The Mustard Seed Conspiracy

11/24/2020

Last call for Advent entries! Please submit your entries by tonight at 11:59pm. Head on over to
https://www.themustardseedconspiracy.com/submissions to submit!

11/17/2020

Submissions for this year's Advent Calendar have already begun to trickle in, and I'm always amazed at the beauty of your work. It feels like such a gift and a privilege to be on this recieving end. I can't wait for them to be shared.

I wanted to send a reminder that there's one more week to enter your Advent submissions! Deadline to submit is November 24th, 2020.

https://www.themustardseedconspiracy.com/submissions

10/31/2020

Submissions are open! We announced earlier this week that submissions are now open for our 2020 community Advent Calendar!

As we begin to even consider entering in to a time of advent reflection, how can we not feel the grief and the weight of it all? Our deepest human longings are as apparent as ever as they cry out and declare, “this is not how it’s supposed to be.” Yet, this is how it is. This is where we are. In his book Closer to the Edge, Ron Ruthruff writes that “lament actively declares the way things are.”

This year, I’d love to invite you to reflect on an Advent that actively declares the way things are. I invite you to press in and engage with the lament that attempts to hold the tension of god-as-child born into the thick of human brokenness.

As 2020 comes to a close, can we dare to believe that something revolutionary is upon us? Can we sit in the unsettlement of revealed broken systems and trust that it is good?

We know that Spirit came as Child to break down unjust systems, give fresh words of life to the poor, and set free the shackled in heart, mind, and body.

May this be our hope.

10/28/2020

Submissions for 2020's community Advent Calendar are now open! This year we invite you to respond and create around the theme of "Lament in Advent." Submissions will be open through November 24th. Click the link below for more details.

https://www.themustardseedconspiracy.com/submissions

06/19/2020

A liturgy for Juneteenth.

In 1865, slaves in Texas were the last to learn of their emancipation following the defeat of the Confederate States of America. In African-American communities throughout the United States, this good news of liberation to the captives is still celebrated as Juneteenth.

06/09/2020

As I determine next steps for this project (why I’ve been quiet), I wanted to make something clear. Here at The Mustard Seed Conspiracy, we wholly affirm that black lives matter. This project was birthed with a desire to honor the dignity, value, and culture of all human beings. It was meant to be a place to express our shared human experience through a lens of creativity and faith.

As the founder of a project like this, I have been doing a lot of reflecting. I admit what I stated above has not always been the case; often times my own spheres of influence subconsciously steered outcomes in a direction that honestly, sometimes, even I was uncomfortable with.

I want to do better as a leader. I am learning. I am listening. I am checking myself. You are welcome in this space.

04/11/2020

A poem by Fran Westwood, for Holy Saturday:

"What way is there left to choose
after what’s been done
to who we’ve chosen?

This is not what I expected, Abba—
you said come, costly,
but all I could see was a new road
to the tree of life on a far hill,
those thousands of desperate feet
leaping like deer and
I didn’t believe you.

Now you tell me wait, joy,
but all I can see is a shorn tree,
ivory bones the only moon in
noonday darkness,
what’s left of the garden
from knives and scattering fee
and I still don’t believe you.

But these coals and hillside skin
I do remember, and the fire
that lived low in your eyes
when you said Abba,

when you asked your questions too
when the sun had dipped
so bloody low and
you chose."

What way is there left to choose after what’s been done to who we’ve chosen? This is not what I expected, Abba— you said come, costly, but all I could see was a new road to the tree of life on a far hill, those thousands of desperate feet

04/10/2020

Libby John, a dancer, producer at Vivid Artistry Co. and the host of the Art and Faith Podcast, offers up our first ever dance and movement submission for Good Friday. "Rapha" is a visual experience that meditates on the crucifixion death of Christ. The video engages the physical senses through sound, sight and the kinesthetic.

"I created this meditative video to engage with the binding up of our wounds in a tactile, vivid way to not only engage spiritually but also physically with the healing presence of God."

As you watch the video, consider the following prompts for reflection:
- What might you need to surrender in order to allow your wounds to be bound by the linen?

- What/how does the visual experience of the strips of cloth make you feel?

- When else in Jesus’ life is he wrapped in linen for the sake of the world?

Rapha is a visual experience that meditates on the crucifixion death of Christ. The video engages the physical senses through sound, sight and the kinesthetic. The viewer is invited in to experience the strips of linen in which they describe binding Jesus’ wounds with in John 19:40 which says...

04/07/2020

I admit it's been hard for me to press into Holy Week in the way that I *want* to this year. Can anyone else relate? I so resonate with this poem by Amelia Freidline ( Innocence Abroad), now on the blog. I have very much felt a mix of both dread and desperate longing to engage in the apparent barrenness before me/us. "Surely this is not the way!" And yet, the Kingdom of Heaven is near us.

here i stand on the edge of wildness on the cusp of wilderness on the brink of a barren land eyes straining sight searching for a road through...

03/30/2020

Yesterday we entered the fifth and final week of Lent before Holy Week begins. Check out this week's new poem to reflect and meditate on by emerging Canadian poet Fran Westwood, titled "Viriditas."

How will they hear is your concern, Romans has been asking for years. My concern is where it grows from and how it grows—your sculpted maps, lips white with practice.

03/27/2020

I had no idea the world would be in the state it's currently in as I started this Lent series. I have been somewhat in awe of the relevance of some these submissions, considering they were created, submitted, and chosen before any of this was going on. We now find ourselves in what I recently heard deemed "the Lent of all Lents." Tell me about it. To be honest, I have not been sure how to proceed. Here we are, encouraging a time of pressing in to our brokenness, while our brokenness and human fragility has suddenly become much more obvious. I have chosen to continue to post Lent submissions through Holy Week and Easter, and will be praying that they serve as prompts toward an opportunity for gutsy self-reflection, and serve to reflect the Light that reveals our brokenness.

Here is a new poem on the blog this week by Sara Cassidy.

For lent I gave up caffeine— my drug of choice. Somewhere I had decided that life was too hard to live without caffeine, so I kept slurping it down. Oh God, now I have to feel!

03/23/2020

Let these words by Greg Dietz remind us that the wound os where the light gets in. Remember that there's so. much. grace. as we are forced to press in to all that broken.

Lent was always my season in the Liturgical calendar. While all those around me seemed to celebrate the divine nature of Christ and celebrate His resurrection every week, I felt that the Lenten season was when I found Christ’s humanity on display. As he spent forty days in the desert being tempted...