Articles + Blog

We have a new website!  As our old site was decommissioned, I redesigned chedmyers.org to continue to serve as the home of resources from Ched Myers, Elaine Enns and Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries. Here you can access (now at no charge):

• Articles
• Ched’s Blog
• Selected Webinars
• Audio Recordings

The following products are still available for purchase at http://www.bcm-net.org:

• Books
• Registration for the Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute, including the recently announced 2019 gathering
  
• Bartimaeus Institute Online course packages.

You can use the Search function (upper right), sort by Category (middle right), or click on one of the Themes (lower right) to browse the material on this site.  Any questions or problems accessing material, please email me.

— Chris Wight, BCM Communications

Below is a slightly edited excerpt from Myers, et al, Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship (Orbis, 1996), pp 199-202.

Above: Good Friday falls on the full moon of the first day of Passover this year, 2018.

Mark’s story, which began heralding a Way through the wilderness (1:2f),  ends on the Way of the cross.  In Mark’s time the cross could scarcely have been further from a religious icon.  To restive imperial subjects it conjured the fate awaiting those who dared challenge Caesar’s sovereignty.  To the civilized it was a form of punishment so inhumane that Cicero once urged that it be “banished from the body and life of Roman citizens.”  But to Jesus it symbolized the cost of discipleship.  Continue reading “THE END OF THE WORLD (MARK 15:21-46): A Good Friday Reflection by Ched Myers” →

  The “Asistencia Santa Gertrudis” (named after Saint Gertrude the Great, a favorite of medieval Iberian Catholics; see here) was an outlying chapel from Mission San Buenaventura.  Records indicate it was constructed sometime between 1804-08.  In our watershed, along Ventura Ave., is an obscure roadside memorial to this long-disappeared structure.  It “served the Indians in the early days,” says the plaque erected by a local historical society.  But there is more to the story than that, and I’ve been intrigued to discover it since we moved into the valley in 2005.

Continue reading “Re-membering the Asistencia Santa Gertrudis” →

Old trees are our parents, and our parents’ parents, perchance.

                     — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, Oct 1855

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, three weeks into the Thomas Fire here in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, the losses from California’s largest wildfire on record (scorching more than 280,000 acres) became searingly real, personal, and almost unbearable.

Continue reading “If an Ancient Cathedral Had Burned: A Lament for Grandmother Oak by Ched Myers” →

Image: Fr. Phil Berrigan pouring blood on 1-A draft files at the Customs House, Baltimore, MD, October 27, 1967.

Today, October 31st, we prepare to embrace that great feast of remembering, the “Triduum of Saints”: All Hallow’s Eve, Saints and All Souls Day, or Dia de los Muertos).

As I have gotten older this season of the Saints has become my favorite time of year.   This morning Elaine and I sat and prayed at our table, pictures of parents and other missed loved ones spread out.  We both cried telling stories.  Tears always help.

Continue reading ““50/500: A Season of Protest and Remembering,” by Ched Myers” →