The Wild Reed

Friday, March 27, 2026

Butch Ware and the Gatekeepers of the Democratic Party

Writes Craig Seeman . . .

Democracy for some, or Democracy for all?

California Democrats love to talk about “saving democracy” – until a candidate like Butch Ware shows up to actually challenge the status quo.

While they preach about voting rights on the national stage, here in California, the machine is working overtime with the Secretary of State and the courts to narrow your choices. They aren’t afraid of a “spoilt” election; they’re afraid of a Green Party voice that can’t be bought.

When you use the courts to block ballot access, you aren’t protecting democracy – you’re practicing gatekeeping.

It’s time to stop the lawsuits and start the debates. Let the people decide, not the party lawyers.

Caitlin Johnstone on the “No Kings” Protests

“The problem is U.S. presidents, not kings.
The problem is the U.S. empire, not Trump.
The United States needs drastic, revolutionary change,
not daytime protests designed to be
as inoffensive as possible.”

– Caitlin Johnstone

The third “No Kings” protest takes place nationwide tomorrow. Here in Minnesota, the "flagship" march and rally of “No Kings 3.0” takes place on the grounds of the State Capitol building in St. Paul. Special guests include Bruce Springsteen, Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Organizers are hoping that over 100,000 people show up. I’m still deciding whether I'll attend the rally at the Capitol or the one at Fairview and Randolph Aves in St. Paul as I did last October for “No Kings 2.0”

To be honest, I continue to feel ambivalent about the “No Kings” movement, and for the same reasons that I shared last October. Added to these is the fact that the movement, one organized by the Indivisible coalition, is refusing to address the war on Iran, even as it cites a multitude of other reasons for the protest, including ongoing ICE raids across the country.

“Given how much Trump’s attack on Iran is rapidly escalating and the stakes involved, it seems now would be a good time for No Kings and Indivisible to marshal their tremendous resources and hold an actual antiwar march with clear demands, not more partisan pep rallies,” tweeted media critic Adam Johnson. “The U.S. is not under any threat of a ‘king’ nor do I have any sense of what this even means,” he added. “It is however in the midst of an imperial murder spree and the largest opposition movement in the county, such as it is, should probably center this fact at some point.”

Journalist Caitlin Johnstone shares a similar perspective in her most recent piece, one that I share in its entirety below.

_________________

The Problem Isn’t “Kings,”
the Problem Is U.S. Presidents

By Caitlin Johnstone

March 24, 2026
There’s another giant “No Kings” protest scheduled for this weekend, and right now all I can think about is how disgusting it is that this is the closest thing to a mass-scale antiwar protest in the United States right now.

The problem with the “No Kings” protests is right there in the title. They’re saying “We don’t want a king, we want a president!” But Donald Trump is not a king. He is a president. And that’s the real problem: U.S. presidents are extremely evil men who do extremely evil things.

Donald Trump is a U.S. president who is doing U.S. president things. U.S. presidents consistently murder people with unforgivable acts of mass military violence, mistreat immigrants and marginalized communities, and promote tyranny for the benefit of corrupting special interests in defense of the U.S. empire and the capitalist status quo. That’s what their job is. If they weren’t willing to do these things, they wouldn’t get the job.

Trump is not some freakish aberration; he is the product of the same American political status quo as his predecessors. He became president the same way they did, and the powers he now wields were given to his office via mundane executive, legislative and judicial decisions and precedents before he was ever elected.

But because the “No Kings” protests are organized by liberal defenders of that same political status quo, the demonstrations cannot address any of this. The whole thing is designed to be as large and inclusive as possible while also ensuring that it doesn’t disrupt the established order in any meaningful way. They make no real demands. They coordinate the demonstrations with police and government officials. Protesters show up for a few hours with their brunch signs and their orange guy shirts, and then they go home without inconveniencing anybody.

They are not protesting against the U.S. empire. They just want a more polite, photogenic empire.

They are not protesting the corrupt oligarchic political system which gave rise to Donald Trump. They just want the corrupt oligarchic political system to give rise to presidents who make them feel less uncomfortable.

