As casual as all that

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of WitnessesLeave a comment

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

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire1 Comment

DSCN3227
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

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

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

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Just PeacemakingLeave a comment

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” →

Today: A Day Of Remembrance

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

spirit house
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 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Just PeacemakingLeave a comment

julia

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 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

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

New World Border

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 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

Cone
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.

Finding Kinship in the Ventura River Watershed

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

sarah and nathan
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.
————————-
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” →