By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann.
Isaac pulls a green sheet off the floor puts it over his head and says “You getting married.” (He still refers to himself as “you”). He brings Patrick, the life-size stuffed dog out of his room and stands him up to pretend they are getting married. I don’t know where he got the idea, but all I can do is smile and say “You look beautiful.”
Continue reading “Learning from Laughter: Wedding Veils and Wrestling”
By Ric Hudgens, after the morning session at Identity, Theology, and Place: Reinhabiting the Mississippi Watershed inspired by Ched Myers, Elaine Enns, Tevyn East, and Jay Beck (photo by Sarah Amalia Holst, sunrise pipe ceremony)
Artifice will not save us.
Neither a technological
escape hatch to Mars
nor a booby hatch with
Jesus in the clouds.
A world of our own creation
collapses all around us
crushing the stranger who
seeks no other home. The
World under our world holds
forth but longs for our tears.
We must find our feet again.
The grief with no name
suffocates the real.
Hear no truth. Speak no
truth. See no truth.
We must find our feet again;
not paved roads nor
graveled paths, but
dirt, soil, humus, the mud
from which we came.
Take off your shoes.
We stand, if we will stand
at all, on holy ground.
From Daniel Rothenberg in With These Hands: The Hidden World of Migrant Farmworkers Today:
When we reach into a bin to choose an apple, orange or plum, our hands stretch out in much the same way as a farmworker’s hands—harvesting our nation’s fruits and vegetables, piece by piece. While the produce may have been mechanically sorted and packed, supercooled, chemically treated, waxed, and shipped hundreds, if not thousands, of miles, often the last hand to touch the fruits and vegetables we buy was that of a migrant farmworker. Through the simple act of purchasing an orange or a head of lettuce, we are connected with a hidden world of laborers, a web of interconnected lives, with hands on both ends.
By Cait De Mott Grady. Cait De Mott Grady grew up in the Ithaca Catholic Worker Community in Ithaca, NY and has been working as an organizer on political and environmental campaigns since graduating from college in 2012. Cait moved to Detroit this past June and is inspired and humbled by all the people who work to make the Beloved Community a reality.
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated to complete the work,
but neither are you free to abandon it.
– The Talmud
I woke up early this morning to darkness and I lay there listening to night sounds – a chorus of crickets and cicadas, punctuated by the occasional engine roar or dog bark. I lay there listening and thinking of my dear friend who is facing a terminal Leukemia diagnosis. I thought about how grateful I am for his life and our friendship and how I desperately want to know that he will be by my side in the coming years, questioning, organizing, marching, imagining, and loving. Continue reading “Witnessing”
Sarah Holst’s art and reflection is the second installment on our monthly bad-ass biblical women series. If you would like to contribute to the series, email lydiaiwk@gmail.com.
An announcement from the Boggs Center
Philosopher-Activist Grace Lee Boggs Dies in Detroit: A Champion for the People
October 5, 2015–Grace Lee Boggs died peacefully in her sleep at her home on Field Street in Detroit this morning. She had recently celebrated her 100th birthday at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.
Grace was an internationally known philosopher activist for justice. She had been politically active since the 1930’s working with A. Phillip Randolph’s first march on Washington and later C.L.R. James. For 40 years she worked closely with her late husband James Boggs in advancing ideas of revolution and evolution for the 20th and 21st Centuries.
She helped organize the 1963 March down Woodward Avenue with Dr. Martin Luther King and the Grass Roots Leadership Conference with Malcolm X. Grace Lee Boggs was active in Labor, Civil Rights, Black Power, women and environmental justice movements. Later, with her husband James, she helped organize SOSAD, WePros, Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice, Gardening Angels and Detroit Summer. Grace was a founding member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership and was a strong advocate for place based education and supported the James and Grace Lee Boggs School.
“Grace died as she lived, surrounded by books, politics, people and ideas,” said Alice Jennings and Shea Howell, two of her Trustees.
Hundreds of Canadian artists warned in an open letter this week that the country’s recently passed anti-terrorism law has a “chill” effect and “directly attacks the creative arts and free expression.”
Dear Party Leaders,
We are Canadian artists. We have been blessed to be part of a country that does not send poets to gulags, that does not behead people for saying things a government considers critical of it, and that does not murder dissidents and journalists wholesale.
Continue reading “Canadian Artists Express Themselves”
Radical Discipleship 