Author: Ken Sehested

Reflecting on the implausible news of finding an infant—alive, literally born amid the earthquake’s rubble

Ken Sehested

Invocation. “When in the dark orchard at night / The God Creator kneeled and prayed / Life was praying with the One / Who gave life hope and prayer.” —English translation of lyrics from “Wa Habibi” (performed by Fairuz), a Christian hymn of the Syriac/Maronite rite. Also known as the Mother’s Lament, the hymn has been performed every year on Good Friday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI-tr1XntsE

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Ken Sehested

Porch Story night, 6 February 2023

Introduction: The story below is from a recent Porch Story night, a monthly gathering (similar to The Moth Radio Hour) here in Asheville, NC, mixing five storytellers with three musical offerings by a local artist. If you’re a fan of good stories, you should check out The Porch Magazine. The editors also sponsor a variety of festivals and retreats, both here and in Northern Ireland.

One congregation’s sweaty spiritual practice

by Ken Sehested

Just this past week one of my congregation’s mission groups, MercyMovers, completed its forty-third moving job, helping members (and a few other special cases) lug their stuff to a truck or other vehicles, then travel to their new home for unloading. (A few times only loading, as a tangible blessing for those moving elsewhere.)

We—Circle of Mercy Congregation in Asheville, NC—have been at this for most of our 21-year history. So we average about two per year. Sometimes it was a small group of us—four-to-five, using a pickup and several cars. One involved 16 volunteers and took most of the day loading and unloading a 26-foot rental truck and ten or so cars carrying fragile things and miscellaneous other items too odd-shaped to box up.

by Ken Sehested

This tale is the unlikely story of a single, five-word sentence, a fragment of a much longer prose poem.

It was first uttered during what many would consider a parochial backwater event: the April 1971 annual meeting of the Florida Baptist Convention Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU).

by Ken Sehested

July 2022

“Every piece of this is man’s bullshit. They call this war a cloud over the land. They made the weather, then they stand in the rain and say, ‘Shit, it’s raining.’” —lines by Ruby Thewes (Renee Zellweger) in the Civil War-era movie “Cold Mountain”