Meetings, Books, Video--and a Bunch of Cool Links!

Elaine and I just returned from a gathering of some 45 prominent denominational and other faith-based activists at Stony Point Conference Center, NY, where we facilitated the first stages of drafting a response to the Kairos Palestine document of 2009.  We commend the Kairos movement among Palestinian Christians, and look forward to the U.S. response that should be available in a month or so.  We'll keep you posted.  

We're delighted that our new book Our God is Undocumented is now out; it can be purchased here.  This Monday, Feb 20th, we'll have a gathering at our place to celebrate the book; lots of our friends from around southern California will join us.  Then we'll move right into the Bartimaeus Institute, in which 25 participants will learn how to read Mark's gospel "politically." 

Speaking of books, our friend Tim Kumfer of the Servant Leadership School in Washington, DC wrote a nice review for Sojourners magazine of Liberating Biblical Studies (Wipf & Stock, 2011), which I co-edited with Laurel Dykstra.  You can access Tim's review here.  That book is also now available on Kindle.  

Finally, speaking of Kairos, I've been working with Kairos Canada for more than a dozen years now.  Recently one of their staffpersons posted on YouTube a talk and Powerpoint I did a couple of years ago on Apocalyptic, Resistance and Discipleship.  Check it out!

Two New Publications Out with Contributions from Ched

Check out these two new publications just out with contributions from Ched:

• Challenging Empire: God, Faithfulness and Resistance, edited by Naim Ateek, Cedar Duaybis and Marine Tobin (Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, Jerusalem, 2012).  It has the texts of two talks Ched gave at the conference by that name last year in Bethlehem (for a video clip from the conference go here).   Copies of the book can be obtained from Sabeel (for a recent press release go here). 
  
  
• An Eerdmans Reader in Contemporary Political Theology, edited by William Cavanaugh, Jeffrey Bailey and Craig Hovey (Eerdmans, 2012).  In this massive, 800+ page collection, Ched provided an introduction to a section entitled “Confronting the Powers” that overviews the work and witness of Dorothy Day, Rene Girard and Walter Wink.  

Our next webinar on February 8^th will focus on Ched’s newest book, Our God is Undocumented: Biblical Faith and Immigrant Rights (Orbis, 2012), which is now available.  To register for the webinar go here. 

Upcoming Themes for the 2012 Bartimaeus Monthly Webinar Series

Our monthly webinars are part of our efforts at BCM to do more online education in order to increase our reach, decrease our travel schedule and reduce our carbon footprint!  Here’s the line-up for our upcoming webinars:

Wed, Mar 21^st:  Explorations in Ecojustice Theology.  “Redemption as Rehydration: The Eschatological Vision of Water in the Bible.”  This webinar will correspond with the publication of my article on this theme in the April edition of Sojourners magazine.

Tue, Apr 24^th:  “Reflections on the Los Angeles Uprising, Twenty Years Later.”  I will look back on the searing experience of the largest urban riots in U.S. history (April 29-May 2, 1992), the second time in my life I saw my city burn.  Some history, context and reflections on urban ministry today.

Thanks for helping spread the word of our 2012 Webinar series.  We hope you'll join us!  

Followers of Jesus in the Way of Martin Luther King, Jr.

This is the first year in the last six that we haven’t been running a Bartimaeus Institute over the Martin Luther King holiday.   Though Elaine is in the east at Haverford College doing some restorative justice work for their MLK commemoration, I was able to take our new intern (Talitha Fraser from New Zealand via the Urban Seed mob in Melbourne) to visit Bethel AME church here locally.  We were warmly welcomed and heard a stirring sermon on how we need to answer God’s call today to be radically prophetic, just as Martin did.  I believe the best place to remember King is

2012 Monthly BCM Webinar Series Begins Jan 19: "On your Mark..."

Above: Andrea Mantegna, “St. Mark the Evangelist,” ca.1450.

With the success of our “pilot” webinar on Dec. 13^th, we are announcing a new series of monthly BCM Webinars throughout 2012.  Throughout this new year, we’ll offer at least one webinar per month on a variety of themes across the spectrum of our educational and organizing work.  

