAACP, Cornell William Brooks. While marching to the capitol, Jefferson City, Mr. Brooks gave a phone interview broadcast on NPR shedding light on the murder of Michael Brown and encouraging all sympathizers to join in the march from Ferguson to the Capitol. Like a strike of lightning, the words of the NAACP leader hit me. His words reverberated down into my soul and reinvigorated my passion for justice. And so I gathered a few of my friends and drove down to Missouri. We met the march in Rosebud (a story which deserves its own telling) and needless to say, the experience was profoundly impactful. After witnessing the NAACP’s firm commitment to nonviolent action firsthand, I became a strong supporter of the organization. Continue reading “Reflections on the road with NAACP”
By Kyle Mitchell
Kyle lives with his wife Lynea on the 3rd floor of an old house in Cleveland. They have a couple egg-laying hens in the backyard and tons of red wiggler worms. Kyle spends his days working alongside folks with developmental disabilities on a 2-acre urban farm down the street from his house. In his spare time, he works alongside Lynea in the 2 youth gardens she started in the neighborhood. They are both passionate about growing food, spreading that knowledge, and figuring out ways to get healthy food to folks that don’t have access to it.
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A few years ago I was reading a book on permaculture and I came across a quote about soil that captured my imagination: “The soil is miraculous. It is where the dead are brought back to life.” This launched me into the slow process of being re-wired – seeing with new eyes, altering my actions, converting myself to the truth that the soil is not dead, but alive! I could no longer waste what I once thought was waste. I had to get in touch with the death-brings-life cycles of creation, and I had to do this through a tradition called composting. Continue reading “Composting as Spiritual Discipline”
“Bienvenidos al Laudato Z’ine,” say the Vati-Cats. Welcome!
If you are here, then you are one of a select group to have heard about the Laudato Z’ine project, a kitchen-table experiment to spread the word about Pope Francis’ circular letter to the world (or encyclical) about climate change and integral ecology.
This started as a fun weekend project and has continued to grow.
Here are the pdfs for you to make your own Laudato Z’ine at home (page 1 and page 2 on 11 x 17 inch paper).
LaudatoZine_page 1 and LaudatoZine_page2.
Click here, if you want to read the original and complete Laudato Si’: On Caring for our Common Home.
Continue reading “Laudato Z’ine & Vati-Cats”
By Charlie King
Original Song © John Lennon, new concept inspired by Will Fudemann
Imagine you have healthcare
It’s easy if you try
Freedom to choose your doctor
Cov’rage money can’t buy
Imagine first class treatment
When you’re unemployed
Continue reading “Imagine (You Have Healthcare)”
From John Dear on this week’s marches, demonstrations, rallies and protests marking the International Day of Peace, Yom Kippur and the Pope’s dramatic visit to the U.S.:
Not only is it unusual to see a week of coordinated nationwide actions for peace and justice in the United States, it’s unusual that these events cover the whole gamut of issues involving violence and injustice. Millions of people are fed up with every form of violence, with the entire culture of violence, and want a new culture of nonviolence as Dr. King taught.
Continue reading “Building a Movement of Movements”
By Ross Martinie Eileer
The “achievement gap” is often presented as an isolated phenomenon, and it has become a misleading euphemism for the workings and product of historic oppression, structural injustice, and institutional racism.
Sarah Matsui, Learning From Counternarratives in Teach for America: Moving from Idealism Towards Hope (2015)
True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes that nourish false charity.
Paolo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1972)
When Sarah Matsui graduated from Penn, she was accepted to the competitive Teach For America (TFA) program, a two-year teaching odyssey in urban and rural schools all over North America. More than $300 million strong and heralding education reform through meritocratic slogans like “Work Hard, Get Smart,“ Data-Driven” and “Closing the Achievement Gap,” for the past 25 years TFA has successfully recruited the highest caliber graduates from top U.S. schools to heroically stride into the nation’s most under-resourced classrooms. Continue reading “Learning From Counternarratives”
By Wesley Morris, Union Theological Seminary and Beloved Community Center
I still think about Charleston, SC and the Mother Emanuel Church. I still think about the dozens of black churches burned in the south during the following days and weeks and the slow movement of the federal government to deem the fires hate crimes.
I love my mother and father and they still go to bible study. The Pastor, other members and visitors join them seeking a good word and study to encourage them through the week. Some travel over thirty miles to make it there at 7:00PM, Raleigh, NC, every Wednesday. That good word over the years has added to the church, our refuge, our peace and those walls.
Continue reading “Black Churches Burning in the South”
Radical Discipleship 