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

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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” →

We need to look toward women

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and TheologyLeave a comment

joyce“The one who finds wisdom finds life. To find wisdom, we need to look toward women clothed with the sun, who shine their light on our path and beckon us forward. They are in the Bible. They are among us as modern witnesses to the resurrection. And they are each of us, for we all carry a pearl of wisdom to add to life’s treasure.”

– Joyce Hollyday, Clothed with the Sun

An Invitation

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as TheologyLeave a comment

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

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as TheologyLeave a comment
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.

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire1 Comment

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)
—————
By Tom Airey

20 years ago, Ched Myers penned Who Will Roll Away The Stone: Discipleship Queries For First World Christians, his 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

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

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

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as TheologyLeave a comment

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

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

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

—————

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” →