Tag: Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries

Festival of Radical Discipleship

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

A message from Lydia Wylie-Kellermann, the executive director of Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center.

Dear Radical Discipleship friends,

We are excited to invite you the Festival of Radical Discipleship May 23-26, 2025 at Kirkridge Retreat Center in Bangor, PA.

This gathering is a Collaboration between Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries (BCM) and Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center.

Grace Boggs, Detroit organizer and now ancestor, would ask over and over again, “What time is it on the clock of the world?” We cannot deny that we are standing at an urgent and catastrophic moment. We are witnessing an assault on humanity and all of creation from so many directions. From climate disaster to genocidal militarism, to racial and religious supremacy, and so much more.  

Our souls are hungering for time and community to be asking what it means to live humanly in this moment. We need to create space for listening and discernment, deep study and imaginative organizing, a diversity of voices and stories, and perhaps more than anything else hope and joy. So, dear friends, we are throwing a festival! 

We are hosting the Second Festival of Radical Discipleship- a gathering of kindred spirits rooted in the radical Christian tradition. It will be a time to remember past gospel experiments, discuss current calls to witness and work; and conspire about future collaborations! Come and join the feast. 

Continue reading “Festival of Radical Discipleship” →

Deep Dives

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The 2024 Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute 2024 is coming. Registration is now open.

February 19-22 2024, in Ojai, California

Register HERE.

BKI 2024 will focus on two longstanding commitments of BCM:

Building capacity for Decolonizing Discipleship and

Sabbath Economics.

These four days offer an opportunity for deep dives into both themes for educator/practitioners.  Two tracks will unfold in parallel:

  • a Healing Haunted Histories track facilitated by Elaine and team (limit 12), and
  • a track examining the Gospel of Luke and contemporary problems of Affluenza and plutocracy facilitated by Ched and team (limit 25). 

Because these themes speak to each other deeply, we will weave them together in plenary sessions to open and close each day.

Registrations for BKI2020 Close at Midnight (PST) on 29 Jan, 2020

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BillabongBartimaeus Kinsler Institute 2020: Unsettling Histories | Decolonizing Discipleship | hukišunuškuy

Click HERE to register and for more info!

This year the BKI will follow up on the Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute 2019, when we listened to and learned from a range of Indigenous voices concerning land, law and language (note: you do not need to have participated to join us in 2020).  The 2020 BKI, as Rev. Art Cribbs puts it, “aims to help us toward 20/20 vision,” by:

Unsettling Histories: Cohorts will focus on the personal and political work required of settlers and immigrants, in order that we might more deeply:

  • understand how our narratives, communities and landscapes in North America are haunted by violence and injustice, past and present; and
  • heal the myriad layers of our colonization, and colonizing behaviors, inward and outward.

Continue reading “Registrations for BKI2020 Close at Midnight (PST) on 29 Jan, 2020” →

Unsettling Histories: Decolonizing Discipleship- An Invitation

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Identity, and History, UncategorizedLeave a comment

0877e485-be58-4cb9-9657-b5fd2e11f63a
“Bartimaeus Billabong”, painted for the 2019 BKI by Australian Indigenous artist, Safina Stewart. www.artbysafina.com.au

2020 BARTIMAEUS KINSLER INSTITUTE

February 17-21, 2020

Forest Home Camp, Oak View, CA

Questions? Email us.

Unsettling Histories: Decolonizing Discipleship

Following on from BKI2019, when we listened to and learned from a range of Indigenous voices, this year we are focusing on the work required of us white settlers to build deeper solidarity with Indigenous peoples.We have a new flyer (please use it) and a new program planning committee (PPC), including the BCM team, former attendees of multiple BKIs, local Chumash indigenous leaders and past BKI planners -artist Rev. Bob Two Bulls (who is kindly gifting use of his artwork again) and Rev. Art Cribbs from LA. As Art put it “The 2020 BKI aims to help us restore “20/20” vision”.

BKI 2020 is the middle year of a 3-year sequence curated to build capacity for Indigenous solidarity from different angles: at the 2019 BKI Indigenous Justice and Christian Faith: Land, Law, Language we listened to Indigenous Voices; in 2020 we will focus on the work required of white settlers; and in 2021 we’ll learn from the experience of non-white, non-indigenous settlers of color.

 

Mothering as Discipleship

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, UncategorizedLeave a comment

58373625_10109215327077547_3301167968863387648_nRe-shared from Bartimeaus Cooperative’s newsletter.

At Farm Church on Mother’s Day, Charletta Erb talked with Erin H, mother of Gabriel (5 years) and Lucia (4 months),about mothering as discipleship, as part of our occasional “biography as theology” reflections.

Is motherhood a spiritual act for you?

