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There is a new creation

The Apostle Paul’s vision of the ministry of reconciliation

by Ken Sehested

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:
everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ,
and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;
that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,
not counting their trespasses against them,
and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
2 Corinthians 5:17-19

        Few things are more uniform among Baptist churches the world over than Sunday school. Many are surprised to learn that this organized form of Bible study began in Britain in the 18th century. And its specific purpose was to provide literacy training for poor children. It was a ministry of reconciliation in an age when industrialization was deepening the chasm of poverty.

        But Sunday school, like the ministry of reconciliation, has been tamed. In 2004, shortly after the release of gruesome photos of abuse and torture in Iraq’s Abu Graib prison, a ranking U.S. Senator responded this way to a reporter’s question: “This is not Sunday school. This is interrogation. This is rough stuff.”

        A traveler to apartheid-era South Africa was stunned to learn that the word “reconciliation” had derogatory connotations even for those Christians committed to racial equality. Why? Because the word had been warped in the National Party’s lexicon to mean: “When you are reconciled to the fact that we are on top and you are on the bottom, then we will have peace.” As Filipino poet Justino Cabazares has written, “Talk to us about reconciliation only if your living is not the cause of our dying.”

        The work of reconciliation—so prominent in the Apostle Paul’s understanding of the discipleship, so pivotal in Jesus’ mandate to love enemies—is frequently misunderstand in the church and is openly derided in the world whose norm is “reward your friends, punish your enemies.”

        How, then, are we to cultivate our calling to be agents of reconciliation? Consider these six suggestions.

        •We are saved for the world, not from it. The work of repentance is not to prepare us for heaven but to propel us into the world’s broken places. We sing with the psalmist that “I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (27:13), confident in the Word that promises “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6). The table of our Lord is such that offerings are to be postponed until reconciliation is initiated (Matthew 5:23-24).

        •The Gospel’s disarming of the heart, and of the nations, is a unified mission. Redemption is always personal but never merely private. To recover our ministry of reconciliation, we need more evangelistic messages that provoke the kind of confession of Jesus as personal Lord and Savior made by Zacchaeus (Luke 8). The church’s evangelistic mission is in contradiction to that of the world, where violence is the Devil’s evangelistic tool.

        •Our capacity to forgive is proportionate to our experience of being forgiven. The work of grace is a fear-displacement process. As Jesus taught, “the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little” (Luke 7:47). The deeper our reverence for God, the greater our capacity to risk for the neighbor. Resting in God readies us for our rendezvous with earth’s trauma.

        •Forgiving does not mean forgetting, at least in the short term. The work of reconciliation requires the labor of truth-telling. The Prophet Jeremiah cried out repeatedly against those who “have treated the wound of my people carelessly” (6:14 & 8:11). The journey of reconciliation toward the promise of peace requires treading the path of justice.

        •Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. The former is a transforming initiative we can take on our own. Forgiving frees us from the toxic grasp of vengeance. It is our imitatio Christi (imitation of Christ), who acted while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8).

        •Finally, reconciliation is a lifelong covenant, not a one-night stand. Even the disciples, upon hearing the Commission before Christ’s ascension, were both reverent and doubtful (Matthew 28:17). Often enough, so are we, for the apparent evidence often favors those “whose belly is their God” (Philippians 3:19). Even still, being “surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses, we lay aside every weight and run with perseverance the race set before us, looking to Jesus . . .” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

Written for a meeting of the Baptist World Alliance Peace Commission, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Parable of the Sower

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it. (The Talmud)

And how are we to spend ourselves for the sake of the world that God loves? For the recognition? For the virtue?

For the hope of return in the future? Maybe for the pleasure?

No, we “give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.” (Kahlil Gibran)

Give without allowing the left hand to know what the right hand does. (Matthew 6:3, 4)

Give without hope for heaven or fear of hell. (Rabia al-Adawiyya, 8th century Sufi mystic)

If you experience forgiveness, you will be forgiving. If you encounter mercy, you will be merciful.

Exhausting yourself in giving grows more from pride than from love. The world’s salvation is not up to you. So back off!

In Jesus’ parable, we are neither the sower nor the seed. We are the ground. Direct all your longing to be fertile soil. The sower will come, and the seed will be planted, in good time.

