By Ric Hudgens
For one thing
too much of it
will make you sick.
Garbage in
garbage out.
Which explains
why the commuter
sitting across from you
looks so depressed.
My counter proposal
is legal in all fifty states Continue reading “Hold On”
By Ric Hudgens
When pundit choirs
sing for blood
when hatred fills
our morning hymns
when court chaplains
intone murder
when tithing
funds annihilation
the prophet
is the one
the prophet
is the one
the prophet
is the one
who interferes.
Glory to God.
Requiescat in pace.
Daniel Joseph Berrigan, S.J. (May 9, 1921 – April 30, 2016)
*Photo: Rose Marie Berger
By Ric Hudgens
[My remarks at the opening of the art exhibit “Justice for Peace” curated by Fran Joy at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, Evanston, Sunday, January 31]
By Ric Hudgens, after the morning session at Identity, Theology, and Place: Reinhabiting the Mississippi Watershed inspired by Ched Myers, Elaine Enns, Tevyn East, and Jay Beck (photo by Sarah Amalia Holst, sunrise pipe ceremony)
Artifice will not save us.
Neither a technological
escape hatch to Mars
nor a booby hatch with
Jesus in the clouds.
A world of our own creation
collapses all around us
crushing the stranger who
seeks no other home. The
World under our world holds
forth but longs for our tears.
We must find our feet again.
The grief with no name
suffocates the real.
Hear no truth. Speak no
truth. See no truth.
We must find our feet again;
not paved roads nor
graveled paths, but
dirt, soil, humus, the mud
from which we came.
Take off your shoes.
We stand, if we will stand
at all, on holy ground.
By Ric Hudgens, a sermon at Second Baptist Church, Evanston, June 28, 2015
Text: Psalm 30 (Fifth Sunday of Pentecost, Year B)
INTRODUCTION
What does it mean in this Kairos moment that we have a God moved by our lamentations?
The events of recent months are too familiar to need rehearsing. We are living in a kairos moment. The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos was chronological or sequential time; the time that we track on our watches and cellphones. Moment by moment time.
Continue reading “Lessons in Lament”
Rosemarie Freeney Harding with Rachel Elizabeth Harding
Remnants: A Memoir of Spirit, Activism, and Mothering
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015
325 pages
Reviewed by Ric Hudgens
Near the end of this utterly unique mother-daughter memoir Rosemarie Freeney Harding (1930-2004) writes:
Grandma Rye and those old Africans put something in the ground. When they got here, they stepped off those boats, chained up and weary. They looked around at this new land and they could see the heartbreak and suffering that were waiting for them and their generation. They saw these traumas waiting for us here. And they knew we were going to need something strong. Some medicine. Some spirit medicine to carry us through these storms.
Remnants: A Memoir of Spirit, Activism, and Mothering is a record of Harding’s journey, the journey of a generation, in drawing upon that spirit medicine as a resource for healing and transformation. Harding is perhaps not as well known as her husband Dr Vincent Harding (1931-2014) and yet this volume is a testament to the individuality of her creative imagination, her deep mystical spirit, and the core of her sacred activism. She was an organizer, teacher, social worker, and co-founder of the Veterans of Hope Project at the Iliff School of Theology. Continue reading “Remnants: A Memoir of Spirit, Activism & Mothering”
By Ric Hudgens, organic pastor, soul activist, fire poet
On one of those last days together
rushing through one station to another
trying to catch a departed train
you saw the small perplexed pigeon
squatting in the passageway,
commuters veering round it
left and right. Tugging at my sleeve
to stop, I hurried you on with
forceful pace, rolling eyes, my
damn condescending smile,
and you just let it go, said
I was right, you were frivolous,
immature, nothing could be done.
It is some time ago now still
I dash through this familiar tunnel
every day too late for something
but alert for that bird and one
more chance to redeem myself.
Radical Discipleship 