Parties, Podcasts, Planting Seeds, Protests and Play

"The opposite of rich is not poor; it's free." - Rev. Lynice Pinkard

In our last update, we said that we wanted to send out shorter posts more frequently. We've faltered in that mission. But in this Spring update, we will offer fewer words and more faces - and commit to sending out another update before the Summer Solstice! 

Not Normal

Peter NG leading us in song at our 10-Year Party.

It’s high time we who believe in a world beyond endless cycles of violence stop trying to play by the rules that are stacked against us anyway. It’s time we stop trying to be right, perfect, or even “good,” and instead do what is needed. It’s time we stop waiting for someone to come and save us, and instead send out our own signal. One that is unwavering. One that blatantly declares that we will not let each other face these incoming long, dark, and difficult times alone. One that makes the bold statement that we will do whatever it takes to keep the soul of ourselves and this world intact. – Chani Nicholas, excerpt from 01.22.25 Newsletter 

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A few months ago, we celebrated with friends and former colleagues in Orange County to mark the ten-year anniversary of moving from Southern California to Southeast Michigan in August 2014. Our sister Kristen organized the event in my mom’s backyard. It was immaculate. 

We raised a glass and ate tacos and shared a few stories. Members of our board testified from the mic. Our friend Peter flew down from Portland to celebrate and play popular tunes on his ukulele. We were bathing in beloved community. 

Since our party, we’ve experienced a lot of heaviness. The election. The wildfires. The Nazi salute Inauguration. The flurry of fascist executive orders. The ongoing terrorizing of the occupied Palestinian territories. Honestly, it feels like things are spiraling out of control. It makes a lot of sense that despair, depression, denial and controlling behavior are seeping out all over the place. 

At the end of 2024, my friend Deni and I were texting. Deni was one of my favorite principals at Capistrano Valley High School. In our thread, Deni lamented that, these days, many well-meaning Americans are feeling absolutely overwhelmed with everything that is going on. She asked this: 

If you could advise one thing that everyone should do in the coming year to help the overall state of the U.S., what would it be? 

I immediately thought back to the day before George Floyd was murdered in 2020. Detroit pastor Rev. Roslyn Bouier got on a zoom church service that Lindsay and I were facilitating from Bend, Oregon. We were in the middle of the lock-down portion of the covid-19 pandemic. Rev. Roz told a dozen of us that our goal should not be about getting back to normal. Because “normal is overrated.” 

10 Years.

This month, we are celebrating the 10-Year anniversary of moving to Detroit and pivoting to the full-time work of soul accompaniment. 

If you are in the area, we would love for you to consider joining us for an open house celebration and fundraiser on September 21 from 4:30 - 7:30pm in Orange County. We're having a taco truck cater it and we'll have a short official program starting at 6pm, but you can swing by whenever. All kids eat for free! Check out the details and register for the event here!

We've compiled a lot of photo highlights below. What an amazing adventure it has been. 

Collective Action

It has been a very busy past few months. See below for photo documentation! 

But before you scroll down, we just want to give you two important updates: 

 

1. Tommy is moving most of his writing to his new Substack newsletter. He is posting pieces every Sunday morning. You can subscribe for free here. 

2. At the end of this month, we are joining an interfaith coalition in D.C. to take on Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the largest Zionist organization in the country. Christian Zionism is a far-right fascist ideology that bears major responsibility for the ongoing U.S.-sponsored Israeli genocide being waged on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. CUFI is antisemitic and aggressively white-and-Christian supremacist in a way that is actively working within the highest places of power in our nation to strip us of our rights, safety and freedoms here domestically as well. 

We are going to DC to participate in the largest interreligious protest for Palestine. Please consider joining us July 28-30 if you can! 

Redefined

"Definitions belong to the definers, 

not the defined." - Toni Morrison, Beloved

For the past fifteen months, we’ve been participating with a grassroots organizing campaign called Core City Strong. The Core City neighborhood is directly to the west of Woodbridge, the neighborhood in Detroit where we live. Core City is literally right across Rosa Parks Blvd from us. It is 96% Black and has a median household income of under $20,000. Core City summons old memories. There are many burned out buildings and open lots where homes once stood. But a lot of people still live in the neighborhood. On many Spring and Summer afternoons, Tommy runs through Core City, tracking wildflowers, feral cats and friendly faces. 

