Ideas for Action

Our Hearts Exchanged cohort spent time learning about the Doctrine of Discovery through readings, videos, stories and conversation. We had taken in the magnitude of how contrary to the way of Jesus this was and how incredibly inappropriate it was for the church to make such a declaration. We felt the weight of its harm and destruction. Reading and processing it together was an important part of the exchanging hearts experience. We were invited to respond, here is my poetic lament that was part of my Hearts Exchanged journey.

Each year, when my students and I travel to Cuernavaca, Mexico to visit with local activists, community builders, human rights workers, and anti-poverty advocates, we meet with a lifelong justice and peace practitioner named Juan Francisco.  After discussing his lifelong work for equality and justice, our students have the chance to ask him questions.  Juan Francisco’s deep experience in neighbourhood renewal, anti-violence campaigns, community art projects, gender justice initiatives, and advocating for mothers of the ‘disappeared’ in Mexico means that our students always have lo

In my email to the editor of Do Justice, I asked, ‘How can I talk about how our bodies are disposed of in the dump or in the river and without being blunt, crude, disrespectful or violently graphic about it?’  I am not exaggerating. This is happening way too often. We Indigenous women are being murdered, then denied proper funerals (left in a landfill and in the rivers) and our families are left with no ceremony to help heal from the violent death of our loved ones. Our legal system hasn’t provided the justice balm needed to move beyond grief.

During Anders' time at Bates College in Maine (he just graduated), he often went to Lewiston, Maine’s downtown skatepark, where he met with several young people. He learned a lot about their lives and struggles, especially those related to homelessness and substance abuse. Many of these individuals shared heartbreaking stories of friends and family lost to overdose or living on the streets. 

I harbor an intense dislike for walking across bridges alongside cars.

Proverbs states in 14:31 that “Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor Him”.