Time for a Retreat?

On November 16, 2020November 15, 2020 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

On offering from our dear comrade Marcia Lee (right) dialing in from eastside Detroit.

As Grace Lee Boggs reminds us, in the Chinese word for chaos, there is both opportunity and danger. These times can be especially difficult to navigate when you are in leadership. To support you in your leadership and to grow a community of leaders, we invite you to join us for a series of retreats for your soul and role and to have a community with which to grow and learn together for a year.

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Cable News

On November 13, 2020November 10, 2020 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

By Ric Hudgens

Fours years ago, I come down for breakfast to find my housemate tutoring her six-year-old daughter: Agitate! Educate! Organize!

Nod your head and acknowledge
your fear when it sits down
at breakfast some morning.

Fear is our necessary friend
watching our world
with wakeful eyes.

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of night and pepper

On November 11, 2020November 8, 2020 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

by jim perkinson, on hab 3:1-6, 17-19; mt 5:13-20

note: this spoken word is featured in perkinson’s new publication a secret gift outside the door: poems of resistance and wonder

the gospel says be salt
but i would rather drop
like pepper in this hour
assuring all who taste
do not forget!

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On Seeing Women Lead

On November 9, 2020November 8, 2020 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Uncategorized5 Comments

By Rev. Tiffany Ashworth

When I was a kid, I told my parents that I wanted to be a pastor’s wife. At the time, I articulated my sense of ministerial call as such because I couldn’t dream what I couldn’t imagine. And in a world of white male leaders that touted female submission, my context was so that I simply could not make sense of my pastoral inclinations in any other way. Because of this, even though my drive to serve the church remained strong, I came up against enough “women don’t do that” pushback that I abandoned plans to begin formal biblical and theological studies and altered course. To make a very long story short, it was painful.

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Count the Vote Rally from One who Prays.

On November 7, 2020 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Opening remarks from Bill Wylie-Kellermann at a November 4 demonstration and march begun outside Detroit Election Offices.

Good afternoon. Great gratitude for the invitation to speak to you today.

You welcome me as 71-year-old, white cis male (he/him) Christian pastor.

Given that most of those intersections are aligned with power or privilege from which I am working to be liberated, your welcome is generous

About this time five years ago Marian Kramer of Michigan Welfare Rights and I stood trial in 36th district court for blocking, with seven others [including Baba Baxter here today], the Homrich company’s water shut off trucks at the beginning of what has become some 120k shut offs. They were ordered by Detroit’s Emergency Manager who had assumed all the powers of government in one person, replacing every elected official in the city. It seemed important to us to get those charges in front of a jury – under emergency management a jury was the last vestige of official democracy in Detroit.

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They’re Talking About Me

On November 6, 2020November 4, 2020 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Uncategorized1 Comment

By Mark Van Steenwyk, re-posted from social media

It is a bizarre experience—I’m reading posts from right wingers about antifa, anarchy, socialism and the “radical fringe” that threatens their freedom.

And reading posts from liberals/centrists fundamentally agreeing with the premise that these are bad things and trying to show how the Democratic Party and Biden aren’t like these bad elements.

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The Vote

On November 3, 2020November 3, 2020 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

From Black Feminist Future. For more inspiration, see this.

This is Where You Start: Letter to a White Child on Choices, Ancestors, and the Future

On November 2, 2020October 28, 2020 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

By Rev. Margaret Anne Ernst

October 2020

I started writing this letter to you four years ago on the kitchen table, the winter after a man had been elected to the highest office in our land who represents such meanness, such smallness of imagination, and such hostility towards humanity that I had to start writing to someone. Best, I thought, to someone not fully grown, or even here yet. If I write to you, I must believe in you. I must believe in something past this moment, this nightmare, as many people behind me have imagined past the terrifying circumstances of their times.

Your world is, to me, barely glimpsed, like the moon showing itself from behind the clouds. And yet I will hang on to that moonbeam like I would clutch a breadcrumb after having not eaten for days. I choose to believe in the future.

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The Psalms Summoned Something

On November 1, 2020October 30, 2020 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

By Tommy Airey

In the lead up to the election, I’ve been soaking my soul in the Psalms. I’ve found these Hebrew resistance songs profoundly relevant. They are rearranging my soul with both agony and ecstasy, two feelings foreign to most white folk like me. In hard seasons like this, I tend to get stuck in my head—and then head for the hills. However, these ancient, heart-wrenching words lend me the language to stay present and tend what is buried deep within me.

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4 Thoughts on Hope and Resistance

On October 30, 2020October 28, 2020 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Note: This is part of a series of short posts, in the lead-up to the election, from leaders reflecting on hope and/or resistance.

By Marcia Lee

Thought #1

Lately I’ve been wondering if I’m doing enough. With everything that is happening in our world, am I causing more harm but not doing enough or not doing the ‘right’ things with my time? I definitely needed to make that pumpkin bread this morning instead of calling people for the election or checking in on someone, right? Maybe…maybe not. But one thing that does give me hope is the reminder that: i will never be enough. No matter what I do, or not do, my contribution is not enough. However, our contribution, when we mix and flow together, each of us, in our small and large ways, we are enough. What I do or do not do, may not be the thing that changes the world, but if I do something and you do something, our somethings combined might, just might be enough. Thank you for doing your something to make a more just and compassionate world. I am grateful for you.

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