Every week in our Sun-Walking Fellowship staff meetings, we engage in a practice of art-making together. Today, we took the text of Thomas Merton's experience at Fourth and Walnut, which inspired our name, and performed Redaction Poetry. I loved mine. The poem I created is in the replies.

I've been on a James Weldon Johnson journey recently. The second stanza of his delight-filled poem "Prayer at Sunrise" warmed my soul this morning. [1/4]

From Toni Morrison's "Racism and Fascism" inthesetimes.com/article/toni... "Fascism talks ideology, but it is really just marketing — marketing for power. It is recognizable by its need to purge, by the strategies it uses to purge, and by its terror of truly democratic agendas...." [1/7]

One of the most difficult, but necessary to read poems from Clint Smith III.

Liam Z. Stephens 🏳️‍🌈@bstingstl.bsky.social · 2y ago

Finally, I'd like to post this poem by @clintsmithiii.bsky.social: When pople say "we've made it through worse before..." "...we are not all left standing after the war has ended. Some of us have become ghosts by the time the dust has settled."

Excerpts from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech, "A Time to Break Silence," www.americanrhetoric.com/.../mlkatime.... "...I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values..." [1/10]

I needed this today @alt-text.bsky.social

Currently repopulating all of my follows over here... Excited to reconnect with some of my favorite journalists, writers, bookfans, and artists!