How we respond to an emergency says a lot about who we are. This week, faith-based groups started organizing for disaster relief before Hurricane Ida even made landfall, while health clinics in Texas did their best to help everyone they could before a new law imposed a state-wide ban on abortions.
After 20 years of war and violence under four different presidents — and the deaths of more than 172,000 people — the United States withdrew its last troops from Afghanistan on Monday.
For many, ending the war in Afghanistan seems like a step toward a more peaceful future. But even in the process of ending a war, the United States has relied on violence to enforce its will.
For those of us who have a relative, friend, or church member suffering from mental illness, I pray we turn away from the dangerous belief that mental illness is something that can be prayed away. Keep praying, but stop telling us to pray in an effort to rid ourselves of mental illness because it gives more power to our shame. In addition to your prayers, take action that helps.
With his knife, brightly colored paper, and the meditations of his heart, Benjamin PowerGriffin cuts “what prayer feels like, or what I yearn for it to feel like,” he said.
It would be too reductive — and too convenient — to suggest that Driscoll’s authoritarianism was solely a product of his brash, conservative theology. Catholic, mainline, and progressive Christians are not immune. Many forms of theology are susceptible to manipulation and abuse, and many others are intrinsically harmful — even if the damage isn’t always easy to discern.
If the United States is to take up any metaphoric role in this period of Israel’s history represented in Isaiah 6, we are the Assyrians, content to blast our way into any country we like, leaving wreckage and destruction in our wake. Like the Assyrians, my country shows no concern for how its vengeance turns the lives of ordinary people to ash.
The only solution to this noisy world is good noise from people who are attuned to the world’s hurt.
Mutual aid — unlike charity — is based on reciprocity. While everyone who participates doesn’t contribute the same way, each person offers something. Proponents of mutual aid often stress that their involvement is not based on giving from their own excess, but practicing solidarity with their community. Most mutual aid is regionally based, as specific as a neighborhood or broad as large cities.
We weep for the places where war leads to war.
We pray for your hand there to heal and restore!
Bless all who seek justice and peace as your way.
We pray for Afghanistan’s people today.
Lost in much of the promotional hype leading up to Solar Power was the quiet news that in the interim between her previous album and her latest, Lorde had started therapy. Famously private, she didn’t share much more than that, but she doesn’t need to — and anyway, the new sonic landscape of the album speaks for itself. Whereas the propulsive and explosive beats of Melodrama mirrored the rhythm of thoughts racing out of your control, the bubbly basslines of Solar Power reflect the steady progression of growth she’s experienced in the years since.