The problem is U.S. presidents, not kings. The problem is the U.S. empire, not Trump. The United States needs drastic, revolutionary change, not daytime protests designed to be as inoffensive as possible. As long as Americans are protesting against fictional monarchies and easily replaceable oligarchic puppets instead of resisting the actual imperial machine, the abuses are going to continue.

The war in Iran is the most obviously evil American war in generations. People should be flooding the streets in every major U.S. city. Washington DC should be on fire. Soldiers should be deserting en masse. Instead we’re seeing these stupid fluffy lib theater conventions where people get together to do nothing.

Americans of conscience should be feeling deeply embarrassed right now.

– Caitlin Johnstone
“The Problem Isn’t 'Kings,’ the Problem Is U.S. Presidents”
Caitlin’s Newsletter
March 24, 2026

_________________

As with my participation in “No Kings 1.0” and “No Kings 2.0,” I’ll be carrying at tomorrow’s “No Kings 3.0” a two-sided sign, about which I wrote the following last June:

My message seeks to acknowledge and convey a deeper awareness of what’s being protested. Yes, Donald Trump has clear authoritarian tendencies and is taking actions that are undermining and dismantling the democratic and humanitarian institutions of the U.S. This needs to be highlighted, resisted, and stopped. For the vast majority of people, this will be their message tomorrow. I support this message. Yet at the same time, many of us don’t see Trump himself as the sole or even primary problem; we see him as a symptom – an undeniably extreme and terrible one – of a deeper reality which for decades has undermined and made a mockery of democracy in this country.

I’m referring to the corrupting influence of corporate money, of special profit-obsessed interests. I’m talking about the corporate capture of our political system; the rise and devastating influence of a corporate aristocracy, an oligarchy to which both major parties bow.

Although such subservience benefits these parties’ coffers, it has proven profoundly detrimental to the well-being of their constituents, the environment, and democracy.

In choosing to appease their corporate donors at the expense of the needs of the people, both parties can be said to be oligarchic; both parties comprise a corporatist/oligarchic duopoly, the policies of which created the economic conditions of profound inequality that make the authoritarian populism of Trump so appealing to so many.

The oligarchy we’re up against is every bit as anti-democratic and thus un-American as any king. Indeed, it’s sadly accurate to say that in the U.S. “money rules,” that “money is king.”

“King” Trump could keel over tomorrow, but the kingship of the oligarchy would remain. It’s this “money is king” reality that I’ll be highlighting and protesting at the “No Kings” rally.

Thursday, March 26, 2026

Butch Ware on the Hard Knock Radio Show

Hard Knock Radio is a talk show on KPFA 94.1 FM in Berkeley, California. Yesterday, host Davey D interviewed Dr. Butch Ware (right), Green Party candidate for California Governor.

This 50-minute conversation can be heard here, while following is how Hard Knock Radio describes the segment.

On this episode of Hard Knock Radio, host Davey D sat down with Green Party candidate Dr. Butch Ware for a wide ranging conversation about ballot access, voter suppression, the crisis facing third party candidates, and the larger political climate heading into the California governor’s race. The discussion centered on Ware’s lawsuit against the California Secretary of State after officials attempted to remove him from the ballot over what he described as a minor clerical redaction issue in his tax documents.

Ware argued that the case against him was never really about paperwork. Instead, he framed it as a deliberate effort to sideline a growing third party campaign that is beginning to gain traction. He said both major parties play different roles in undermining democracy, with Republicans trying to challenge results after elections and Democrats working before elections to narrow the field and eliminate candidates who threaten their power. He rejected the long standing claim that Green candidates simply “spoil” elections for Democrats, saying the evidence does not support that argument and that many Green voters come from non-voters, independents, and people alienated by both parties.

