By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
With his hand in the shape of a C, he touches his eye and lifts it to the sky as a smile appears on his mouth. He has spotted “the moon.” Even before the world has words, he knows joy.
It is a rare and powerful gift we have as parents to be able to teach joy. Continue reading “Teaching Joy”
by tommy airey
—————
The invitation to “turn around” assumes there is something important and precious we have left behind. It is an invitation to deconstruct what is wrong about our way of life and to reconstruct one that is more characterized by justice & mercy.
Ched Myers, Who Will Roll Away The Stone? (1994)
Back in ’08, I began the slow, patient journey of repenting of the homophobia that had been instilled in me by Western civilization in general and, more specifically, the sports & Evangelical Christian cultures that most shaped my moral imagination during the “formative” 80s & 90s. Back then, my world was framed by a triumphalistic masculinity. My Jesus was athletic. And He was kicking ass.
Continue reading “Repenting of Homophobia: An Autobiography”
By Bill Wylie-Kellermann
empire,
crouched to devour,
breathes, like a dragon, winter darkness upon us:
decrees go out, are believed and obeyed, indictments
are suppressed, privilege covers the blunt ends of supremacy;
widescreen redundancies brutalize, dull, the mind; the most basic human
Poetry by Shahin Shabanian
Artwork by Ibrahim Ozdabak
I know you, child
I have seen your face full of fears
And your eyes full of tears.
Your fears are real as they were then:
When you were abused in ghettos of Europe,
And in the concentration camps, without a hope.
Gassed and burned in the ovens: a damned consternation,
The instigating brutes called it the “Final Solution.”
Continue reading “A Dedication to the Children of Palestine”
A warning from Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth (1963):
The unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of the people, their laziness, and, let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps.
From the website of Church of All Nations in Minneapolis:
1. We confess the Church’s complicity in much of current and historic injustice. We do not detach ourselves from the past, but in grace and humility take responsibility for it.
2. We confess our sin both individually and collectively, including structural and systemic injustice, for unless we take collective responsibility, the ministry of reconciliation simply cannot be advanced.
Continue reading “A Provisional Understanding of Justice”
Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all,if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it get much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that save everything.
– Thomas Merton
Those who have never despaired have neither lived nor loved. Hope is inseparable from despair. Those of us who truly hope make despair a constant companion whom we out-wrestle every day owing to our commitment to justice, love, and hope.
Cornel West
From Laurel Dykstra in Vancouver:
In March the Interfaith Institute for Justice Peace and Social Movements, a small collective of anti-racist people of faith, in Vancouver BC, launched Anishinaabe filmmaker Lisa Jackson’s short film Hidden Legacies. The film tells about the resistance and resilience of young adults who are the children and grandchildren of Indian Residential School survivors. The event included a territorial welcome, prayers, tears, hip-hop, cello, and hard questions from children. In collaboration with First Nations teachers, the film is being prepared for use in high schools. In the fall the film was premiered in Surrey, BC with a mostly South Asian audience and panel who drew connections between very different colonial legacies.
I wrote this list of practices for the calendar Wretch. You can see more details or purchase the calendar here.
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
My own calendar fills so quickly with fast paced, endless commitments and lists, while I long for a different kind of schedule- one with reminders to slow down, pay attention, listen, learn, remember, bake, plant, resist, and build the Beloved Community. Continue reading “Doing Justice 52 Weeks of the Year”
by tommy airey
We script & sing this Bethlehem Dream
Of Life reflecting divine Reality,
Light illuminating every dark cavity,
When the lion and the lamb
Dance to a silent tune sung by all humanity.
Continue reading “This Bethlehem Dream”
Radical Discipleship 