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On living hopefully in a despairing, destitute world

Ken Sehested

Prelude. “Lead me, O Lord, O great redeemer through the troubles of this world. Lord, I thank you for watching over me thus far. You are forever by my side.” —English translation of lyrics in “Ndikhokhele Bawo,” University of Pretoria Youth Choir 

§  §  §

Immediately following the dastardly terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, I sat at a computer screen—in the secretary’s office of Austin Heights Baptist Church in Nacogdoches, Texas, far from home—for the better part of a day trying, desperately, to write something that made sense of this tragedy.

It unfolded not only as a devastating body count but also a grievous psychic wound to the US national self-image. But it also had a very personal immediacy: My first-born, and her Aunt Abigail, lived 14 blocks from that calamitous collapse.

This changes everything, I wrote.

(See “In the valley of the shadow: Reflections on the trauma of 11 September 2001.”) 

Within days, Ray, a Canadian friend—a theologically astute and socially aware ally—responded with condolences; but also a gentle, chiding reminder that such tragedies are multiplied many times over in many parts of the world on a regular basis.

My purpose was not comparative tragedies. In fact, the country of Chili has its own 9/11 woebegone memory: Of the 11 September 1973 coup d’état overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende, bringing to power a right-wing military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet who ruled—with support from the US—for 27 years, killing or “disappearing” more than 3,000, torturing most of the other 38,000 political prisoners.

It’s the context of our terror memory that makes this such a grievous wound, in this one country (my own): Being the wealthiest in history, and being the most heavily armed, and having one of the most extensive colonial influence-peddling operations in the world (accomplished more by economic penetration and financial manipulation than by gunboat diplomacy), the US would likely undertake retaliation for a generation or more.

Sure enough, on the heels of 9/11, the US Congress passed a revised “authorization of use of military force,” which allows the president almost unlimited use of military force by simply saying “terrorism.” For the first time, legal justification for preemptive war. (And remember: the US has never made a no-first-use policy regarding nuclear strikes against our enemies.)

I remember a comment made by General John Abizaid, then head of US forces in Iraq, made a few months after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He admitted that his troops face “a classical guerrilla-type campaign” and said that troops might have to double their expected tours of duty in order to pacify the country. After that, a special assistant to Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense under President George W. Bush, said about the unrest in Iraq: “This is the future for the world we’re in at the moment. We’ll get better as we do it more often.” (italics added) [1]

A generation after the 9/11 attacks on the US, the recoil of that abominable day has spawned the ravenous and ruthless administration of our current president, his molesting cabinet, and his duplicitous judicial, legislative, and social media enablers.

Not to put a too fine a point on it, we are in deep doo-doo. As a constitutional republic, certainly. Small-d democrat institutions, rules, and norms are crumbling. Political commentator Ezra Klein recently said “This is not just how authoritarianism happens. This is authoritarianism happening.”[2]

As communities of faith, clearly, as the public posture of Christian congregations is not only dwindling but increasingly devoid of reference to Jesus—except as a mascot.

As has been said, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”[3] Today, though, the cross is the most ubiquitous form of jewelry, so it’s the Bible being carried—kissed, per a meme from our President, and sold for $99.99, with his own name on it.[4]

As former Time magazine essayist Lance Morrow wrote, “War is rich and vivid, with its traditions, its military academies, its ancient regiments and hero stories, its Iliads, its flash. Peace is not exciting. Its accoutrements are, almost by definition, unremarkable if they work well. It is a rare society that tells exemplary stories of peacemaking—except, say, for the Gospels of Christ, whose irenic grace may be admired from a distance, without much effect on daily behavior.” (Italics added.)[5]

As that anguished prophet, Jeremiah, moaned: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” (8:20).

§  §  §

Hymn of lamentation. Shakespeare, Sonnet 29, musical rendition by Rufus Wainwright 

 

Above: The “Tribute in Light” is an art installation in New York City created in remembrance
of the September 11, 2001 attacks. It consists of 88 vertical searchlights arranged in two
columns of light to represent the Twin Towers. These lights come on each year on September 11.

§  §  §

The time of testing is upon us. The day of judgment will be disruptive. As William Shakespeare’s storm-tossed characters in “The Tempest” cried, “All is lost, all is lost, to prayer, to prayer.” Such is, I would argue, the truthful claim that the courage needed for the facing of these days comes from beyond human facility.  Which is to say, transcendence is involved: a firmer footing, a deeper clarity, a capacity beyond what is thought possible.

Such transcending prayer, however, is not an escape hatch, not a head buried in the sand, not a “Hail Mary” (a desperation football play), not whistling through the graveyard.

Rather, prayer is the portal available to grace-shaped lives to envision another world, an earth cradled in Heaven’s Kinship, a re-created future when all shall linger ‘neath their own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid (Micah 4:4), the day when “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6).

The call to prayer is not merely reclusive. Sometime the center to which our “centering prayer” calls us is smack dab in the middle of the world’s de-centered, disoriented, disabled and dysfunctional life.

Such prayer conjures memory supplied in the Little Flock of Jesus’ two primary sacraments: baptism and eucharist. The first being a renunciation of the squandering world’s reliance on the myth of redemptive violence (as New Testament scholar Walter Wink so aptly called it); the second, the sheer joy of the bread-and-cup table of assurance that nothing can finally separate us from the love of Christ (Romans 8:35).

At this table we learn that we can risk much because we are safe. That not even mortal wound can sever ties with the Beloved.

The eucharistic meal is a repetitive reminder of our baptismal vows, vows which are safeguarded by the promise that, though weeping endures for the night, joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5).

It’s important to remember, though, that the eucharistic invitation is not for a happy-clappy life. As mentioned above, embedded in this invitation to blessed assurance and feast of plenty is the memory of the baptismal act of renunciation of “the world’s” modus operandi—of the incessant claim characteristic of profaned life—that only the strong survive, that you get what you earn and you keep what you can protect.

As the fifth century BCE general and historian Thucydides commented, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”[6]

Integral to the infant baptismal vows in several denominations are these three questions: “Dost thou renounce Satan? and all his works? and all his pomps?” To which the parents reply, to each question, “I do renounce.”

To profess this renunciation is not simply to parrot the words but to foster a life devoted to the places where life has come undone, where the abused and forsaken congregate, to offer care not as a patron to a debtor but out of the conviction reflecting God’s preferential option for the impoverished and the excluded who have no place at the table of bounty.

We locate ourselves in compassionate proximity to the abandoned because it is in such locations that we are most likely to be attuned to the Spirit’s movement in history. Counter intuitively, it is in such circumstances that we find our own salvation, that our own breath is restored, and where the Kinship of God is announced.

Our very souls are at stake in the midst of this conquest by the haves of the have-nots.

As playwright Archibald MacLeish penned in his play “J.B.,” a modern retelling of the Book of Job: “Isn’t there anything you understand? It’s from the ash heap God is seen. Always! Always from the ashes.”

Between the baptismal soak and the table’s delightful feast, there is the Apostle’s call to mobilized training and outfitting, of “putting on the whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:10-17). Such preparation is the sine qua non, the first and fundamental duty, of those on the Way of Jesus. The text is militant, a boot-camp stipulation, an exacting disciplining, like steel-on-steel sharpening. Living hopefully “in the world” is a risky business, for which rigorous preparation is essential.