Davey D pressed Ware on the fear many people feel in this political moment, especially with rising authoritarianism, attacks on voting rights, repression of dissent, and the weaponization of labels like “domestic terrorist” against radicals and progressives. Ware responded by saying that neither major party can be trusted to stop fascism because both have helped create the conditions for it. He insisted that only a real left opposition rooted in organizing, anti-imperialism, and working class politics can offer meaningful resistance.

The conversation also dug into Gaza, the influence of AIPAC and the Zionist lobby, media blackouts, and the pressure placed on candidates who speak openly against genocide and war. Ware said his anti war, anti corporate message is resonating precisely because so many voters are tired of being forced to choose between what he described as two compromised parties. He closed the interview by linking politics and Hip Hop culture, even delivering a fiery rap aimed at the political establishment, underscoring his belief that the fight for political change is also a fight happening through culture.

To listen to Hard Knock Radio’s interview
with Dr. Butch Ware, click here.

And if you’re in the Sacramento area today . . .

Above: Standing second from right with Dr. Butch Ware (center) and members of the Green Party of Minnesota at an iftar, the fast-breaking evening meal of Muslims during Ramadan – Tuesday, March 3, 2026. This iftar was hosted by the Muslim American Caucus of the Green Party of Minnesota, and Dr. Ware was the event’s special guest.

UPDATE: Judge Rejects Green Party Candidate Butch Ware’s Bid to Appear on California Governor Ballots – Yue Stella Yu (CalMatters.org, March 26, 2026).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:

BUTCH WARE
• Introducing California’s Gubernatorial Candidate Butch Ware
• “People Really Want New Options in Politics”
• Butch Ware on “Red & Blue vs Green Politics”
• “We Have the Power to Stop the Flow of Money and the False Legitimacy Upon Which Empire Depends”
• Photo of the Day – March 3, 2026
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – November 26, 2025
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – June 5, 2025
• Butch Ware on His Run for California Governor and the Wider Goal of Disrupting the Duopoly
• “The Moment Is Ripe”: Butch Ware on Building a “True Oppositional Alternative” to the Duopoly
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – January 30, 2025
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• “This Is a Tragic, Heartbreaking Moment in the History of Humanity”: Butch Ware on the Gaza Genocide
• Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Butch Ware in Minneapolis
• Butch Ware: “You Can Actually Vote Your Conscience”
• Butch Ware: “I’m Not Here as a Spoiler”

GREEN PARTY
• “Green Wave 2026 is Global”
• Meet Some of the “People-Powered” Green Party Candidates for 2026
• An Opportunity for Organizing Against Duopoly
• “It Is Our Responsibility to Make a Third Party Viable”
• Something to Think About – December 8, 2024
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• “We Give Reasons for People to Come Out and Vote”
• We’re Witnessing a Liberal Meltdown Over Jill Stein
• The “Green Smoothie” Option
• Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Butch Ware in Minneapolis
• Butch Ware: “I’m Not Here as a Spoiler”
• Jill Stein: “Americans Deserve Choices”
• Elise Labott on How Third Parties Can Revitalize Democracy
• Something to Think About – August 15, 2024
• Howie Hawkins: “The Democrats Are Not the Answer to the Trump/Fascism Problem”
• Demolishing the False Narrative About Jill Stein and the 2016 Election
• Cornel West: “The Next Step Is a Green Step, a Progressive Step”
• Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein: Is a “Historic Collaboration” in the Making? (2016)
• Voting Green: Hope Over Fear

Do Nation States Have the “Right” to Exist?

The question, “Does Israel have a right to exist?” is frequently posed by those who unconditionally support the destructive and death-dealing actions of the Israeli government in Gaza, the Occupied West Bank, and elsewhere. According to filmmaker and social commentator Matthew Cooke, this question is “a little rhetorical trick designed to make the rights of certain people [i.e., Palestinians] disappear.”

Cooke them goes on to ask, “Does any nation state have a right to exist?” In responding to this question, Cooke notes that “the concept of nations, with standardized language, culture, and identity, is brand new – less than 250 years old.”

The entire nation-state concept is an ideology we call nationalism, which Albert Einstein (right) called a disease – the “measles of mankind.”

