Coming out the other side!

Like so many, I’ve been thinking, listening, conversing and strategising with those I love and trust about coming out the other side of the pandemic. As a result I have some resources to recommend and look forward to adding more in the coming days and weeks.

To begin with, I’m excited by The Kenarchy Journal Volume Two. If you haven’t encountered it yet you can do so here: http://www.kenarchy.org.

Volume One focused on three of the primary foci of kenarchy: instating women, advocating for the poor, and reintegrating humanity and the environment. Volume Two, published earlier this week, builds on the starting points of Volume One with articles focusing on prioritising children, restoring justice to prisoners and welcoming strangers. I particularly commend Sunita Abraham’s article on Reparative Love and Marisa Lapish’s on Casting Stones at Laws Cast in Stone, although I heartily recommend it all! The Journal exists to promote applied research and activism around the values of love that are the real hope for any configuration of “building back better” or “levelling up” that doesn’t amount to just another version of the old normal. We are now inviting submissions for Volume Three which will focus on healing the sick with a particular emphasis on the theology of nations and their healing. You can submit an abstract here: https://kenarchy.org/contact/

Secondly, I would like to draw attention to my friend Lee Ann Thompson’s recently published book Finding Veronica: Essays in Feminine Restoration.

As I have made clear on this blog over the last year Patriarchy is truly “weighed in the balances and found wanting” Daniel-style, and must surely now come down! See https://rogerhaydonmitchell.wordpress.com/2020/07/20/undoing-structures-of-patriarchy. Lee Ann’s collection of essays is packed with thought provoking material that instates women and there is surely no way ahead otherwise. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Lee+Ann+Thompson%3A+Finding+Veronica&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss

Thirdly, if you haven’t yet read Valarie Kaur’s See No Stranger (London: Aster, 2020) you should!

This is revolutionary love with gut wrenching authenticity from a Sikh daughter of peace to challenge and catalyse disciples of Jesus to embrace the intersectional human others as they seek and find the kingdom of God with ever increasing intensity. This raises plenty of inescapable and crucial questions about what love is, what non-violence is, who and what we can and can’t embrace and what happens next, but hers is an undeniably prophetic voice of the moment.

What all these recommendations have in common is a vision and commitment for a different and sustainable future for people and planet in line with Jesus’ prayer to an utterly kenotic loving Father, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven!”

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