by Mary Oliver, Red BirdOh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy
and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles
Invitation
by Mary Oliver, Red Birdby Mary Oliver, Red BirdPCUSA: Long Time Allies of Coalition of Immokalee Workers
From Coalition of Immokalee Workers, on PCUSA’s eloquent and inspiring statement of solidarity:
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders are celebrating a major milestone in the ongoing campaign to improve the lives of farmworkers. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) announced that Ahold USA became the first major grocer in the U.S. to join the CIW Fair Food Program. Ahold is the parent company of Stop & Shop, Giant Foods and online grocer Peapod and operates nearly 780 supermarkets in 14 states and the District of Columbia.
Continue reading “PCUSA: Long Time Allies of Coalition of Immokalee Workers”
Homily for the Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage
By Gloria House, SNCC Field Secretary in Lowndes, 1965-67
August 10, 2013 Lowndes County, Alabama
Good afternoon, Everyone. I would like to express my gratitude to the planners of this year’s pilgrimage for inviting me – especially to Claire Milligan, who first approached me about coming for this event a couple of years ago. Thank you to everyone. And I would like to acknowledge Ruby Sales, who is an integral part of this pilgrimage, as well as the presence of my SNCC sisters, Joann Mants and Gwen Patton, and other friends from the Lowndes County and Selma communities. And, of course, I acknowledge Jonathan. I remember him as a man of extraordinary warmth, clarity of mission, and commitment to justice. His spirit is certainly here with us today.
Continue reading “Homily for the Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage”
Taking The First Step: Reflections on Powerlessness from an Adult Child of a Non-Alcoholic Family (and Citizen of a World Gone Mad)
By Lindsay Airey (right, with nephew Riley), on the occasion of working her First Step, prodded by the context and struggle of Beloved Detroit…
Admitting our powerlessness may be very difficult for us. After all, we are the competent ones who held the family, the job, or the world together while the alcoholics in our lives created chaos. How can it be that we, the responsible ones, are powerless?
Pathways to Recovery, AlAnon Family Groups
It is so true. I thought my being “good,” “perfect,” “responsible,” “aware,” “sensitive,” and “insightful” would all be what saved my family and stopped the chaos I felt. If I just figured out what was wrong, what was hurtful, and told them, they would surely change. They just didn’t see it (I told myself), and when they do, they’ll change! But all my tears, insight, responsibility, “goodness,” and withdrawing never saved a single one.
Continue reading “Taking The First Step: Reflections on Powerlessness from an Adult Child of a Non-Alcoholic Family (and Citizen of a World Gone Mad)”
Beauty and the Beast
By Kim Redigan. First published in the Summer edition of On the Edge.
The assault on beauty in these times is brutal, unrelenting, traumatic as we fall ever more deeply into the nightmarish throes of what Naomi Klein calls “shock doctrine.” It doesn’t take a prophet to see that we are living through the end times of a ruthless economic system that is willing to soil its own nest and destroy its own children in order to feed an insatiable appetite for all that is good and God-given. A system, demonic by design, predicated on every kind of violence imaginable. Continue reading “Beauty and the Beast”
Kids Who Die
By Langston Hughes
This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.
Continue reading “Kids Who Die”
The Direct Opposite of Taking Life for Granted
From Jon Kabat-Zinn’s classic Wherever You Go, There You Are (2004):
[Mindfulness] is the direct opposite of taking life for granted…an attempt to appreciate the deep mystery of being alive and to acknowledge being vitally connected to all that exists.
Neighbor back into the Hood
“We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other. We urgently need to bring the neighbor back into our hoods, not only in our inner cities but also in our suburbs, our gated communities, on Main Street and Wall Street, and on Ivy League campuses.”
― Grace Lee Boggs
Loving Those We See
By Peter Gathje, Professor of Christian Ethics and Associate Dean for Curriculum and Instruction at Memphis Theological Seminary; a founder of Manna House, a place of hospitality in Memphis. This article first appeared on his Radical Hospitality blog in October 2014 and was reposted this summer in the Atlanta Open Door Community Hospitality newsletter
One of our guests is in the hospital. She was brutally beaten and stabbed and left for dead just a block from Manna House. This guest is an African American transvestite. We lifted her up in prayer this morning when we opened at Manna House. We invite others to do the same.
Continue reading “Loving Those We See”
Moments of Transformation
From Cindy Milstein in Organizing Social Spaces as if Social Relations Matter (Thanks to community organizer Aaron Handelsman for this):
If we believe that failure and success are separate, stable moments; and if we think that being human, being imperfect, is in itself wrong, then we’ve already lost…The point of revolutions is not to achieve some permanently perfect world, or a utopia in the most caricatured of definitions. it is to find ourselves having different, less horrendous conflicts…It’s about making better mistakes, and utilizing our better failures as moments of transformation in pursuit of an ever-freer society, filled with ever more dignity and freedom, among other lovely practices.