“Instead of providing human rights and protections,” says Cooke, “nationalism has locked the world into an escalation trap, at a time when we need to cooperate more than ever.”

Cooke’s full 14-minute video commentary on the “death cult” of nationalism and alternatives to it, can be viewed below. It’s well worth watching.

Our survival depends on cooperation between our cities, neighborhoods, communities – the places human beings actually live.

The word “nation,” which comes from the word “natio,” means a people born together. So for this concept to actually reflect reality, we have to recognize that the earth is the home of humankind. This world is our nation, where we are born together. Our individual identities are a patchwork of interconnected cultures whose family lines trace back hundreds of thousands of years.

All of us are related, one bloodline. All the land, holy. All the people, chosen. All of them, our people, with a right to exist.

– Matthew Cooke
March 24, 2026

Wednesday, March 25, 2026

Quote of the Day

The problem with [liberal] moralism is not its concern for ethics as such, but its tendency to replace structural analysis with moral judgement. It creates a sense of having acted, of standing on the “right” side, while sidestepping harder questions of organization, power, material interests, and the conditions of real intervention. The result is a form of pseudo-activity such as loud and morally self-satisfied, yet ultimately safe for the very order it imagines itself to be opposing.

– Sally Mju
via social media
March 25, 2026

Monday, March 23, 2026

Jim Palmer on the 10 Things About Christianity That Jesus Would “Vehemently Dispute”

Jim Palmer is an author, spiritual director, and the founder of the Center for Non Religious Spirituality. He recently shared the following on social media which caught my attention.

As someone who is less and less involved in organized religion and yet drawn to the life and message of Jesus, I find much meaning and insight in this particular piece. Perhaps you will too.

_______________

What follows is a refusal to keep pretending that the system built in Jesus’ name still resembles the life he lived or the vision he proclaimed.

If Jesus walked back into the room today, he wouldn’t recognize much of what claims his authority, and he wouldn’t be polite about it.

What follows are the assumptions that would likely provoke his sharpest rebuke.

1. That a vision meant to upend the social order was converted into an afterlife distraction

What began, in Jesus’ own language of the “kingdom of God,” as a concrete, this‑world confrontation with injustice, exploitation, and dehumanization was slowly evacuated into metaphysics. Liberation was postponed. Accountability was deferred. The future became a convenient place to store promises Jesus clearly expected to be enacted in the present.

2. That a movement of practice became a religion of admiration

Jesus did not call people to admire him, invoke him, or build systems around his name. He called them to follow. Yet a way of life was replaced by loyalty to a symbol. The question shifted from How shall we live? to What must we affirm? and belief became a substitute for transformation. Devotion replaced courage. Orthodoxy replaced responsibility.

3. That the core message centered on repairing a separation rather than exposing it as a fiction

Jesus lived and spoke from an unbroken sense of intimacy with God, inviting others into the same awareness. Instead, an entire narrative was built around distance, estrangement, and reunion. Alienation was treated as metaphysical fact rather than psychological and social condition, and then monetized with solutions Jesus never proposed.

4. That abstract theories overshadowed embodied truth

Jesus taught with his body as much as with words – through meals, touch, conflict, and solidarity. Yet second‑hand explanations gained authority over lived demonstration. System builders inherited the microphone, and the life Jesus actually lived was reduced to footnotes. Consistency of doctrine mattered more than coherence of character.

5. That one life was elevated beyond imitation instead of offered as a model of possibility

Jesus’ life could have functioned as an invitation into shared capacity – what a fully human life animated by love, courage, and justice looks like. Instead, it was reframed as ontological exception. The gap between “us” and “the ideal” was widened, not bridged, safeguarding reverence at the cost of empowerment.

6. That access to truth was narrowed rather than expanded

Jesus consistently pointed beyond himself to lived experience, moral imagination, and transformed relationships. But wisdom that once opened outward was domesticated into a closed epistemological system. Mystery was replaced with certainty. Inquiry with answers. Dialogue with defense, all in the name of protecting what Jesus never tried to possess.

