Advent Longing

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

light-in-the-darknessFrom author and activist Ken Sehested, a resident of the French Broad watershed of the Southern Appalachian Mountains in Asheville, NC. Ken just launched a subversively informative site called Prayer & Politiks:

Oh Wondrous One, Who rides the skies and consorts with the earth— haunting the heavens, hounding mere mortals with the expectation of ecstasy—come and rouse hungry hearts with the aroma of your Presence.

Let the song of angels sound again, announcing glory to God and peace for the earth.

Give your people wombs of welcome to the news of reversal: the annulment of enmity and the Advent of promise.

Let every lip echo the jubilant manifesto of creation’s destiny with justice and with joy.

Set our hearts on the edge of our seats, shivering in hope, longing, longing for the age when bitter memory dissolves into Magnificat.

Holy One of heaven, mark these dark nights with the brilliance of your star to guide emissaries of exclaiming grace.

The grace of contradiction and scandal to the insolent innkeepers of this age.

The grace of blessing and bounty to the indigent, and to all who find no lasting home save in the age to come.

Our Divine Duty

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of WitnessesLeave a comment

Professor-Obery-Hendricks-Jr.From Obery Hendricks in The Politics of Jesus (2007), on Jesus’ command to love our neighbors:

In practical terms this means that when we who claim to know God become aware that any of God’s children are caught in webs of oppression in mind, body, or spirit, it is our divine duty to struggle for the liberation and deliverance of our suffering neighbors in the same way that we would struggle for our own. In this sense, the only true evidence of one’s love for God—and the only true evidence of real spirituality—lies not in retreating to a private prayer closet, although it is important to go there to gather strength and guidance by communing with God undistracted. The only authentic evidence of spirituality is that we have personally sought and struggled for the health, wholeness, and freedom of others.

What Are You Thankful For? Gratitude as a Way of Life

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as TheologyLeave a comment

prison

Joyce Hollyday is a co-founder and co-pastor of Circle of Mercy, an ecumenical congregation in Asheville, North Carolina as well as Word and World. She served for fifteen years as the Associate Editor of Sojourners magazine and is the author of several books, including Clothed with the Sun: Biblical Women, Social Justice, and Us and Then Shall Your Light Rise: Spiritual Formation and Social Witness.

I walk through the opening as the steel door clangs open and head toward the vending machines with my fistfuls of quarters. Nothing new, unfortunately. The same sugary, neon-colored sodas, salt-laden chips, and dry, mystery-meat sandwiches on bread as thin and tasteless as cardboard, wrapped in cellophane. But these will be my friend Wiley’s only chance at lunch. The prison doesn’t serve lunch on Saturdays. Continue reading “What Are You Thankful For? Gratitude as a Way of Life” →

Positioning by Rose Berger

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

oakRose Berger is an award-winning religion journalist, author, public speaker, poet, and Catholic who specializes in writing about spirituality and art, social justice, war and peace.

Positioning

I didn’t count the rings
on the oak we took down

—crane and all—but think
there must have been a hundred

or more. I’d rather,
I’m sure, count the hairs

on your head
or finger the span

of your spine, my hand
on your smooth skin,

until we are old enough
to have limbs

that can no longer bear
the weight of a high wind

or surprise snow. Continue reading “Positioning by Rose Berger” →

Idle No More

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment


The impetus for the recent Idle No More events, lies in a centuries old resistance as Indigenous nations and their lands suffered the impacts of exploration, invasion and colonization. Idle No More seeks to assert Indigenous inherent rights to sovereignty and reinstitute traditional laws and Nation to Nation Treaties by protecting the lands and waters from corporate destruction. Each day that Indigenous rights are not honored or fulfilled, inequality between Indigenous peoples and the settler society grows.
Continue reading “Idle No More” →

Racism in the Age of Colorblindness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

michelle alexanderFrom Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2012):

When we think of racism we think of Governor Wallace of Alabama blocking the schoolhouse door; we think of water hoses, lynchings, racial epithets, and “whites only” signs. These images make it easy to forget that many wonderful, goodhearted white people who were generous to others, respectful of their neighbors, and even kind to their black maids, gardeners, or shoe shiners–and wished them well–nevertheless went to the polls and voted for racial segregation… Our understanding of racism is therefore shaped by the most extreme expressions of individual bigotry, not by the way in which it functions naturally, almost invisibly (and sometimes with genuinely benign intent), when it is embedded in the structure of a social system…
Continue reading “Racism in the Age of Colorblindness” →