Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

Black Lives Matter

  • The slogans of our world can help us better understand the mandates of our faith. That we are called to better the circumstances of our neighbors. to understand Jesus we have to trySaint Barnabas | Matthew 10:7-16 We don’t know a lot about Barnabas, of course. His place in tradition is dwarfed by Paul. And…

  • It’s time we take responsibility for allowing flimsy justifications for racism.

  • You’ve seen the memes on facebook or watched the exchanges on television about the Black Lives Matter movement. You know its origin on Twitter and you know that a response sprang up just as quickly: #alllivesmatter. You know that somehow, a witness to the brutality of black bodies turned into yet another culture war moment…

  • [bctt tweet=”A poem for King, justice, and repentance. #ReclaimMLK” nofollow=”yes”] When we speak of a dream, we speak not of the hazy sleep indulgence, the phantasm of our psyche, but the very call of GOD to make this world radically different from the way it is. The dream, a tricky encounter of revelation. Assaults our…

  • More than dogs

    Given our country’s spotty record on race relations, on exploitation of others, it is far too easy for us to ignore our place in the mess. a call to reconciliation Proper 18B  |  Mark 7:24-37 Feeding the dog We don’t know the original question the woman asks Jesus. Only its subject and that she begs.…

  • We are fond of the dialectic method of arguing. In this, there is always “us and them” and things are always “black and white”. We assign sides and it is simple and clean. Life is never so simple and clean. Those raising concerns about systemic violence in the criminal justice system, particularly toward young, unarmed, black…