Despite all apparent odds and most available evidence, hope is our rightful posture, rooted in a beatific vision, the provision of buoyancy in the midst of drowning billows. Ours is a faith that history is not fixed, that the future is not fated, that creation is not abandoned to its violent, predacious habits and corrupt predilections.

§  §  §

Benediction. “To prayer, to prayer” . . . but, no, in the end, all is not lost. And thus we pray:

Blessed One,

Hallowed be Your Name; and thereby may your
consecration uphold us in the living on these
trying days. We confess that our faith, our hope,
and our love are oft under siege by the
powers of enmity, animosity, and acrimony.

Teach us to live within the bonds of your
strength rather than the pretense of our
vanity, so that we may stand against the wiles of
the Confuser. Remind us that only reverence can
counter the tides of violence. In the struggle

for earth’s proper alignment with Your promise in
Creation, and your intention in Re-Creation, clothe
us with the attire that makes for life’s flourishing:
with the belt of truth to cinch every lie; with
the breastplate of righteousness that confronts

every injustice; with feet shod with the hope that
sustains against the bruising stones of despair;
with the helmet of assurance that averts the
arrows of insult and contempt and shame;
with the shield of faith that denounces the

spirit of confusion and the temptation of
despondence; and with the sword of
protection against the soil’s despoiling, the
water’s fouling, the air’s poisoning. Most of all,
help us to remember:

that we are not loved because we are valued, but
that we are valued because we are loved[7]; that
God is more taken with the agony of the earth
than the ecstasy of heaven; and that, in the end,
love will outlast hate, kindness will displace

hostility, mercy will trump vengeance—in our
longing for and leaning toward that day when
all flesh shall see the goodness of God in the
land of the living. We ask these things not for
private gain but for the common good,

endowed in and through the name of Jesus,
our masterless friend, and aspired by the
Holy Spirit’s work twining the heart’s desire
with history’s consummation and habitation
of that Land which is fairer than day.

Maranatha. Come quickly. Amen.

§  §  §

Postlude. “We Are Not Alone.” —The Royal Singers

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ENDNOTES
[1] Quoted in Harper’s Weekly, 22 July 22 2003
[2] “Stop Acting Like This Is Normal,” New York Times, 7 September 2025 Weeks earlier, on her weekly broadcast, cable news reporter said the US is not headed toward an authoritarian state under President Trump, “We are there. It is here.” —“Rachel Maddow Warns the US Isn’t Headed for Dictatorship: ‘We Are There,” Tess Patton, The Wrap, 5 September 2025
“On Friday, September 5, Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell told Southern Baptist pastor and Newsmax host Tony Perkins that Trump may try to declare that ‘there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States’ in order to claim ‘emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward,’ overriding the Constitution’s clear designation that states alone have control over elections.” —Heather Cox Richardson, “Letters from an American,” Sept 8, 2015
[3] The statement has been widely misattributed to Sinclair Lewis.
[4] https://godblesstheusa.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoqi8mTMMqNa4P0ZcBGKgLyUPX-WiMkU0mIG3z3UBJ3EEtkpW1r8. Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Bless_the_U.S.A._Bible included royalty payments amounting to $1,306,035 for his endorsement of Greenwood’s Bible. The comedian Lenny Bruce famously quipped “If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.” https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/lenny_bruce_107553
[5] “To Conquer the Past,” 3 January, 1994
[6] Spoken by Athenians during the Melian Dialogue in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War
[7] Line borrowed from William Sloane Coffin

 

 

Ken Sehested

“I arise in the morning, torn between a desire to save the world
and a desire to savor the world. That makes it hard to plan the day!”
—E.B. White

Prelude. “Give me a word, give me a sign / Show me where to look / And tell me what will I find / What will I find / Lay me on the ground / Fly me in the sky / Show me where to look / And tell me what will I find / What will I find / Yeah, oh / Heaven let your light shine down, ohh . . . .” —“Shine,” Dolly Parton

§  §  §

In his August 2026 column, Sojourners’ José Humphreys III introduced readers to Barbara Holmes’s notion of “crisis contemplation. . . . When the ordinary isn’t ordinary anymore and the crisis is upon us, the self can center in this refuge,” in the moment when there is “a cracking open, the rupture and shattering of self, community and presumptions about how the world works.” (“Preparing Our Spirits for Midterm Elections”)

Crisis contemplation is the place where hearts and minds need to center when things appear to be falling apart, when trauma erupts outside of emergency rooms or natural disasters, when the normality is shuttered in the calamities that threatens despair, when illusions are exposed, when the dream of a Beloved Community seems beyond the pale, when whole armies of animosity terrorize and mock every testimony of hope and expectancy of a new heaven and a new earth.

When ease lies crushed to dust; the promise of dawn, kidnapped and held for ransom.

Hope, outside the context of threat, is not hope, but rather a form of shallow optimism, a kind of superstition, like the search for unicorns and juju beans and all manner of magical thinking. Hope requires a larger horizon, of being grasped by a transcendent vision which the “world” cannot admit and, in fact, tirelessly, relentlessly represses.

§  §  §

Among the revelatory moments that shape my spiritual formation is one from my oldest daughter, Jessica, a professional bodyworker (an Ortho-Bionomy practitioner) in a group Pilates class as we practiced balancing exercises.

“The secret to balance is movement,” she repeated. Not stasis, as seems commonsensical. Learning to balance on one leg does not mean cessation of effort but the reliance on vast number of muscles working in tandem.

“Stillness”—a more familiar term in contemplative practice, and also another of Scripture’s reiterated appeals (“Be still and know that I am God.” —Psalm 46:10)—is not inactivity but a collaboration between initiative and receptivity: When to stand at the city gate relaying Heaven’s demand that justice flow like the waters and when to take shelter under the Beloved’s wings.

Squeezed between the deep Red Sea and Pharaoh’s war chariots, God told Moses: “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today.” —Exodus 14:13

Not quite “know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em,” but you get the idea. There is a time for hallowed action and a time for holy idleness, for giving and for being given, for speech and for silence, for taking to the streets and for solitude’s sequestering.

There are grounds for lively debate on just how serious a threat President Trump (and minions) is to our constitutional order and basic human rights. He’s threatened to declare a national emergency on several occasions, for several reasons, in the past. Just recently, on 11 August, a headline in The Hill reported: “Trump on declaring national security emergency for elections: ‘Stranger things have happened.’”

Not to put too fine a point on it, I happen to believe that our republic is in deep doo-doo. (I strongly support small-d democratic governance because it is the means by which voters practice nonviolence.)

It’s up to you to make your own assessment. For my purpose, let me urge you to spend less than 10 minutes listening to three brief videos:

• Commentary (2:58) on where we in the US are currently situated, by Sarah Chayes, a former senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former reporter for National Public Radio, who also served as special advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

• Eddie Glaude Jr., of Princeton University, eviscerates the US Supreme Court’s overturning of the Voting Rights Act this past April. —interview by Nicole Wallace, MS Now (2:38)

• Commentary (1:32) by famed political philosopher Hannah Arendt on the difference between ordinary tyranny and authoritarianism.

§  §  §

“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, don’t worry, live in the sunshine, / We’ll understand it all by and by.” —“Farther Along,” Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris 

§  §  §

Consider these four excerpts on the state of our future as a republic.

