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Ideas for Action

Take action. Find concrete ways to live justly, engage your congregation, and advocate for change.

Advocacy Works: Redeeming Neighborhood Violence—One Block at a Time

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This article was first published in the Banner in April 2014. 

When bullets fly, innocent people die.

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Advocacy Works: Empowering to be a Voice for Change

Preparing to meet with staff from the office of Congressman Justin Amash

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Advocacy Works: Advocacy as a Spiritual Practice

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Advocacy Works: Training Agents of Change in Communities

Community members brainstorm to imagine their ideal health center.

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“Lack of medicine.”

“Handwritten receipts.”

“No psychologist or social worker.”

Across Tegucigalpa, Honduras, community members are auditing their local public health centers, documenting findings and standing up for their right to quality health care.

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Bundles of Creativity

Imagine you are pregnant for the first time. You are excited. You’ve been trying to have a baby for a while now. Overall, you just want a smooth, uncomplicated pregnancy, however, deep inside you hope that the baby is a girl or a boy. Why do you hope that she is a girl or hope that he is a boy? 

Secure Dwellings and Stumbling Blocks: Accessible Housing for People of All Abilities

As I’ve said before on this blog, I’m a person with spastic cerebral palsy and other disabilities. That means that – like all people, let alone other folks with disabilities! – I require access to affordable housing. On one hand, I can happily report that as I write these words, I sit at my own kitchen table, in an apartment where I live by myself. Sometimes, I need a little help getting my groceries, but I can come and go when I please, and I don’t live with too many insects!

Justice and Dignity – a snapshot on TRC Calls to Action 7-10

Lead Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Commissioner Murray Sinclair has the wonderful ability to speak important truths in great one liners.  Two of those one-liners have stuck with me for  the 7 years since the release of the final report of the TRC:  education got us into this mess and education will get us out and reconciliation is a generational project.  Both of these short-zingers have inspired our long-term work in the CRC in Canada to advocate for the implementation of TRC Calls to Action 7-10 that focus on justice and equity in First Nation K-12 education.

Are we on the edge of biodiversity renewal?

We’ve turned into a new calendar year, with all of its cultural energy around newness. And Christians carry on into the church year begun at Advent, and the newness brought into history in the incarnation. 

So it’s a good time to see afresh the entire world, object of God’s love, theater of God’s glory, and our miraculous home. And not only ours, but of the entire community of creation—human and ‘beyond human’ creation. 

Holiday Blues

While most Christmas adages point to the joy of the season (e.g. it’s the most wonderful time of the year), this year I have been once again reminded that November and December are two of the most difficult months for millions of people. Feelings of loneliness and anxiety, a fear of missing out, painful reflection and overwhelming sadness during the Christmas season are so common there’s a special term for it—the holiday blues.

Why Can’t We Do Both? Mary, Martha, and the Myth of Productivity

I’m both a person with multiple disabilities, and a good worker. The problem with holding those two concepts in tension is my distinct lack of efficiency. I can do the things I’m skilled at regularly – in church contexts, I can pray, preach, receive and count offering, sing, and not only assist in but help to celebrate the Eucharist – but, when I do them, all those tasks are slower and more deliberate than they would be when done by able-bodied people. Moreover, all those tasks may have small pieces missing.

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