From David Wilcox’s “Deeper Still” (2000)
In this life, the love you give becomes the only lasting treasure
And what you lose will be what you win
A well that echoes down too deep to measure.
Death Poem
By Jumah al Dossari, written while a prisoner in Guantanamo. After five years, he was released without charges. Published in Poems from Guantanamo: the Detainees Speak.
Take my blood.
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.
Continue reading “Death Poem”
Ratzlaff Reviews: How to Read the Bible and Still be a Christian
The heart of God’s justice is to make sure that the “weak and the orphan” have received their share of God’s resources for them to live and thrive. Retributive justice comes in only when that ideal is violated.
John Dominic Crossan, How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis Through Revelation (2015)
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The legendary Vern Ratzlaff (above), Canadian Mennonite pastor and professor, was sporting his 5-inch beard long before practically every American white guy under 35 started growing theirs. Vern is spending free time at his outpost in Saskatoon reading dense anti-imperial theology and writing concise summaries for the rest of us. Here is a recent submission on John Dominic Crossan’s latest publication: How to Read the Bible and Still be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis Through Revelation (2015, Harper Collins)
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Do we have to deal with a bipolar G-d, a G-d of vengeance and retribution in the Old Testament and a G-d of mercy and love and rehabilitation in the New Testament? A violent G-d and a non-violent Jesus? Crossan develops a way to deal with this conundrum. He takes seriously the full sweep of biblical data. For example, the Year of Jubilee, Leviticus 25, spells out that the land belongs to G-d and every fiftieth year was to be a Jubilee, a year of liberation, redemption and restoration. But if this was the understanding of land tenure, why is there so little mention of it in later texts? Eg Isaiah 5:8 is a diatribe against expansion of real estate ownership. Why the move from divine decree to mere suggestion? Continue reading “Ratzlaff Reviews: How to Read the Bible and Still be a Christian”
Decolonizing Our People & Culture
From Evo Morales’ Ten Commandments Against Capitalism, For Life & Humanity.
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Sisters and brothers: We are living in a society in which everything is globalized and homogenized, in which cultural identities seem to smack of the past that everyone wants to ignore. The ancient and ancestral cultures are marginalized in economic and political processes and their cultural and spiritual force and energy are discounted. This has led to a profound dehumanization in the world and discrimination in the spiritual and cultural resources that can give us the necessary strengths to stop the brutality of capitalism. We must:
Somewhere Between Sturgeon, Graffiti, and Jubilee
By James W. Perkinson. Written in preparation for the Detroit Spirit and Roots Gathering this upcoming weekend in Detroit hosted in part by Word and World. Published on On the Edge, a Detroit Catholic Worker Paper.
This summer in Detroit, some of us will attempt a new thing. Tentatively, slowly deliberately—we will convene a dialogue among three communities of inspiration. One is rooted in postindustrial soils, breaking street savvy into spit finesse, spun bodies, and tagged walls. Another is deeply historical, born of peasant resistance against ancient Roman might, itself gone genocidal and colonizing. The third, most rooted, is embedded in soils and waters, seasons and weather, enculturated by the place itself. Hip-hop, Christian, and indigenous by other names—three constituencies roughly demarked, will make common cause in concern for the future of de troit, the strait. We have named it the “Detroit Spirit Roots Gathering” and seek to serve a re-spiriting of the city in part by learning from each other’s stories. Continue reading “Somewhere Between Sturgeon, Graffiti, and Jubilee”
The Well of Grief
A poem from David Whyte, passed along to the RadicalDiscipleship community by Peter Nilsen-Goodin of the Wilderness Way Community of Portland, OR.
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of griefturning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathewill never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for something else.
Journalism
From Janet Malcolm in The Journalist and the Murderer (1990):
What gives journalism its authenticity and vitality is the tension between the subject’s blind self absorption and the journalist’s skepticism. Journalists who swallow the subject’s account whole and publish it are not journalists but publicists.
I am with you
“I am with you. Let us together say from the heart: no family without lodging, no rural worker without land, no laborer without rights, no people without sovereignty, no individual without dignity, no child without childhood, no young person without a future, no elderly person without a venerable old age. Keep up your struggle and, please, take great care of Mother Earth. I pray for you and with you, and I ask God our Father to accompany you and to bless you, to fill you with his love and defend you on your way by granting you in abundance that strength which keeps us on our feet: that strength is hope, the hope which does not disappoint. Thank you and I ask you, please, to pray for me.” – Pope Francis
80 Years Later: War Is A Racket
An excerpt from a speech given in the 30s by retired U.S. Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler, published later in 1935. A classic:
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
PROPHETIC GENEALOGIES AND THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP
By Ched Myers, for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost (Mark 6:14-29)
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.
This Sunday’s gospel is Mark’s account of John’s execution by Herod (that is, Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilea and Perea from 4 B.C.E.-39 C.E.) This “flashback” belatedly explains the circumstances surrounding John’s arrest, which was reported in passing at the outset of the story (1:14). Mark tells us that Herod believes that Jesus is John coming back to haunt him (6:14-16). Insofar as Jesus took up the Baptist’s mantle (preaching repentance and the Kingdom of God), Herod is not wrong. But the disturbing implication for the king is that this proclamation persists despite his having gotten rid of one of its messengers, suggesting that there was a more serious popular movement to be reckoned with. It is to the sordid tale of John’s demise that Mark now abruptly turns.
Continue reading “PROPHETIC GENEALOGIES AND THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP”
