Composting as Spiritual Discipline

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Watershed Discipleship3 Comments

DSC01674By 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” →

Laudato Z’ine & Vati-Cats

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by Rose Berger

3810_001“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.
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Building a Movement of Movements

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

John DearFrom 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” →

2015 Ohio River Valley Catholic Worker & Christian Intentional Community Gathering

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Just PeacemakingLeave a comment
cwBy Ross Martinie Eileer
The children were the best dancers at the 2015 Ohio River Valley Catholic Worker & Christian Intentional Community Gathering, although they faced fierce competition.  Most (but not all) of the dancing occurred Saturday night at the lakeside, where the music was illuminated by moonlight and punctuated by persistent frog harrumphs.
The Gathering was held at the Solsberry Hill retreat center outside of Bloomington Indiana and hosted nearly seventy people (and three wolves) from fourteen communities located in or near the Ohio river valley, particularly Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and the great state of Chicago.

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Learning From Counternarratives

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

LearningThe “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” →

Black Churches Burning in the South

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn RaceLeave a comment

wesleyBy 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.
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War Thug Presidents

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

War Thug Presidents

This is a mural on the side of a restaurant formerly known as the Calvert Cafe in D.C. It features U.S. presidents from Eisenhower to Obama with Mama Ayesha, who founded the restaurant that is now named for her: Mama Ayesha’s, just near the Duke Ellington Bridge in Adams Morgan. It was originally labored over by Karlisima Rodas.

The recent transformation involves someone having apparently paintballed all the presidents, shooting them in the privates with red paint…It’s a bit messy, but the intent is fairly clear: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton I, Bush II and Obama. Scrawled on the side is “The War Thugs.”

See here and here for more info.

Campaign Zero

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Campaign Zero#BlackLivesMatter is homing in on ten specific proposals. Read the entire article here for a helpful update on the movement and a lot of really profound research.

1. End broken windows policing. This refers to a style of policing that goes after minor crimes and activities, based on the notion that letting minor crimes go unaddressed can foster and lead to even worse crimes in a community. In practice, this tactic has disproportionately impacted minority Americans — in New York City, the vast majority of stops in 2012 were of black or Hispanic people.
Continue reading “Campaign Zero” →