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.

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Earth’s habitus

A meditation on creation

by Ken Sehested

“All of creation is a song of praise to God.” —Hildegard of Bingen

Creation is not simply the props and drops,
the costumes and orchestra,
the catwalks and footlights
on the stage of salvation’s drama.
Rather, creation is an active part
in history’s narration.
Without the cosmos,
Salvation’s story
cannot be comprehended.
Without earth’s habitus,
the play’s opening is obscured,
the storyline confused,
the finale unintelligible.

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My Shepherd Will Supply My Need

New lyrics to an old hymn

by Ken Sehested

My Shepherd will supply my need; Beloved is God’s name
In pasture’s fresh now I shall feed, Beside the living stream
You bring my wandering spirit back, When I forsake the Way
You gather me, for mercy’s sake, In paths of truth and grace

When shadows cast the shade of death Your presence is my stay
One word of Your supporting breath Drives all my fears away
Your hand, in sight of all my foes, Does still my table spread
My cup with blessings overflows, Your oil anoints my head

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Easter’s affection

May Easter’s affection
spawn many children
who know
            despite the trouble
            the toil
            the rubble strewn soil
the way of the cross leads home.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

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Both enchantment and chore

A poem about vocation

by Ken Sehested

Our vocation entails both enchantment and chore;
beatific vision and mundane devotion;
reverent rapture and disciplined restraint;
the dissolution of the ego’s ravenous edge and
discovery of the true self’s Center,
which combined provide
the joyful and fearless freedom necessary
to live in Creation’s broken and bruised places
to declare that another world
is not only possible
but is promised.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

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Raucous

God’s mutiny against Lenten tedium and patriotic pablum

by Ken Sehested

There’s a raucousness to God, in God, of God, by God,
that the orderly mind cannot abide (finds chaotic, riotous)
that the prim-proper mind finds embarrassing (even trashy)
that the erudite mind judges tacky (mangy)
that the pious mind believes unseemly (well-nigh depraved)
that the disciplined mind finds rowdy (or at least untidy)
that the morally rigorous simply cannot condone.

Have you ever been in a place like, maybe, as a child
in church, sitting next to your best friend who, despite
trying hard not to,
            how can I say this without
            offending delicate sensitivities

“breaks wind”? What might normally be only marginally
humorous, now
            given the sanctuarial circumstances,
            the prohibition of irreverence being severe

becomes funny all out of proportion and, despite your
best efforts, trying to swallow the guffaw rising from
your esophagus,
            like trying to muzzle a sneeze
it squirts out anyway, and the breath suppressed explodes
through nasal cavity, launching a mucus-laced snort,
unleashing giggles, a mutiny against solemnity.

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The quelling word

Emancipation is (still) coming: A poem inspired by Revelation 21:1-6a

Written against the backdrop of New Year's Eve services, 1862, when African Americans gathered to await news of US President Abraham Lincoln's promised "Emancipation Proclamation."

The angel breaks with Heaven’s hail!
from Joy’s horizon on every weary heart,
amid that unruly, precarious land beyond
where cheery sentiment stalls and merry,
bright roads end. Now, in terrain beyond all
mapping, the adventure begins. No warranty
reaches this far. Creature comforts here are
few, risks are high, and danger surrounds.
Here winded Breath calls to bended knee
with promises of ecstasy and manna’s
fragile provision. Here water clefts rocks to
slake desperate thirst. Chained, tamed hearts
will never survive, deprived as they are of
Mercy’s solvent power to undo generations-old
resentments, driven deep by fear’s reflexive
habit into armed entrenchments. The
temptation is strong to abandon earth’s rancor
in favor of Heaven’s rapture. Yet from Joy’s
horizon storms the quelling word: Heaven’s
abode is anchored in earth’s tribulation.
The proclamation has been rendered;
incarnation, tendered; emancipation,
though delayed, will not finally be hindered.
Misery’s tearful eye will glisten with elation;
mournful cries shall rise in thankful jubilation.
Despoiling death itself will yield to adoration.
Behold! All things—from earth’s bounded
borders to Heaven’s blissful shore—stand
destined under Glory to be made new.
The quelling word to a quarreling world:
Come home. Come home.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.com
Inspired by Revelation 21:1-6a, lectionary text for the 2015 New Year's Eve Watch Night service.

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Venite Adoremus (Come and Adore)

A poem for Advent

by Ken Sehested

I have given birth countless
Times, too many stillborn
And breathless, despite
Conception in the
Throes of passion and
Patient preparation. Restless
Nights and nauseous days
And stretch marks
Amniotic fluid securing watery
Life, waiting, kicking
Kicking and waiting
Anxious about that
Birth canal’s tumultuous ride
And leaky breasts
Until then, waiting, kicking
Kicking and waiting
Waddling stride
Provoking curious stares
Down Broadway in
Manhattan and
Comments from strangers
On the bus, a complete stranger
Saying, I bet it’s a girl
No, says another across
The aisle, she’s carrying
High, it’s a boy, with unseen
Choired angels arrayed
testing their pitch:
Venite adoremus!
Come and adore!

Who are these people? Why
Didn’t I ask for phone numbers
And maybe recipes? But they
Barrel on past my stop to
Where I wish I knew. Who is
Waiting for them, I wonder, like
Those truckers I notice rumbling
On up the interstate when I exit
For gas and a pee, no need for
My company, four-wheelers
Just get in the way

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Portal of praise

Praise as presage to Advent’s treason

by Ken Sehested

The Manger’s trailhead opens at
the portal of praise and genuflecting
thanks. Not because heaven arises to
piety’s incense. But because Advent’s
brush with mortal flesh is a perilous journey,
fraught with insurrection’s threat,
pregnancy’s scandal, birthed from
stabled bed, and Herod’s foam and fury.

The innocents take it in the chops every
time. Yet Advent threatens treason to
every Herod-hearted arrangement.

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