Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

“Hope is a gift, but you don’t receive that gift if you’re not creating resources for it,” Gutiérrez said. “Reasons for hope don’t just drop from the sky. They come from below, from what people are doing or not doing.” - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

Prácticas alternativas para la transformación social - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

This comes from my brother Julio: There is a school called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly known as the School of the Americas) at Fort Benning, GA that teaches terror tactics to soldiers to repress and intimidate the civilian population. This school teaches torture tactics to Latin American military leaders and soldiers. On Nov. 16, 1989, a14-yearold girl named Celina Ramos, her mother Elba Ramos, and six Jesuit priests were slaughter in El Salvador. A US Congressional Task Force reported that most of these soldiers were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas. This school continues to be responsible for the worst human rights abuses in Latin American. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

The engagement with the work of Negri and Hart is a necessary one for those of us looking for a new ways to live as followers of Jesus, in the new age of Empire. Not only to look at what Empire really is, but also of some of the alternatives to it currently been expressed and lived. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

the creation of yet another great USAmerican myth. We are far from it. Are seriously thinking that we are living in post-racial country in which by casting ballots we've embrace full embrace? The election of B. Obama is a big step on the right direction, but there still a long walk ahead. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

This is certainly a fantastic and challenging book. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

Obama stands in the tradition of King by appealing to the founding vision of America and calling America to fulfill that vision. And he is right to believe that there can only be a vision for the future if that vision is rooted in memories that can engender and sustain such a vision. And he was politically wise to argue that we must reject the Bush legacy because it departs from the best of American traditions, the best of American promise. But what is that promise? What, beyond those three foundational words, is the heart of that tradition? If vision is rooted in memory, are some memories better than others? Might there be some memories that need to be re-evaluated if we are to proceed with hope and an alternative vision? - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

Wonderful post by Rachelle Mee-Chapman answering some questions posed for her birthday. Compare ten years ago to now, what would you say are the major beliefs that have changed and how has that change changed you? Since then I have completely let go of evangelical doctrine. I don’t believe Christianity is the only way to God. I don’t believe in hell. I still love the transformational theology – that is, I think we can all continue to become more in-the-image-of-God by transforming more deeply into our truest selves—but moral ‘rightness’ and acquiescence to some religious standard (i.e. personal holiness) is no longer a tantamount for me. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

In Australia, the UK and elsewhere, people calling themselves “Pentecostal Anabaptists” or “Restorationist Anabaptists” or “Methodist Anabaptists” doesn’t signify a switching of denominations. Rather it signifies a conversion within their own tradition to a Christianity that rejects all domination. This ‘conversion’ is not based upon modernist liberal or fundamentalist assumptions but rather seeking a deeper immersion into this story which expresses the alternative nonviolent paradigm that is found in discipleship. A desire to see God’s love flood all areas of life; spirituality, sexuality, economics, ecology, personal transformation, political transformation... everything! A movement that longs to walk in the ways of Jesus Christ, rejecting the sword of violence and accepting the towel of service. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

Introduction to a challenging and timely series of reflections about the church dna as a co-op - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

gotta love that graphic! - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

Excellent collection of unchooling/deschooling. Highly recommended to those interested in alternative education. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

Anti-globalization folk hero and sheep farmer Jose Bove has inspired a T-shirt that’s all the rage in Europe. It shows the globe open in the form of a huge jaw; from it emerges the handcuffed wrists of Bove, keeping the teeth from snapping shut. The slogan reads: "The world is not merchandise, and neither am I." Bove is one of the "Millau Ten," members of the Peasant Confederation recently charged with "a festive dismantling with collateral damage" of an unfinished McDonald’s outlet in the small French town of Auch. They singled out the Golden Arches to protest the U.S. government’s recent tariffs on French specialty products, such as mustard and Roquefort cheese. The tariffs were in retaliation for Europe banning hormone-treated U.S. beef. Bove’s sheep milk is used to make Roquefort. His demonstration was nonviolent, local, personal, and specific. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

It is called "Guayaba" but anyway. I miss the guayaba trees in the back yard. I wish we could grow at the MSH. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

I'll be there. As a panelist on the first evening and enjoying the films and conversations during the whole weekend. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

The man who led communion said that we could take the tortilla (the body of Christ) through the fence as an act of civil disobedience, because it is illegal to pass things across the border. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

zHome is a revolutionary, 10-unit townhome development that uses smart design and cutting edge technologies to radically reduce its environmental impacts. zHome will prove that homes that use zero net energy and 60% less water, emit net zero carbon emissions, have clean indoor air and use only low-toxicity materials are possible and scalable to mainstream home production. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

This week the mayor ignored the request of 13 local congressmen as well as the city council and destroyed the homes of 143 people. You probably didn’t hear that much about it because these people were homeless. Most there at Nickelsville have been homeless less than a year, many less than one month. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

"I don't want to know, necessarily, that she shoots moose -- more power to her -- but I want to know what her foreign policy is, how she would address education and health care in this country," said Leah Klug, 29, an associate pastor at Quest Church in Seattle's Interbay neighborhood. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

Dig and Give Generously - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

This sense of the presence of God] can be reached only if we learn a certain amount of silence. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

Which reminds me, we better get some cheesemaking going again at MSH. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

A political art installation of US Policy souvenirs - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

By Jason Clark It is not a collection of Christians talking about ‘emerging church’, and about what we don’t want to be. That surprises visitors who often expect ‘Emerging Church’ will be the most immediate topic of conversation amongst our people. It’s not…mission, community, life with Jesus are (I hope) our identity and focus. I think for many of us, ‘emerging church’ has been a resource and become part of who we are, and it’s natural to start talking about what we are doing in different terms, than an ongoing critique of existing church. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

Therefore, we have this against you, brothers and sisters, that along with this powerful announcing of the Gospel, the Church from the United States has not also raised its voice in protest against the injustices that powerful governments and institutions are inflicting on the global South - injustices that afflict the lives and ecosystems of millions of people who, centuries after the proclamation of the Gospel, still have not seen the sweat of their brow turned into bread. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

This is the concept I resonate the most. "The church must become a community of resistance. A community that subverts the cultural norm, a community that dismantles the dominant consciousness and offers an alternative to it." - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

Naomi Klein wrote The Shock Doctrine in the hopes that it would make us all better prepared for the next big shock. Well, that shock has certainly arrived, along with gloves-off attempts to use it to push through radical pro-corporate policies (which of course will further enrich the very players who created the market crisis in the first place...). - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

DIY tips - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

good book indeed. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

So consumption should not be the center of the Christian's identity, and I think you're getting at the question of whether even using the framework of consumption is in some way capitulation to consumer culture's values and worldview. That's a very good point - Christians should subvert and transform consumer language and find more thoroughly Christian language and vocabulary. - Eliacin Rosario-Cruz