• “There are people I know and love — very smart people who are aligned with me spiritually and politically — who still don’t believe (or don’t want to believe) the imminent threats to our democracy. They tell themselves any number of things to quell their anxieties about the moment: ‘It can’t be that bad.’ ‘Our institutions will hold.’ ‘Our courts will save us.’ ‘Both parties are corrupt, so what’s the point?’”
“It is time we all start having difficult conversations about authoritarianism and our democracy.” —first-hand account by Rev. Mara Richards Bim, Justice and Advocacy Fellow at Royal Lane Baptist Church, Dallas, TX 

• From our neighbor to the north, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney:

“For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.
“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
“This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
“So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.
“This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” —in his January speech to the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2026 in Davos, Switzerland

 

• From “A Call to Christians in a Crisis of Faith and Democracy,” joint statement in February 2026 from 400 Christian leaders in the US:

“We are facing a cruel and oppressive government; citizens and immigrants being demonized, disappeared, and even killed; the erosion of hard-won rights and freedoms; and a calculated effort to reverse America’s growing racial and ethnic diversity — all of which are pushing us toward authoritarian and imperial rule.
A significant component of this crisis is “a Christian faith corrupted by the heretical ideology of white Christian nationalism, and a church that has often failed to equip its members to model Jesus’s teachings and fulfill its prophetic calling as a humanitarian, compassionate, and moral compass for society,” adding that “In moments like this, silence is not neutrality — it is an active choice to permit harm.”

• From James Madison, often referred to as “The Father of the Constitution” for his role in drafting the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights:

“The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become instruments of tyranny at home.” —from his speech at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on June 29, 1787

§  §  §

In the mist of our mourning. “Farewell Dolly Parton.” —Miley Cyrus (Parton’s goddaughter)

§  §  §

And so we existentially face the ancient question, “How then are we to live?”—how to live neither in passive resignation (which is, in fact, spiritually cancerous) nor in visceral, reactive outrage and murderous bloodlust?

There are numerous worthy responses to that question. But for us on the Way with Jesus, the wellspring is located in the recovery of our baptismal vows. It is in the buoyancy of stilled water, the catharsis that begins with a renunciation (“of the Devil and all his ways”) premising an affirmation (“nothing can separate”) which lead—over time and too many setbacks and missteps—to a disarming of the heart essential to any disarming of the nations, to the rejection of current norms (“the strong take what they can, the weak suffer what they must”) and the glorious affirmation of the Psalmist: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of God in the land of the living” (27:13).

I love the way Debra Dean Murphy frames this: “Baptism is the rite of initiation into the life of the church, indeed, into the very life of God. It is an act of disaffiliation [emphasis added], conferring an identity at odds with the ways we are named and claimed by family, nation, and ideology. It is also a process of conversion: old allegiances shattered; initiation into a new polis (thus a “political” act).”

Then there’s this summary of baptism’s aftermath from Catholic theologian James Alison: “Faith [is] a habitual confidence given us by Another in whose hands we can relax. It means that what causes us to belong is a pattern of desire produced in us by someone we cannot see who is giving us the strength to live in the midst of this world as though death were not [emphasis added].”

And, of course, Alison knows that our practice of communion, of Eucharistic participation, serves as our repeated reminder that the Spirit’s presence “is designed to feed us with the capacity to work our way out of being moved by the winds of victim-aimed desire, and instead to teach us how to stand up against that and begin, however tentatively, another way of living together.”

Baptism is the key (along with the baptismal reminder of the Eucharist) because baptism, at root, is about power. With our confidence in the Resurrection—God’s power over the realm of death— we can risk much, because we are safe, even in a despotic political climate. Not even death can take away anything important. This is the secret of our freedom and our joy. Nothing frightens imperial agents of any sort more than joyfully free, fearless people.

As the Prophet Zechariah records, “‘Not by might nor by power but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord” (4:6).

§  §  §

Postscript. Nothing in this moment is complete without a grateful acknowledgement of the life and legacy of Dolly Parton, whose sum was so much greater than the total of her many exemplary parts. As has been said, in a world of Donald, be a Dolly.

§  §  §

Postlude. “It’s been a long dark night / And I’ve been a-waiting for the morning / It’s been a long hard fight / But I see a brand new day dawning / I’ve been looking for the sunshine / You know I ain’t seen it in so long / But everything’s gonna work out just fine / And everything’s gonna be all right / That’s been all wrong / ‘Cause I can see the light of a clear blue morning / I can see the light of a brand new day / I can see the light of a clear blue morning / Oh and everything’s gonna be all right / It’s gonna be okay.” —“Clear Blue Morning,” Dolly Parton with Lainey Wilson, Miley Cyrus, Queen Latifah, & Reba McEntire 

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Ken Sehested

Prelude. “Transfiguration.” —Vasari Singers, music by Jeremy Filsell and David Briggs 

Call to worship. There is almost always a discordant cacophony—confusion, disorientation, turbulence—in the transition from unreflective innocence to the revivifying and reorienting presence of the Spirit’s inaugurating disclosure of Heaven’s intent for Earth’s reclamation.

Right: “Transfiguration,” by Sócrates Magno Torres

Don’t recoil from this bewilderment, for God is bewilding the world, shaking off its conformity to the Deceiver’s constricting and toxic lies. Trust yourself to the hands that turn the world upside down and inside out, however unnerving it may feel. Even if wounding, it is in the end for your healing (Hosea 6:1). —kls

§  §  §

A litany for worship

Introduction: Matthew (17:1-8) tells the story of the Transfiguration, when Jesus took his tres amigos to a high mount for a transcendent encounter with ancestral luminaries. The following is an imaginative rewrite and expansion of that story. In rabbinical scholarship, such reimagining of a scriptural text is a revered tradition called “midrash.”

JESUS CLIMBED A HIGH MOUNT, taking Peter, James and John. Then, in a lustrous vision, Moses the liberator, and the great prophet Elijah appeared.

The disciples shivered. Who wouldn’t? Trembling is the portal to creed.

Then others joined the vision, reaching forward, including Our Lady, Protector of Ukraine, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico. Soon, Mother Mary arrived.

Reaching further back in history came Shiphrah and Puah*, the Hebrew midwives, who made a fool of Pharaoh.

And into the future, in the end times, came the unnamed woman**, great with child, who had been pursued by the dragon in the Revelator’s account but saved when the earth itself came to her rescue.

Twelve now were gathered.

And on this transfiguring height, the woman revealed her name for the first time: Wisdom – Sophia – “for I was there” at Creation.***

Peter wanted to hang out in blissful adoration. Jesus said, “Don’t we all.”

So they descended and immediately met a father beseeching on behalf of his convulsing son. Ever since, Heaven’s ecstasy has been entwined with Earth’s epilepsy.

Blessed One, grant us wakefulness, lest we miss the epiphanies that occur not just on mountaintops but also in every valley, in every shadow:

In kitchens, in neighborhoods, in work places; with immigrants and widows and orphans; and in the midst of all the odd intersections where the least, the last, and the lost cross our paths.

