“It’s okay to go slow,” he says. His four-year-old feet step gently in silence. “That way you can see more things.”
The air is still chilly but the snow has melted. Walking nudges us to take off our sweaters. Below the still-bare branches, wet dirt reveals stories of what has passed in the woods over winter.
Named for this very stretch of land in the thumb of Michigan, my son, Cedar, searches for stories . . . for friends . . . for bones.
By Jim Perkinson, a sermon for Land Sunday, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (Detroit, MI)
Dr. James Perkinson, offering a spoken word at the Heidelberg Project in Detroit, Michigan.
The word for today is “woe.” Woe, woe, woe, woe, woe, woe! The potency of a cry! It is the season of the sob—the wail of grief, the howl of anger, the warning of danger! But we live in a society that is illiterate in the language of lamentation. Neither the tears of mourning nor the rage of wounding is acceptable in the halls of power or the decorum of wealth. Lose a spouse or child to disease? We give three days off from work. Then you better be fully functional and productive again, not talk of the agony, not exhibit the melancholy. Go private with the pain; pretend in public. Lose a spouse or child to violence—it is the same. Lose entire families and communities to violence—like generation after generation of black folk up against the nooses and walls, choke-holds and policies, traffic stops and bullet barrages of white folk? Swallow hard and invisibly, smile politely and submissively, and re-assume “the position.” Dare arch an eyebrow? Your funeral is next. March in the streets? Now we really uncover the history and reality of the country. Out come the labels, the AKs, the white-sheet posses (now dressed Hawaiian or khaki), the full metal jacket riot squads hot-to-trot, itching-to-swat, backed by bellicosities Fox and Hannity, Carlson profanity, Barr absurdity and the sheer inanity of an Orange-headed contempt for fact and truth and reasonable conversation.
Rev. Sekou will be hosting a revolutionary bible study for the next 8 Wednesdays
We are getting flooded with some profound Zoom webinar offerings in the lead-up to the election. Here’s a short list of dates and links that you may be interested in. Please feel free to post others in the comments section!
Since our last webinar just 2 months ago, we’ve witnessed the rapid escalation of white nationalist attacks on our communities, from the grassroots to the highest office in the United States. This movement isn’t new, but it is taking new forms. As anti-racist white people, we believe it’s our responsibility to defeat this movement.
Beyond the borders of church, communities are crafting practices of remembering on their own terms.
What I have learned about mourning in the streets has prompted me to dig deeper into my Christian roots, pulling forward ways of caring for, and remembering, the dead that have been covered over with weeds. These liturgies in public space have reinforced my understanding of liturgy in its original terms – work of the people.
On Fridays, we are posing questions to Dr. Bruce Rogers-Vaughn (right), an ordained Baptist minister, pastoral psychotherapist and Associate Professor of the Practice of Pastoral Theology and Counseling at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and the author of Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age (Palgrave, 2019).
*This is our fifth Friday with Bruce. See this for Part I, this for Part II, this for Part III and this for Part IV.
By Rev. Solveig Nilsen-Goodin (August 16, 2020), from the second-half of her homily at Salt + Light Lutheran Church (Portland, OR)
Radio silence. Is that what you’re giving me? Radio silence? I expected better from you, Jesus. I just told you my daughter is horribly demon-possessed, and you ignore me! We’re family, remember? From way, way, way back. Or did you forget that your ancestors Rahab, Tamar and Ruth were all Canaanite just like me. We’ve got the same blood, Jesus. Breathe the same air, too. Our bodies made of the same earth. Our spirits part of the same God.
Well, if that’s how you’re going to roll, then I guess I’ll have to get a little louder.
I wanted to share some exciting news! For the past year and a half, I have been working on pulling together a beautiful anthology that will soon be a very real book! It’s called The Sandbox Revolution: Raising Kids for a Just World. It is being published by Broadleaf books and will be released March 30, 2021.
I began this book as a most selfish of projects as a parent overwhelmed and tired and searching for communities raising kids in these unbelievable times with a passion for justice. The contributors in this book are all ones I love dearly. They have been mentors, friends, co-conspirators, and kindred spirits.
Jesus discourages his followers from working and encourages them not to worry about the provision of material needs. The gospels give a strong impression, however, that such behaviour will not lead to impoverishment, but rather to abundance. The Jesus of the gospels does not endorse the “worldly asceticism” (Weber) of the Protestant ethic. Rather, Jesus appears to live lavishly, when the opportunity for such indulgence arises, as the comparisons that are drawn between Jesus and his disciples and the ascetic John the Baptist suggest. In Luke’s Gospel the Pharisees and scribes state, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so
do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink” (5: 33). Jesus
himself seems to agree that “John the Baptist has come eating no bread
and drinking no wine” (7: 33). On the other hand, Jesus states that people call him “a glutton and a drunkard” (7: 34). In stark contrast to John,
Jesus is accused of living indulgently; an accusation which neither he nor
the narrator rejects. Continue reading “Luxury Communist Jesus”→
By Rev. Solveig Nilsen-Goodin (August 16, 2020), from the second-half of her homily at Salt + Light Lutheran Church (Portland, OR)
An excerpt from Michael J. Sandford’s “
Radical Discipleship 