โYou Canโt Let the Fear Stop Youโ: Solidarity Prayers for Good Friday
…inequities, resulting in high poverty levels, dangerous health conditions, pollution, and community divestment. As we seek to travel in your footsteps, empower us to resist and interrupt racism’s persistent and unrelenting violence and become the relief that is needed to move us always closer to freedom and new life. In solidarity with the Mvskoke people, Black freedom fighters, working class…
2025 All Church Read: Building Up a New World
…others in your church and community, including: Centering Practices – building self-regulatory and community grounding skills Scripture Readings – rooting our organizing work in God’s revolutionary word Discussion Questions – deepening our understanding and connecting to our experiences “Think like an organizer” Assignments – helping us discover more about our community’s needs and hopes Prayer – nourishing our spirits and…
On Executive Orders and Christian Callings
On Tuesday January 21st, a day after the presidential inauguration, I asked my community organizers friends in DC to send me all the information they had summarizing the new executive orders affecting immigration and the LGBTQ community. I had managed to disconnect from the news the day before because I wanted to preserve my mental health for the long fight…
December 4 - Repent
…the drumbeat of justice. Hear us as we repent our complicity and our complacency with systems that harm, and strengthen our hands to lift the downtrodden, the lonely, the outcast, and the forgotten, so that your new realm of freedom may come. May it be so, in Jesus’ name. Amen. Artwork: “Repent” by Yohana Junker (discover more at: https://www.yohanajunker.com/)…
December 24
…your radiant good news among us, so that we can move beyond fear, shame, and stigma and lean into our callings to be messengers of fearless joy. On this and every silent night, as we look toward the dawn of redeeming grace, we pray. Amen. Freedom Song Music: “Alleluia” by Jerry Sinclair Offered by: Lynice Pinkard and Erica Powell Wrencher…
December 12
…orientations, our neural pathways will strengthen and compel our actions in that direction. Prayer When punishment seems to be the only way to justice, teach us to sing, comfort, comfort. When harm seems to demand retribution, show us a more tender way. When the mountains seem unsurmountable, enliven our imaginations. When the valleys threaten to swallow us, lift us…
I Must Go: MLKโs Radical Commitment to Collective Liberation
…force of white supremacy’s resistance to the dream of freedom. He refuses to use his privilege as a nationally known figure to protect him from the risks and demands of solidarity. What if this commitment to collective liberation was the legacy we chose to live into this MLK Day? What if we understood this courageous embrace of the risks and…
An Investment in Freedom: Join the Movement at General Synod 34
Join the Movement Curator Sharon Fennema reflects on finding hope at General Synod 34 through literally hundreds of conversations with folks who are doing the work and urging their communities to keep moving toward racial justice. She explores the need for interconnected and intersectional movements as investments in freedom for future generations.
December 3
“Hope is a discipline.” – Mariame Kaba Abolition asks us to commit to birthing the communities we want to live in and want our children to be able to grow up in in the future. It asks us to imagine anew how we want to be in relationship with one another, with ourselves and with the world, far beyond the…
All Church Read 2024: Sacred Self Care and Black Liturgies
…are inviting all of us to deepen our capacities and commitments to healing, wholeness and care through our 2024 All Church Read. We will journey with Chanequa Walker-Barnes and Cole Arthur Riley and their books Sacred Self Care and Black Liturgies to discover ways of tending ourselves while we are tending the world. Buy Sacred Self Care: Daily Practices for…