Since Lucia’s birth my space has been physically grounded, happily reclusive, narrow, and defined by the predictable cycle of a baby’s needs. At times I find myself fighting it, or wanting my own space, but then I release (often with the help of nursing) and can relax into it as I remember this is such a short season. Then I just stare in wonder at my children. Mothering is a discipline, like training for a century or iron man, or like sitting in meditation for hours: painful and repetitive, yet so rewarding, with fleeting moments of nirvana or bliss. Continue reading “Mothering as Discipleship” →

We Talk, You Listen

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire1 Comment

Black Elk
Icon of Black Elk by Rev. Bob Two Bulls

By Tommy Airey, co-editor of RadicalDiscipleship.Net

“Our arms are tired of troubling the waters for you. Do us a favor and trouble your own waters and receive healing.”–Jim Bear Jacobs, Thursday morning at the Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute

Yesterday, on my flight back to Detroit, I had a front row seat for a rather disturbing dialogue. A young man whose family owns a limo company in the suburbs was aghast at Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) who called out the director of Green Book for publicly praising the watch-and-bicycle-company Shinola for their role in “saving Detroit.” Then the young man proclaimed, “In my opinion, gentrification is really helping.” His passionate conversation partner, a white woman about my age, gasped, “Why can’t people just be happy?” Continue reading “We Talk, You Listen” →

An Opportunity to Network and Be Inspired

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Two Bulls
Wowasake kin slolyapo wowahwala he e (“Know the power that is peace”)  Diptych icon of Black Elk by Robert Two Bulls.

Come join RadicalDiscipleship.Net at the 2019 Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute in sunny Southern California Feb 18-22, 2019.

The 2019 BKI theme is “Indigenous Justice and Christian Faith: Land, Law, Language.” The week will feature a great line up of indigenous resource people, the acclaimed theater production “Discovery,” workshops, art, music and more.

Registration is now open: Registration and Accommodation Package Details

Registration includes, accommodation (most packages), all study materials and 11 meals (Mon dinner-Fri breakfast).

Early bird registration closes: Dec 16th, 2018
Registration deadline: Feb 3rd, 2019

Click on HERE for more information!!!!

World on the Scales: The Apocalyptic Season of the Church Year

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King CrimsonBy Ched Myers

Note: These thoughts were shared on the 26th Sunday after Pentecost at Farm Church to give context for the readings and theme of the service. They are germane to this long but informative issue of the BCM Enews.

Yesterday Elaine and I attended the memorial service for my oldest friend’s mother. She was the last of the parents of our tight-knit neighborhood group to cross over during the last year, a string that began with my mom’s passing. We gathered at the venerable old St. James Episcopal church in South Pasadena, where I was baptized as an infant. The memories shared yesterday were about the halcyon days of our little suburban community—and it was by all means a very privileged and insular context in which to grow up. But as I listened, I was mindful of the fact that actually, from puberty onward, I was a pretty alienated kid. In 1970, I was 15, a vegetarian, and already marching against the Indochina war, to the great exasperation of my father, a veteran of two wars. This was on the heels of the 60s, and my older brother was stuck in Vietnam, sending me coded antiwar letters—in Elvish script! Continue reading “World on the Scales: The Apocalyptic Season of the Church Year” →

Robin Wall Kimmerer

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, UncategorizedLeave a comment

indexThis piece was developed during the third Bartimaeus Institute Online (BIO) Study Cohort 2017-2018.  These pieces will eventually be published in a Women’s Breviary collection.  For more information regarding the BIO Study Cohort go here.

By Kristen Snow

Robin Wall Kimmerer is an acclaimed writer, professor, mother and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Her home is in the Oswego River/Finger Lakes watershed, where she has spent many years learning and writing about Sugar Maples (Acer saccharum), Spotted Salamanders (Ambystoma maculata), Cattail Plants (Typha latifolia), and Sweetgrass (wiingaashk, and Hierochloe odorata), to name just a few. She is the founding director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment as well as a distinguished professor at the State University of New York at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. She is a botanist, teacher, counselor, and restorer. A weaver of worlds, Kimmerer pulls strong strands of indigenous wisdom in with a deep appreciation for western sciences and the latin names of plants, teaching and collaborating with people from all nations, countries and backgrounds. She speaks with an awe and adoration for the earth, always acknowledging the relationship we as living beings have. Her view of the planet is familial, embracing the mystery and gift of turtle island. She works hard to weave modern science in with the wisdom she has received from her indigenous ancestors, and present that joining in a digestible way to the often-times disconnected, immature, concrete cultivated, plastic addicted reader of our age. Continue reading “Robin Wall Kimmerer” →

A Reflection on Mary Oliver

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, UncategorizedLeave a comment

mary oliverThis piece was developed during the third Bartimaeus Institute Online (BIO) Study Cohort 2017-2018.  These pieces will eventually be published in a Women’s Breviary collection.  For more information regarding the BIO Study Cohort go here.  

By Kristen Snow

Mary Oliver spends her life offering her view of the world as a gift to anyone, and everyone. She has lived a poor and simple life, not seeing the interest in wealth or possessions, but finding her sustenance in the fruits of the ocean and the earth. Her spirituality and belief in the Creator is deep and wide. She is not framed in the specificities of theology or religion, choosing to see the reality of God in the natural world and through the words of Rumi, a similarly gifted seer. Her poems have reached millions. Continue reading “A Reflection on Mary Oliver” →