if the donkey could talk (Matthew 21: 1-11)

On By Tim NafzigerIn Lectionary PoetryLeave a comment

For over 20 years, Jim Perkinson has been riffing on lectionary selections in spoken word mode and often presenting the same at worship services of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church just outside downtown Detroit. This is the first in a series of collaborations between Jim and Tim Nafziger putting this poetry in video form and adding commentary and footnotes flowing from their conversations.

if the donkey could talk (matt. 21: 1-11)

jim perkinson
original: 3/27/99
updated: 3/30/22

so what do you think
mister flop-eared ferry-back
carting the precious cargo across
palm-covered dust and
peasant boys shouting
messianic manifestos
in the ears of pilate’s guard
shouting terror in the tone-deaf ears
of old-men-arrogance
the priestly pomposity
the scribal-orthodox heresy of

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The Time is Very Urgent – We Must Slow Down

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation3 Comments

By Bayo Akomolafe and Marta Benavides , a letter to deepen the conversation, re-posted from BayoAkomolafe.net

Recently, we were privileged to be part of a Global Summit organized by DEEEP (Developing Europeans’ Engagement for the Eradication of Poverty) and a coalition of activist organizations that includes CIVICUS, CONCORD and GCAP (Global Call to Action Against Poverty). We gathered in the city of Johannesburg to consider what a different world might look like and, much more importantly, how we could collectively work together to bring about this world. We celebrate the amazing efforts of the organizers that made this possible.

Bayo Akomolafe (one of us) delivered the keynote address, in which he espoused a new politics of engagement, a new sort of activism for the times. On the heels of his passionate plea, we now write. We, members of the so- called Global South, now offer to you the gifts of our spaces – gifts we think are crucial to this beautiful conversation about a world our hearts believe is possible today.

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A Monarch Migration in March

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

By Tommy Airey, re-posted from Easy Yolk

On Fat Tuesday, six days into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I drove out of Detroit while it was still dark. For the first two hours, the slipped disk in my upper back was screaming. This thorn in my flesh, this messenger from Satan, was signaling a lack of emotional support in a world collapsing with the 4 C’s: capitalism, climate, covid and conflict. I drove through all four time zones as gas prices sky-rocketed and the stealth BA. 2 variant spread. On the road, in this mess, I was trusting in Something greater than myself, a divine Presence percolating the world with steadfast love and solidarity. This Force does not sit on a throne. It hovers low like a nurturing mother bird and runs fast like an open-hearted, emotionally expressive father figure.

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Of Mountain Watches and Dread Help

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Jim Perkinson, a sermon on Transfiguration, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Detroit, MI, February 27, 2022

I have developed a late life habit.  When the snow falls around our house, these days, the bird seed comes out.  I am a bit loath to invite too much wild dependence on human provision, so I normally don’t lay out food that way. But given our urban Detroit encampment on the habitat of so many wild creatures, I figure snow may interrupt some of the other foraging possibilities and so sprinkle some seed. The local sparrows and chickadees are quick to spy out the offer and just as quick to spread the word, sparrow style.  But it is especially the cardinal pair whose territory we occupy that I delight in.  For two winters now, when my gift-giving begins, they are adept at the uptake and 2-3 times per day, beginning around noon, will summon me by cavorting in the front bushes outside my second-story study-window.  Once I see, I get up, go down to the front door while they vigil in a front-row, top-of-the-bush seat.  I give a little throw onto the sidewalk from the open door; they hop down and feast.

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A Society Designed to Meet People’s Human Needs

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

An excerpt from Alex Vitale’s The End of Policing.

Modern policing is largely a war on the poor that does little to make people safer or communities stronger, and even when it does, this is accomplished through the most coercive forms of state power that destroy the lives of millions. Instead of asking the police to solve our problems we must organize for real justice. We need to produce a society designed to meet people’s human needs, rather than wallow in the pursuit of wealth at the expense of all else.

What’s in a Name?

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

The opening paragraphs of Dina Gilio-Whitaker’s recent piece in Sierra Magazine “What’s in a Name? What It Means to Decolonize a Natural Feature.”

There are hundreds upon hundreds of them—by one count, more than 800. They are mountains, valleys, creeks, lakes, and other physical landmarks with one thing in common: They all have the word squaw in their name.

The exact derivation of squaw is unclear. Some etymologists say that it’s an Algonquin word for “woman”; others say that it’s a mistranslation of the Mohawk term for “vagina.” In any case, it’s inarguable that over the centuries the word became a misogynistic and racist slur directed at Indigenous women—a means of using language to demean. Yet the word is etched across the American landscape. There are at least 1,400 places across the United States whose official names contain a racial slur of some sort. By far the most common epithet is squaw (hereafter, I will use sq***).

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THE CROSS OF CHRIST:  A Justification for Redemptive Violence Or a Call to Gospel Nonviolence?

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

Another compelling online offer from the Alternative Seminary in Philly. See details below for tomorrow’s gathering.

The cross can heal and hurt; it can be empowering and liberating but also enslaving and oppressive … I believe that the cross placed alongside the lynching tree can help us to see Jesus in America in a new light, and thereby empower people who claim to follow him to take a stand against white supremacy and every kind of injustice.” ― James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

We are witnessing how the Christian faith has been contorted to almost unrecognizable shape and put at the service of empire – even though the founder of the faith was executed by empire. The cross of Christ, perhaps the central image of Christian life and thought, has been frequently been used to promote the idea of “redemptive violence,” and has been directly or indirectly used to vindicate and even bless human violence.

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Echoes of the Green Corn Ceremony

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Detail of “Water is Life” by Soni López-Chávez

By Joshua S. Hopping | Published in Geez Winter 2022 Issue

The water rippled and splashed as the People waded into the Long Man and turned east towards the rising sun.

Holding their hands so that their fingertips touched their breasts, they plunged under the cold water before turning to the north and repeating the ritual. Seven times they did this as they continued to turn counterclockwise towards the cardinal directions until they arose from the waters looking west towards the Darkening Lands. Captured in the waters of the Long Man were the pains, sorrows, and misdeeds of the past year, which flowed from their wet souls toward that land where all must one day walk.

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Time

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

An excerpt from The Overstory by Richard Powers.

“But people have no idea what time is. They think it’s a line, spinning out from three seconds behind them, then vanishing just as fast into the three seconds of fog just ahead. They can’t see that time is one spreading ring wrapped around another, outward and outward until the thinnest skin of Now depends for its being on the enormous mass of everything that has already died.”