Ken Sehested
Processional. “I’m gonna tell you fascists / You may be surprised / The people in this world / Are getting organized / You’re bound to lose / You fascists bound to lose / Race hatred cannot stop us / This one thing we know / Your poll tax and Jim Crow / And greed has got to go / You’re bound to lose / You fascists bound to lose.” —”You Fascists Bound to Lose,” Woody Guthrie, performed by Resistance Revival Chorus with Rhiannon Giddens
Call to worship. You may have seen this social media meme. It’s a painting, of a woman in Victorian style dress, and the caption reads: “These days most of my exercise comes from shaking my head.”
Any of you been doing this kind of exercise lately?
Without a doubt, we’re in a rough patch as citizens in this republic. Clearly moving toward an extreme autocratic (or oligarchic) federal government. Depending on your definition, you could also say fascist. Reminds me of Jeremiah’s scathing criticism in his age: “Were [the rulers] ashamed when they committed abomination? . . . [No] they did not know how to blush” (6:15). Or recall the judgment of Amos, who complained that the rich sell the poor for silver, and barter the needy for a pair of shoes (8:6). We are millennia removed from the ages of these prophets, but their sharp accusations are as relevant as ever. —kls
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Sorrow follows most waking hours
A personal testimony
Our land is fraught with trauma. Sorrow follows most waking hours, even haunting sleep’s dreamland.
Light returns and mornings arise, and the best we can do is throw off the covers, throw our legs over the bed’s edge, and sit for a moment to allow blood’s flow to our feet before attempting to stand.
A decision stands before us: Dare to stand, to move, to break fast and enter the day’s adventure—or lie back and hope for the bliss of the quieted breath of torpid slumber.
Some days, you’re tempted to toss a coin. Heads, rise up, Tails, lie back. In most cases, though, biology itself makes the call. By this time, bladders are squealing.
So decide again, despite the odds, that life is stronger than death; love, stronger than fear; gratitude, more enduring than complaint.
For all who have warm beds, food without anxiety, beloveds who call you by name, no threats hounding you by day, no thievery by night, count your privilege: Those who lack such resources need your attention. But more so—so much more—do we need their presence. The tables are turned, for even now the proud are to be scattered, thrones toppled, the lowly lifted, the hungry sated, the rich sent into exile.
And we, the exiled, can only hope for mercy from the lowly—an absolution that, while it cannot erase the past, can animate the work of repair that opens on to a new, healed future.
We are supplicants, with the prophet, asking, pleading, half-way fearful, bracing ourselves for a frightful conclusion, “Can these bleached bones yet live?” And with the psalmist, “Can justice and peace embrace?”
And in its varied but parallel contexts, we ask, here and now, in the bosom of our own native soil, our own republic, our own beloved-but-now-bedeviled nation, “Who can deliver us from this body of death?”
Linger in prayer, pilgrim: But lounge unencumbered, vigilant, open-handed. Soften the furrow of your brow. Align your whereabouts with those whose voices cry out for Heaven’s incursion upon Earth’s revulsion, aligned against Creation’s promise and Re-Creation’s consummation.
Behold, the Holy City! If it seems slow, wait. It will surely come; and all flesh shall see the salvation of our God. —kls
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News of Walter Brueggemann’s passing causes many of us to rise up and bless his name and prompts gratitude for his labors. I highly commend to you “Walter Brueggemann: A Remembrance (March 11, 1933 – June 5, 2025), by my friend Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellermann, an author, activist, pastor, and a Detroiter (whose most recent book is Celebrant’s Flame: Daniel Berrigan in Memory and Reflection).
https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2025/06/10/the-radical-power-of-the-poetic-word/ From my own recollection, see “A remembrance of Walter Brueggemann.” https://prayerandpolitiks.org/articles-essays-sermons/a-remembrance-of-walter-brueggemann/
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Benediction. We are, slowly and inexorably—though faster now than I’ve ever noticed before in my life—turning toward the dark side, an arena of life as certain and palpable as that reality characterized, and as compelling, as the beatific invitation of the Beloved Community. The truth of the matter is, as Tolkien’s Galadriel says, “The Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stay but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true.”
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Recessional. “When the rain is blowing in your face / And the whole world is on your case / I could offer you a warm embrace / To make you feel my love / When the evening shadows and the stars appear / And there is no one there to dry your tears / I could hold you for a million years / To make you feel my love.” —“May You Feel My Love,” by Bob Dylan, arranged by Anna Lapwood and performed by the Pembroke College Chapel Choir, Cambridge, England
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