Ideas for Action

This year the U.S administration introduced a new refugee resettlement program called Welcome Corps. This program allows individuals and groups to sponsor and resettle refugees without the support or financial assistance of resettlement agencies. With resettlement numbers down after years of cuts to the resettlement budget, Welcome Corps is an opportunity to offer a pathway to safety to more refugees and live out our biblical call to welcome the stranger as found in Matthew 25. With this new program comes a few frequently asked questions—read on to learn more!

In November 2022, Representative Donald McEachin died after a years-long struggle with colorectal cancer. His death ended a lifelong commitment to justice for all creation, but his legacy lives on.

When COVID happened and all our meetings went virtual, many of us got to see what we look like when we talked. We were unfamiliar with our facial expressions and the different message it was conveying when we spoke. As a result, we started to stare at our own faces during those virtual meetings to make sure they were not betraying our emotions or conveying what we don’t mean. The camera became a tool which unveiled this blind spot. 

There was a time in my life when I arrogantly decided that Psalm 23 was so overused that it had become a Hallmark card cliche. Then I realized it embodied a deep and profound call to seek justice. 

Here is my own paraphrase of the Psalm written as a prayer that attempts to highlight this beautiful call.

Shepherd me, Lord, through all my longings and wants. So much seems so broken, and without your shepherding, I am often left exhausted, drained of hope.

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? 

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!

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.

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. 

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.

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.