While the median pay for top corporate executives has quadrupled since the 1970s, the pay of non-supervisory workers has declined [in 2011] by more than 10 percent. — Robert Scheer
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”
Signs of the Times • 3 November 2016 • No. 95
¶ Processional. Someday there will be a peace dance as vigorous, as compelling, and as ecstatic as this: Comanche war dance (1:00 video).
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.
Read more ›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.
Read more ›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.
Read more ›Signs of the Times • 27 June 2018 • No. 165
¶ Processional. “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor,” musical setting by Irving Berlin of Emma Lazarus’ poem on the Statue of Liberty, performed by the Portland Choir & Orchestra.
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.
Read more ›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.]
Read more ›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.
Read more ›Subscribers receive full access to the entire prayer&politiks site. It’s free. Each week you will receive an automated email with a link to the new edition of the Signs of the Times column. All you provide is you name, email address and city, state or province, and country. This information is never shared with any other party. The only other agreement you make is to receive two solicitation letters per year, one in the spring, the other in the fall. (Which you are free to ignore. Your subscription is still free, and you may “unsubscribe” at any time.) This is our modern begging-bowl. Contributions are our sole source of support.