It is no sin to leave some things for our children—and to God. (Walter Rauschenbusch)

Inspired by Mark 4:26-34.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks

Are the poor “always with us”?

Brief commentary on a fatalistic reading of an ancient text

       My hometown paper, the Asheville Citizen-Times, recently ran an editorial arguing that poverty is not inevitable. The following was my response, printed as a letter to the editor.

        Wednesday’s AC-T editorial (“The cycle of poverty is not inevitable”) offers a compelling rebuttal to the notion that poverty is preordained. One reference, however, repeats a popular misreading of ancient authority: “Many who are not poor accept the biblical maxim that the poor will always be with us. . . .”

        The “maxim” in Deuteronomy 15:11 (referenced by Jesus, in three of the Gospels, for other purposes) is the premise for this conclusion: “I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy.’”

        In other words, the persistent scourge of poverty does not absolve us of responsibility but actually underscores our duty—because poverty is not a given in creation but the result human greed, i.e., the fracturing of covenant life. In fact, earlier in this same chapter, God promises, for those faithful to the covenant, that the day is coming when “there will be no one in need among you” (v. 4).

        Furthermore, divine mandates earlier in Deuteronomy 15 (which surface in many other texts) call for a regular pattern of debt release and social reordering. Now there’s a scary thought in a culture devoted to building bigger and bigger barns (cf. Luke 12:18).

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

News, views, notes, and quotes

28 May 2015 •  No. 23

Special issue on
The Bible

“What bothers me about the Bible is not the parts I can't understand, but the parts I can understand.” —Mark Twain

¶  “Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of [another]. . . . There are just some kind of men who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.” —Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockingbird”

"Most people who profess a deep love of the Bible have never actually read the book. They have memorized parts of texts that they can string together to prove the biblical basis for whatever it is they believe in, but they ignore the vast majority of the text." —Rabbi Rami Shapiro, noting that a student in his Bible class at Middle Tennessee State University believed the saying “This dog won’t hunt” is a biblical proverb

“When the white man came we had the land and they had the bibles; now they have the land and we have the bibles.” —Chief Dan George of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation

The first English settlers to this “new” world were not hesitant to plunder the graves and winter grain storages of the indigenous population. Among the biblical texts they favored was Psalm 2:8: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”

“There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, "Why on our hearts, and not in them?" The rabbi answered, "Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your heart, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.”  —Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“Avoid stupid, senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels.” —2 Timothy 2:23

“Polis is the Greek word for 'city,' and thus politics is concerned with the 'shape' of the city, and by extension, of any human community.  Indeed, it concerns both the shaping and the shape, process as well as result.  In this sense of the word, biblical religion is intrinsically political, for it is persistently concerned with the life of a community living in history.” —Marcus J. Borg, Jesus: A New Vision

“The biblical writers are clear that faith generally reflects the social fabric of the nation. The ramifications of social injustice quickly spread to the temple, where faith tends to reinforce rather than transform the structures of oppression. For this reason Amos [13:13-15] announces that God's judgment will strike both temple (the center of religious life) and mansion (the embodiment of an economy of luxury built on the backs of the poor).” —Jack Nelson, Hunger for Justice

“We do not read the Bible the way it is; we read it the way we are.” —Evelyn Uyemura

“I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence. I can understand a wrathful God who’d just as soon dangle us all from a hook. And I can understand a tender, unprejudiced Jesus. But I could never quite feature the two of them living in the same house.” —Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

As the story goes, a Catholic monk was asked if Jesus was his personal Lord and Savior. The monk replied, “Nope. I prefer to share him.”

Is there justification for barbarity in the Qur’an? Better ask, first, is there such justification in the Bible? What about 1 Samuel 15: “Samuel said to Saul, ‘[L]isten to the words of the Lord. . . . Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey’” (vv. 1, 3). The psalmists have plenty of payback resolves, including “Happy shall they be who take your [speaking of Babylonians] little ones and dash them against the rock!” (137:9) And blood fairly runs in the streets several times in John’s Revelation.

