Nuns

Flannery Says...

“The Church is founded on Peter who denied Christ three times and couldn’t walk on the water by himself. You are expecting his successors to walk on the water. All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”

— Flannery O’Connor, letter to Cecil Dawkins, 9 Dec 58 (via habitofbeing)

Winter Church

true.

tonyburgess1969:

Too cold to change sign. Come inside for message. My church has the right idea! #umc #Chattanooga #arcticvortex #weather #church (at White Oak United Methodist Church)

A Christmas Meditation and Invitation

Whether its because we’re excitedly making plans to be with family, or unexcitedly making plans to be with family, Christmas is a time when home is on the brain.
 
But Christmas is also an opportunity to home in on what it means to feel “at home,” because the Christmas story itself is really about the possibility of feeling at home in what can be a harsh world.
 
We all know about the couple on the brink of childbirth, far from home, being turned away because there was “no room.” Those glowing plastic nativity scenes don’t do a great job at conveying what it would mean to actually give birth in a stinking, drafty, dirty barn.
 
But the Christmas story makes the crazy proposition that this was the perfect place for sacredness to be born. Far from home, in a structure not meant for human shelter, a baby is born who will grow up to bring the radical message that everyone is worthy of being at home in this world.
 
It turns out that the way to be at home in this world is the same way this baby went on to live: by being unafraid to let go of the easy comforts of home, lovingly asking others to do the same, all in the service of giving the socially, spiritually, and literally homeless the news that they—we—deserve to be here just as much as anyone else.
 
We have been invited as a church to participate in a celebration of the traditional Mexican celebration of Las Posadas to remember both the timeless message of finding home in the midst of what can seem like an inhospitable world, but also to honor and bear witness to a place where people are at risk of losing their chance at having a decent, affordable place to call home. Lathrop Homes is one of the few remaining affordable housing complexes on the North Side of Chicago, and there is a proposal to convert much of it to more expensive housing. On Saturday, December 21, from 2-4pm, we will have the opportunity to stand (and walk) with other members of our community to support the radical, and utterly common sense proposal that everyone deserves a home. 

And then we’ll have a party!

We’ll be meeting at the Cotter Boys and Girls Club at 2pm. Event is until 4.  Learn more and sign up here: 
https://www.facebook.com/events/226225527552782
And feel free to email neil@rootandbranchchurch.org with questions.

-Neil

Soldiers for Christ Endure an Amusement Park

Recently I went to an amusement park in Minnesota with my young cousins, and as we were entering the place so were about 300 teenagers wearing these t-shirts. With their advertised commitment to endure hardship, one might imagine they had come to test their Spartan self-restraint, observing in silence while us non-combatants ran around having fun, but no, they were there for the same reason as the rest of us: to ride Steel Venom, Wild Thing, and Renegade. Like the roller coasters, whose names terrify but are ultimately quite safe, these teens seemed mostly pretty normal and sweet. Still, there’s something not so sweet about making the war metaphor central to a characterization of the life of faith. I don’t think they’re subversively challenging our valorization of war so much as taking it for granted and reinforcing it as a mark of toughness. Also, what about peace, love, gentleness, joy?

Does my undying allegiance to Sade’s “Soldier of Love" make me then a hypocrite? No, because Sade has been kicking R&B/soul/soft rock ass for thirty years,* and the song has lyrics like "I’m at the borderline of my faith / I’m at the hinterland of my devotion / I’m in the front line of this battle of mine / But I’m still alive / I’m a soldier of love…I am lost but I don’t doubt."

The faith I’ve experienced is most often like Sade’s: at the borderlines and hinterlands, where I have to trust in being lost. 

*Unfortunately not all posts on the R&B Church blog will include a meditation on an actual R&B song, but no one can stop me from doing it occasionally.

- Neil Ellingson

Decline to Discovery

Martin Marty reflects on the decline of the “mainline Protestant” church:

Historians who mark their work with enduring attention to the signs of finitude, contingency and transience may not join the front rank of strategists for the once-mainline. But they can provide perspective and contribute to the search for wisdom in bewildering times—if they are not surprised, paralyzed or distracted by obsessive talk of mainline decline. Over my shoulder as I write is a framed phrase in Chinese calligraphy. It once was on the office wall of Charles Huggins, a Nobelist in science. It translates: “Discovery is our business.” True for the scientists, it also informs the vocation of humanists and theologians who are mining the past for the purposes of discovery.

I suspect that the time for lament is coming to an end. Church attendance is down, cultural influence is dwindling, buildings are crumbling. =’(. ITS A SIGN! So lets go from there and see what we can do.

For some reason tumblr is being whack and won’t let me hyperlink within the text. Here is the link below:

http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2013-08/declinism-discovery

Dude You Have No Audience

Post by R&B Co-founder Neil Ellingson:

Franklin Graham, son of famous evangelical mega-preacher Billy, was invited to speak at the Festival of Hope in Iceland, but he may be looking out into an empty auditorium after an ingenious mass protest of the event in which people claimed all the free online tickets with no intention of going. Graham claimed that God grieved the day Obama came out in favor of gay marriage; Iceland had the first lesbian head of government in history. He’s also scheduled to speak the day before Pride, which is a big deal in Iceland. He’s also said a ridiculous number of ridiculous things about Islam.

The Icelandic protest is kind of like the tactic employed by my hero, Jacob Isom, the guy who took the Quran from the conservative Christian activist who was going to burn it, except with maybe a bit more coordination and a sense of playfully serious mischief worthy of the land where more than half the population claims to believe in Huldufolk (elves or hidden people).

Source: International Business Times and PRI’s The World

I just really wanted to post this picture, the cover page for the Public Religions Research Institutes’s recent release. The dudes on the right are feeling just as much spiritual ecstasy.

For interesting commentary on what it says:

Religion Challenges Left and Right by E.J. Dionne

A Challenge to Religious Stereotypes by Ed Kilgore

-Tim

"Religious Poem"

<a href=”http://dangodston.bandcamp.com/album/poetry-music-at-the-sulzer-library” data-mce-href=”http://dangodston.bandcamp.com/album/poetry-music-at-the-sulzer-library”>poetry & music at the Sulzer Library by Larry Janowski</a>

Post by Root and Branch Co-Founder Neil Ellingson:

The first poem in this audio stream could serve as a manifesto for Root and Branch. It beautifully makes the case for how religious community can take us beyond our selves, into the presence of others and the sacred blood and bones of reality, in a way that solitary spirituality might not.

It’s by Chicago poet and Franciscan friar Larry Janowski. If we can get permission (and get a hold of him) we’ll post the text as well.