—kls, inspired by Matthew 17:1-9. Other scriptural reference: *Exodus 1:15-21; **Revelation 12; ***Proverbs 8:22-31

§  §  §

Confession. “Hiroshima Song.“ —Pete Seeger 

§  §  §

¶ “The atomic bomb [referencing Hiroshima and Nagasaki] was no great decision. It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.” —President Harry S. Truman 

¶ “Seven minutes past midnight on March 9, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a more than 1,800-degree firestorm that liquefied asphalt and vaporized thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed.
Black Snow is the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: “If we lose, we’ll be tried as war criminals.”

Right: Urakami Cathedral, before bombing (top) and after bombing (bottom).

James M. Scott reconstructs in granular detail that horrific night, and describes thedevelopment of the B-29, the capture of the Marianas for use as airfields, and the change in strategy from high-altitude daylight “precision” bombing to low-altitude nighttime incendiary bombing.
Most importantly, the raid represented a significant moral shift for America, marking the first-time commanders deliberately targeted civilians―which helped pave the way for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later.” — “Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb” (emphasis added)

¶ LeMay later said of the incendiary bombing of Tokyo (and 60-65 other large Japanese cities), designed to unleash firestorms in neighborhoods where most structures were made of highly flammable wood and paper:
“There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn’t bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders.” —Alex Remnick, “The Most Notorious General You’ve Probably Never Heard Of”

¶ These bombing campaigns killed somewhere between 241,000-900,000 Japanese civilians.

¶ The atomic bomb that struck Nagasaki on 9 August 1945 exploded during mass near the Urakami Cathedral, the largest Catholic church in East Asia.

§  §  §

Postlude. “Hiroshima Nagasaki Russian Roulette.” —Christy Moore (scroll down to see lyrics)

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by Ken Sehested

Prelude. “Hold on, just a little while longer. Everything will be alright.” —The Kuumba Singers & Bobby McFerrin, “Hold On (Just a Little While Longer)”

 

Invocation. Watch this short (3:24) time lapse video of flowers blooming, from National Geographic.

§  §  §

“He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.”
—William Blake

§  §  §

Ordinary Time (Tempus per Annum) on the church’s liturgical calendar is so named not because they have been demoted, but rather they are ordinal, numbered, as the Sundays following Epiphany up to Lent, then the longer stretch from Pentecost to Advent. Taken together, there are 33 or 34 weeks of Ordinary Time, depending on the lunar dating each year of Easter.

Ordinary days are not mundane. But you could say they contain less drama than the festal seasons. That’s because the bulk of life, liturgical and otherwise, is less dramatic—but not less important. This season is ordinary in that it is outside the pinnacle moments of Jesus’ life.

This interval represents the dailiness of life lived between the peaks. It includes the grit and grind and humdrum of living, with party clothes in storage—the casual days when no trumpets are sounded, no ecstatic visions are had, where shoulders are put to stubborn wheels.

This is quotidian time, where the smallest details matter. To the easily distracted, Ordinary Time is tedious. The watchful, however, are granted confidence in incremental growth, though progress seems imperceptible. Germination is largely out of sight. Faithfulness in small things sets the stage for the great (Luke 16:10).

I suspect Ordinary Time is what Jesus was referring to when, in his departing soliloquy, he told his disciples “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now;” but that in the days to come the Spirit will provide further guidance (John 16:12-13). Wisdom accrues in Ordinary Time.

§  §  §

“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that
is not what I have found. I have found that it is the small everyday deeds
of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”
—Gandalf, the wizard and protagonist in J.R.R. Tolkein’s novels,
“The Hobbit” and “Lord of the Rings”

§  §  §

When people of faith speak of God, and how the love of God leads to the flourishing of souls and soil alike, such language appears on the surface as something being done to us, as from the outside.

Merely being acted upon—being objectified—hints at coercion, manipulation, feeble dependency, indignity. As if we are to be kept in chains and, moreover, taught to love those chains—lovely as they may appear, but chains, nonetheless. As if we are merely utensils in a cosmic drama. As if we are chess pieces on a divine board game.

Right: linocut art by ©Julie Lonneman

Such is not the case. Think of a time lapse video of a flower blooming, first in one layer, thenanother, then another, and yet another—as if from out of thin air. Prior to this there was merely a tiny bud. And before that, a roughly buried unseen seed. Pleasant enough, but without the slightest indication of what was to come—as if from nowhere, as if from outside and beyond and super-natural. As if being infused with what, originally, was not there.

Human life thrives only when surrounded by fertile humus, enriched soil generating life from decomposition. The fallen leaf does not regret its demise.

§  §  §

“No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can
live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it.”
—Wendell Berry

§  §  §

The Blessed One is not the author and enforcer of transcendent patterns of creaturely co-dependency. The Gracious Host is not a giant Self, demanding subservience from petitioners. The Merciful One is not obsessive and in need of constant homage and ovation as a guarantee of kindly attention.

Rather, as mystics write, creaturely blooming is a growing into God and God into all.

Apotheosis—a growing into God—is the word used in Eastern Christian traditions. Frequently in Paul’s writing, the Apostle speaks of growing into Christ and being “filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). Or as 2 Peter insists, we are called to “become participants of the divine nature” (1:4).

Such language is fragile and risky and easily manipulated, because it hints that creatures may thereby strap on the glory of the Creator and be freed to wield power to reorder the world in self-aggrandizing ways.

Does a self/soul even survive the Spirit’s transforming fire? Yes, and no.

Yes, understood developmentally, in history’s time and space, the self that is in Christ expands, step by gradual step, to include ever-larger circles of communion with others—even, potentially, with enemies. It’s not so much a matter of denying the self but a relaxing and uncoiling of the self. The self-forgetfulness that grows is not a self-debasement. Rather, it is like the bud’s tilt toward the sun’s radiance; like the arousal of the loved to the Lover.

No, however, if the self means the continued existence of a sniveling, whining ego needing constant assurance and reinforcement of its own value and performance. Such a self demands that if I’m special, you must be less so. Being self-possessed is, by definition, being separated from the Love that binds each to all without definition, degree, merit, or measure.

§  §  §

“Hope is the ordinary things you stubbornly do every day!”
—Mitri Raheb, Palestinian theologian and pastor

§  §  §

Because we humans, at least occasionally, require reassurance, comfort, and encouragement, we assume the same for the Beloved, creation’s author. And thus our worship becomes a form of commerce, offering praise in exchange for blessing, compliments in return for security safeguards. And when God’s honor is challenged, we—as divine lackeys—assume retribution, including bloodletting, is a sacred duty.

The annulment of such duty was accomplished in the cross, confirmed in the resurrection, and kindled at Pentecost. For people of The Way, swords have become plowshares in preparation for the bountiful harvest of peace, sown in justice, and harvested in mercy.

§  §  §

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty
to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble.”
—Helen Keller

§  §  §

It is in these days after Pentecost, Ordinary Time in the church’s calendar, that dreams are molded into deeds, that vision is mirrored in befriending habits, that yeast is unleashed, that struggle is ensued and peace is waged. The daily duties of covenant-keeping, the menial acts of fidelity, the chaste response to aggravating speech, the refusal of silence in the face of abuse, the encouraging word to the forlorn and offended—these are among the beads of your Ordinary rosary. Pray it even on faltering days and throughout restless nights.

