By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson, reposted from Advent 3 2017
Just north of Magdala in Galilee stand the cave-pocked cliffs of Mt. Arbel. Twice in a hundred years, Roman soldiers shot fire into the caves to destroy Israelites who refused to give in to imperial rule. The first occasion was the imposition of Herod as king in 40 BCE, while the second was during the Roman-Jewish war of the mid-60s CE.
By Ériu Erin Moran Martinez (Detroit, MI), re-posted with permission from Facebook
Calling my kin who are in need of a strong dose of wonder, connection, and mystery…
Please come birding in the alleys with me. I walk the alleys in my neighborhood a few times a week, and it is a deeply nourishing experience. Yes, there is unsightly business back there, and vigilance is required. But the birds (and other kin) I encounter there remind me that we are surrounded and supported by our non-human relatives, all the time and everywhere, even here in the heart of the city. Our alleys, in their “weediness”, are a secret oasis for the birds, where they feed on seeds, insects, and rodents. It’s in the alleys where many birds shelter in the overgrown brambles and bushes from harsh weather. It’s there where so many secret away to mate, nest, and raise their young.
Continue reading “A Secret Oasis for the Birds”
An excerpt from Martin Prechtel’s classic 2001 interview with The Sun Magazine.
Every individual in the world, regardless of cultural background or race, has an indigenous soul struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile environment created by that individual’s mind. A modern person’s body has become a battleground between the rationalist mind — which subscribes to the values of the machine age — and the native soul. This battle is the cause of a great deal of spiritual and physical illness.
Continue reading “An Indigenous Soul”
A note from Will O’Brien, director of the Alternative Seminary in Philadelphia.
Peace On Earth and the Politics of Christmas
A VIRTUAL PROGRAM
Saturday morning, December 11
Join the Alternative Seminary on December 11 for a virtual Bible study, “Peace on Earth and The Politics of Christmas” Alternative Seminary coordinator and contributor to RLC Will O’Brien will lead a program reflecting on the “nativity narratives” in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke to see how they express core biblical themes of justice and liberation. For more information, go to the Facebook page.
Continue reading “Liberating Christmas”
By Kendra Watkins. First published in Geez 62: Dismantling White Theology.
Twice a week, my chevruta (learning partner) and I, both of us Black, Trans Jews, spend a few hours working our way through a page of Talmud, word by word.
Between the dictionaries and notebooks stacked up beside us, we catch a glimpse of the future, a shared vision in which we, and our people, are free.
Talmud plays a central role in my life, and the chevruta relationship is vital to studying as a practice. We learn from each other, witness each other’s brilliance, hold each other accountable, and offer each other a soft place to land when the text (and the world it represents) hurts. Together we can reach backwards into our tradition to find tools and strategies, and practice the love and care it takes to move us towards a world liberated from anti-Blackness and transphobia. We know that when we bring ourselves to meet each other and the rabbis in any given text, we aren’t passively receiving a set of laws; far from it. We receive the offerings of our ancestors and offer parts of ourselves in turn, and we are both changed because of it.
Continue reading “Reading the Torah towards Liberation”
From James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time.
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth
By Ched Myers, the co-director of Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries (if you’ve been inspired and challenged by Ched’s posts this year following the lectionary, consider making an end-of-the-year donation to BCM, day in and day out, doing the work of radical discipleship)
Note: This is reposted from Ched’s occasional comments on the Lukan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year C, 2015-16.
The second and third Sundays of Advent focus on the ministry of John the Baptist, first locating him in the wilderness (2. Advent), then focusing in on his prophetic message (3. Advent). Following on his infancy (and young childhood) narrative about Jesus, Luke commences the gospel story proper. More than the other N.T. evangelist, Luke anchors his story in real political space, signaling that we ought not be afraid to do the same.
Continue reading “Anchoring the Gospel Story in the Real World”
By Maki Ashe Van Steenwyk, director of the Center for Prophetic Imagination (please consider making an end-of-the-year donation to this compelling organization doing the work of radical discipleship)
You’re under no obligation, whatsoever, to maintain relationships with people who treat you dismissively or disrespectfully.
This idea that you need to embrace self-diminishment in a way that shows love or compassion or empathy towards others is toxic.
Christian folks in particular seems to misunderstand Jesus’ admonition to “take up your cross.” The idea that your deepest fulfilment is at odds with love and liberation of others is false.
Self-fulfillment in a capitalist way is a lie. But true self-fulfillment is bound up in collective liberation.
For the anniversary of her passing, (November 29)
Bill Wylie-Kellermann
(Reprinted from A Common Reader, a Journal of the Essay, Washington University, November 7, 2021)
“She lived as if the gospel were true.” Daniel Berrigan[1]
Dorothy Day’s autobiography, The Long Loneliness[2], was placed in my hands fifty years ago by Dan Berrigan, Jesuit poet and prophet of nonviolence. Fresh from federal prison for burning draft files as a protest against the U.S. war in Vietnam, he was my teacher at Union Seminary in New York, and then, in a way I’d not yet understood, my “spiritual director.” The book and conversation weekly over mint tea, were my first exposure, as a young Protestant, to Dorothy and her Catholic Worker movement of hospitality houses and nonviolent resistance.
In his own autobiography, Daniel has two extended reflections on Dorothy. The first is in childhood recollections, predicated simply on the regular presence of the Catholic Worker newspaper in their Minnesota home, but it reads from a view of that seed bursting full bloomed in his life. “She became my friend and the friend of my family; and the friendship was to spur our moral and spiritual development.”[3]
Continue reading ““An Act of Prayer:” Dorothy Day’s Influence on Daniel Berrigan (and Even Vice Versa)”
By Bayo Akomolafe, originally posted to Facebook (November 13, 2021)
I learned this morning about what some news outlets – referring to the stubborn persistence of the coronavirus despite the exertions of the global nation-state order, the pharmaceutical complex, and our increasingly medicalized lives – are haltingly calling “the fifth wave.” Time Magazine asks, “Is the Fifth Wave Coming?” (https://time.com/6117006/covid-19-fifth-wave/). USA Today, through its interviewed experts, writes – as if in response: Yes, and “we may simply come to call it winter.” From France to Pakistan, numbers are creeping up, new mutations are on the horizon, and worried officials with wrinkled foreheads are declaring that the virus is here to stay – no matter what we do.
Reading these reports, I was reminded of those biblical passages I was hunched over as an obsessed teenager – the letters of Paul, undulating prose cross-textured with a messianic lilt and soft humble whispers of self-deprecating awareness. I once delighted in reading the nomadic evangelist’s notes – often under warm candlelight, and was struck by the similar undertones of pathos and lamentation that entangles his letters to the Corinthians with this morning’s pandemic news. In particular, Paul’s passage about the “thorn in the flesh” came to mind:
Continue reading “A Thorn in the Flesh”
Radical Discipleship 