7. That humanity was defined primarily by guilt and condemnation

Jesus’ posture toward people affirmed dignity before repentance and belonging before correction. Yet a fear‑based anthropology replaced one rooted in dignity. Wrath became foundational. Punishment became redemptive. Moral development was subordinated to appeasement, and people were trained to see themselves as problems Jesus supposedly came to manage.

8. That responsibility for healing the world was outsourced to future intervention

Jesus sent people out – to heal, to feed, to reconcile, to confront injustice. Instead, people were taught to wait – for rescue, for resolution, for Jesus to return and do what they were unwilling to do themselves. Passivity was baptized as faithfulness.

9. That words were mistaken for power

Jesus consistently exposed the emptiness of religious language divorced from action. Yet names, phrases, and verbal rituals were treated as if they could do the work that embodiment, risk, and love require. Meanwhile, the unsettling truth Jesus trusted – that humans already possess the capacity to effect change – was quietly ignored.

10. That the original vision became associated with institutions, influence, and control

Jesus aligned himself with the vulnerable and confronted systems of domination. Yet what once stood for courage, justice, beauty, and love became entangled with hierarchy, ideology, and power. The symbols survived. The substance was neutralized.

If this feels uncomfortable, good. These aren’t minor missteps, they’re fundamental reversals of what Jesus actually called people to live. If his life still matters, then so does the responsibility it demands. Everything else is just avoidance dressed up as faith.

– Jim Palmer
via social media
March 23, 2026

Sunday, March 22, 2026

Marianne Williamson on Staying Grounded Amidst the Chaos

Saturday, March 21, 2026

Photo of the Day

Friday, March 20, 2026

A Sacred Moment

The Astrological New Year begins on the Equinox, a sacred moment when light and darkness come into perfect balance across the Earth, marking a quiet but powerful turning point that guides us into renewal, rebirth, and new beginnings.

At this threshold, you are invited to release what has run its course and to begin again, not from force, but from a deeper trust in yourself. As a new cycle unfolds, you are called to consciously choose what you are ready to grow and to plant the seeds for the future you feel stirring within you.

This is not about waiting for the right time, but about recognizing that the moment is here. The life you are meant to step into begins with what you are willing to claim now.

– Wild Woman Sisterhood
March 20, 2026

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

20 Years of Saying “Yes” to the Charism of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

Earlier this evening I had the honor of delivering the “Jubilarian Reflection” at the St. Joseph Day celebration at Carondelet Village in St. Paul, Minnesota. This year marks my 20th anniversary of being a consociate member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet – St. Paul Province.

Right: With fellow CSJ Consociates Kathleen Olsen and Rita Quigley – March 18, 2026.

Left: Making my Consociate commitment on May 16, 2008. With me are the two inspiring women who served as my companions during my two-year consociate candidancy (one that started in 2006) – Rita McDonald, CSJ and Marguerite Corcoran, CSJ.

Consociates are men and women of diverse ages, faith traditions, and backgrounds. What we all have in common is an expressed desire to live the charism of the Sisters of St. Joseph (CSJ). A charism is a spiritual gift from God for the good of the church and the world. The charism of the CSJs is the “love of God and the dear neighbor without distinction.” In short, consociates live this special calling and gift of the Sisters of Joseph within the context of their own lives.

My reflection was preceded by the reading of an excerpt from Dorothy Day’s autobiography, The Long Loneliness, in which she writes about the “revolution of the heart.”

______________

Good evening. My name is Michael Bayly and I’m happy to say that I’ve been a consociate member of this wonderful community for 20 years. I’m honored to have been invited to share some thoughts with you during on this special day for us.

When I was first told of the title of this evening’s event, my first thought was, Oh, how poetic! – “God relied on Joseph to do the really tough things, to which he quietly replied, ‘Yes.’”

As I pondered these words I realized that, like all true poetic words, there’s a timelessness to them. This is because they reflect the eternal spirit of hope and trust in the midst of the many uncertainties and upheavals of life.

