Community Ministry

As a boy I had a two member "club with god" and my journal was called "The Believer." God would encourage me to do crazy dance moves on the way to the bus stop and hold my breath underwater for longer. I would write in my journal about how my brother sucks and my mom has to clean up the dog poop off the carpet but how I still Believe in a more beatuiful world. I still believe in this world, and am facinated at how peoples "clubs with god" aka religions, influence and transform their behavior and catalyze revolution or placate the masses.

Its abundantly clear to me that our consumer theology in this country is what holds the current economic and political powers in place. In this track I will explore what the theology that will liberate people from these oppressive political and economic powers is. Also, how can I further grow, support, and minister the communities that are living the antidote to Neocolonial, Rasist, America using Prophetic Imagination, Love, Healing/Justice, Creative Truthtelling, and who knows what else!?

In the Winter and Spring I will be focusing on the Theology, and in the Summer I will be putting this into practice in my support of the Learning Man community forming in Santa Fe, NM.

Winter & Spring 2016: A Liberation Theology for Now

Who is the God of Freedom? Where/How do I find them? How has religion been used successfully and oppressively in political revolution? What might a Liberation Theology for America look like and feel like now?

Direct Experience: For the next three months I will consecrate 20 minutes at the beginning of the day and 20 minutes at the end of the day to direct experience with God, while being open to the ironic/playful ways that might show up.

Books:

Exodus.
Between the World and Me.
Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology
Prophetic Rage: A Postcolonial Theology of Liberation.
Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggmann (reading this first)
Occupy Spirituality by Adam Bucko and Mathew Fox

Courses: Passover as if Earth Really Matters

an online course with Arthur Waskow 3/8 to 4/5

Community:

Racial Justice Study group meeting once a month.
The Sanctuaries
GenUp? Joshua?
I'd like to develop a study group of 3-7 others that are interested in the intersection of freedom, spirituality, and community.

Skills: Storytelling, Integrating my the Artist, Love trickster and Healer into Racial Justice work as much as possible.

Fruits:

Paper-Poem-Song around what arises in this theme before March 31th
New Freedom Seder, bringing together Jews and African-American’s to explore slavery and what solidarity towards collective freedom would look/feel like.

Summer 2016: Building Beloved Community

Questions: What does a 21st century engaged intentional community look like from the outside and feel like from the inside? How is a community boundaried in a way that lets it deepen and grow and not one that makes it feel trapped? How can I live the uncommodified artistic, community life myself and build it for the next generation to be able to do so? What are the stones I can lay down now to start the community on the land? How do we be together?

Direct experience: This summer I wil live with 7 other liberators of learning, meaning-making, and love in a house in Santa Fe experimenting with being together in a culturally generative, intellectually enrichening ways that feels like we are singing together even when we aren't.

Skills: Learning together, Hosting others, Creating things that challenge oppression and the status quo, Being in it for the long haul.

End Goal: A community and cultural hub (and eventually network of hubs) that launches people on their soulful learning journeys and welcomes them back to integrate lessons and make meaning.

from the first Learning Man Festival in 2015