by Ken Sehested
We are free to act boldly because we are safe.
We are safe because we are at rest.
Read more ›Author: ppadmin
News, views, notes, and quotes
Signs of the Times • 25 April 2017 • No. 117
¶ Processional. “Testimony,” Voices of Hope, acclaimed women's choir made up of inmates at Lee Arrendale State Prison in Georgia.
When was the last time you heard a tourism expert talk about land redistribution and debt forgiveness?
TV travel program host Rick Steves donates $4 million apartment complex for homeless woman and children
by Ken Sehested
Years ago, when I first heard Rick Steves’ squeaky voice, channel flipping late on night, I thought it was satire. This being my last resort of delaying bedtime, I continued watching. And then later, in my night owl habit of TV diversion to put my brain in neutral to (hopefully) coast toward sleep, I would stumble across his show again. Over time, I actually began to look for the “Rick Steves’ Europe” program.
Why? I don’t remember exact details now, but interspersed with touristy stuff, he actually made a few honest comments about some of the history that had occurred in that place which the local chamber of commerce doesn't mention, the kinds of things travel brochures will never say.
Read more ›Loosed for life and love’s consent
A litany for worship inspired by Acts 2:42-47
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 ›News, views, notes, and quotes
Signs of the Times • 18 April 2017 • No. 116
Special theme issue
Earth Day
¶ Processional. “For the Beauty of the Earth,” Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Holy Saturday 2017
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 ›Funeral songs
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 ›The United States at War
There have been only 17 years that the US has not been involved in a war since 1776
“We’re at War!”
And We Have Been Since 1776: 214 Years of American War-Making
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 ›Follow-up on the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech.
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 ›News, views, notes, and quotes
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.)
