Good Works in Green Bay

 

In this video you will see Katie Stockman advocating for the creative powers, stories and beauty of women everywhere–but particularly these refugee women in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

It’s never a bad idea to share the good works of another person.  By Good Works I mean the work of another person that promotes Goodness, one component of the trivium–Truth, Beauty and Goodness–that points to God.  (The other two components have been and indeed will continue to be discussed on this here weblog.)

My neighbor’s daughter is part of the Good Work featured in this video and I am so proud to say that I know her and that my life somehow intersects hers, for Christ calls us to surround ourselves with others who do His work and to learn from one another how to discover and use the Gifts He has so generously given us.  Not everyone can be an organizer or a motivator or an advocate, but neither can everyone be a lawyer, a teacher, a lineman, a chef. And so when we see others using their gifts, not afraid or held back by fear, challenges or social constraints, we must thank God, both for the gift and the recipient of that gift.

 

Ash Wednesday

Remember that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.

For Ash Wednesday I am letting Professor Alison Milbank speak for me in this University of Nottingham Department of Theology and Religion Sacred Calendars video.

This series, Sacred Calendars, sets to explain the church year, the liturgical calendar to people who, like me, did not grow up in a liturgical tradition.  But it does not assume total ignorance, and that, I believe, is its mark of success.

Let us be penitent; let us rend our hearts and not our garments, and let us sing litanies, long prayers to God, and wear the ashes.  On this Ash Wednesday may our petitions for clean hearts and right spirits be made in humility and in genuine love and may our understanding of the ash on our foreheads remind us of the dust from whence we came.

 

Shrove Tuesday

Today, for Shrove Tuesday, I post to the site a video that, in many ways, isn’t phenomenal.  It has had 107 views, and a dozen of those are likely the person or organization that uploaded it.  It has one ‘like’ (mine) and for some seemingly-insensitive reason, one ‘dislike’ (why does that option exist?).  It is a video I found through rather phenomenal circumstances, however, and that is what merits its presence here.

I found this piece after spending the weekend in Rochester, Minnesota, at the annual L’Abri conference, where I met a man named Joe Holbus who attends the church featured in the video.  He and I got to talking, as people do at conferences, and it turns out his church, Trinity Presbyterian, works closely with the Crow Creek Tribe and Reservation to restore and preserve their graveyard.  When I went searching for more information on the leader of this project, Wes Peterson, I found–as one must–there to be more to the story and a strong need for understanding and silence as we hear the stories another culture tells us about its own, precious humanity.

Should you decide to watch it, I recommend sticking to it through all 22 minutes, even though at times it is slow and even repetitive.  Good narrative repeats itself and is rarely–perhaps never–summed up quickly.  It is a Christian video, that is, it possesses and shares the message of Christ which is to Love one another.