The first in the series will be on Thursday, January 19^th from 5:45-7:15 pm PST (note the date, which is different than previously announced).  The theme will be “Mark’s Call to Discipleship in Sociopolitical and Economic Context.”  The cost of this 90 minutes webinar is only $9.50 (for two people sitting at a screen that's less than 5 bucks each!)  You can register here.  

Margaret Enns, 1933-2011

Above:  Elaine and her mother at La Fonda restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  We took Elaine’s parents on a tour of the Four Corners area in 2002, just 2 years before her father passed away and her mother sunk into Alzheimers.   

Early Christmas Eve morning, Margaret Hertha Toews Enns, Elaine’s beloved mother, slipped quietly into the next world as Elaine slept next to her bedside.  Her final, labored breaths brought a blessed end to a marathon journey of Alzheimers, which had kept her locked up for more than 8 years in a mysterious, private (and for us frustrating) world. 

New Book on Immigrant Justice Going to Press

A Few Advent Resources: Occupy, CPT and the God of Exodus (a link to our recent sermon!)

Last night the first freeze came to Oak View.  Fortunately we'd covered the fruit trees, the salad greens were frosty, but the last of the tomatoes and tomatillos are now done.  The big winds over the last week have finally subsided, and it's chilly and clear--winter in southern California.  Yesterday four Christian "biker gypsies" rode by as we happened to be outside, and we struck up a conversation.  We ended up spending the afternoon talking about faith and following the radical gospel; we fed them and secured them a place to camp, they reminded us to trust the Spirit for all things.

Thanks to our buddy Ric Hudgens in Chicago, here is a link to the audio of a sermon Elaine and I gave at the closing worship of the 25th anniversary Congress of Christian Peacemaker Teams in October.   This 33 minute reflection asserts that only a mystical connection to the God of Exodus can sustain our long term activism; we offer it to you here in memory of Tom Fox and the CPT hostage crisis six years ago.  

Sabbath Economics and Occupy!

Above:  Occupy Austin protesters march outside Bank of America on Congress Avenue on 11/4/11; photo by Alberto Martínez /AMERICAN-STATESMAN. 

Today (11-11-11) is called “Veterans Day,” but was originally “Armistice Day.”  As activist Gary Khols writes:  “This day was made a holiday in 1918 in order to celebrate the end of World War I—up until that point one of the worst things our species had done to itself.  Because what was then known simply as the Great War was marketed as “a war to end war,”  celebrating its end was understood as celebrating the end of all wars.  A ten-year campaign was launched in 1928 that created the Kellogg-Briand Pact, legally banning all wars.  That treaty is still on the books, which is why war-making is a criminal act, and which is how Nazis came to be prosecuted for it…”

We at BCM have, like most activists, been tracking and supporting the viral growth around the country and across the world of the “Occupy” protest against an economic system geared to benefit only the richest 1 %.  The most interesting, and in our opinion strategic, aspect of this movement has been the “Move Your Money” campaign.  This tactic urges people to shift their personal assets from corporate banks to credit unions and other community development financial institutions (see http://moveyourmoneyproject.org).

The All Saints Triduum: Remembering as a Household Practice

Note:  This is a slightly edited version of a reflection published in our BCM E-News, November 2005.  Above picture:  Over the last several years Elaine and I have been inspired by the magnificent Día de los Muertos altars built by brilliant folk artist Manuel Hernandez, who was part of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker community for many years before returning to Mexico to found a Catholic Worker farm.  Often his altar would take up half of the living room of the house of hospitality; it became famous around East L.A., with dozens of friends and neighbors coming to view his installation each year.  The altar pictured here is from 2005.  

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…”  (Heb 12:1)

 The death of loved ones leaves a hole in our hearts and souls, one that can be salved only with memory.  We North Americans, however, are not very competent at the art of remembering.  The dominant culture into which we have been socialized is one rife with historical amnesia and disconnection with the past.  This has had a negative impact on personal, family and community practices of mindfulness and memory.  We have a lot to learn therefore from cultures for which rituals of remembering are more intact.  One of those traditions is our ecclesial feast of All Saints.