By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann. Originally printed in On the Edge.
I am sorry. I am sorry for speaking too quickly. For saying the wrong thing. Or not saying anything. For speaking unaware out of my own white supremacy.
I am sorry for not learning the history. For the large blind spots I carry. For all the people and creatures hurt along my way.
Continue reading “Repenting White Supremacy”
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
“Keep your eye on these fish for a few days. You don’t want him to be around if one of them dies,” she whispers so Isaac can’t hear.
For his two year old birthday, we got three fish which he quickly named “Two, Baubee, and Three.” He’s learning to count and there really isn’t anything more exciting at the moment than the numbers two and three. He can tell them apart and feeds them every day. And when bedtime comes around he refuses to turn off their light because, he insists, the fish do not want to go to bed- just like him.
Yesterday, one of them did died. It started growing something gross on its face and by the time we got home, Baubee was gone. The store attendant’s voice was ringing in my head, “you don’t want him to see if one of them dies.” Actually, I think we do. Continue reading “Learning from Laughter: Fish Funeral”
I learned the liturgical year as a child by where we put our bodies. Mondays in Advent were spent at Williams International where they were making cruise missiles and Good Friday was spent walking the streets of Detroit. This walk has been happening since before I was born and I’ve walked it every year of my life. As a community, we spend Lent thinking about where we see the Cross today. Where is crucifixion happening today. Then together on Good Friday, we name it out loud by taking our bodies and a wooden cross to those places.
This year when we think about the Crucifixion we are thinking about the poor being pushed out to make way for gentrification. We are thinking about water shut offs and privitized education system. We are thinking about drones and black lives matter. Today, hundreds of us join together reading these words together. We invite you to join us in reading a couple of them here.
– Lydia Wylie-Kellermann Continue reading “Stations of the Cross through the Streets of Detroit”
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
I was pruning these same apple trees and grape vines when I first felt the pull of contractions. Today, it is a two year old that calls me down. “Mooommy,” he calls. He’s standing in the green turtle box filled with sand he collected with his grandpa from the shores of Lake Huron last summer. He stands there barefoot having demanded to take his shoes off even though it’s the middle of March and the snow has not yet fully melted. Continue reading “Learning from Laughter: Blessed by Sand”
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
I became a mom two years ago today. I can still feel Erinn’s hand in mine as she breathed with me through each contraction and reminded me what the pain was for. After more than two days of active labor, in one final push, this beautiful child leapt out head to toe.
Almost a year earlier, as we began to try to get pregnant, we had beloved friends over for dinner who were helping us conceive, one of them asked us “Why do you want to be parents?” Continue reading “Learning from Laughter: A Series on Radical Discipleship Parenting”
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann (First published at http://www.dlmayfield.wordpress.com)
Frustrated he said, “Well what would you do if you were trying to convert someone?” He had been following my mom around campus for months trying to convert her to be a Crusader for Christ by following the 5 spiritual laws of conversation. Without needing a minute to think about it, she said “I would ask them to read the Chronicles of Narnia and then invite them to talk about it.” Continue reading “Love Story to Narnia”
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann (printed in Conspire, Fall 2014)
It was unseasonably warm as I carefully stepped onto the next wrung balancing the extra weight and size. My body called me into those trees as I deliberately and gently trimmed the small, sucker branches. First the apple tree, then the peach, then the plum. Being past my due date, I knew I probably shouldn’t be on a ladder, but I kept climbing higher and higher. Continue reading “Birth: The conspiracy of Soul and Body”
Written by Lydia Wylie-Kellermann for a neighborhood Eucharist.
In a time when we are so mindful of the violence and racism done to black bodies and mindful of the privileges of our own bodies, we pause as a community to remember another body. One that was targeted and murdered by another violent system over 2000 years ago. Continue reading “Claiming his body as his Own”
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
With his hand in the shape of a C, he touches his eye and lifts it to the sky as a smile appears on his mouth. He has spotted “the moon.” Even before the world has words, he knows joy.
It is a rare and powerful gift we have as parents to be able to teach joy. Continue reading “Teaching Joy”
I wrote this list of practices for the calendar Wretch. You can see more details or purchase the calendar here.
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
My own calendar fills so quickly with fast paced, endless commitments and lists, while I long for a different kind of schedule- one with reminders to slow down, pay attention, listen, learn, remember, bake, plant, resist, and build the Beloved Community. Continue reading “Doing Justice 52 Weeks of the Year”
Radical Discipleship 