True love is embodied in expectancy, an eagerness to love God now as a preparation for God’s Kingdom. Our ultimate hopes are expressed by whom and what and how we now love. . . . True love is embodi… — Paul S. Minear
by Ken Sehested
Following the dramatic response to Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost, the text reports that the newly-formed People of the Way devoted themselves to listening and learning, to lingering in each other’s presence, to potluck dinners, and to prayer—with praise and pintos, songs and salads, received and given ’round the Bountiful Table.
Hands and hearts, bound together, loosed for life and Love’s consent.
Read more ›Signs of the Times • 18 April 2017 • No. 116
¶ Processional. “For the Beauty of the Earth,” Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
by Ken Sehested
Betwixt and between. Jesus’ disciples and followers are bereft and adrift. The world seems to be coming apart.
As are we.
Read more ›by Ken Sehested
When I was in seminary I remember thinking that all of us, as part of our final year of study, should be required to build our own casket, hauling it around as a storage chest wherever we lived, until the day for its final use. Odd as it sounds, the “remember you are dust” charge provokes an intensity and a freedom to the living of our days, chipping away at the anxiety that too often drives our frenetic habits.
Along that same line, one element of our congregation’s seven-week Lenten reflection group was beginning and ending each meeting by listening to songs participants’ want at their funeral service, in keeping with the season’s invitation to reflect on our own mortality.
Read more ›Danios, loonwatch.com blog, 20 December 2011
Year-by-year Timeline of America’s Major Wars (1776-2011)
1776 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamagua Wars, Second Cherokee War, Pennamite-Yankee War
Read more ›by Ken Sehested
¶ Connecting the dots—or, as we now say, intersectionality. “But when, exactly, did the post-civil rights era begin? Arguably it was fifty years ago today when in a speech [‘Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence,’ aka ‘Declaration of Independence From the War in Vietnam’] at Harlem’s Riverside Church Martin Luther King Jr. definitively broke ranks with the liberals he once considered allies. . . .
“The very liberals who supported and signed civil rights legislation while waging war in Vietnam would wind up in the years ahead being the chief promulgators of new laws that criminalized the daily lives of the urban poor and authorized the militarization of municipal police forces. The 1968 Safe Streets Act, signed by Johnson, poured hundreds of millions of dollars into building up law enforcement and the criminal justice apparatus—astronomically more than was ever spent on the same president’s anti-poverty programs. This legislation would lead to a slew of other law-and-order policies that together helped lead us into the age of mass incarceration.” —Eric Tang, “‘A Society Gone Mad on War’: The Enduring Importance of Martin Luther King’s Riverside Speech,” The Nation
¶ Can’t turn back now. “At first blush it may seem counterintuitive to elevate [the ‘Beyond Vietnam’] speech above the watershed ‘I Have a Dream’ speech delivered four years earlier, or the "[I Have Been to the] Mountaintop’ speech he would give on the eve of his death. But if King's address at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom made him into an American icon, his Riverside Church speech announced him as a genuine prophet for social justice, one who willingly sacrificed his hard-won status to defy an empire.” —Peniel Joseph, “This speech made Martin Luther King Jr. revolutionary,” CNN
Read more ›Signs of the Times • 4 April 2017 • No. 115
¶ Processional. “Mother Mary, full of grace, awaken. / All our homes are gone, our loved ones taken. / Taken by the sea - / Mother Mary, calm our fears, have mercy. / Drowning in a sea of tears, have mercy. / Hear our mournful plea. / Our world has been shaken, / we wander our homelands, forsaken.” —Eliza Gilykson, “Requiem,” written after the 26 December 2004 earthquake in the Indian ocean, creating a tsunami which struck Indonesia, killing over 260,000 (Thanks Steve.)
by Ken Sehested
Text: Matthew 21:1-13
Sunday 17 April 2011
Circle of Mercy Congregation
Before I begin, a word of explanation about our special communion table cloth. No doubt you’ve seen the photo on this banner many times before. It’s probably the most widely published photo in human history, and it is the first clear image of an illuminated face of the earth. Officially, it’s known as “The Blue Marble.” It got that name because the astronauts on the Apollo 17 spacecraft, at a distance from about 28,000 miles high.
One other bit of trivia: originally the photo had the South Pole at the top of the image. (How confusing is that?) It was rotated, with the north at the top, before being distributed.
Read more ›Signs of the Times • 21 March 2017 • No. 113
¶ Processional. “Cavatina,” guitar solo by Ana Vidovic.
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