The spiritual life is not a peculiar form of piety. It is, on the contrary, that full and real life for which humanity is made. . . . Still less does the spiritual life mean a mere cultivation of one… — Evelyn Underhill
Ken Sehested
Does Lent’s labor lead to serenity? Yes, but not to tranquility.
To be serene is not to be neutral and unaffected.
Such location clarifies our yeses and our noes.
As such, we might be marked as agitators,
of being incendiaries
of the social, political and economic prevailing consensus.
Rockers of the boat.
Disturbers of the peace, when peace is structured injustice.
Insurrectionists against current power arrangements.
Defectors from the rule of corruption.
Ken Sehested
Text: Philippians 3:17-4:1
Invocation. “Lovers of the world unite / bound to Creator’s vision, bright / that even these our darkest nights / become the light become the light.” — “Hope Beyond All Hope,” Alana Levandoski
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The original blessing of God’s delight in Creation echoes through this blessing given by Isaac to his son: "May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine" (Genesis 27:28). Such luscious, material bounty is bound up with and parallels the maintenance of covenant faithfulness with the Heaven’s insistence.
But a fraud is perpetuated by Jacob (suggested by his mother and Isaac’s wife, Rebekah), who disguised himself as his brother Esau, Isaac’s first-born.
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Invocation (on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). —“A City Under Siege,” in solidarity with Ukraine, composed by Elijah Culp, text from Psalm 31: 21-24
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Invocation. “Tempted and tried we're oft made to wonder why it should be thus all the day long / While there are others living about us, never molested, though in the wrong. . . . / Farther along we'll know all about it; farther along we'll understand why / Cheer up, my brother; live in the sunshine, we'll understand it all by and by.” —“Farther Along,” Dolly Parton
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Mardi Gras processional. “Jubilee Stomp.” —Tuba Skinny
Ash Wednesday invocation. “When Love Meets Dust” —Alana Levandoski
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Dearly beloveds,
the ashen interposition stakes its claim upon us
in this midweek assembly, and
the Word is announced by trumpet’s blast
rather than a piccolo’s peep.
We approach the hour of trembling.
But the Beloved One – who nestled with us
even in our gestation—this One has a
reprimand to announce.
In the midst of our modern conveniences –
in our sheltered presumptions,
our decent good order,
our fashioned attire, and our
tamed and housebroken piety –
we have all but lost the capacity for trembling.
Ken Sehested
In Memory of Rosa Parks’ refusal to relinquish her bus seat, leading to her arrest,
1 December 1955, Montgomery, Alabama, a small act of defiance which
prompted the modern Civil Rights movement.
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Ken Sehested
Processional. “Ode to Joy” (“Ode an die Freude”). —from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, flashmob performance, orchestra and choir, in a Sabadell, Spain public plaza
Invocation. “Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that come down to us from the darkness of these days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures.” —J.R.R. Tolkien
Read more ›Ken Sehested
Every lit and lively season (Christmas, especially) comes, for some, with heartache, usually over the absence of a beloved whose remembrance still cuts to the quick and pickles the heart. In addition, Nativity’s season unfolded with ancient Palestine’s writhing under the oppressive heel of Rome’s imperial boot. The poem below is set in these parallel moods.
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