Tag: Jessica Miller

Wild Lectionary: Three Stories

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bamboo-forest-background.jpgProper 22(27) B
20th Sunday after Pentecost

Genesis 2:18-24
Psalm 8
Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16

By Jessica Miller

I find this weeks’ lectionary difficult to read because more than one of these passages have been used violently… or are used violently. Let’s be honest: These passages have been used to justify the oppression and rape of nature, to reinforce patriarchal dominance, to ostracize divorced persons, and to clobber queer people with hate, asserting they are not a part of God’s original design. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Three Stories” →

Wild Lectionary: Wonder and the True Easter Lily

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skunk_cabbage.jpgEaster, Year B
Acts 10:34-43
Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
John 20:1-18
Mark 16:1-8

By Jessica Miller

Across the northeast of North America at this season, a wonder is happening. The flowers of Symplocarpus foetidus have begun emerging and blooming from swamps and wet places. These true Easter-lilies—members of the same family of the Calla ‘lily’—are more commonly known as skunk-cabbage. Varieties of the plant also grow in Japan, where the red robe-like blossoms resembling a monk’s hood have gained it the name Zazen-sou, or Zen meditation plant.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Wonder and the True Easter Lily” →

Wild Lectionary: Learn from the Fig Tree

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed Discipleship3 Comments

PhotoAdvent 1B

Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

By Jessica Miller

Many years ago, on a prairie in Michigan, I became a student of the landscape. Officially, I tracked phenology, or the study of seasonal phenomena. Mostly I would wander the tall grass, seeking changes in the flowers. Who is blooming? Who is senescing? Whose shoots are green and growing? Some days would be punctuated by the commanding, haunting, rolling trumpet-call of sandhill cranes. The sound yanked my head up out of the grass and up to the sky. Where were they coming from? Where were they going? Learning the birds and plants and just a tiny fraction of the invisible strings that tie them to the world (the temperature, the direction of the wind, the rising and setting of the sun) taught me how to listen to the Spirit. Where does she come from? Where is she going? You can never know for sure, and yet you can become familiar with her flight-paths. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Learn from the Fig Tree” →