The Blessed One is a stronghold of safety for those crushed by the world.
In every season of trouble, cling to this promise.
May this Name be upon your lips in every waking hour.
Read more ›Author: ppadmin
Blessed assurance
Call to the table in the face of terror
by Ken Sehested
One important thing that hasn’t been said this week [about the savagery of separating of children from parents at the US-Mexican border] is that this Department of Justice policy change is in fact a form of terrorism.
The point of terrorism isn’t killing people. Terrorists make strategic use of aggressive trauma to spread fear for the purpose of affecting social or political objectives. Look up the FBI’s definition.*
Read more ›Early Church Fathers on refusal of the sword
A collection of quotes
TERTULLIAN (160–220)
§ “Christ, in disarming Peter, disarmed every soldier.”
§ “Shall we carry a flag? It is a rival to Christ.”
§ “It is absolutely forbidden to repay evil with evil.”
Read more ›Out of the House of Slavery
Bible study on “immigration"
by Ken Sehested
This material was delivered in 2010 to a North Carolina Council of Churches-sponsored series of clergy gatherings in various cities.
My assignment is to do a Bible study relevant to the intense conversation underway in our nation over the question of immigration. Others will offer social analysis and practical strategies. But I should mention three presumptions I bring.
Read more ›Let Wisdom’s Way endure
A litany for worship inspired by Psalm 107
Listen now you who linger in wasted lands, consumed with wanton hearts: The Blessed One has eyes and ears opened and tuned to the cries of your distress.
Give thanks and rejoice you faint-of-limb and sick-of-soul: An open gate of Quenching Delight stands eager to receive you.
Listen now you who languish athirst, bowels rumbling in hunger: Bountiful tables—too wondrous to behold—are spread as ransom for your ruin.
Read more ›Amnesty
A litany for worship inspired by Psalm 130
If you, O God, should keep track of all our failures,
none of us would make the grade.
But your hands heap pardon on all the penitent.
Forgiveness is your middle name.
Mercy is your mandate; pardon, your provision.
Declarations of amnesty flow from your lips.
Every remorse is met with remission.
Morning by morning
A litany for worship inspired by Lamentations 3 and Luke 19:41-42
Be gracious to me, Blessed One, for I am in distress.
My eyes are awash with grief; my bed swims in tears.
My bones bulge under the weight of unlived life.
Read more ›News, views, notes, and quotes
Signs of the Times • 5 June 2018 • No. 163
¶ Invocation. “Imagine,” by John Lennon, performed by the Secaucus (New Jersey) High School and Middle School, on the 4 March 2018, National School Walkout.
Imagination and transformation
Do not be conformed
by Ken Sehested
Imagination is one of our age’s feel-good words, and if you use it (and I do, a lot), first pause to consider the term’s shadow side.
Imaginary, a linguistic cousin, can be used to describe a life removed from the vicissitudes of history, e.g., pipe 
dreams sprinkled with pixie dust, also known as magical thinking. To call such living childish is an insult to children. Imagination is not escapism. Spiritual life is not evacuation to another world.
Imagine This
A story from prison
by Nancy Hastings Sehested
(Excerpt from an upcoming book of stories from work as a prison chaplain.)
Forty inmates lined up for smudging to enter the sacred circle for the Native American prayers. I spotted Genaro and a little alarm went off in my head. “Genaro, can I talk to you for a minute?” He smiled and nodded.
The shade of the building sheltered us from the blistering noonday sun and got us out of hearing range of the other men. “Genaro, you know that you must either go into the circle to smoke the pipe, or stay outside the circle by yourself. Last week I noticed that another guy sat with you outside the circle. If custody staff sees that, they assume you’re passing tobacco.”
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