Other Poems

“Do this in remembrance of me,”
       Jesus told his disciples during their
       final meal together.
To “remember” Jesus is not simply
      to experience fond memories
      and tender emotions:

Those were the days, were they not?
Let us toast their memory!

It is not simply to recollect the events
of that evening. This memorializing is
anamnesis, to recreate, reenact and
reanimate the drama of Jesus’ life:
       •to enter into his passion and
              character;
       •to love whom he loved and
              confront whom he confronted;
       •to be animated by the same vocation;
       •to be turned and churned, even
             spurned, in like manner;
       •to be similarly authorized—and
              stigmatized;
       •to be implicated in his mission
              and thus in his fate.

It has been said: Our weakness is our only claim on Jesus. “Come to me,
you who are weary. . . . For my yoke is light” (Mt. 11:28, 30).

“Aha!” you say. “Just as I suspected. What God really wants is to keep
us subservient and dependent! On our knees, rather than on our own
two feet. This religion business is nothing more than a form of social
control—with leaders, pretending to speak for God, slyly bolstering
their own exploiting power.”

If that were true, I would say: This “Master” must die if we are to find
our freedom. This “God” is nothing but a pimp and his disciples are
but hustlers.

Weep, oh my soul,
with tears painful and public:
when life abandons ardor for order;
when the demand for sober security

upstages the generative prospect of passion;
when the birthright of fertile charism
is bartered for a ration of bridled expedience.
The blessed struggle—¡Buena lucha!—is upon us.

The City of Promise
is bathed in the tears of the Beloved
      —would that you knew,
            would that you knew—
who cries not in indignation or threat

May you store up patience, for life is not always kind,
and you need to persevere.
     Remember that regret is not the last word.

Despite life’s disregard, the last word is this:
           One day every cup will overflow.

May you store up affection, for sometimes the heart
grows cold, and you need to persevere.
     Remember that bitterness is not the last word.

How well I remember standing there on the
Sidewalk in Santa Fe in front of a jewelry store
           where you'd just picked up your rings.

My wife of twenty-seven years, me, the two of you.
The two of you trying your best not to melt into the
           pavement under the weight of emotions;

The two of us with eyes watering from the
Holy smoke from some nearby burning bush,
           wondering if we should take off our shoes.

Who among you believe that
grieving and lamentation
are symptoms of despair.
Not so!
Only the hopeless are silent
in the face of calamity—
silenced because they no
longer aspire even to be heard,
much less heeded. The labor
of lament, on the other hand,
is premised on the expectation
that grief’s rule will be bound
by the Advent of Another.
The liturgy of grief transforms
the pain of lament into passion
for an outcome forged in justice
and tempered in mercy. Such an
outcome is not ours to impose
by strength of will or accomplished
by force of threat; yet it does demand
of us relentless struggle and steadfast resolve.

Come, you whose beds are awash
in weeping, you whose portion is
tear-mingled wine and bread of mourning.
Come, come to the mountain
of Refuge. There the Spirit,
as with Jesus before, kneels
ready to bathe your feet with her tears.
Hear this Word of assurance, you
of wavering endurance: the
moment nears when those sowing
in tears will reap shouts of
extravagant joy.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Written for an ecumenical “Service of Lament and Healing” following the August 2014 killing of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, MO. Inspired by Ps 6:6; 42:3; 80:5; 102:9; Luke 7:38;

We kill and bomb
Murder and maim
Target and terrorize mostly
      (for high-tech armies)
from great distance
the better not to see actual faces
or severed limbs, or intestines oozing through
holes where belly buttons used to testify
to being a mother-born child

But then we apologize
     Sorry
           So sorry
                 Deeply regret
                       Such a tragedy!
                             Sorry, sorry, sorry

We do everything we can to limit civilian casualties
“This isn’t Sunday school”
     (one politician’s actual words)
Didn’t have those children in our sights
Impossible to see, at 10,000 feet,
     whether Kalashnakovs are present
Smart bombs aren’t flawless
Flawed intelligence
     (as if a test score were at stake)
Military necessity
Rules of engagement need refining
S**t happens
We gave them advance warning
War is hell

In the beginning, darkness covered the face of the deep.

Then the Breath of Heaven swept across the waters, blessing the sea with all manner of creatures.

The sea knows its Maker and roars its applause; the fish therein leap at the sound of God’s voice.

by Ken Sehested

Wondrous was the
occasion of your birth,
which I knew not,
and hardly
since.

But mere acquaintances, distant
and casual as we are,
participated in jubilance by
proxy reflected from
the eyes of those whose
longing and labor lifted
your name in splendid recognition,
and reverence, even as
they lifted your flesh
from mucous
incubation.

Pentecostal power has little to do with
exaggerated religious emotion. But
such power, when granted,
has everything to do
with passion, with conviction.
It’s not your mind that
you lose—it’s your heart,
which falls head-over-heels
in love with the vision of dry bones
re-sinewed and aspired to life.

When such power erupts, they
probably will call you crazy.
“Have you lost your mind?!”
Yes, we will say, because
these days the mind has
become acclimated to a culture
of war; has become inured to
the ravages of poverty in a culture
of obesity; has become numb
to ecological wreckage.

When Pentecostal power erupts, all
heaven’s gonna’ break loose.
The boundaries will be compromised;
barriers will be broken; and
borders will be breached.
Economies of privilege will be fractured
and the politics of enmity will be impeached.
The revenge of the Beloved is the
reversal of Babel’s bequest.