What is the vitality and necessity
of clean water?
Ask the man who is ill, and who is lifting
his lips to the cup.
Ask the forest.
Region As Rabbi by Todd Wynward
Todd Wynward writes, farms, teaches and leads wilderness trips in northern NM. He is an animating force behind TiLT, an intentional discipleship co-housing community in the Rio Grande Watershed. His new book, Rewilding the Way, is to be published by Herald Press in 2015.
This is the first post in an 8-part series covering unique experiments in Watershed Discipleship: every Friday until Advent on RadicalDiscipleship.Net.
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We will not save a place we do not love.
We cannot love a place we do not know.
Ched Myers, citing Senegalese environmentalist Baba Dioum
This is the vital adult education of our time: to become re-placed in our watersheds. To love a place, we must first know it. This means paying attention to it: paying attention to its seasons, its species, its attributes and its attitudes.
I began to seek the wisdom of my watershed about five years ago. What could it teach me about how to live as a place-based person? As I learn to re-inhabit the place I live, I see my region as my rabbi in three specific ways.
Hot off the Press: It Runs in the Family by Frida Berrigan
It Runs in the Family: 
On Being Raised by Radicals and Growing into Rebellious Motherhood
By Frida Berrigan
“A moving chronicle of the things that make for love and peace, elegantly written by a woman who knows more than most about both. How to balance family, children, intimate partnership with urgent rescue of the gravely endangered planet? With wit, stark honesty, and deep compassion, Frida Berrigan suggests a simple answer, drawing on the bliss and grit of her own life as a mother — and as an activist. …This book matters enormously.” —James Carroll Continue reading “Hot off the Press: It Runs in the Family by Frida Berrigan”
Pledging Allegiance To Watershed Discipleship
Last weekend, we got to spend time at the Rooted & Grounded Conference hosted by Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, IN (photo right: the St. Joseph River Watershed). A lot of focus was placed on the challenge of shifting the epicenter of our discipleship towards each of our unique, respective watersheds during this “watershed moment” of impending climate catastrophe, income inequality, violence & racial tension. King’s giant triplets of evil (racism, materialism & militarism) haven’t gone away. What now? Continue reading “Pledging Allegiance To Watershed Discipleship”
Pride Sermon by Laurel Dykstra
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost – Pride Day
August 3rd, 2014
Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver
Laurel Dykstra is a community-based scholar with a long history in intentional communities and the radical discipleship movement. Her justice work focuses on issues of urban poverty; the activism of children, youth and families; challenging white privilege; and Queer and gender-Queer participation and resistance in churches. She is the author of Set Them Free: The Other Side of Exodus (Orbis, 2002), Uncle Aiden (Baby Bloc, 2005), editor of Bury the Dead (Cascade, 2013) and co-editor, with Ched Myers of Liberating Biblical Study (Cascade, 2011).
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I have a lot of favorite bible passages, but today’s about Jacob, his 4 wives and 11 children beside the river Jabbok is one of them–it is complicated, human, and a surprisingly good fit for pride Sunday. Continue reading “Pride Sermon by Laurel Dykstra”
Child Poverty Is Not An Act Of God
From Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children’s Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities:
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Just released U.S. Census Bureau data reveal 45.3 million people were poor in America in 2013. One in three of those who are poor is a child. Children remain our poorest age group and children of color and those under five are the poorest. More than one in five infants, toddlers, and preschoolers were poor during their years of greatest brain development and vulnerability. Black children saw no decrease and continue to have the highest child poverty rates in the nation. In 20 states more than 40 percent of Black children were poor and nearly one in five Black children were living in extreme poverty with an annual income of less than half of the poverty level or $33 a day for a family of four.
Acting Against the Spirit of Our Time
From Howard Thurman in Footprints of a Dream : The Story of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples (1959):
The movement of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men and women often calls them to act against the spirit of their times or causes them to anticipate a spirit which is yet in the making. In a moment of dedication they are given wisdom and courage to dare a deed that challenges and to kindle a hope that inspires.
Puddleglum on Faith
From C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair:
“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things- trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones…I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”
Two Weekend Reading Recommendations
We urge you to take up and read two really important pieces of social analysis & theological animation before this huge weekend of climate justice action and international peace advocacy. Continue reading “Two Weekend Reading Recommendations”
Coming This Weekend: A Wall Street Flood
The climate crisis is not just a narrow ‘environmental’ problem of resources or jobs in need of better management. It is the supreme symptom of a political and economic system that is bankrupt to its core.
Flood Wall Street organizer Sandra Nurse
Today we excerpt from an article by Yates McKee over at Waging Nonviolence, detailing the upcoming People’s Climate March & follow-up action, Flood Wall Street, in NYC this Saturday to Monday. Continue reading “Coming This Weekend: A Wall Street Flood”
