From Babylon to Jerusalem :: A New Urban Vision

30 09 2011

by Brian Walsh

A meditation on Rev. 21.9-14; 21.22-22.5 delivered in the Wine Before Breakfast community on September 20, 2011

Grief is the doorway to hope,
tragic endings give birth to surprising beginnings,
lament gives way to praise,
and death is overturned in resurrection.

That’s the good news this morning.
That’s how the failed, painful reality of Babylon
meets the restored city of Jerusalem.

And it is all there in the very first line of our reading.

“Then one of the angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me….”

Man, by the time I’ve got to the end of the book of Revelation
the last thing I want to see is one of those angels
with their bowls of plagues.
The last thing I want to hear is any more bad news
from one of those angelic messengers. Read the rest of this entry »





Film, Prophecy & Culture

30 06 2011

This fall, Brian Walsh will be teaching a new course at Trinity College in Toronto entitled Film, Prophecy & Culture. Registrations are limited, so if you’re interested, get on board soon!

Humans are story-telling animals. We find our identity, memory, vision and our meaning through the narratives of our lives. While the church has been a foundational story telling institution, it has clearly been eclipsed in the last half century by various forms of mass media, and most notably through cinema. Read the rest of this entry »





Practicing Resurrection 2010

6 05 2010

This August marks the return of Practicing Resurrection, an annual conference held at Brian and Sylvia’s Russet House Farm in Cameron, Ontario.

This year’s keynote speakers are Ched Myers and Elaine Enns. Their work with Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries focuses on building capacity for biblical literacy, church renewal, and faith-based witness for justice. Read the rest of this entry »





Homemaking on the Road: Romans 15 and the Bigger Picture

3 03 2010

by Brian Walsh

It has been about home from the beginning.
The very beginning,
the beginning of all beginnings,
was about home.
……A good home,
……a rich home,
……a home of blessing,
……a creational home,
……home with God.

And when homebreaking raises its violent face,
the homemaking God makes covenant.
The homemaking God embraces the homebreaker,
with eyes wide open.

Read the rest of this entry »





What If?

30 12 2009

Originally posted on Allan Reeve’s blog, he’s given us permission to repost it here at Empire Remixed in its entirety. Allan is the minister at Trinity United Church in Bobcaygeon, Ontario.

by Allan Reeve

What if Jesus were born in Canada today?

To be true to the story, he would most certainly be born an indigenous native Canadian. He would be of a tribe out on the fringe of the Empire. He’d live within a day’s travel of the capital – say within an Otter’s flight – putting him perhaps in a community in Northern Quebec?

It’s been seven generations since his people have drifted from their traditional ways. Slowly at first, they lost their trust in the land as the source of security. Slowly they began to depend upon the machines and tinned foods and coin of the realm that eventually invaded every aspect of their lives.

Mary and Joe remember the stories their grandparents told them. They remember trips stolen away from school where they were shown how to negotiate the waters, get what was needed from the land, use everything to good purpose, watch the stars, the birds, the tracks that would tell them where they were, when they were, who they were. Sometimes they can even remember parts of the songs their grandparents sang. Read the rest of this entry »





Justice and Creation

10 11 2009

CRC Campus Ministries, University of Toronto and Crux Books present:

Justice and Creation:

a double book launch for

“The Justice Project” (Ed. Brian McLaren et. al.)
“The Gift of Creation” (Ed. Norman Wirzba)

with contributor Dr. Sylvia C. Keesmaat

Commentaries by:
Bruxy Cavey (The Meeting House)
Ron Kuipers (Institute for Christian Studies)

Music by Michael Iafrate, Alison Hari Singh, and Zoe Thiessen and The Hildegard Project (featuring Billy Gekas).

Facebook event info here.





Easter Reflection

12 04 2009

by Andrew Stephens-Rennie
a reflection on Isaiah 25:6-9

It’s a feast today – and oh what a feast it will be. A feast of rich food, and of well-matured wines will be served, and all are invited to this table. Rich and poor, young and old, from every tribe and tongue and nation. All are invited to this table.

This ain’t no ordinary feast. This isn’t your run of the mill celebration. With this feast, on this day, we rejoice at the greatest victory ever witnessed. We rejoice in our very hearts - for the pall of death, the shroud cast over all peoples, the sheet spread over all nations – all of it has been destroyed.

Done away with forever. Death has been swallowed up, and all tears will be wiped away. Read the rest of this entry »





The iPhone Challenge

11 07 2008

by Dion Oxford

Well, it looks as though the long awaited iPhone will finally be making its way to Canada.

Oh joy. Oh bliss. The saviour has finally come (tongue is now firmly planted in cheek).

How did we manage before its long awaited arrival? We had to carry our bulky iPods, PDA’s, and phones as separate entities. One doesn’t have enough pockets in one outfit to be able to safely and conveniantly handle all of those toys. Read the rest of this entry »





Beyond Homelessness – Early Reviews

21 06 2008

Republished with permission from Byron Borger at Hearts & Minds Books in Dallastown, PA. Byron has a longer review to follow, which we’ll be sure to post

Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement by Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh (Eerdmans; $24.00) is a book that I can safely say will be one of the most important works of the year, a major contribution to Christian social analysis and cultural reformation. I’ve followed these friends a bit as they’ve worked out this material. I’ve had an early draft and have been awaiting this published copy for a year; I couldn’t be more excited that it has arrived. Thanks be to God, the ever-faithful home-making and Earth-restoring God who comes to us in Jesus not, as they ably show, to take us away to heaven only to leave behind a burning planet, but to help us image the God of creation here, now, in creation-caring stewardship, until that great day when Christ returns to consummate his covenantal ways in a new Earth. Read the rest of this entry »





New Design

19 04 2007

It’s a new year, with a new event, and we’re going live with a new site design. Simpler, easy to manage, which is good when you’re a group of techno-peasants. We’ll leave all the flashy stuff to the cybergnostics.








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