I see this spirit of hope and trust in the life of Joseph of Nazareth, and in the spiritual community that bears his name. I’ve witnessed countless example of Sisters and Consociates choosing, like Joseph, to be fully present in the moment when faced with uncertainties and challenges; choosing to wait trustingly for God’s guidance; and choosing to respond with a “Yes” born of compassion, courage, and trust.

Throughout our history as a spiritual community, we have done, and continue to do, some truly remarkable and inspiring things as a result of our saying, time after time, “Yes!”

Left: With Marilaurice Hemlock and Char Madigan, CSJ – March 18, 2026. Char is the founder of Hope Community in Minneapolis.

We have established and maintained ministries and programs, projects and collaborations that have changed lives; that have challenged systems of oppression and inequality; and that have embodied the “Good News” of justice, community, and liberation that Jesus lived and taught.

We have, like leaven in bread, infused the world with our presence and made a profound difference; we’ve lifted people and causes, we’ve taken risks, learned hard lessons, recalibrated and changed course when necessary, and kept going because we keep listening, trusting, and saying “Yes!”

Right: With Mary Ellen Foster, CSJ – March 18, 2026.

I’m sure that each one of us acknowledges that doing all of these things was and remains tough. But faithful doing is always predicated on faithful being – being still, being centered, being open to the flow of the Divine in and through both our individual and our communal lives. Being is just as tough as doing. Sometimes I think it’s actually more tough. There are just so many distractions, so many voices demanding busyness and productivity and results that to take time out, to cultivate quietude and wait upon the still small voice within, just seems crazy; a waste of valuable time.

But then I remember Jesus wandering off into the wild places to be alone. I remember Joseph holding back from acting rashly upon hearing the news that his betrothed was mysteriously with child. I remember Mary making sacred time and space to ponder all the uncertainties swirling around her and then choosing to trust the God of her Magnificat, her revolutionary canticle of praise to Divine transformation and a world liberated from hierarchy, injustice, poverty and shame.

The Magnificat’s revolution is an outer revolution, one that begins, however, as Dorothy Day reminds us, within each one of us as a “revolution of the heart.” Dorothy’s words remind me of a statement attributed to political and feminist activist Emma Goldman: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”

In our community’s embodiment of the “revolution of love,” we definitely allow for dancing. I sense we intrinsically know that, in the words of Gabrielle Roth, “We dance to fall in love with the spirit in all things.” Some of my most memorable experiences in our community have involved movement and dance.

Some examples . . .

• Being uplifted by Florence Steichen (above), Rita Quigley, and so many other Sisters and Consociates as they danced the history of the CSJs at the River Center during our 150th anniversary celebration;

• Watching Susan Hames joyfully dancing with her young nephew at this same event (left);

• Being inspired by the mindful and graceful moves of Rita Foster, Susan Oeffling, and Cathy Steffens as they practiced and taught tai chi;

• Marveling at the skill and stamina of each and every one of Brigid McDonald’s Irish jigs (right, in 2016);

• Being mesmerized by the beauty of Ansgar Homberg’s creations of oil and brush and the slow, graceful dance of her hand;

• Feeling valued and accepted in watching the rainbow-inspired gestures of welcome from Linda Taylor, Mary Ellen Foster, Ruth Brooker, and so many other Sisters and Consociates as, year after year, they moved with joy and grace in the Twin Cities LGBTQI Pride parade (left, in 2010);

• Dancing to the ABBA classic “Dancin’ Queen” with Kathleen Olsen and the McDonald Sisters at the Ministries Foundation Gala (below, in 2014);

• And, of course, there’s dear Rose Tillemans’ memoir, I’m Still Dancing.

So, yes, there’s dancing of all kinds in our revolution of love – physical dancing. But there’s also always been a deeper type of movement, a symbolic dance; one that we can all partake, even if we can’t physically move and dance to the extent that we’d like.