A dozen years ago, a wealthy white dude named Murray Wikol bought a parcel of land for $1300 in Core City. He tried to sell it for a huge profit a few years later. Then, he pivoted with plans to build a concrete crusher facility. Just a few blocks from homes, schools, churches and organic farms. He applied for a permit and was denied. But he put up electronic fences with barbed wire and started storing and sorting huge mounds of dirt and concrete anyways. Trucks and tractors have been operating on the site. When wind whips from west to east, as it so often does in Detroit, it sends toxic fugitive dust through the neighborhood. The city has given him 127 blight tickets and he still owes more than $130K of it. The city is now suing him. 

Wikol, who lives in a mansion in suburban Bloomfield Hills, claims that all the construction and demolition debris that is stored on his property has been illegally dumped there by other people. Wikol claims that he has cleaned up that land more than anyone else ever. He claims that he is just trying to create jobs and development in the community. Wikol is trying to control the narrative. Code for lying out of his ass. For the past fifteen months, we have listened to Murray Wikol spread his propaganda to news sites, over and over and over again. Everything's been documented by a professional community organizer named Vanessa - as God is our witness, a sure-as-hell, real-life superhero who just so-happens-to-live a block from Wikol’s toxic shit show. 

Radical Be(com)ing

Millions of people in the United States are part of this organically evolving cultural revolution. Because we believe in combining spiritual growth and awakening with practical actions in our daily lives, we are having a profound effect on American culture. - Grace Lee Boggs, The Next American Revolution (2011)

Note: a tad longer than our usual quarterly updates, this is an abridged and edited version of a way-too-long end-of-the-year review Tommy wrote for the Radical Discipleship blog. 

Fifty-five years ago, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King warned that American society was in a spiritual death spiral and that we would not be able to come out of it without undergoing a radical revolution of values. That same American society assassinated him when his radical values led him to speak out clearly against the Vietnam war, and when he threw his support and efforts behind the mass-organization of sanitation workers in our country. 

Is it any wonder that same American society has been working hard ever since to demonize the notion of anything "radical," which simply means to get at the root? Root causes expose America's sins, so we are trained to fear, dismiss, and mistrust anything radical. Grace Lee Boggs was a Chinese-American with a PhD who moved to the eastside of Detroit with her spouse Jimmy Boggs to live in solidarity with low-income residents and labor organizers. She was fully committed to the spiritual and political revolution that Dr. King participated in. Grace used to say this:

We can transform the world if we transform ourselves – and we can transform ourselves if we transform the world.

Grace Lee Boggs believed that this two-sided transformation is rooted in an interconnected network of diverse and scattered partnerships and groups, most of them small and barely visible. These radical incubators can cultivate in us the kind of moral courage we need in order to openly break rank with the supremacy stories (like racism, materialism and militarism) that control every major American institution - and create new ways of being and living. When two or three are gathered in the name of a love supreme, the long arc of justice, a compassionate groan, the inconvenient truth and a whole-hearted humility, Something Else is present and working towards transformation (pictured above: the Nahar Family, beloveds we visited in Elkhart, IN just after the new year - they inspire and lead, in manifold ways, with their enduring and dynamic embodiment of Boggs' and King's vital visions for our times).

Bound

A few months ago, on a gray, thirty-five degree afternoon in Detroit, Tom was sipping on a Reds Rye IPA by the fire at Founders Brewery with his friend Bill Boyle, a former teacher and administrator who is now the executive director of a company that helps organizations (like schools) become more equitable, restorative spaces. When the topic shifted to spirituality, Bill flipped the script and said that he was “religious not spiritual.” Bill broke it all down to the basics. The Latin root of religion means “to be bound.” Bill said that he’s bound to his Zen Buddhist practice, a discipline that leads to love and liberation – for himself and others.

Bill was dropping some really compelling wisdom. In these chaotic, confusing times, we need to be bound and anchored to Something Else. Unfortunately, “organized religion” in America is often weighed down with so much traumatic, dramatic and dogmatic baggage. The guilt and obligation can be so oppressive. On the other hand, “spirituality” can feel like a slippery, vague, kind of non-committal concept. Our Buddhist brother Bill speaks a slightly different dialect, but we are bound together by core convictions. Above all else, we both pivot on a love paradox boldly proclaiming that the only thing we get to keep is what we give away.