Notice the unnoticed. Choose the less lovely for a dance partner. Keep your eyes shielded from shiny baubles, your ears from the marketers’ lure. Proclaim honor in the land of disrepute. Approach all your pedestrian duties in the knowledge that future blossoms begin as dirt-covered seedlings jostling amid the mire, powered by unseen force to break through compressed soil until welcomed by the sun’s fecund radiance.

Right: linocut art by ©Julie Lonneman

Live the unvarnished life, susceptible neither to flattery nor mockery.

Don’t begrudge being little. Be like the yeast in the dough, not the flour.

Remember: there is no secular space or time; only sacred or desecrated. Train your eyes to spot reverential clues among sullied clutter. Shield them from cultural glitter and gaudy glamor.

Practice the kind of silence that allows you to notice the cries from the rubble above the clamor of barkers. Locate yourself in a community of conviction which trains attention spans away from the glitterati and toward the disregarded.

Acclaim the unadorned season, with its back alleys and broken asphalt and places google maps don’t go. Give praise to Ordinary days, such that—when all is said and done—more is done than said. Then be freed: to live large, to laugh often, and to love well.

§  §  §

“My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed.
I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.”
—Adrienne Rich

§  §  §

Benediction. Gracious One, grant us the wherewithal to journey from Mary’s annunciation, to Christmas’ sedition, to Epiphany’s acclamation, through Lent’s interrogation, all the way to Easter’s exultation and Pentecost’s animation. May our Ordinary days be marked by both sweat and praise. Find us faithful in the ordinary work of clearing, plowing, planting, and watering, that those to come might winnow the grains of justice and reap the harvest of peace.

Postlude. “We Are Not Alone.” —The Royal Singers 

#  #  #

What are we to make of our nation’s semiquicentennial?

Ken Sehested, Circle of Mercy Congregation, 5 July 2026
Text: Zechariah 9:9-12
(“Return to your stronghold, you prisoners of hope”)

Prelude. “One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple / By the Relief Office I saw my people — / As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if / This land was made for you and me.” —“lost” verse to Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land”

§  §  §

      Your cartoon for the day: A couple, sitting in their living room. One says to the other, “It seems wrong to celebrate America’s birthday while it’s on life support.” We today asked ourselves, “Is our nation’s historic anniversary the occasion for celebration or lamentation?” Or both?

I’m breaking a cardinal rule in preaching, which dictates that you give only one image for the congregation to ponder. Today I’m giving you three, because I think these three interact with each other, and each impacts and reshapes the other.

The first image comes from Woody Guthrie, from his song, “This Land Is Your Land.” He wrote the song as a protest to the familiar patriotic hymn, “God Bless America.”

One of Guthrie’s verses is rarely listed when his lyrics are printed. That verse reads “One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple, / By the relief office I saw my people. / As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering / if God blessed America for me.” It is a not-so-subtle critique of the church, as an agency complicit in the structure forces of poverty.

The second image is to imagine a tussle between Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty, our two patriotic icons. Given the condition of our republic, you might think there’s a case of domestic violence going on.

The third image is excerpted from the text for today: “Return to your stronghold you prisoners of hope.” What exactly is our stronghold? And are we really imprisoned by hope, against our will? Is the yoke of Jesus merely the transference of one form of bondage for another?

Chances are you can recite from memory the eloquent lines from the Declaration of Independence, whose adoption we observed yesterday: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . .”

But of course, the self-evident truth of “all men are created equal” did not intend what it says. “All men” did not include women, or slaves, much less Native Americans, whose very existence the Declaration repudiated later in that document. And by “equal,” it did not mean the right for all to vote—not even for all men. You had to be a white, property-owning male to vote in those early elections. It would be 52 years before the popular vote was a factor in presidential elections.

Today, though, we observe another semiquincentennial—from America’s first major prophet, the remarkable abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818–1895). On 5 July 1852, Douglass gave his famous speech—“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July”—to a gathering of the Rochester, NY Ladies Anti-Slavery Society.

“I answer:” Douglass declared, “[this is] a day that reveals to [the slave], more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour. . . .”

National Baptist leader Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879–1961) viewed white Christianity as a contradiction of true identity because of its support for segregation and lynching. She rejected America’s Christian identity, saying “but it is the most lawless and desperately wicked nation on the globe.” Lynching, she insisted, was “no superficial thing . . . it is in the blood of the nation. And the process of eliminating it will be difficult and long.”

Ouch! And again, ouch!

Without a doubt, slavery was the original sin of our country. While it’s true that this abominable practice is as old as written history, the modern African slave trade was far by the most extensive in history. Worse than that, the only way our ancestors in the US could bear the shame of this exploitation was to literally invent the notion of “race” to justify the practice—invented a novel moral code—that dark-skinned people were less than fully human. The signatories of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were so conscious of this blasphemy that, in the latter document, they could not bring themselves to use the word “slave.” Instead, they chose the euphemism of “other persons.”

Jefferson himself, the chief architect of the Declaration’s soaring words of liberty, was owner of a large contingent of slave, and sired at least six children with one of those. Today he would be called a serial rapist.

Yet his original draft of the Declaration included a 168-word section condemning the slave trade as an “execrable commerce” and a “cruel war against human nature.” The other five men in the drafting group immediately scratched out that section.

Also, we should not forget that at the time of the Declaration’s proclamation, all 13 colonies permitted slavery. The reason the South developed its “peculiar institution” was not because the Northerns were predominantly abolitionists. Rather, slavery was profitable as a tool of industrial scale agriculture—whereas the Northerners developed industrial scale manufacturing. Late in his life, Douglass wrote that the “wage slavery” of Northern industry was almost as brutal as chattel slavery of the South. And wage slavery is still a thing.

In case you haven’t noticed, the chain now laying at the Statue of Liberty’s feet can barely be seen. We’ve largely forgotten that the statue’s French architect, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the chain was meant to be in the hands of Lady Liberty as a celebration of the defeat of slavery. But the US financiers of the statue’s pedestal didn’t want to be reminded of that horrible conflict. So only a few links can be seen under the Lady’s skirt, and is only visible from above.

The famous poem by Emmas Lazarus, a Jewish immigrant to the US, penned those memorable lines—”Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”—was added later, declaring our nation’s willing welcome of immigrants. In these days, those lines have been suppressed by the forces of nativism, xenophobia, and unabashed cruelty.

Slavery was certainly the cause for our Civil War. But not as a human rights issue—it was a war between competing industrial policies.

So, yes, Uncle Sam’s notion of liberty and freedom is locked in a White House lawn cage fight with Lady Liberty’s ideal. And right now, the Lady is being pummeled.

We sometimes forget that words and ideas can change over time. Uncle Sam’s notion of liberty means 800 US military bases outside the borders of the US. As former US Secretary of State Henry Kissenger famously said, “The US has no friends; only interests.’

“Freedom” in the US—and not just recently—has come to mean the freedom of our economy to penetrate and subjugate the economies of other countries. (It’s called “free enterprise.”) Domestically, freedom has established wealth as moral stature; and when money is god, to be poor is a sin.

Right: Hundreds of the white supremacist group Patriot Front march in Washington, DC, on July 4, carrying US and Confederate flags.

And in the church, “freedom” has come to mean “don’t expect me to make any commitments.” Freedom as personal autonomy, with no covenant bonds, no vows, no friends, only interests. Reminds me of what Bill Ramsey, a former member, said several years ago in a Lenten prayer group, when the question was asked: Give a brief characterization of the church. Bill replied: “We are a community of consequences!” Membership has implications.

