By Cathlena Plummer It is the 21st century, in the year 2024, water has become the fight between Natives and the dominant mineral extraction industry. Last year alone, the artesian water well at St. Christopher’s Mission in Bluff, Utah, served over 80,000 people from around the Navajo reservation, and this well is still going strong….

By Dan Ries Seventy of us at Old Donation Episcopal Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia, completed Sacred Ground, and many were troubled by what we learned. We wondered, “How can we empower our grief to further the Beloved Community?” We decided first to tell the truth about Old Donation, founded in 1637 as Lynnhaven Parish….

By the Rev. Anne-Marie Jeffery One mantra I repeat in my congregational vitality work is how important getting out into the community around the parish is. You have to be willing to meet your neighbors, to hear them and see them for you to be able to love and serve them. For many in our…

By Yamily Bass-Choate I am a Hispanic Latina woman, but that was not the way I always saw myself.  I grew up in Colombia, South America, and came to the United States for college. I had planned to stay for a few years and then return. My plans changed, and I began to plant my…

By Phoebe Chatfield and the Rev. Melanie Mullen April is “Earth Month,” leading up to the 52nd annual Earth Day on Friday, April 22. As we join people around the world to honor this month, we proclaim that caring for the earth is part of the work of Becoming Beloved Community. It is not a…

By the Rev. Bude VanDyke Te-Lah-Nay was 15 in 1838. She was from a small band of Yuchi who lived near the Florence and Muscle Shoals area of North Alabama. As a little girl, she spent her spare time sitting on the banks of Nu-Nah-Say, the Tennessee River, to listen to the river’s songs. At…