Speaker
Date
Book
Series

Reconciliation Creation-ward, reconnecting the vines to the branches to bear the fruit of creation.

May 02, 2021   ·  

My friends, if we are responsible for all of creation, representing to the world the nature of the Creator, then the “cost of doing business” gets much more expensive.  It costs far more than just a pack of Boudin sausage, or even a steak dinner at a fancy restaurant.  It may even cost more than 84 million pounds of toxic chemicals leeched into our waterways.  The cost of doing business, the cost of our consumption, the cost of our comfort and convenience, may threaten more than just ourselves or even our neighbors.  It may threaten the entire interconnected web of relationship held together in the source of all life and flourishing More

Maundy Thursday 2021

Apr 07, 2021   ·  

Many of you have heard me tell of my family’s experience of this kind of Eucharistic vision on Navajoland, where we were assisting with COVID relief and building community gardens.  You’ve heard me tell of how, when my sister, Cornelia, risks her own health and safety to deliver fresh produce, eggs, and milk to sheltering families, she is quite literally handing over the bread of heaven.  Or how, when my brother, Leon, hauls barrels of water to remote communities with no access to running water, he is literally offering up the cup of salvation.  Or as my shimá, Paula, and her husband Hank chop and deliver loads of firewood to sheltering elders, they are literally sharing the light of Christ that keeps the frigid night winds at bay and preserves life.  Theirs is a vision of Eucharist that shapes us to live life in radical relationship, as a sacrifice for others.  This is, I think, what Augustine meant when he wrote that, if we receive the Eucharist as it has been given to us, we “become what we receive,” the bread of heaven broken for the life of the world.  More

What is woven into the story to justify our privilege and prosperity

Mar 01, 2021   ·  

Now, I don’t blame Peter, here.  He has a clear idea of what he is expecting from the Messiah who would deliver God’s people into life.  And whatever it may have looked like, it didn’t look like rejection.  Steven Charleston, one-time Bishop of Alaska and member of the Choctaw Nation, describes how, in an “[Indigenous] community built on acceptance and inclusion … exile is the very worst form of punishment” (87).  For Peter, the Messiah was supposed to deliver God’s people from exile, not suffer exile himself.  So Peter pulls Jesus aside and corrects him, something any one of us might do with a friend whose potential we see, even if they cannot.  So, Jesus’ response is a little curious, then, isn’t it? More

Teaching and learning (“Hózhóogo naasháa doo: In beauty I walk.)

Jan 31, 2021   ·  

When Baxter Liebler founded St. Cristopher’s Mission, he, like most other Christian missionaries came to teach the Way to those he thought had never known it.  And, yet, in the end, it was the Navajo who taught Baxter Liebler the Way.  And, to his credit, Fr. Liebler became open to the work of the Spirit that preceded him in this place.  More than once, he accepted invitations to join Navajo medicine men in praying for sick children, and on one occasion, a medicine man asked Fr. Liebler to pray for his own infant son.  The medicine man’s traditional prayers were good, he told Fr. Liebler, but “You make good “Jesus-talk,” and holding up two fingers together, he added in his own prophetic voice, “Two good make strong good” (55).   More