Reflection given by Lydia Wylie-Kellermann at the Air National Guard Base in Battle Creek, MI where they have begun operating drones.
Luke 1:41-47
I am really grateful to be here today. I grew up spending Mondays in Advent at Williams International. So, this feels like just the right place to be.
These days, I find myself turning to Mary as a mother. She raised an incredible son. Continue reading “Witnessing to the Darkness”
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
I wrote this poem two years ago when I was pregnant with Isaac. These days in the wake of events in Ferguson, I still hold onto these worries and hopes of what it means to raise a white man today.
Mary, did you worry your son would grow up
to idealize the military and violence around him?
What did you sing in his ear?
What toys did you give him?
That taught him to put away the sword
and to give his life before shedding the blood of another. Continue reading “Mary, did you worry?”
From Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
It’s been two months since this blog went live and it has been a joy to read the stories and gather a circle of writers and activists to participate. Yet, there is so much still dreamt for what this could be. We invite you to join us in collaborating and giving life to this space. The words, questions, invitations, struggles, pondering, poetry, rememberings are uttered by a community crying out for justice from a biblical vision living within the empire of the day. This space is offered as gift with the hope of collective ownership. Continue reading “An Invitation”
From Lydia Wylie-Kellermann 
Word and World was birthed three hundred feet away from my freshman high school classes. I have been lovingly molded by this thing as I began to imagine my own vocation in activism and faith. I came to my first school (Philly) when I was seventeen years old. In Minneapolis, the community wrapped my mom in a quilt in her dying months when I was nineteen. The mentoring program called me deeper into relationship with mentors and mothers so deeply needed inspiring and allowing for a love of writing. From marriage to giving birth, anti-war activism in Baltimore to local economies in Detroit, Word and World has been home, church, school, community, and family. My heart aches with gratitude. Continue reading “A Love Letter to Word and World”
Written by Lydia Wylie-Kellermann in 2012 for the Michigan delegation of United Methodist pastors to General Conference who would be voting on changes to the Discipline around gay marriage.
Dear Delegation,
I have been told by politicians, by laws and disciplines, by bishops, by friend’s partners, by extended family, by neighbors and life long friends, and even by a woman waiting for a bus, that my marriage is wrong. That its mere existence is a cause of harm in this world. Continue reading “A Letter to our Churches”
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann, Program Coordinator, Word & World
The 2nd of a two-day report from Detroit.
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Candles shine from one room to another while I write in the waning minutes of battery life on my laptop. This is our second power outage this summer. Some neighborhoods have had even more. Each a result of strengthening and unusual storms. Continue reading “On the Ark with Parched Lips”
From Lydia Wylie-Kellermann of Word & World and Jeanie Wylie Community in Detroit:
Cynicism seems an easy road these days. From my own porch, I watch the house across the street burn just days after US bank told us they had no intention to ever sell. On the corner a fifteen year old girl was shot and killed. At the Catholic Worker, I spend more time answering phone calls and turning down desperate pleas for a place to stay that night. In Detroit, democracy slips away as the city is taken over by corporate interests. Wars continue endlessly with no end in sight and growing rumors of more to come. Not to mention the political climate, the environmental climate, the continuing racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia around us. We all have an ever growing list. It is all too Continue reading “Community Counteracts the Seduction of Cynicism”
Radical Discipleship 