“Evangelical Christianity . . . once harbored an ancient biblical bias in favor of the poor, but now, at least in its high-profile megachurch manifestations, it has abandoned the book of Matthew for a ‘prosperity gospel’ that counts wealth as a mark of God’s favor.” —Barbara Ehrenreich

You may recall the “Open Letter to Dr. Laura,” a satirical jab at biblical literalism, which circulated on the internet some years ago (and was adapted and put in the mouth of "The West Wing" television series’ President Bartlett, played by Martin Sheen).

“How does my reading of the Bible affect my relationship to others? As Augustine states in De Doctrina Christiana, if it does not teach you to love, read it again until it does!” —Scripture scholar Ray Hobbs

“I was assigned as chaplain to the battalion defending the Remagen bridgehead in Germany in World War II. My company took over a house a few miles upstream from the bridge. The house had been the home of a German pastor. A corporal hailed me and said, "Look, Chappie, what I found" and he handed me a Bible. On close inspection I was surprised to find a big lot of pages torn out. They were after Nehemiah and before Job. The book of Esther was missing. I recalled that Hitler had ordered all loyal pastors to excise the book of Esther, which recorded another attempt by a tyrant, from biblical days, to annihilate the Jewish race.”  —C.B. Hastings

"The Bible is a mirror with true reflection. If an ass looks into it, don’t expect an apostle to look back." —William Sloan Coffin

“Scripture is indeed at the center of our conversations, but is not their parameter. Our reflections begin in the text but are not exhausted by it. For the Bible does not reference itself, only Another, Another so elusive and unbounded as to have an unnameable Name.
        “Scripture emits the aroma of God, an echo of God, a taste of God, a grace-and-pathos filled touch of God, a fleeting backside glimpse of God whose purpose is to whet our senses and thereby draw us into a world aflame with Heaven’s impassioned presence still hidden in the shadows of brutal temporal affairs.
       "As Northern Irish theologian Peter Rollins says, ‘God is not a fact to be grasped but an incoming to be undergone.’” —Ken Sehested

“If the scriptures do not justify slavery, I know not what they do justify. If we err in maintaining this relation, I know not when we are right—truth then has parted her usual moorings and floated off into an ocean of uncertainty.” —The Reverend Ferdinand Jacobs, Presbyterian pastor in Charleston, SC, 1850

Pictured at left: Isaiah 2:4, carved into stone at the Ralph Bunche Park across from the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Bunche, a key figure in creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, was the first African American recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediation work in Israel-Palestine.

“Linda and Rob Robertson, whose gay son died of complications after a drug overdose, now run a weekly Bible-study group for about 40 LGBT adults in the Seattle area. Linda runs a private Facebook group, "Just Because They Breathe," for nearly 350 conservative evangelical moms of gay and lesbian children. The work is slow, she says, but important: she devotes her days to talking to mothers who feel they have to abandon their faith to love their child or who are afraid to voice their questions with their nonaffirming churches.” —Elizabeth Dias, “A Change of Heart: Inside the evangelical war over gay marriage,” Time magazine

The Bible is “the place where the church hears God speaking and discerns God’s presence when their words are studied and pondered and questioned—and opened for us by the Stranger who accompanies us on our journey and breaks bread with us.” —Phyllis Ann Bird, The Bible as the Church's Book

“It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.” ―Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“Once we recognize that the most basic questions about economic systems were entwined with biblical religion and fought over as an intrinsic aspect of living religiously, we gain leverage to criticize and evaluate economic systems today.” —Norman Gottwald, The Hebrew Bible in Its Social World and in Ours

“It is common that we are prone to use the Bible as a drunk uses a lamppost—for support rather than illumination.” —William Sloan Coffin, Credo

Pictured at right: US Marines in an M1 Abram tank in Anbar Province, Iraq, with its gun barrel christened as the "New Testament."

 ¶ “Reading the Bible with the eyes of the poor is a different thing from reading it with a full belly. If it is read in the light of the experience and hopes of the oppressed, the Bible’s revolutionary themes—promise, exodus, resurrection and spirit—come alive.” —Jürgen Moltman, The Church in the Power of the Spirit

“Do we really need to break a cow's neck at the sight of an unsolved murder (Deuteronomy 21:1-6)? What about the prohibitions on two kinds of material in the same garment (Leviticus 19:19)? If I get into a fight and my wife inadvertently grabs the privates of my opponent I do not want to have to cut off her hand (Deuteronomy 25:11-12). It may even be time to let go of capital punishment for breaking the Sabbath (Exodus 31:14)." —Brett Younger

