Upstream Swimming Made Easy: Resisting the God of Personal Health & Being Re-arranged by Beloved Community

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neighborhood gardenBy Lindsay Airey

When I walked past the magazine racks at the CVS the other day, I inadvertently glanced at a magazine that had a nondescript, mid-30’s, white woman on the front cover. She was scantily clad in sports bra and spandex, totally toned, abs of steel and zero body fat. You know the cover I’m talking about. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all—placed and marketed strategically and relentlessly around every corner to make all us women feel bad enough about ourselves that we will become better consumers of the latest diet fad or work-out craze.
Continue reading “Upstream Swimming Made Easy: Resisting the God of Personal Health & Being Re-arranged by Beloved Community” →

Learning from Laughter: Fish Funeral

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology5 Comments

shovelBy Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

“Keep your eye on these fish for a few days. You don’t want him to be around if one of them dies,” she whispers so Isaac can’t hear.

For his two year old birthday, we got three fish which he quickly named “Two, Baubee, and Three.” He’s learning to count and there really isn’t anything more exciting at the moment than the numbers two and three. He can tell them apart and feeds them every day. And when bedtime comes around he refuses to turn off their light because, he insists, the fish do not want to go to bed- just like him.

Yesterday, one of them did died. It started growing something gross on its face and by the time we got home, Baubee was gone. The store attendant’s voice was ringing in my head, “you don’t want him to see if one of them dies.” Actually, I think we do. Continue reading “Learning from Laughter: Fish Funeral” →

The Cross & The Lynching Tree

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James ConeFrom James Cone in The Cross & The Lynching Tree (2011):

The lynching tree—so strikingly similar to the cross on Golgotha—should have a prominent place in American images of Jesus’ death. But it does not. In fact, the lynching tree has no place in American theological reflections about Jesus’ cross or in the proclamation of Christian churches about his Passion. The conspicuous absence of the lynching tree in American theological discourse and preaching is profoundly revealing…To reflect on this failure is to address a defect in the conscience of white Christians and to suggest why African-Americans have needed to trust and cultivate their own theological imagination.

*Click here for a free PDF of the Introduction and Chapter 1 of The Cross & The Lynching Tree.

Touch

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touchTouch, however, is always ‘touchy.’ It crosses boundaries. In U.S. culture, we have a presumption against touch. ‘Look, but don’t touch’ describes behavior toward objects, but is also used to describe relations between people…. Jesus … allowed himself to be touched by the bleeding woman who reached him through the crowd and the woman anointer at Bethany. He received Judas’ ambiguous kiss and the violent soldiers’ blows. After his death women touched him, washed him, rubbed oil into his skin, and wrapped his body in linens. Even resurrected Jesus said to Thomas, ‘Touch me and see. No ghost has flesh and bones like this. — Rose Marie Berger

Stations of the Cross through the Streets of Detroit

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good fridaysI learned the liturgical year as a child by where we put our bodies. Mondays in Advent were spent at Williams International where they were making cruise missiles and Good Friday was spent walking the streets of Detroit. This walk has been happening since before I was born and I’ve walked it every year of my life. As a community, we spend Lent thinking about where we see the Cross today. Where is crucifixion happening today. Then together on Good Friday, we name it out loud by taking our bodies and a wooden cross to those places.

This year when we think about the Crucifixion we are thinking about the poor being pushed out to make way for gentrification. We are thinking about water shut offs and privitized education system. We are thinking about drones and black lives matter. Today, hundreds of us join together reading these words together. We invite you to join us in reading a couple of them here.

– Lydia Wylie-Kellermann Continue reading “Stations of the Cross through the Streets of Detroit” →

“Who Will Roll Away the Stone? A Meditation on Mark’s Easter Story”

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MyersTopBy Ched Myers

Note: This year Easter (Apr 5) falls close to the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination (Apr 4). This is an abridged excerpt from the conclusion of Who Will Roll Away the Stone? Discipleship Queries for First World Christians (Orbis, 1994); it appeared in Sojourners (April 1994, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 20-23; King pictures added).
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VERY early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, Mary, Mary, and Salome went to Jesus’ tomb (Mark 16:2).

Sooner or later, we who have tried to follow Jesus find ourselves weary and broken like the Galilean women, on our way to bury him. It is the morning we awake to that inconsolable, aching emptiness that comes only from hope crushed. This dawn does not bring a new day, only the numb duty of last respects. Continue reading ““Who Will Roll Away the Stone? A Meditation on Mark’s Easter Story”” →

The Crucified God

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Micah IconBy Tommy Airey

God will again have compassion upon us;
God will tread our iniquities under foot.
You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea.
Micah 7:19

At the heart of the prophetic proclamation there stands the certainty that God is interested in the world to the point of suffering.
Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (1972)

*This is the final installment in our series on Micah posted every Wednesday during Lent.
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In the midst of Holy Week, we pause to remember our 6-week Journey through Lent thus far. Our daily trek towards the Divine starts with stripping down so that we can vulnerably and transparently take inventory of our weaknesses, copings and inconsistencies. We summon the strength and focus to study the ways social, political, economic and religious systems enslave and devour humanity and the land. We ask ourselves how we are complicit and benefit from these arrangements. Then we expose oppression, injustice and greed while casting a vision and creatively constructing another Way.
Continue reading “The Crucified God” →