Joyce Hollyday is a co-founder and co-pastor of Circle of Mercy, an ecumenical congregation in Asheville, North Carolina. Her most recent book, Pillar of Fire, is a historical novel that celebrates the extraordinary witness of the medieval mystics known as Beguines. She is the author of other several books, including Clothed with the Sun: Biblical Women, Social Justice, and Us and Then Shall Your Light Rise: Spiritual Formation and Social Witness. She was a founding member of Witness for Peace, a grassroots organization committed to nonviolence and led by faith and conscience. She was formerly the Associate Editor for Sojourners.
Posts By This Author
On Retreat
Let's be honest right up front. Many of us at Sojourners are movie buffs. And basketball fans.
An Invitation to Faith
In the half-light of dawn, in a graveyard, it might have been tempting to believe that their eyes were playing tricks.
Women At Work
In the world of the last few decades, work and family patterns have undergone dramatic upheaval.
'Usual Operating Procedures'
To look into the eyes of Gustavo Parajon is to see compassion and integrity.
Sojourners Community
It was an unusual sight--40 people walking through our neighborhood, from house to house, carrying forks.
The Grand Canyon
The sun was about to slip behind a grove of Ponderosa pines, the sweet-smelling bark of which tinged the air with a scent like butterscotch.
A Messenger Of God's Truth
On 1879, four years before Sojourner Truth died, a Louisville, Kentucky newspaper said of her, "The oldest truth nowadays is Sojourner."
Vengeance Gets Its Day in Court
A nationwide rise in vindictive activity toward death row prisoners and their advocates seems to confirm a trend of opinion about the death penalty in the last two decades.
Casualties
The city was still blanketed in early-morning drowsiness. The sun, an orange glint on the eastern horizon, shone through broad-leafed trees. A stooped man in a gray uniform swept discarded candy wrappers and crushed soda cans into a container.
I imagined it was like the start of every other day on Capitol Hill, though I wasn't sure. I had never been there before at dawn.
Some of our small group had spent all night on the east steps of the Capitol. Others arrived at various hours throughout the night to take part in a round-the-clock vigil during the days preceding the second contra aid vote in the House of Representatives.
There was less attention than usual paid to a group of Christians praying for the people of Nicaragua and lifting up the names of the victims of the contra war. As the president had hoped, America's attention was focused elsewhere. It was April 15—the day after the U.S. air strike on Libya.
We were told that the attack was intended to put an end to terrorism. But even the president himself seemed not to believe his words. During the night huge dump trucks were parked across the entrance roads to the Capitol. The orange and white trucks dotted our view and stood as a last line of defense against potential retaliatory suicide-bombing missions on the Capitol by angry Libyans. As the usual flood of tour buses began to enter the Capitol plaza, German shepherds were guided out of police wagons bearing the K-9 insignia and set loose to sniff at luggage compartments for bombs.
An Unanswered Question
At 11:39 a.m. on Tuesday, January 28, the world changed for millions of children.