9. Rise and Resist

Well, Zoom seems to be the new way of getting about these days, and this last week, we were involved in two Zoom conferences across Canada, offering presentations at both of them. The virtual conference focused on the Eco-Commoning Project brought us the staggering vision of imagining communities of faith as radical Changemakers and Innovators, leaders in shifting the social, political, economic and spiritual mindset from an individualistic-capitalist system of thought to a relational or eco-commons way-of-life.

I seem to recall that the commons was Jesus’ home rink — remember where he gathered people? . . .In the meadows, down by the beach, on the front steps of people’s homes. . . And his call to arms was to rise and resist anything and anybody that was not part of the communion way of life, the way of relational, eco- commons, the way of sharing. 

Our podcast this week focuses on sharing, though not what one would think of as the ordinary kind. Rather it explores the larger landscape of sharing as we connect with others at a deep level, where a shift of worldview is required. 

“Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:
No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.
And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.”

— Antidotes to Fear of Death, by Rebecca Elson