amazing what you find when you clear out your camera's memory

 

I guess in the old days this is what you found when you developed that roll of film that's been in your camera for ages. Anyway, here's a blurry picture of me shaking hands with Jurgen Moltmann!!!

i feel like everyone should write one of these about themselves

I can walk as far as I need to.
I know a lot of stories.
I know a lot of songs.
I know that everyone can dance.
I can use words for magic. Which is to say to turn citizens into people, turn sitters into waiters, to pitch matches that are rhythms and slowly building metaphors. Ｉknow a half-dozen rituals that I can deploy at a moment's notice and can improvise more on a half-moment's notice.
I can turn bitching into planning.
I believe in enough things.
My name is David Weasley. And I fight demons.

Nothing Can Ever Stop My Lord

nothing can ever stop my lord: an easter song by david weasley. spoiler alert: if you're coming to first baptist berwyn tomorrow morning, you shouldn't read this unless you want to hear the song before worship.

C Am/ F Am G
C Am/ F F G

chorus:
nothing can ever stop my lord
though lord knows, many have tried
nothing can ever stop my Lord-
we didn't know it was true, til he died.

Nothing can ever stop my Lord
though the Empire didn't know that
the thought that the torture would stop the good news
and make all of us people turn back

and when they left him to die in the sun
they were trying to stop that word
and convince us that justice was not in our grasp
but they had not counted on my Lord

chorus

some say when they killed him he went down to hell
to stem even death's bloody tide
and he busted all of the dead sinners out
and left hell's gate broken wide

so they tell that story of the Harrowing of Hell
I don't know if I believe that stuff
but that he will find you no matter where you are
I know that, and that is enough

chorus

over and over we try to nail him down
with our genders and nations and race
but my old friend Jesus is never down for long
even death could not put him in his place

nothing can ever stop my Lord
not your hatred or your bigotry
not even your doubt, not even your despair-
he will not rest until you're free

chorus

nothing will ever stop my Lord
not your failure or your having no room
when you're too sad to rest or too broken to pray-
remember what happened when they put him in the tomb

now: you may die, and I may die
and our bodies may crumble to dust
but we will remain as his body lives on-
deep roots are not reached by the frost

chorus

there will come a day

there will come a day,
when we won't have
to mark good friday.

when there aren't any more executions.
when there isn't any more injustice
when there isn't any more death.

And then we will celebrate easter together.
but easter will just be our lives.
easter will just be our world.

we who love the fallen: a good friday call to worship

We who love the fallen
who desperately cling to those unjustly killed.

We who have walked with them,
we who slept and fought with them,
we who played and ate with them.

We gather on this day,
when they tried to kill Jesus-
and when they succeeded.

This moment is inscribed on our hearts-
just like the death of far too many others:
King and Romero, our family members,
our friends, our lovers.

We wish they weren't dead. We hate
their absence. We will seek justice
for those who killed them,
and for those who allowed them to die.

Though the ones who killed them
would like us to forget-
we will never forget.
We will always remember.

We who love the fallen.

Ordination Vows

I got ordained on Sunday by a whole crowd of wonderful and strange people.

The whole service was awesome. I don't know what else to say about it.

Here are the vows that I made, drawn from a wide variety of traditions and colleagues.

---Ordination Vows

We will begin with a reaffirmation of the vows made for you at your baptism and made by you at confirmation:

On behalf of the whole church, I ask you:
Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?

DW: I do.

Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms the present themselves?

DW: I do.

Do you confess Jesus Christ as your savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races?

DW: I do.

And continuing with new vows:

Do you believe that you are truly called to the work of the pastor as your vocation and ministry in this season?

DW: I do, God being my help.

Will you be faithful in prayer and devotion, in reading of the scripture and in examining of your own heart?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you invite others into the holy work of God, into the proclamation of the Gospel, into the movement for the coming Kindom of God? Will you seek to empower everyone you encounter in their own vocations, their own ministries and calls?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you refuse to follow the biases of the world, and seek to follow only the biases of God?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you be faithful in preaching and teaching the Gospel, administering the ordinances and rites of the church, in exorcising demons and in exercising pastoral care and leadership? Will you bear faithful witness to the history and practice of your Baptist tradition?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you endeavor to seek, always, the further edge of possibility? Will you bring a radical hope to mundane moments, a radical joy to terrifying moments, and a radical love to difficult moments?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you endeavor to know, always, the nearer shores of comfort- the solace of God's own embrace, through prayer, fellowship, rest, and play? Will you maintain friendships, interests, and intimacies outside the congregation of your service, as a commitment to your own full living?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you endeavor to release your grasping, to cede that which is not yours to control? Will you uphold your calling as a sign and agent of God's saving work in the world, remembering that you are no savior, but only the teller of salvation's story?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you care for all of God's creation, in its radical diversity, both in its present Now and its future Not-Yet, including your own self and body?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you be brave and honest, loving and clear, in understanding that people will sometimes look to you as a way of looking for themselves, the lost truth of the Divine Within, and in helping them in that search?

DW: I will, God being my help.

As an agent of truth, will you love the dishonest? As an agent of justice, will you love the unjust? As an agent of reconciliation, will you love the divisive? As an agent of kindness, will you love the cruel?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you relentlessly serve the cause of Jesus in the world until you cease to draw breath or until justice is won and we all feast together at the Great Welcome Table?

DW: I will, God being my help.


And now, after those 3 and 12 vows for the ordinand, there is just one for you:

Will you the gathered community support David Weasley in the ministry of Christ? (If so, say, "We will.")

The People: We will.

faces of a new generation

So... as many of you know, my ordination is coming up. I don't know if this is related or not, but here is an awesome youtube video my friend helped make a few months ago. I don't know what else to say about it.