Part 1

“I see and admire your manner of living…In short you can do almost what you choose. You whites possess the power of subduing almost every animal to your use. You are surrounded by slaves. Every thing about you is in chains and you are slaves yourselves. I fear that if I should exchange my pursuits for your, I too should become a slave (Jensen, 259) .”
We live in a post-modern world, a world which bows down and pays tribute without question to oppressive regimens and unholy dictators (Obama). Violence is divinely sanctioned and encouraged in the land of slavery and bones (The USA). Oceans expire while we pray.
Appalachian peoples, indigenous blacks, and others tribal peoples are painted as ill-bred, dumb, lesser then human peoples. This is the land of Empire. This is life. This is your world, a world where the divine is separated from humanity by brick buildings known as churches and a wooden cross with a tortured peasant suffocating upon it .
We live in a world where we are encouraged to stay deeply rooted in our miserable lifestyles. We live in a world where we are encouraged to stay aggressive, to submit to the capitalist model…and to never fight back. What ever you do, do not fight back…do not resist as industrial civilization kills off your land base. Remember my friend, as I cannot stress this enough, do not ever fight back, even as you die or the world around is dying…please don’t fight back… for fighting back is only acceptable when it comes from the top and is directed toward those at the bottom.
Neither you nor I are free beings, if you think are, you are being duped my friend. The radical activist David Edwards once wrote, “There is no greater obstacle to freedom then the assumption that it has already been attained.” Your mind is and will continue to be colinialized by powers that preach “DEMOCRACY IS FREEDOM”. Allusions are and always shall be the most impenetrable prisons.
Life is tough, it is dreadful, however that is life and Jesus, he suffered just like we did and he was rewarded in the end, so shall I! This way of thinking is deeply ingrained into our minds. Suffering is the definition of humanity.
We need to wake the fuck up.

East of Eden.

We are living East of Eden.
200,000 gallons of oil per day are being pumped into the ocean; this is what life is like East of Eden.
Human beings are being treated like Lepers in Arizona; this is what life is like East of Eden.
When Christians are at the forefront of oppression towards alien, migrant, undocumented workers, Christians who are supposedly Exiles, who follow an Alien, Undocumented, Migrant Messiah, this is what life is like East of Eden.
We are a people who view the world through the eyes of white privileged men, Aristotle, Aquinas, Plato, and Augustine, instead of through the fathers and mothers of our faith, Ruth, Ester, Mary, Amos, Micah, and Jesus. We see the world through the eyes of conquers and the oppressors instead of through the eyes of those who desire to go back to Eden.
I am fed up.
I am fucking tired.
I am sick and tired of listening to men at church talk about funding colonializing missionaries to reach the people who have not even heard of Jesus…
I am sick of the salmon dying…I am sick of drowning polar bears…. I am sick of buildings…I am sick of airplanes…I am sick of being sick…I am sick of sitting with teenage girls that are addicted to pills…I am sick of life East of Eden.
My sickness is making me wake up…I am angry, I have a holy, a holy prophetic anger against this system, against the narrative that is dominating life in the Empire…
We are in exile, just as our ancestors were, we must as they did work for the radical and all-encompassing vision found in the words of Isaiah, Joel, and Hosea. It is time we like our tribal ancestors begin to resist…it is time we believe…
I want us to now relax and reflect on some readings of scripture. I do not want us to view the words as a far off promise, this is not how our ancestors viewed them, they viewed them as possibly happening in the hear and now. …after this I would like to discuss our experiences…what can we do to get this to take place.