Today: A Day Of Remembrance

On November 12, 2014November 13, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

From Ruby Sales of the SpiritHouse Project:

A DAY OF REMEMBRANCE: On November 12, 2014 at Freedom Plaza (14th @ Pennsylvania Ave) in Washington D.C. at 12:30 p.m., SpiritHouse Project and our allies will stand with you to break the silence on this modern-day lynching by holding the first national, public memorial service that includes a public roll call of the 1000 black victims of state-sanctioned murders. Family members from across the nation whom have lost loved ones to these murders will lead a processional into Freedom Plaza. The theme of this gathering, A Charge To Keep: A Movement to Build, reminds us that this is more than a memorial service. It is a call to the living for us to keep our eyes on the prize of racial justice. Continue reading “Today: A Day Of Remembrance” →

Julia Ward Howe on Veterans Day

On November 11, 2014November 11, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Just PeacemakingLeave a comment

Again, in the sight of the Christian world, have the skill and power of two great nations exhausted themselves in mutual murder. Again have the sacred questions of international justice been committed to the fatal mediation of military weapons. In this day of progress, in this century of light, the ambition of rulers has been allowed to barter the dear interests of domestic life for the bloody exchanges of the battle field. Thus men have done. Thus men will do. But women need no longer be made a party to proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror. Despite the assumptions of physical force, the mother has a sacred and commanding word to say to the sons who owe their life to her suffering. That word should now be heard, and answered to as never before. Continue reading “Julia Ward Howe on Veterans Day” →

New World Border

On November 10, 2014November 8, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

Artist Nancy Hom was born in China and immigrated to the U.S. when she was five.

The wall, now being constructed across the length of the US/Mexico border is like a knife cutting off neighbors, wildlife, indigenous people, and families. The wall is inflaming hatred and contributing to an atmosphere of vigilantism and oppression. While the US walls itself off from the world in the name of “security” what is it sacrificing? What is the price of this imprisonment? What is at the root of this fear based policy of building walls? (courtesy of CreativeResistance.Org)

The Context of Oppression

On November 9, 2014November 5, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

From James Cone in A Black Theology of Liberation (1970):

Persons who live in the real world have to encounter the concreteness of suffering without suburbs as places of retreat. To be oppressed is to encounter the overwhelming presence of human evil without any place to escape…

…Who can ‘pray’ when all hell has broken loose and human existence is being trampled underfoot by evil forces? Prayer takes on new meaning. It has nothing to do with those Bible verses that rulers utter before eating their steaks, in order to remind themselves that they are religious and have not mistreated anybody. Who can thank God for food when we know that our brothers and sisters are starving as we dine like kings? Prayer is not kneeling, morning, noon and evening. This is a tradition that is characteristic of whites; they use it to reinforce the rightness of their destruction of blacks. Prayer is the spirit that is evident in all oppressed communities when they know that they have a job to do.

Thank you by Alice Walker

On November 8, 2014October 22, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

“Thank you again. I love you. I love your trees, your sun, your stars and moon and light. Your darkness. Your plums and watermelons and water meadows. And all your creatures and their fur and eyes and feathers and scales.”

Finding Kinship in the Ventura River Watershed

On November 7, 2014November 7, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

Sarah Holst (right, with hubby Nathan) just finished a split internship with Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries and the Abundant Table Farm Project. The newlyweds will be heading to Rochester, NY in January to intern with the Spiritus Christi community. Here, Sarah reflects about her process in creating the Equinox Liturgy for Farm Church in early October.
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A week ago, I was washing the dishes after a shared breakfast at Ched and Elaine’s and rolling around how the Equinox Liturgy I was writing was going to take shape. In the process of this, I was also thinking about the chapter that Nathan and I had just read in Ched’s book Who Will Roll Away the Stone on Reclamation (Chapter 11). This chapter lays out the skin and bones of what has now fleshed out into Watershed Discipleship, and asks the question: How do we come to love our land (through the lenses of Christian theology) in a way that moves us to work for environmental and social justice? Continue reading “Finding Kinship in the Ventura River Watershed” →

Book Recommendation! Set Them Free: The Other Side of Exodus

On November 6, 2014November 6, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

From Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

Friends, when folks ask me for a book recommendation. This is it- no matter who you are. Whether you have never read the bible or are a total geek for it, whether you have been in the movement for decades or are just starting to ask the hard questions, this is a book that calls on your mind, your heart, and moves it into your hands and feet. For those growing up in the church identifying with the story of liberation, it turns everything on its head. It’s brilliant, accessible, loving, and filled with ancient and current stories of communities resisting empire. It calls us out on our shit and invites us into another way. I love this book. It is never far from reach. And I love the author- Laurel Dykstra loves the bible and you can tell. Her history goes deep in community and justice work. Her writing is born from movement and gift to movement. She is an incredible human being. So…..read this book. Read it in community. Read it on the bus. Read it in jail. Read it in the heart of empire and on the margins. And let us struggle together on our way out of empire. Continue reading “Book Recommendation! Set Them Free: The Other Side of Exodus” →

The Wilderness Way: 7 Sustainable Practices

On November 5, 2014November 1, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

The Wilderness Way Community (Portland, OR) is a practice-oriented community pledged to be “guided by the wisdom of Nature, the undomesticated Jesus and his movement, and the wilderness tradition in which Jesus was grounded.” They share a common life by committing to live by a common set of daily practices. These practices flow from their mission statement and shape their life according to values other than those of the marketplace or the battlefield.

Over the years their practices have changed as the community has changed. For several years they used these Seven Sustainability Practices to shape their lives. For many of them, those once-new practices have now become simply part of how they live their lives.
Continue reading “The Wilderness Way: 7 Sustainable Practices” →

Day of the Dead and Death Well Lived

On November 4, 2014November 3, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses2 Comments

By Mary Bradford,excerpt from Bury the Dead:
Stories of Death and Dying, Resistance and Discipleship

The dead come back whether we invite them or not.
They are our friends, our brothers and sisters, our parents and ancestors, our children, our lovers.
They bring memories, insight, blessing and good fortune.
They travel a long, long way.
Who would greet them with a dark house and an empty table?
Show them you remember them. Put out the things they loved,
even the things they loved to death.
Don’t be so judgmental. You can’t reform them now.
Fill the bellies they no longer have.
Refresh the skin that cracked into a fine husk
and drifted away in the desert.
Give the old man his glasses. Maybe he will find his eyes.
Put away your sadness. It sours the music.
Hear the music and dance with the quick, the light, the dry-boned.
One autumn the feast will be for us. Continue reading “Day of the Dead and Death Well Lived” →

Photography As Resistance: Securing The Vote

On November 3, 2014November 3, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

Just in time for Voting Day: remembering the long-suffering to ensure suffrage for people of color…and the vigilant & virtuous sacrifice that it’s going to take to keep working for a more just and equitable electoral process. A witness to history, Bob Adelman’s voluntary work as a photographer for the Congress of Racial Equality, the NAACP Legal Defence Fund, and other civil rights organizations allowed him to capture the stories of the Civil Rights Movement in a way that projects both the vulnerability and passion of its activists. Adelman’s unique vantage point is in part due to his close relationships with civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and John Baldwin. Right & Below: Selma 1965.