“The innermost truth of a text resides in a life that exhibits its power.” —Belden Lane, Backpacking With the Saints

“In my seminary preparation in the USA, I never dreamed I was preparing for a career as a professor of ‘subversive literature’! Now I am not surprised when I hear how the American Bible Society landed in trouble for publishing a modern, comprehensible translation of Amos with the red cover and the simple word ‘Justice’ printed on the cover (banned in Pinochet's Chile).  Or that the use of a Spanish version of Mary's Magnificat in the Catholic Mass was prohibited in one area of Argentina.” —Thomas D. Hanks, God So Loved the Third World

“The central vision of world history in the Bible is that all of creation is one, every creature in commune with every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every other creature.” —Walter Brueggemann, Living Toward a Vision

“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” —Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“How would it change the nature of our wrestling if we did so in the context of continuous Bible study and singing and worship?  For those still working their way out from under the weight of an oppressively pious upbringing, that probably does not resound as good news, but it is. It is the way increasing numbers of others have learned they must live, in order to keep on struggling against the Beast without being made bestial.” —Walter Wink, Naming the Powers

“The Bible is the story of the breakthrough of God in human history.” —George Williamson

“One of my seminary colleagues had taken a pair of scissors to an old Bible, and he proceeded to cut out every single reference to the poor. It took him a very long time. When he finally was finished . . . the Bible was full of holes. I used to take it out with me to preach. I’d hold it high above church congregations and say, ‘Brothers and sisters, this is our American Bible! It’s full of holes!’” —Jim Wallis, Faith Works: How Faith-based Organizations are Changing Lives, Neighborhoods and America

“For we do not go hawking the word of God about, as so many do.” —2 Corinthians 2:17 (New English)

The Spanish, in their conquest of Americas, looked to Scripture to justify their imperial reign: “For the king had a fleet of ships of Tarshish at sea with the fleet of Hiram. Once every three years the fleet of ships of Tarshish used to come bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. Thus King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom. The whole earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put into his mind. Every one of them brought a present, objects of silver and gold, garments, weaponry, spices, horses, and mules, so much year by year” (1 Kings 10:22-25).

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people." —G. K. Chesterton

“An agricultural student from India who was studying at Florida State University visited Koinonia Farm for a weekend, and he expressed an interest in attending an American Protestant worship service. The Jordans escorted him to Rehoboth, where the presence of his dark skin miraculously chilled the hot, humid southern Georgia atmosphere. Obviously Koinonia had disguised a "ni**er," called him a Indian, and sneaked him into divine worship. 
        “A group of men from the church came to the farm and confronted Clarence again with a plea for Koinonians to stay away from the church. Clarence said that he and the others would be willing to apologize before the congregation if they had done anything to offend anyone. He handed a Bible to one of the men and asked him to show, through the Scriptures, how any wrong had been committed. The man slammed the book down and said: ‘Don't give me any of this Bible stuff!’
        “Clarence, who always geared down to a soft but confident tone in such encounters, replied: ‘I'm not giving you any Bible stuff. I'm asking you to give it to me.’ He then suggested to the deacon that if he could not accept the Bible as the ‘Holy inspired Word of God,’ that perhaps he should get out of the Baptist church himself. Exasperated, the men left.” —Dallas Lee, Cotton Patch Evidence

“There are some [Scripture texts] . . . which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction.” —2 Peter 3:16b (English Standard)

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

• “Bowling in Baghdad: Which memorial will guide?”, a Memorial Day reflection

• “Hallelujah,” new lyrics to Leonard Cohen’s song, adapted from Psalm 23

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.

Your comments are always welcomed. If you have news, views, notes or quotes to add to the list above, please do. If you like what you read, pass this along to your friends.

Bowling in Baghdad

Which memorial will guide?

by Ken Sehested, Memorial Day 2015

The Al-Fanar Hotel restaurant was bustling when I walked in. I sat with a new friend, Charles, a professional photojournalist and fellow Iraq Peace Team member. There were about 40 of us, split between three hotels in downtown Baghdad on the banks of the Tigris River. This was February 2003, in the weeks leading up to the “shock and awe” invasion.

