An Invitation

Picture3From Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

It’s been two months since this blog went live and it has been a joy to read the stories and gather a circle of writers and activists to participate. Yet, there is so much still dreamt for what this could be. We invite you to join us in collaborating and giving life to this space. The words, questions, invitations, struggles, pondering, poetry, rememberings are uttered by a community crying out for justice from a biblical vision living within the empire of the day. This space is offered as gift with the hope of collective ownership. Continue reading “An Invitation”

Book Recommendation: Transforming Addiction

jpgVictoria Marie, PhD, MDiv. is a Roman Catholic Woman Priest who studied Anthropology of Education at the University of British Columbia, attended seminary at Vancouver School of Theology, is a member of the Vancouver Catholic Worker and pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Tonantzin Community, Vancouver BC.
“I know from my own experience as a member of a racialized group that racism, if internalized, can result in an individual seeing their identity as tainted. Even when negative self-conceptions are overcome, the tenacity of racism does not instil in those who are continuously injured by it the vision of a future that is different than the past.”

Continue reading “Book Recommendation: Transforming Addiction”

Who Will Roll Away The Stone? 20 Years Later.

ChedA theology of reclamation is about redemption–the healing of our individual, but more importantly our collective, humanity. It is thus, in the North American context, fundamentally concerned with the struggle to become a non imperial people, neither grandiose nor ashamed. It is about practicing discernment, honesty, dignity, community, and simplicity.
Ched Myers, Who Will Roll Away The Stone (1994)
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By Tom Airey

20 years ago, Ched Myers penned Who Will Roll Away The Stone: Discipleship Queries For First World Christianshis promised sequel to Binding The Strong Man (1988), the critically-acclaimed 560-page socio-political reading of Mark’s Gospel. Who Will Roll  was an inter-disciplinary bombshell for making sense of how followers of Jesus might live in the wake of “the 1st Gulf War” and the Los Angeles uprisin Continue reading “Who Will Roll Away The Stone? 20 Years Later.”

This Weekend: Converging Upon Georgia

SOA
Join thousands at SOA Watch’s 25th anniversary Vigil at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia, where we will remember the martyrs and denounce continued SOA violence against our brothers and sisters in Latin America. For all the key info see this.

From School of the Americas Watch Vigil:

One of the most powerful allies of imperialism is division. Division deters communities from working together and confuses our understanding of the past, present and future. Let us recognize – as people from many parts of the world, of many faiths, ethnicities, colors, belief systems, sexualities, gender identities, classes and abilities – that our presents and futures are intertwined, and so too must be our resistance. As a collective of communities we can make a conscious effort to overcome divisions by uniting to denounce the impunity that safeguards Empire. Continue reading “This Weekend: Converging Upon Georgia”

A Happy Birthday Poem for Liz McAlister

November 17, 2liz014

From Bill Wylie-Kellermann

Thanks be to Glory in you…
for a heart to hear and see and know this love
for conscience, spirit-hatched in convent walls, breaking out the door;
for community found, nourished of bread, and breathed as one
(and for the love which will bear its wounds)
for the fracture of good order in a time of sanctioned insanity
for conspiracies, east coast to west, scattered by missive, by car and thumb Continue reading “A Happy Birthday Poem for Liz McAlister”

The Freedom Prayer

young black walking
Delivered by Rev. Melanie S. Morrison
at the Day of Remembrance & Call to Action
November 12, 2014, Freedom Plaza, Washington DC

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O Holy One, known by many names,
I am who I am
Forgiving Love
Fertile Darkness
Fiery Freedom
Liberator of the Oppressed
Lover of All Peoples

As we gather remembering your holy names,
may we also remember that this is holy ground.
For we sense your presence winging near. Continue reading “The Freedom Prayer”

As casual as all that

Dorothy Day 2“We were just sitting there talking when Peter Maurin came in. We were just sitting there talking when lines of people began to form, saying, “We need bread.” We could not say, “Go, be thou filled.” If there were six small loaves and a few fishes, we had to divide them. There was always bread. We were just sitting there talking and people moved in on us. Let those who can take it, take it. Some moved out and that made room for more. And somehow the walls expanded. We were just sitting there talking and someone said, “Let’s all go live on a farm.” It was as casual as all that, I often think. It just came about. It just happened. “

Dorothy Day

A Day of Remembrance: A Reflection

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We who believe in freedom should not rest until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s son. We who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.
Ella Baker
—————
Tom Airey, Washington D.C.

This week, on a sunny Fall Wednesday at D.C.’s Freedom Plaza, SpiritHouse Project of Atlanta, recognizing that racial justice is both a spiritual and social concept, hosted a “Day of Remembrance” for the “slow genocide of extrajudicial killings” of people of color that continues to plague the United States. This event took the form of a memorial service, a wooden coffin taking center stage, filled with the scrolls of one thousand names of those killed by the police or state-sponsored vigilantes (think Trayvon Martin) since 2007.
Continue reading “A Day of Remembrance: A Reflection”

Christ & Cascadia

Cascadia_LOGO@72by Matt Cumings & Emily Rice

This is the final post in our Friday Watershed Discipleship series.  Matt Cumings (Settler, Scottish) works on Eloheh Farm and attends Wilderness Way Community. He is finishing up an internship with EcoFaith Recovery which intends to explore intersectionality, both barriers and benefits, in social justice and ecological justice movements.  Emily Rice (Settler, Ikalahan, Philippines) is an organizer focused on the intersections of racial justice, indigenous solidarity, feminism and faith. She is a co-founder of the activist collective Killjoy Prophets and serves on the board of Evangelicals 4 Justice. Continue reading “Christ & Cascadia”

Resistance to Drones in Upstate NY

MarkFolks in upstate NY have been engaging in a long-term campaign of civil disobedience in resistance to drone warfare. Below is the reported testimony at Mark Coleville’s trial as reported on http://upstatedroneaction.org.

Mark Colville, a Catholic Worker from New Haven, Connecticut, was tried on September 18 and 19 on five charges stemming from a peaceful, nonviolent protest at Hancock Air National Guard Base, which is a drone control site located outside Syracuse, New York.    His Sentencing Hearing is coming up on December 3. Mark, who faced the court pro-se (presenting his own defense rather than having an attorney do it) was tried in DeWitt Town Court before a jury of 6 persons, with Judge Robert Jokl presiding. Mark was charged with 3 Violations: Trespass and 2 counts of Disorderly Conduct; and 2 Misdemeanors: Obstructing Governmental Administration and Contempt of a Court Order. Continue reading “Resistance to Drones in Upstate NY”