But it is beauty, not duty, which embraces us—though not the beauty of Milan’s fashion runway or Miss America contests or even a gymnast’s perfectly scored routine. The beauty which has a hold on us is that of a beatific vision, of the day when all tears are dried and death itself is vanquished.

Given the shifts over the last 10 years, a significant slice of the Christian community is itself vehemently opposed to Douglass’ claims. Our nation has always had its share of what we now call “white Christian nationalism,” but in this century it has developed into a prominent political force, with frequent and insistent calls that the US has always been a “Christian” nation, that Christians should be in charge, and that all our institutions, from the military down to the local school district, should prominently feature this perspective.

We have, for much of our history, consulted a flattering mirror like the Evil Queen in “Snow White”: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” The mirror’s response to our national vanity’s query provides the basis for manifest destiny, national exceptionalism, America-first assumptions.

I would caution you, though, not to assume it’s only the right-wingers who believe these things. Progressive political currents meant something similar, though they used different terminology. “Manifest destiny” and “exceptionalism” were common terminology.

In his 2012 commencement address at the US Air Force Academy, then-President Barack Obama said the United States is exceptional, and will always be, [quote] “the one indispensable nation in world affairs.”

The phrase “indispensable nation” was first coined in 1996 by an aide to President Bill Clinton, who later used it in a speech outlining the rationale for the NATO’s intervention in Bosnia. Then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright used that word in a 1998 interview on NBC’s “The Today Show” defending the US role in enforcing an embargo on Iraq after the first Gulf War in 1991: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.”

James Baldwin put his finger on our problem when he wrote, “For those innocent [white] people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.”*

The Declaration of Independence is a remarkable document. In its day, in the age of kings and monarchs and imperial despots, it declares a truly radical political idea, that governing power derives “from the consent of the governed.” Regardless of how you define “the governed,” that notion on its own is historically distinct in political philosophy. That is something we can celebrate and commemorate and cherish.

By the way, I support democracy because it is the most common way we practice nonviolence.

Our nation’s steeples—both conservative and liberal—have been and are now implicated in policies of injustice, in legacies of institutional trauma, in justification of slavery and Jim Crow and patterns of generational poverty and the blessing of wealth . . . and on and on.

There has been and is now a massive struggle between Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty. And it is, I believe, the church’s duty both to publicly denounce these faults and to put our shoulders—however small in relation to the enormity of the task—to the wheel of repentance and repair, of healing and restitution and, ultimately, of hope. As has been said, “the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.” And has also been said, that arc doesn’t bend on its own. Bending it has consequences for those of us on the Jesus Road, and we do so in the company of people of other faiths and conscience.

What, then, is the stronghold to which the prophet Zechariah calls? And is the hope we profess (and call others to) simply another form bondage, an alternative form master-slave relations? Is hope nothing more than “a tease designed to keep us from accepting reality,” as Violet Crawly, played by Maggie Smith, said in an episode of “Downton Abbey”?

No. No. No. No. No And no.

We are prisoners of hope because we are head-over-heels in love with the promise of mountains being humbled and low places raised. Of nourishment appearing as manna in the desert and water flowing from sheer rock. Of the day when lions and lambs lie peacefully together. Of swords beaten into plowshares.

We are prisoners only in the sense that our minds are being decolonized—literally freed from its bondage to death—which is a modern way of saying what the Apostle Paul said when he called for the “righting of our minds,” righting in the sense of recognizing a horizon beyond the prevailing dogma that might makes right, that the strong take what they can, the weak suffer what they must. Of the day when the poor will have plenty to eat, the powerful dethroned, the rich sent away, the land itself restored to its ecological prime.

There are many, many beautiful things about our land and its people. Of the ugliest is what is currently referred to as Christian Nationalism.

Is our republic on life-support? Maybe. I’m not sure. There are a number of reasons to think the fever now gripping our nation is decreasing. But fevers can create long term damage. It will be a while before we can make any reliable predictions.

And so we pray, “Blessed One, on this dramatic date of commemoration, help us to distinguish between the beautiful and the abominable—and be ready for the consequences—as we discern the times in which we live.”

Amen.

* James Baldwin in “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” The Fire Next Time

§  §  §

Benediction. Hear this benediction from the closing remarks of Douglass’ speech: “Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. ‘The arm of the Lord is not shortened,’ and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains. . . .”

Postlude. “Come on and raise your voice above the raging seas / We can’t hold our breath forever / When our brothers cannot breathe / Come on and raise your voice above the raging seas / We can’t hold our breath forever / When our sisters cannot breathe.” —“All Good People,” Delta Rae

Bonus tracks

• “Let America Be America Again.” —Langston Hughes poem, spoken word by James Earl Jones

• “I Too Sing America.” —Langston Hughes poem, visual representation by William Sexton, spoken word by Denzel Washington

• Five young descendants of Frederick Douglass’ read excerpts (6:59) from his “What Is the Fourth of July to the Slave” speech.

#  #  #

 

 

 

Ken Sehested

¶ Read Cameron Vickrey’s brief summary of the Supreme Court’s brutal rulings affecting immigrants’ “protected status” and asylum seekers fate.

¶ You probably didn’t know: Undocumented immigrants paid more income taxes than Amazon, GM, IBM and Netflix combined. —SNOPES fact checker

¶ And then there’s this: “Cato Study: Immigrants Reduced Deficits by $14.5 Trillion Since 1994”

¶ And also: “A robust body of research shows that welcoming immigrants into American communities not only does not increase crime, but can actually strengthen public safety. In fact, immigrants—including undocumented immigrants—are less likely to commit crimes than the U.S.-born. This is true at the national, state, county, and neighborhood levels, and for both violent and non-violent crime.” —”Debunking the Myth of Immigrants and Crime”

¶ There is no shame. Vice President J.D. Vance confessed that he made up the story about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio (Trump later told the same lie) saying that if he had to lie to get media coverage, “then that’s what I’m going to do.” —NPR

§  §  §

We live in a fretful land
A litany for worship regarding the plight of immigrants

Gracious One, who jealously guards the lives of those at every edge, we lift our heavy hearts to your Mercy. Corrosive leaders claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

We live in a fretful land, anxious over the ebbing away of privilege, fearful that strangers are stealing our birthright.

Loud, insistent voices demand a return to “the rule of law.”

Speak to us of the Rule of your law, the terms of your Reign. Incline our hearts to your command.

“Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.” All the people shall say, “Amen!” (Deut. 27:19)

All the people shall say, “Amen!”

—continue reading “We live in a fretful land”

§  §  §

Songs about immigrants and refugees

I pulled together my list of favorite songs about immigrants and refugees, shared it with some friends, got additional titles, for this chart of 23 songs. —kls

• “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor,” Irving Berlin, using lyrics from Emma Lazarus’ poem, performed by The Zamir Chorale 

• “City of Immigrants,” Steve Earle

• “El Coyote,” Guy Clark

• “Matamoros Banks,” Bruce Springsteen

• “The House You Live In,” Gordon Lightfoot

• “Moving (Songs for Refugees),” Refugees Welcome

• “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” Woody Guthrie 

• “I Am a Stranger,” Ken Medema

• “The Refugee,” U2

• “Clandestino,” Manu Ahao  [English translation: “I come only with my punishment / There comes only my conviction / Running is my fate / In order to deceive the law / Lost in the heart / Of the great Babylon / They call me the Clandestine* / ’cause I don’t carry any identity papers.”