We were monitoring the effects of U.N. sanctions and providing an alternative account to that of the mainstream media’s war promotion. The trip was not undertaken lightly, given the impending invasion, along with the threat by our own government of prison sentences and steep fines for breaching the U.S. travel ban.

Midway through our meal Charles asked if I’d like to go bowling.

Bowling? In Baghdad? Sounds like a Jon Stewart Daily Show comedy skit.

I jumped at the chance, though I hadn’t bowled in years. In his wandering the city capturing photogenic occasions, Charles had stumbled across a two-lane bowling alley several blocks away.

In the lane next to use were three Iraqis, one of them really good, bowling strike after strike. I whispered to Charles, “Can you believe this guy?” He whispered back, “Oh, that’s Ahmad. He’s a former Iraqi national bowling champion.”

Yet one more thing I didn’t know. (It’s a long list.)

“Do you think it would be OK if I asked for his autograph,” I asked. “Oh, I’m sure he’d be happy to,” Charles said as he walked over to speak to one of the other bowlers, conveying my request, who then spoke to Ahmad, who looked at me and smiled.

I started looking for something for him to sign. Ahmad had walked over to a desk near the door, opened a drawer, pulled out something I couldn’t see—though it appeared to have a string attached.

He was writing on it as he walked back, then handed me my souvenir, some sort of medallion.

There I was, not just a foreigner (not to mention pitiful bowler), but the face of a nation bitterly antagonistic to his, and about to invade, and he’s handing me one of his bowling medals with his personal autograph. (Pictured left.)

I was—and remain still, with every remembrance—overcome with grace, shocked-and-awed at the outbreak of heaven where hellish hostility reigns. Not even Jon Stewart’s comedic mind could conjure an Iraqi national bowling champion as an instrument of absolution.

The war came anyway, of course, and the outbreaks of enmity—some small and personal, some large and public, some nearby and others far afield—seem relentless. Compared to its sway, the Way of Jesus seems a bit romantic.

The Way of Jesus is committed to a different sort of Memorial Day as a guide for its bearings. Not in reproach to the courageous valor of soldiers—nonviolent struggle against injustice requires at least as much. But for an alternative memory—forged in the Eucharistic remembrance of Jesus’ Last Supper—and its vision of how the world is to be re-ordered and reoriented by a different sort of romance, tuned toward the day when justice and peace shall kiss (Psalm 85:10), when the meek will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5), and every tear will be dried (Revelation 21:4).

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©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Hallelujah

New lyrics to Leonard Cohen’s song, adapted from Psalm 23

The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want
Green pastures rise and from the font
Flow waters, ever gentle, to surround me
My soul restored, my heart aflame
My feet will walk and for that Name
My lungs will lift to sing, Hallelujah.

Chorus: Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

In darkest valley, I’ll not fear
Though evil threat be crouching near
Your Presence ever shadows and enfolds me
At banquet feast you bid me rest
With enemies as table guests
My cup o’erflows with shouts of Hallelujah.

Chorus

Now goodness rests upon my head,
To follow all my days, no dread
But mercy comes running to embrace me
With love’s refrain I shall obtain,
A dwelling place in God’s new Reign
And fallow fields in chorus yield hallelujah!

Chorus

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org.

Reprinted from In the Land of the Living: Prayers personal and public

News, views, notes, and quotes

21 May 2015  •  No. 22

Invocation. "This old world is mean and cruel, / But still I love it like a fool, this world, / This world, this world." —Malvina Reynolds, “This World”

Right: ©Julie Lonneman

Call to Worship. “Send Me,” a litany drawing from Isaiah 6:1-8.

¶ Let’s begin with birthday remembrances of three lesser-known faces among the cloud of witnesses: Bayard Rustin (17 March), Rachel Carson (27 May) and Malcolm X (19 May).

Bayard Rustin (17 March 1912 – 24 August 1987) is among the least well-known key leaders of the modern US Civil Rights Movement. Mostly because he was a gay black man.
        It didn’t help that he was also a pacifist—before, during and after World War II—and served three years in a federal penitentiary, beginning in 1943, for his refusal of military service.
        It also didn’t help that for a few years, before Joseph Stalin came to power in the Soviet Union, Rustin was a member of the Communist Party. He never looked back on that affiliation; in fact, he later became an outspoken critic of Soviet aggression. But he always considered himself a socialist.
        At various times Rustin was a brilliant strategic planner for the American Friends Service Committee (he was a lifelong Quaker), the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Congress on Racial Equality, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the War Resisters’ League. Many would say his signature accomplishment was as the organizing strategist for the 1963 March on Washington.

