News, views, notes, and quotes

Signs of the Times  •  3 July 2018 •  No. 166

Processional. “There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me. / The sign was painted, said ‘Private Property.’ / But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing.  / This land was made for you and me.” —Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, “This Land is Your Land

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Call to prayer & pastoral prayer

June 10, 2018

by Nancy Hastings Sehested

Call to Prayer

I visited my friend Ralph while he was plowing the community garden with his shovel. The garden helped to supply a small neighborhood lunch program offered by his church. I looked at the tools of his work. He’d used the same tools for so many years that they subtly shaped themselves to the contours of his hand. The tools welcomed his hands, allowing their full heft and grip to attune with his body.

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Strangers we were

A litany for worship inspired by Ephesians 2:11-22

by Ken Sehested
 

Listen, O people of the Way, and take note. Your ancestors were once illegal aliens in the land of Southern Appalachia.* Boat people, all of you, undocumented immigrants. Scots-Irish trash; crackers and kaffirs, wetbacks and wops; gooks, goyim, gringos and gypsies.

Strangers we were, with no stake in the Promise; hopeless, helpless, beggarly-born.

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Of thee I sing

An Independence Day meditation

by Ken Sehested

It was the third of July on a cool cloudy sky
I set in for a storm in the makin'. . . .

I believe that a thought has just gotten caught
In a place where words can't surround it
It concerns the years past and the shadows they cast
And my path as I walk around it.
—John Prine, “The Third of July”

       Some years ago, on a visit to the Maritime provinces of Canada, we took a history tour of St. John, New Brunswick, and learned details of a narrative I vaguely recalled. St. John’s story is uniquely tied to U.S. history.

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Are things getting worse? No, just uncovered.

Commentary on “zero tolerance” immigration policies, with five suggestions

by Ken Sehested

U.S. President Donald Trump is a self-obsessed, infantile, demagogic and malicious huckster without a shred of moral capacity other than self-promotion.

There. Say it out loud.

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Three exegetes—a traditionalist, a modernist, and a post-modernist—walk into a bar

Pastoral commentary on Ephesians 1:3-14

by Ken Sehested, slightly adapted from a Feasting on the Word article

        A traditionalist, a modernist, and a post-modernist walk into a bar. Over shots of bourbon, the three friends discuss the prologue (1:3-14) to the epistle to the Ephesians.

        [The following exchange is fictitious—though quite plausible—imagining the voices and perspectives of three particular friends.]

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Rouse yourselves

A litany for worship inspired by Ezekiel 2:1-5

by Ken Sehested

Rouse yourselves, O creatures of clay, for it is I, the Potter of Heaven, who commands your attention!

We tremble, but trust that your grace is sufficient.

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