Liberation: Mary & James Cone

Liberation: Mary & James Cone

Ben Conachan

During the long stretch of the Christian year from Advent to Pentecost, we are invited to ponder the mysteries of Christ: incarnation, atonement, resurrection. The remainder of the year, Ordinary Time, turns to the generations of every day saints, the Jesus-followers who keep pushing the Divine Story forward. In an age where American Christianity seems to have lost the plot, we can turn to the stories and examples of mystics and poets, women and outsiders who have kept the way of Jesus alive in times ancient and modern. This series will explore pairs of saints whose lives and writings inspire us to keep moving forward today.

This week, our series closes with Mary and James Cone—a pregnant teenager in an occupied country, and a Black theologian raised under Jim Crow—who, two thousand years apart, tell the same story: that God sides with the oppressed, not with the powerful. Her song has been banned by governments who understood exactly what it meant, and his witness insists we see the cross as God in solidarity with the marginalized.

Feminism: Julian of Norwich & Anne Sexton

Feminism: Julian of Norwich & Anne Sexton

Mike Roth

During the long stretch of the Christian year from Advent to Pentecost, we are invited to ponder the mysteries of Christ: incarnation, atonement, resurrection. The remainder of the year, Ordinary Time, turns to the generations of every day saints, the Jesus-followers who keep pushing the Divine Story forward. In an age where American Christianity seems to have lost the plot, we can turn to the stories and examples of mystics and poets, women and outsiders who have kept the way of Jesus alive in times ancient and modern. This series will explore pairs of saints whose lives and writings inspire us to keep moving forward today.

This week, Mike turns to two women six centuries apart—the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich and the poet Anne Sexton—who each embodied the work of feminism in their writing. From Julian's vision of Jesus as a nursing mother to Sexton's poems on grief, addiction, and an irreverent, card-playing God, both found their own language using the experience of women to illuminate the Divine.

Mysticism: Meister Eckhart & Bruno Barnhart

Mysticism: Meister Eckhart & Bruno Barnhart

During the long stretch of the Christian year from Advent to Pentecost, we are invited to ponder the mysteries of Christ: incarnation, atonement, resurrection. The remainder of the year, Ordinary Time, turns to the generations of every day saints, the Jesus-followers who keep pushing the Divine Story forward. In an age where American Christianity seems to have lost the plot, we can turn to the stories and examples of mystics and poets, women and outsiders who have kept the way of Jesus alive in times ancient and modern. This series will explore pairs of saints whose lives and writings inspire us to keep moving forward today.

This week, we turn to two mystics—Meister Eckhart and Bruno Barnhart—who challenge the idea that God is somewhere "out there" and invite us instead to discover God as the very ground of our being. It's a vision of faith less about searching for the Divine and more about coming home, and learning to grow up into the kind of secure, mature love that makes us capable of real connection.

Science: St. Hildegard of Bingen & Ilia Delio

Science: St. Hildegard of Bingen & Ilia Delio

Mike Roth

During the long stretch of the Christian year from Advent to Pentecost, we are invited to ponder the mysteries of Christ: incarnation, atonement, resurrection. The remainder of the year, Ordinary Time, turns to the generations of every day saints, the Jesus-followers who keep pushing the Divine Story forward. In an age where American Christianity seems to have lost the plot, we can turn to the stories and examples of mystics and poets, women and outsiders who have kept the way of Jesus alive in times ancient and modern. This series will explore pairs of saints whose lives and writings inspire us to keep moving forward today.

This week, Mike draws on the 12th-century abbess Hildegard of Bingen and contemporary Franciscan theologian Ilia Delio to make a case that science and Christian faith aren't enemies—they never were—and that evolution, consciousness, and cosmic convergence can deepen rather than threaten the ancient mysteries of incarnation, Trinity, and atonement.

Creation: St. Francis & Wendell Berry

Creation: St. Francis & Wendell Berry

Ben Conachan

During the long stretch of the Christian year from Advent to Pentecost, we are invited to ponder the mysteries of Christ: incarnation, atonement, resurrection. The remainder of the year, Ordinary Time, turns to the generations of every day saints, the Jesus-followers who keep pushing the Divine Story forward. In an age where American Christianity seems to have lost the plot, we can turn to the stories and examples of mystics and poets, women and outsiders who have kept the way of Jesus alive in times ancient and modern. This series will explore pairs of saints whose lives and writings inspire us to keep moving forward today.

This week, St. Francis and Wendell Berry guide us into a different kind of Christian imagination—one where creation isn't a backdrop to human salvation but belongs to it, and where learning to love the world around us turns out to be some of the most ancient and most human work there is.