This is Dorothy Day’s “revolution of the heart.” And I’ve come to understand it as beginning with an internal movement involving four steps:

1) The decision to cultivate stillness. Now this might sound odd, given that we’re talking about dance. But as Henry Miller reminds us: “To relax is the first thing a dancer has to learn. It is the first thing any one of us has to learn in order to fully live.” But it’s tough, because it means surrender.

2) An “active waiting” in the words of Henri Nouwen, for the voice, the flow, the rhythm of the sacred;

3) The saying of “Yes!” to what we hear and feel, be it in the form of guidance, clarity, or the call for further stillness and listening;

4) The realization that intrinsic to this process is a growing capacity to “recognize what is true, aligned, and life-giving, and to distinguish it from what is imagined, projected, or misaligned.” Shamanic teacher Mary Newstrom reminds us that throughout cultures and spiritual traditions, this capacity is called discernment. It is through our active cultivation of this capacity that we begin what’s been called the “great awakening within,” or as Dorothy Day names it, the “revolution of love.”

It’s a beginning that invites us to go beyond the inner realm in which our dance of revolution is born.

The next steps of this dance, and they can be tough ones, involve connecting with others, sharing what we’ve discerned, seeking counsel and community so as to realize and express ever more fully the “true love” that imbues and empowers the dance.

It’s a love that gifts us with vision to see things as they really are, and this might seem like new vision if we’ve become accustomed to seeing things with the ego and its obsession with falsities of separateness, brokenness and lovelessness. That’s not the vision of God. And we know this in our heart of hearts.

Left: With Jane McDonald, CSJ – March 18, 2026.

We know it too from our experiences – especially our experiences of community. It’s community that protects us from slipping back into old habits of ego thinking and seeing; it’s community that keeps the music and rhythm of the dance in our ears and in our hearts.

Our dance as Sisters and Consociates of St. Joseph of Carondelet has a very unique and beautiful rhythm, one which makes us move and flow in very unique and beautiful ways. One way of identifying this rhythm is by recognizing that it is what we refer to as our charism: To love God and the dear neighbor without distinction.

That’s how we move in the world. That’s our dance, our expression of love.

For twenty years I’ve been honored to share in this dance, to embody it with you and with many who are no longer with us as they have danced their way into the sweet unknown. Yet their essence continues to be felt, continues to inspire in and through the rhythm of our shared dance.

Long may the dance of our “revolution of love” continue. And when our feet tire from the dance, which can and does happen; and when we struggle to hear the rhythm of our dance above the world’s noise and chaos, may we again say “Yes!” to the tough thing of both being and doing what it takes to reinvigorate and continue our shared dance of revolutionary love. Amen.

– Michael Bayly
March 18, 2026

Above: With Cathy Steffens, CSJ – March 18, 2026.

Above: Part of the beautiful mural at Corondelet Village that honors the history of the Sisters and Consociates of St. Joseph of Carondelot – St. Paul Province. Featured in this part of mural is Rose Tillemans (top right), founder of Peace House in Minneapolis. Also featured are two of the four McDonald Sisters (Kate and Brigid), Marguerite Corcoran, CSJ and Rita Steinhagen, CSJ (foreground). All for four Sisters are pictured protesting the School of the Americas at Fort Benning Georgia in 1998. Rita Steinhagen was a founder (along with Marlene Barghini, CSJ) of The Bridge for Youth in Minneapolis.

The Wild Reed

Friday, March 27, 2026

Butch Ware and the Gatekeepers of the Democratic Party

Caitlin Johnstone on the “No Kings” Protests

Thursday, March 26, 2026

Butch Ware on the Hard Knock Radio Show

Do Nation States Have the “Right” to Exist?

Wednesday, March 25, 2026

Quote of the Day

Monday, March 23, 2026

Jim Palmer on the 10 Things About Christianity That Jesus Would “Vehemently Dispute”

Sunday, March 22, 2026

Marianne Williamson on Staying Grounded Amidst the Chaos

Saturday, March 21, 2026

Photo of the Day

Friday, March 20, 2026

A Sacred Moment

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

20 Years of Saying “Yes” to the Charism of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

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