• “Todos Somos Ilegales (We Are All Illegals),” Residente, Tom Morello & Chad Smith

• “American Oxygen,” Rihanna 

• “Without a Face,” Rage Against the Machine 

• “Ice El Hielo,” La Santa Cecilia 

• “America,” Neil Diamond 

• “Immigration Man,” Crosby & Nash 

• “Immigrants,” Leslie Lee & Steve Gretz 

• “Look In Their Eyes,” David Crosby 

• “Refugee Immigrant Song,” Jack Warshaw 

• “Lady of the Harbor,” Brother Sun

• “Good Night, New York,” Nanci Griffith

• “Running (Refugee Song),” Gregory Porter, Common, Kenyon Harrold & Andrea Pizziconi

• “The Prayer of the Refugee,” Rise Against 

#  #  #

Ken Sehested

Processional. “I’m going to watch you shine / Going to watch you grow / Going to paint a sign / So you’ll always know / As long as one and one is two / There could never be a father / Who loved his daughter more than I love you. —“Father and Daughter,” Paul Simon 

§  §  §

Among my most treasured photos is the one below, of me and my second born, Alayna (a few moons ago). Such a cherished face, with me beaming in recognition of such loveliness.

 

§  §  §

 

“When there was no ear to hear /  You sang to me. . . / When there were no strings to play / You played to me. . . / When I had no wings to fly / You flew to me. . . / When there was no dream of mine / You dreamed of me.” —“Attics of My Life,” Grateful Dead 

§  §  §

Almost as treasured is of Alayna’s first born, Jordan, helping me mow the grass. This one, too, is from a while back. Jordan recently turned 20. (Whose umbilical cord, along with his mother’s, I had the honor of cutting.)

§  §  §

“Just the Two of Us.” —Will Smith

§  §  §

 

And then there’s me and my Dad, circa 1952.

§  §  §

“I’ve heard of God the son and God the father / I’m still looking for a God for the daughters.” —Little Big Town, “The Daughters” 

§  §  §

For many, Father’s Day (like Mother’s Day) is poignant and filled with sweet recollections. But for more than a few, these observances are filled with mixed emotions and conflictive memories.

Which is why I never grow tired of rereading the posts my friend Courtney Walsh sends every year on these occasions, this one for dads’ day:

“As we head into this weekend: I am thinking of all of you who are not fathers but want to be, all of you who decided not to be fathers but feel society’s pressure, all of you who navigate the realities of being a stepfather or a former stepfather without a current connection to kids you cared for, all of you who have lost a child, all of you whose fathers have left this Earth, all of you whose fathers weren’t/aren’t who you needed them to be. This weekend may be tough for you. Please remember that you are loved and you are not alone.”

And, yes, it’s true: Some children remember their father’s eyes more with fear than delight. But today, let’s remember the fathers who bless.

§  §  §

Recessional. “As my soul slides down to die. / How could I lose him? / What did I try? / Bit by bit, I’ve realized / That he was here with me; / I looked into my father’s eyes. / My father’s eyes. / I looked into my father’s eyes. / My father’s eyes.” —Eric Clapton, “My Father’s Eyes”

#  #  #

Seven recommended habits for white folk like me
designed to breach the wall of racism

 Ken Sehested

Prelude. “Come on and raise your voice above the raging seas / We can’t hold our breath forever / When our brothers cannot breathe / Come on and raise your voice above the raging seas / We can’t hold our breath forever / When our sisters cannot breathe.” —“All Good People,” Delta Rae 

 §  §  §

Malcolm X’s Autobiography was the first book that scared me. Here I was, in the transition from adolescence to young adulthood, secretly abandoning my pietist-revivalist rearing in favor of the more verdant fields of liberalism (which helped for a time), and here’s this guy, who I now am ready to befriend, sharply critical of liberal integrationists!

Turns out he was right, unnervingly prescient, not exactly predicting the cases of Rodney King, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddy Gray—ad nauseam and likely to be continued—but sensing that “civil rights” could be doled out in limited doses without affecting the underlying patterns of structural disparity.

The Black Lives Matter movement made important inroads. But then the backlash against “diversity, equity, inclusion” policies cratered that advance. Similarly, the whitelash against Obama’s election paved the way for Tumpism. Something deeper is at work sustaining the patterns of discrimination, something more than simple bigotry and prejudice.

Right: Malcolm X painting by Derek Russell

However sincere the righteous intent, integration has mostly been a one-way street. Despite curtailed bounds, the African American community had—before the advent of the “war on poverty” urban renewal initiatives—vibrant commercial districts, schools, neighborhoods and other cultural institutions. While the grip on access to bus seats and lunch counters and drinking fountains and even voter registration rights were loosening, the noose of widespread economic disparity was tightening.

The accumulated racial trauma reminds me of that tragic conclusion of Msimangu, in Alan Paton’s memorable novel, “Cry the Beloved Country,” where he says “I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they [white South Africans] are turned to loving, they will find we [Blacks] are turned to hating.”

So, what are we to do? How are we to live? What are the new habits needing to be formed?

The first is to get over the assumption that we can do one big march, back one ambitious legislative agenda, read all the right books, and be done with it.

The second habit is to admit that we are “trapped in a history” we do not understand, as James Baldwin wrote to his nephew; that it has to do with our nation’s mythology of manifest destiny (and its warped ideology of “freedom”), both domestically and internationally; and that we must bare our faces to the blistered history that mythology has left in its wake. It’s not a pretty sight: The truth will indeed set you free, but first it will make you miserable.

Third, understanding this venal history will require a look at our awash-in-cash, pay-to-play political process, our imperial military policies, our cannibalizing form of capitalism, a judicial system transforming corporations into persons—and a church for which “freedom” means “don’t expect commitment.”

The fourth habit is to get over the need for personal purity, admitting that we are all enmeshed in structurally tangled relations—racial, economic, national, gender, sexual orientation, relative dis/ability, etc. (we have trouble even naming them all)—that will not dissolve with well-meaning, even heroic personal effort.

The fifth habit, for those in positions of relative power (and it’s a complex equation—all of us are haves and have-nots in relative degrees in various contexts), is to acknowledge that the journey to justice, and its promise of genuine peace mediated by the agency of mercy, will come at a cost. We need to cultivate a beatific vision powerful enough to sustain against the fear-mongering threats that the choice of right-relatedness will entail.

Sixth, we must devote ourselves to initiating and sustaining partnerships—starting close at hand, extending to far away—with those whose destiny is un-manifest, consciously taking incremental steps toward margins of every sort (and you can’t do them all—get over it!), and not only personal partnerships but community partnerships.

Theologian Kelly S. Johnson, in The Fear of Beggars: Stewardship and Poverty in Christian Ethics, unveils a universe of meaning in one single sentence: “The opposite of poverty is not plenty, but friendship.” When folk living with bounty and privilege set out to form relations of solidarity with those who live amid scarcity, it is so, so, so easy to develop a skewed donor-recipient relationship. Patronage and philanthropy are typically only kinder, gentler forms of appeasement and control of those of meager means.

