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Summon your nerve

A call to the table on Pentecost Sunday

by Ken Sehested

I would love to think approaching
this table conferred visions of
leisurely picnics in green meadows
beside gentle bubbling streams,
with cooling breeze matched by
warm sunshine and birdsong in
nearby long leaf pine and hemlock.

Truth is, it’s more like unleavened
bread, hastily prepared under dark
skies when death angels rout the
countryside, on the eve of betrayal
and the cusp of terror, in a land on
the brink of ecological collapse and
lead-lined water pipes poisoning
the young and an infestation of
woolly adelgid leaching the life
from majestic forests.

Welcome to Ordinary Time!

A word from Gerald, the prayer&politiks guardian angel

Today we leave behind the bold drama and bright colors of the church year’s mountain range—Advent to Christmas, Ash Wednesday to Easter, all setting the stage for yesterday’s Pentecostal flames. (See the special artwork at bottom.) Now we descend to the plains of “ordinary” time and muted earth tones.

Not mundane or insignificant by any means. Even in his fantastical imagination, William Blake knew that “whoever would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.”

News, views, notes, and quotes

Signs of the Times • 13 May 2016 • No. 72

New essay featured this week

“Public reasoning and ekklesial reckoning
Commentary on the Vatican conference calling for ‘spirituality and practice
of active nonviolence’ to displace church focus on just war,” by Ken Sehested

¶ Processional. “Samba Magic,” Brazilian beat big band, by the Basement Jaxx with the Metropole Orchestra. (Thanks Al.)

Enfleshed by the Word

A litany for worship inspired by Proverbs 8 and John 1:1-18

by Ken Sehested

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

By that Word were all things breathed to life from the breathless dark, knit into comely shape from nether and nil.

Wisdom

by Ken Sehested

Text: Proverbs 8
Sunday, 6 June 2004
Circle of Mercy Congregation

I think it was last Monday, or maybe Tuesday. Nancy was ready to start putting this Sunday’s service together, and she asked if I had decided on a text and theme.

Public reasoning and ekklesial reckoning

Commentary on the Vatican conference calling for “spirituality and practice of active nonviolence” to displace church focus on just war

Ken Sehested

We must acknowledge the essential defect in the just war tradition, which is the assumption that violence can
somehow achieve justice. And we must with equal courage acknowledge the essential defect in pacifism,
which is the assumption that justice can somehow be achieved simply by opposing violence.
—Ivan J. Kauffman, “If War is Wrong, What is Right? The New Paradigm”[1]

Ever since Pope Francis was selected to lead the Holy See three years ago, the Roman Catholic Curia watchers have had a field day with his many uncommon statements and actions. The most recent bustle had US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaking at a Vatican conference on economic inequality, just days after the issuance of Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”), a papal exhortation reframing the plight of divorced Catholics and “all those living in any ‘irregular situation.’”

Almost lost in news coverage was the groundbreaking conference, “Nonviolence and Just Peace: Contributing to the Catholic Understanding of and Commitment to Nonviolence” (11-13 April), jointly co-sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and Pax Christi International, the unofficial global Roman Catholic peace network. What’s at stake—with an unclear outcome—is the Church’s 1,700 year-old “just war” doctrine, traced back to St. Augustine in the 4th century and systematized by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. It outlines precise criteria as to when violence can be morally justified in opposing oppression.

News, views, notes, and quotes

Signs of the Times • 4 May 2016 • No. 71

¶ Processional. Theme song from the movie “Schindler’s List,” performed by violinist Ann Fontanella. “Holocaust Remembrance Day” begins tonight at sundown.

Boots on the ground and other obfuscations

On this, my 65th birthday, I’ve made a new vow.

by Ken Sehested

On this, my 65th birthday, I’ve made a new vow. From here on, whenever some public figure says “we need more boots on the ground” in any of our nation’s 134 theaters of conflict, I shall write them to say,

“Sir/Madame (bloodlust increasingly an equal-opportunity villainy), please come out from behind the dishonesty of your words: When you advocate for more “boots on the ground,” have the courage to say “we need more of your sons and daughters.”