By Nick Peterson, Lancaster Theological Seminary
Peace had 80% of his spine severed.
Peace was choked to death on the side walk.
Peace was killed in her home while she was sleeping on the couch with her Nana.
Peace was beat down on the side of the highway.
Continue reading “Peace”
From Baltimore:
“It is said that to awaken to critical consciousness, it is not enough to see and grieve what is wrong in the world; one needs also to fall in love.”
S. Lily Mendoza and Leny Mendoza Strobel in Back from the Crocodile’s Belly: Philippine Babaylan Studies & The Struggle for Indigenous Memory.
From John of Christian Peacemaker Teams
For the last year, I have lived as a guest. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.
Since I graduated college last May, taking that so-called next step into “adulthood” (whatever that is), I have lived as a guest in other people’s spaces. Talking with other people who have also just finished college, there is something inevitable about this – whether you move to a new city, move back to your parent’s place, or stay in the place you went to school, you’re not really “at home.” To attend a residential college, as I did, is to already be living in someone else’s space – a college campus or a dorm can be “ours,” the student body’s, but because each of us spend so little time in it, it is never really “mine.”
Continue reading “Guest Ethics”
Harry Huggins is a Jesuit Volunteer in Detroit serving formerly homeless residents of a supportive housing building. When he’s not serving the residents at work or his roommates at home, he writes.
Bud dealt heroin and cocaine before and while he lived on Detroit’s streets. He’s wheelchair bound now, and he’s one of the social hubs of the supportive housing building where I serve. Last Thursday, Bud stopped me in the hall outside his apartment to pitch a project idea.
“I’m gonna tell you something,” he said. “I used to deal drugs. I was damn good at it. Heroin. And you know why I was good at it? I noticed things.”
Continue reading “Reflections from a Jesuit Volunteer”
By Tommy Airey, the 2nd post of a 3-part series about how we learn from our location about what is truly Divine
Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.
Jerry Seinfeld
When I met Reggie on a Tuesday morning a few weeks ago, he was beaming a world-class smile. He was copping a holy swagger. After his second cup of coffee, he hollered at me from his seat 20 feet away: “is it the 7th?” His curiosity was cut off by another guest asking me for a cup of hot tea with sugar. Reggie flew into a spontaneous fit of rage. Shortly thereafter, he approached me to apologize for the outburst: he just needed a confirmation of the date, he explained, so he could resume his daily reading of the Psalms.
Continue reading “The Pedagogy of Place: Psalms & Seinfeld”
By Sarah Matsui
For: Liz Nicolas, one of my dearest people and one of the most distinctly human individuals I know.
Dear friend, your way of seeing can be
as much burden as gift; I know
you know.
—
When tears threaten to swallow you whole:
Know you will not be overcome. Learn and relearn to
find the counterweight you need. Continue reading “Your tears know where they come from.”
From Kathy Kelly, just before she finished serving a three-month prison sentence for protesting the U.S. drone war at a military base in Missouri. Originally posted on the Voices For Creative Nonviolence website here.
—————-
Thanks to generosity of people “outside,” I’ve been able to read about two dozen books here in Atwood Hall. Many other books have been sent. Books I had already read were given to other prisoners or donated, as gifts, to the prison library. Still others remain in my locker and under my bed, waiting to be read. Many thanks! The books have generated interesting conversations and helped build a lovely “book club” atmosphere which I’ll genuinely miss.
Continue reading “From The Prison Library”
From Louise Erdrich in Original Fire: Selected and New Poems
Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.
Nor is this a private experience because the addictions from which we must turn are systemic economic/political/cultural pathologies. The insights from the 12 Step programs tells us that the dysfunctional system cannot be reformed, it must be disengaged. We must develop collective and long-term disciplines of “turning around” that empower a political practice that is nonagressive and nonexploitative.
It may seem indulgent to talk this way in view of the suffering of the innocent. Yet how, except through suffering, are we to allow God whoever or whatever that might be for us to train us to fling ourselves upon the impossible? For when we learn that behind the impossible is God’s grace and presence; the future is an enigma; our road is covered by mist. But, we need to go on giving ourselves, because God continues hoping amid the night and God continues calling us to put ourselves out there with those who suffer. I don’t believe there is a better way to live than this a life of nonviolent civil resistance.
– Elizabeth McAlister
Radical Discipleship 