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Words, Wordlessness and Coping with Despair
by Suzanne Belote Shanley – The cascade of global and national catastrophes is so devastating that we hear repeatedly on newscasts phrases such as “There are no words to describe Yemen.” Nevertheless, a human rights official managed to locate a few: “Hell on earth for millions of children…starving and in jeopardy.” Wordlessness yields to words as collectively we struggle to give language to misery and innocent suffering. “Every ten minutes, a child dies in Yemen.” Imagine if we in the US heard: “Millions of American children in Boston are near starvation.” It would never happen. Why is this? What do we need to comprehend about the privilege of white, western protection from indiscriminate use of our first world bombs on other people’s children?
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Solar is Agape’s Sole Power
As of June 2018, both of the houses and the electric car at Agape run solely on solar power. In 1999, Agape began its commitment to solar energy when the community built the Straw Bale House with five solar panels, providing a fraction of that house’s energy demands. In 2011, the community upgraded to a four kilowatt […]
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Annual Agape Workday June 2018
This year’s Work Day included a memorial to Pat Tracy, who, before his passing last fall, had come to every Work Day to drive groups of students, serve refreshments, haul wood nonstop, and make everyone laugh. Friends of this “Agape pillar”, as Brayton and Suzanne described him in a tribute in last winter’s Servant Song, came from Long […]
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Stonehill College Rural Immersion
A Stonehill College H.O.P.E. service trip, originally scheduled for two weeks in Nicaragua, had to change plans when a travel advisory was issued, so the two faculty members and nine students came to Agape from May 21 to May 26. Students were dismayed that their Nicaragua planning sessions never came to fruition, but they enjoyed, […]
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Iona College Rural Immersion
This post comes a few months after the fact due to a combination of Brayton and Suzanne’s writing sabbatical earlier this year, transitions in community members, and lack of website expertise. However, after a full year without regular blog posts, we will be eager to make more posts this summer. For the fifth year in […]
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Remembering Francis Day 2017
Though it is approaching two months since October 7th, we still find ourselves immersed in the significance of Francis Day 2017. Read on for a re-cap of the day. The Agape Community’s Francis Day celebration this year saw more than 350 water protectors (more attendees than any other year) gather to honor America’s indigenous people. […]
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No More Sacrifice Zones by Suzanne Belote Shanley
Ever since Brayton returned from Standing Rock, North Dakota, the breathtaking images that he shared with me by phone while in North Dakota have resounded in my heart and soul: “You won’t believe these…teepees, tents everywhere. We delivered the straw bales. Our greeters were people of all ages. They came for a month ago and […]
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Native Nations Rising: A Countersign by Brayton Shanley
Our country is in rapid political decline. The sign? Donald Trump is president and has been leading the decline for seven whole months now. Eighty percent of the registered Republicans support Trump through his clinical narcissistic horrors. So we are descending fast. And where is the hope in such a descent into dangerous political absurdity? […]
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“We Need an Energy Shift to Heal Our Mother Earth” Chief Arvol Looking Horse: Lakota, Dakota, Nakota Nations
“I, Chief Looking Horse, of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota Nations, ask you to understand an Indigenous perspective on what has happened in America, that we call ‘Turtle island’…recognize the importance of Sacred Sites and realize the interconnectedness of what is happening today…continued massacres…on other lands and our own Americas. Our ancestors never saw a […]
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Wronging Each Other in the Name of God and Ideology: Reflections on and from Mosul by Ahmad al Hadidi
I have been living in the United States for almost fourteen years but I never imagined that I would be witnessing from my comfort zone here the destruction of my birth city Mosul. Yet, another war in my life made me not only suffer but also ponder on why we, equally created human beings, have […]
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