In every instance when justice is established, wealth will most definitely flow from the affluent to the impoverished. But the relief provided is reparation, a returning of what has been stolen, rather than benevolence. The logic of manna is the goal: as characterized by the Israelites’ harvesting instructions during their sojourn in the wilderness: larger families gathered more, smaller families, less; but none had surplus (or, if so, it quickly spoiled) and none were lacking (cf. Exodus 16).

And finally: While the promised Commonweal of God will profoundly rearrange every provision of privilege, our walk to freedom will recognize that colonized neighborhoods and nations are generated by an underlying colonizing of the mind, of the heart, of the will. Thus we must be invested in communities whose labor includes decolonizing of the mind, disarming of the heart, re-abling of the will.

And Jesus disclosed: “I do not call you servants any longer . . . but I call you friends” (John 15:15). This sort of befriending is both manifesto and mandate, a penetration of reality accompanied by the wherewithal to reshape it, a knowing of the truth divulged only in its doing.

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Postlude. “Got a Mind To Do Right.” —Morehouse College and Cornell University Glee Clubs

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Ken Sehested

Unlike traditional cultures (mostly of the past), Western modernity has few common “rites of passage,” typically during the transition of adolescence from childhood to adulthood. Getting a driver’s license is our substitute, along with school graduations. What follows are two pieces of adaptable commentary.

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Prelude. “Wide Open Spaces.” —The Chicks

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Advice on vocation to a young friend

Recently, a young, about-to-graduate friend wrote:

I felt recently a sort of calling to do something… I’m just not sure what that is. I think it may just unfold rather than me choosing it… If you have any thoughts about following a call and understanding how to hear its direction, I’m all ears!!

I responded:

There’s no magic to it. It will, indeed, unfold but may then require you to work your tail off. Your calling, like a wild animal, will not come close on your command. Wait patiently; coax it, sing to it, proclaim your love for it, pray for it. You will likely have to overcome some fear. Fear can be cruel master or a helpful servant.

Pay close attention. Let your head do whatever work it needs to do, but then let your heart have the final say so. Look in odd places. Turn your ears in unexpected, unfamiliar directions. Pay particular attention to options that cause your heart to leap. Prepare to be surprised.

There will likely be dead ends. Don’t fret the wasted time. Nothing, finally, is wasted.

No doubt you will make mistakes. And the ancient Deceiver will try to convince you that you are a mistake. This is the only appropriate time to issue a middle-finger salute.

Be prepared to have your heart broken, but you will heal and even be stronger. Locate those who have wisdom—the best are those who ask you insightful questions, not give you the right answers. Keep a diary of your questions. Each will be like a piece of a larger puzzle taking shape. Listen to those who call you by your true name: not the name you want, or the name that failed you in the past, or the name that others have required you to have.

Don’t take sh*t from anyone; plant a boot in their ass, if need be. The mandate to take up the towel of servanthood still applies today as much as when it was declared to those dumbfounded disciples. That doesn’t mean becoming a doormat for people to wipe their feet on.

But your default practice is kindness, especially to those who have no way to return the favor. Assess your past truthfully, especially the hard parts. But do not judge. Just notice. The past cannot be changed, but it can be remembered differently.

Find worthy companions. They will be part of your discernment, probably without even trying to. There is a Rwandan proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, walk alone. If you want to go far, walk together.”

And, finally, trust that you are beloved beyond your wildest dreams. Gravitate to those who reflect this back to you, for you, on you.

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Altar call. “So we took one on the chin fought a battle we couldn’t win / Until it all comes ’round again it’s welcome to the great unknown / So we’ll taste the bitter tears till the darkness disappears / While we’re leaning on each other it’s welcome to the great unknown / So we’ll taste the bitter tears till the darkness disappears / While we’re leaning on each till we can hold our own.” —“Go Light a Candle,” Rodney Crowell feat. Emmylou Harris & Lera Lynn

Above: Sixteen years ago my friend Mark Siler (left), a prison chaplain in the US, spent a year in Cuba assisted in the first class of volunteer prison chaplains in that country (pictures are but a few of that graduating class). Graduates went through 60 hours of intensive training, in retreats around the country, for chaplains—a project initiated by Rev. Francisco Rodés, pastor emeritus of Primera Iglesia Bautista in Matanzas (and my personal pastor). That work continues to this day.

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On the Flow of Tears
For my daughters (as they take their leave)

—from years past, when our first-born graduated from college, our younger graduated from high school

As each take your leave, now charting your own courses, I pause and ponder your upcoming absence with dreaded joy: joy that your wings have spread so far so fast, dread at the silence filling the air which your voices once stirred.

It wasn’t that long ago that I maneuvered surgeon’s scissors and severed the cord which tied you to your mother. That I did so— snip, then a brief spurt of blood— without fainting was a happy surprise. I took it as a hopeful sign, that I would not faint as a father.

The memory of those similar, separate exertions—the extent of my labor in bringing you to life so disproportionate to that of your mother’s—has occupied my thoughts with more than passing recollection in recent weeks. It is as if that rupture served, with each of you, as prophetic announcement of what was to come. It has taken many measured steps and years and come, no doubt, too slowly for you, too quickly for us; but now the significance of that severance is being fulfilled.

Each of you are occasions for delight, in ways unique to the wonder of your separate ways. The seeds I have sown in your life-soil (and that of your mother’s, but here I will speak for myself) will continue to sprout for countless seasons to come and mark you in ways of which I alternately rejoice and repent. It is up to you to cultivate, including pruning and plucking and uprooting, as needed.

But your leave-taking also prompts me to inventory the ways your lives have cultivated my own, beginning with your births.

I was a mere bystander in your gestation, of course. But I now know about the connection, on either end, between the passion and pain in every act of creation. All hopeful planting finally unfolds with tender shoots tearing their way through resistant ground. The earth must be disturbed; the womb must be rent; the cord must be cut.

Every birth is an act of dangerous hope: The cord which nourishes can also choke; the body which shelters can also poison; the tempestuous journey from watery womb to inaugural breath is subject to countless perils threatening giver and gift.

Why life should begin with a blood-soaked scream is a mystery. But such are the terms for the flow of milk.

One day, says the prophet, against overwhelming odds and much reliable evidence, the flow of tears will be dried and death itself will be undone. As it now stands, though, history’s outcome seems to favor those who turn lions loose on lambs, those who squelch every scream and rob the suckling of its breast, and plug birth canals with fists of fury and fits of ambition.

In their hideous vision every natal cord becomes a slaver’s chain; every spilling of blood, a grasping demand rather than a gratuitous gift. Even now, says the psalmist, their “eyes swell out with fatness,” gorged in assault against creation’s gestation and promised deliverance.

You, beloved daughters, serve as reminders that life cannot be had on the cheap; that every new future foreseen in joy will endure all tearful failures; that strength of hand and valiance of heart must be coupled with wombish welcome to that unnameable (and thus unmanageable) Promise that death’s ascendance will be crushed.

Such vision persists; such milk flows; and by it we are kept from perishing.

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Postlude. “I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean, / Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens, / Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance, / And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance. / I hope you dance.” —“I Hope You Dance,” Lee Ann Womack 

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