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.
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”→
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.”
#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”→
You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are things to be considered . . .
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.”
Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, “This could be a good time!”
“There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are torn apart and will suffer greatly. Continue reading “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”→
A Vision in Action story given by Sarah Matsui at First Mennonite.
After the sermon or music is concluded, the Worship Leader and Vision in Action storyteller go to the podium. The Worship Leader introduces the Vision in Action: In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus invites us to pray: “God, may your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” In our monthly Vision in Action, we hear stories about how people in our community live this prayer – how they shift, reform, transform, revolutionize, and nudge the world so it becomes more fully the realm of God. Today, Sarah Matsui will share her story with us as we take our morning offering. Please pray with me: Creating God, may Sarah’s story open our imaginations to the many ways in which you partner with us to bring about your realm on earth. Receive these offerings, which are also a part of this great work. We rejoice in what we have been given, and in what is ours to give. Amen.
By Ched Myers, for the 16th Sunday of Pentecost (Mk 8:27-9:1)
Note: This is an ongoing series of Ched’s brief comments on the Markan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year B, 2015.
Roughly midway through the season of Ordinary Time, and a week before the Fall Equinox, our lectionary series in Mark’s gospel arrives at the midpoint of the story.
The first half of the narrative began by heralding a “Way” (1:2), and closed with a question addressed to the disciples and the reader: “Do you not yet understand?” (8:21) The second half opens “on the Way” (8:27), with yet another query: “Who do you say that I am?” (8:29a). Do we really know who Jesus is, and what he is about?
It is a shock to discover in this Sunday’s reading that Peter’s “correct” answer (8:29b) is silenced (8:30). This issues in what I call a “confessional crisis” (8:30-33), followed by Jesus’ second call to discipleship (8:34ff). This sequence represent the fulcrum upon which the entire gospel balances. Mark’s thesis is most clearly revealed here: discipleship is not about theological orthodoxy, but about the Way of the cross.
This Way will be explained by three object lessons, both positive and negative. The architecture of the ensuing narrative section consists of three “portents” about Jesus’ impending arrest, which the disciples fail to comprehend, and three teaching cycles. This structure has a catechetical character, representing a “school of the road,” as Jesus and his disciples journey from the far north of Palestine to the outskirts of Jerusalem:
Geography Portent Incomprehension Teaching
1) Caesarea-Philippi 8:31 8:32f 8:34ff
2) Galilee to Judea 9:31 9:32-34 9:35ff
3) to Jerusalem 10:32-34 10:35-37 10:39ff
This catechism is neatly framed by two stories in which the blind receive sight: in Bethsaida (8:22-26) and in Jericho (10:45-52). Here we see master story telling indeed.
Since Mark’s first storm episode (4:41), the issue of Jesus’ identity has been lingering in the background; now Mark turns to address it directly (8:27). The public’s perception of Jesus parallels the three misinterpretations reported earlier concerning John (8:28; see 6:14-16). But when the disciples are asked for their opinion, Peter hails Jesus as “Messiah” (8:29).
We meet this politically-loaded term for the first time since the story’s title (1:1). Messiah was understood by many Jews in first century Palestine to be a royal figure who would someday restore the political fortunes of Israel. Based upon Mark’s title and the centrality of this confession in the church, we are likely to approve of Peter’s identification. But to our chagrin, Peter is immediately silenced by Jesus (8:30), as if he were just another demon trying to “name” Jesus (see 1:25; 3:12)!
Since this lection has already come up this year (on the Second Sunday in Lent), I refer to my comments there concerning the crisis of expectation that punctuates Jesus’ exchange with Peter, and the meaning of his teaching on denial and the “Coming of the Human One.”
By Ric Hudgens, a sermon at Second Baptist Church, Evanston, June 28, 2015
Text: Psalm 30 (Fifth Sunday of Pentecost, Year B)
INTRODUCTION What does it mean in this Kairos moment that we have a God moved by our lamentations?
The events of recent months are too familiar to need rehearsing. We are living in a kairos moment. The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos was chronological or sequential time; the time that we track on our watches and cellphones. Moment by moment time. Continue reading “Lessons in Lament”→
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.
By Wesley Morris, Union Theological Seminary and Beloved Community Center
#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. 
A Vision in Action story given by Sarah Matsui at First Mennonite.
By Ched Myers, for the 16th Sunday of Pentecost (Mk 8:27-9:1)
By Ric Hudgens, a sermon at Second Baptist Church, Evanston, June 28, 2015
