Caitlyn Ference-Saunders

YouTube video by Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles Canon Jeff Baker | 2025 Margaret Parker Lecture | 11.8.25

Jeff Baker got a room full of Episcopalians to start yelling "Amen!", "C'mon!", and "Preach!" at this year's EDLA Diocesan Convention.
It's well worth the listen and a reminder of what the practical implications of living out Christ's love looks and feels like.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI9S...

A large white room with checkered tile floor and high windows. Paper lanterns line one wall.

new space!? So thankful to St. James' South Pasadena for allowing me to continue to grow a yoga program alongside my postulancy work.
I believe deeply that to use our sacred spaces well, we must think about all the ways we can gather and nourish, including outside of our normal worship rhythms.

Maybe nobody in the great big world cares about this.
But the public libraries in tiny Jefferson County in Northern Appalachia were in danger of losing their tax funding thanks to right-wing book banners. And we won. The library's funding is safe!!!!!

Just because we beat them doesn’t mean we should continue to let billionaires spend whatever they want on elections.

Couple things I learned today:
- Seniors are extremely fired up about this
- "Fuck ICE" is a normie position now
- People are MASSIVELY pissed off about Sen. Padilla being wrestled to the ground in LA
- We all we got, we all we need

No Kings Day should probably just be a regular American holiday. Take over Flag Day but turn it (literally) upside down like the medieval Feast of Fools. And add burning effigies

I heard your talk at the recent UCLA Bible in Ancient Iranian Context conference and have not stopped thinking about the fanfic lens. Such a helpful tool for creating curiosity about the text with folks today.

Will have to check this out!

some thoughts on grief. This is not the essay I thought I would write for my Substack debut.

trends for summer: writing intimate reflections on grief, love, and longing.

The service of Easter morning is about to begin in the empty chancel and altar of St. James' Episcopal Church in South Pasadena. Warm wood paneling and white walls enclose the choir stalls, a golden wall surrounds the italian-stone high altar. White flowers flow over the chancel rails and paschal candle.

One a personal note, this Holy Week was one of the most profound for me. This year, the love I have for my community and the love I witness among them absolutely knocked me over. I cannot adequately express the joy I felt serving with them as we journeyed through last week.

This is the consistent love of God incarnate: nightly calls with those under siege. May we all follow this example in the way we care for, fight for, and build up the least powerful among us.

Really love this :)

The Day of the Jackal (1973)

Six yoga mats with blocks and blankets in a a room with a wood floor, warm, sand-colored walls and white cabinets. The room is ringed with twinkle lights

It's really such a gift, in the midst of everything to get to hold space for out yoga group at St. James'. I often find myself looking at this photo from after class. I can feel the presence of each of the people who belong with those mats, their softness, their selfness, their hope. It heartens me.

This is giving excellent Judy Chicago Dinner Party vibes!

YouTube video by Bernie Sanders Where Do We Go From Here?

The consistency of this man 👏👏👏

My evening thought is that I suspect a great many Americans, in the period after 1989, grew very used to a world in which it didn't matter *that* much who they elected (to them).

They had the rule of law, the most prosperous economy in human history, the long peace.

But it always mattered.

Want to Know What a Project 2025 World Looks Like? Just Ask the Homeschoolers Who Lived it Although President Trump’s executive order on elections signed earlier this week is probably unconstitutional, it closely resembles the stalled SAVE Act, which requires voters to present a passport or...

"What I and many others raised in religious homeschooling communities offer is an inconvenient truth: that previous generations already tried to build this utopia, and they lost their children in the process."

~ @abbinye.bsky.social for @religiondispatches.bsky.social

Casey continues to be the one person whose internet writing I am willing to regularly pay for. This whole series has been stunning, but this essay really worked into my bones—reminding me of our own flight from NELA and what it means to build life together in its many forms.

And reader, those beans were, in fact, lovely on that butter-fried bread.

I just discovered the joy of beans on toast. I have never thought this was a good idea. However, perhaps due to the particularly Englishness of today's grey skies, as I was frying some seed bread, I thought, the tomato & herb stewed beans I have a little of would be so lovely on this.

Quotes are from the early pages of Weller’s book: “The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief”

“The dream of full-throated living, woven into our very being, has often been forgotten and neglected, replaced by a societal fiction of productivity and material gain”

According to Francis Weller the two primary sins of “Western Civilization” are amnesia and anesthesia (not empathy). “When we are lost in…the Great Forgetting we slip into a mode of being that neglects the wider bonds of our belonging…when we forget, we are able to do untold damage.”

First swim of the season complete! Many thanks to the good folks at Glassell Park Pool and our local @lacity.bsky.social parks. These kind of neighborhood resources are some of the best things our city does. Our police budget is not one of the best things our city does.

Good reminder this morning.
"When people see others as willing to fight, they believe they can fight too. The will to fight doesn’t go out of a community unless the individuals in that community give up their faith in their cause."

Hey Americans, call your senators (especially the ones below, if you're their constituent!). Find their numbers at 202-224-3121 or at 5calls.org. If you don't get a person, you can still leave a voicemail asking them to vote NO on cloture and no on the Republican spending bill.

Can you love the Bible enough to learn the history of how these texts have come to be, and love this collection for what it is, not what you wish it to be?
There's definitely a sermon, class, or blog post here.

I'm having a great time learning about a whole area of scholarship I've had far too little connection with. And I am thinking a lot about how some of my former religious communities may not appreciate the literary and historical lens through we are investigating these texts.