[If *you* have remembrances or condolences you’d like to add, please go to Wilson Station’s Dawn Herrin Memorial Page and offer them.] Due to the rapidity of face book communications and so on, I post this tonight without much polish or time to ponder, just wanting my friends and Jesus People USA’s friends to know about the passing of someone […]

March 27, 2014 at approximately 6 pm, Ida Dawn Mortimer slipped silently from her husband, family and others of us at Jesus People USA to be with Christ. Dawn was the person many of us viewed as the heart of our community, who through her life exemplified the word “disciple.” This is Dawn’s Wilson Station memorial page. Please feel free […]

Martin Luther King’s birthday, January 15 (today), seems a fine time to offer up a lesser-known sermon he gave at the Mount Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church August 27 1967. Entitled “Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool,” it still has a shocking resonance today. Perhaps it isn’t as polished, as memorable in some ways, as “I Have a Dream” or […]

In the Aftermath of Uptown Shootings of 5, Area Churches Including JPUSA Gather for Prayer Vigil Jon Trott Tom Wray, our ever-patient and reliable Jesus People USA photographer (and member, along with his wife Teresa) offers these images of our neighborhood’s prayer vigil (click to enlarge if they don’t do so automatically): As I reported in Wilson-Sheridan Shootings Half a […]

I know…. here we go again, taking the bait from Mr. Limbaugh and ensuring that his nonsense (and thus his brand) stays highly visible. That formula has worked well for him in the past and will continue to work for him in the future. So why do I do it anyway? Because: Rush Limbaugh is one of the world’s most […]

“You can’t make me do nothing but die!” ― Richard Wright, Native Son Perhaps I have no right to say what I’m thinking tonight — there’s no room for so-called “objectivity” in the midst of this tsunami of emotions — but I will say it anyway. Racism in all its power to distort justice has once again won a victory. […]

“Our need for love is infinite, and what community can afford us is finite. We make an idol of community if we cling to human beings and hope in them to meet every need. Even in community, in fact sometimes especially in community, we must learn not to turn from our sufferings, but to name them the best we can […]

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That is, don’t put people in prison without a trial or even specific accusations of wrong-doing. “Walking while Muslim” or “Walking while a bearded male in Iraq / Afghanistan” is not a good reason to put someone into solitary confinement for (in many cases) over a decade. What if […]

Jim Palosaari, who with his first wife Sue founded Jesus People Milwaukee, passed away May 25 of an apparent heart attack. For a brief but fairly thorough account of Jim’s life and influence, see Wikipedia. As news of Jim’s passing spread via face book, those of us who knew him or who have been influenced by his vision remembered him […]

Approximately thirty Uptown Community activists and citizens, spearheaded by Organization of the Northeast (ONE), gathered last night at the Unitarian/Universalist People’s Church in Uptown to grieve and pray together over the death of Tim Pittman, 19, a man shot and killed within half a block of the Church’s front doors. (See the Chicago Journal’s coverage of the shooting.) I was […]