Commentary

Including 35 questions for contemplative attention

Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Tempted and tried we're oft made to wonder why it should be thus all the day long / While there are others living about us, never molested, though in the wrong. . . . / Farther along we'll know all about it; farther along we'll understand why / Cheer up, my brother; live in the sunshine, we'll understand it all by and by.” —“Farther Along,” Dolly Parton

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Ken Sehested

Mardi Gras processional. “Jubilee Stomp.” —Tuba Skinny

Ash Wednesday invocation. “When Love Meets Dust” —Alana Levandoski

(or any time joy is highlighted by the day’s lection)

Ken Sehested

Processional. “Ode to Joy” (“Ode an die Freude”). —from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, flashmob performance, orchestra and choir, in a Sabadell, Spain public plaza

Invocation. “Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that come down to us from the darkness of these days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

Ken Sehested

Every lit and lively season (Christmas, especially) comes, for some, with heartache, usually over the absence of a beloved whose remembrance still cuts to the quick and pickles the heart. In addition, Nativity’s season unfolded with ancient Palestine’s writhing under the oppressive heel of Rome’s imperial boot. The poem below is set in these parallel moods.

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Ken Sehested

¶ Processional. “Who then shall stir in this darkness, / prepare for joy in the winter night. / Mortal in darkness we lie down blindhearted, / seeing no light. / Lord, give us grace to awake us, / to see the branch that begins to bloom; / in great humility is hid all heaven / in a little room.” —“What Is the Crying at Jordan,” The Miserable Offenders

¶ Invocation. “Let us consider how to incite one another to love and good works . . . encouraging one another. . . .” —Hebrews 10:24-25

Against the backdrop of the war in Gaza

Ken Sehested

“For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you shall
burst into song, the trees in applause.”
—Isaiah 55:12

by Ken Sehested 

I was a stranger in a strange land, having left behind a Baylor University football scholarship for the alluring but intimidating environs of New York University’s Greenwich Village campus in Manhattan. I was so over being who I was, so eager for, if frightened by, what was to come. Odd that it was there, so far from home, that I should encounter the iconoclastic voice of a fellow Baptist-flavored Southerner whose testimony would come to profoundly impact the tenor of my own.

“Here’s somebody you should know about,” said Dr. Carse, my religion department mentor, as he tossed an open copy of Newsweek magazine across his desk. The upturned page contained a one-column profile of self-styled bootleg preacher, Rev. Will Campbell.

Ken Sehested

Lent’s emphasis on ascetic practices—prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—is not an obligatory gauntlet of self-abuse, designed to curry favor with the Beloved. These practices, rather, are illustrative means (there are many others) by which we can check personal and communal appetites, which so easily get out of control and function as illusions for what leads to the flourishing life intended from the Beginning. Of course, these aren’t limited-time-only practices; but during Lent the community of the Way devotes special attention to their observances.

A modern illustration: Some newer autos are equipped with a GPS-guided feature that sets off an audible alarm when it detects the car’s drift out of its lane of traffic. This is Lent’s training purpose for deepening life in the Spirit.

14 February 2025

by Ken Sehested

Processional. Thousands of students and faculty from the Catholic-run St. Scholastica’s College dance en masse to protest violence against women and children on 25 February 2024, in Manila, Philippines. The annual dance, dubbed One Billion Rising, is held every Valentine’s Day.

Might the church in the US have a new liturgical season,
beginning with the anniversary of King’s birth and extending to Ash Wednesday?

Processional. “I Want Jesus to Walk With Me.” —Fannie Lou Hamer, renowned civil rights leader from Mississippi, who persevered despite receiving unrelenting threats and endured brutal beatings by police

Invocation. “May God bless you with discomfort . . . so that you may live deep within your heart,” begins “A Franciscan Blessing”

Call to worship. “Who the hell is Diane Nash?” features a brief (2:04) interview with former Assistant Attorney General John Seigenthaler remembering his phone conversation with civil rights leader Diane Nash, trying to talk Black students from Nashville from carrying on the “freedom ride” after the original participants were brutally beaten when their bus arrived in Birmingham, Alabama