Right: Design by Ken Sehested.

¶ Here are some media sources on Rustin’s life for more information:
        •Watch this stirring 4-minute clip from the film, “Brother Outsider—The Life of Bayard Rustin.”
        •Here is a 4-minute video, “Bayard Rustin in Pictures”
        • Read this extraordinary brief essay, “Nonviolence vs. Jim Crow” by Bayard Rustin, about his 1942 arrest on a bus trip.
        •Want more? Here’s a 53-minute audio program, “State of the Reunion,” profiling of Rustin’s life.

Can’t you just imagine Rustin’s angelic smile today when he heard the news that Boy Scouts of America President Robert Gates called for an end to the group’s blanket ban on gay adult leaders?

“I remembered Bayard Rustin, a conscientious objector who had served time in prison during the Second World War and then became a leader in the civil rights movement, saying that being a pacifist is one-tenth conscientious objection and nine-tenths working to do away with the things that make for war." —David Hartsough with Joyce Hollyday, Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist

“My activism did not spring from my being gay, or for that matter, from my being black. Rather it is rooted, fundamentally, in my Quaker upbringing and the values that were instilled in me by my grandparents who reared me.” —Bayard Rustin, I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters, edited by Michael G. Long

Rachel Carson (27 May 1907 – 14 April 1964) was a marine biologist and conservationist. Her 1962 book, The Silent Spring, documenting the poisonous effects (on birds, especially) of widespread use of pesticides, is considered by many to have launched the modern environmental movement.
        As you might imagine, chemical companies mounted fierce resistance, including threatened legal action and a disinformation campaign (sound familiar?), to discredit the book. One industry biochemist called Carson “a fanatic defender of the cult of the balance of nature." A former US Secretary of Agriculture said that because Carson was unmarried despite being physically attractive, she was “probably a Communist.” Her signature accomplishment was the successful campaign to ban the use of DDT. Her enduring legacy was recalled in the creation, under President Nixon in 1970, of the US Environmental Protection Agency; and, in 1980, President Carter posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Left: ©Ricardo Levins Morales, RLM Art Studio.

¶ "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." —Arthur Schopenhauer, 19th century German philosopher

Malcolm X (19 May 1925 – 21 February 1965) was born Malcolm Little (also known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz). By age 20 he was in prison, where he converted to the Nation of Islam. Afterward he quickly became a leader in the movement and was known for his black supremacy message and frequent criticism of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., for their integrationist vision. (On choosing “X” for a last name, he said, “For me, my ‘X’ replaced the white slave master name of ‘Little’ which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears.”) He later became disillusioned with the Nation of Islam, spurred in part by his growing international connections in the Muslim world and conversion to Sunni Islam. As his vision of the future became more expansive, King’s was becoming deeper. Many have speculated that, had they lived, their respective trajectories might have led to some form of collaboration. (For a fuller exploration of their differences and similarities, see James Cone’s monumental work, Martin, Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare.)

On the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
        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, and here’s this guy, who I now am ready to befriend, sharply critical of liberal integrationists! (continue reading Ken Sehested's essay)

An encouraging word. “I am one of 450,000 hospice volunteers in the United States. Hospice programs now care for 60% of all dying patients each year, a total of 1.5 million. . . . I’ve purchased lottery tickets and fetched bialys from Zabar’s, the specialty grocery store on Broadway. I’ve scored weed in the Village for an 80-year-old doctor with lung cancer and schlepped it by subway to the Upper West Side. I rolled its sticky green leaves into a thin joint and watched her relax for the first time since I met her. I’ve read all 150 chapters of Psalms in one sitting and written tactful letters to childhood friends. I’ve bought Champagne for last birthdays and white carnations, their smell harking back to some unstated but precious memory from years gone by. Once, when Hostess briefly discontinued Twinkies, I scoured a dozen delis in Brooklyn for the cream-filled, spongy yellow cakes. I finally found a carton on eBay.” —Ann Neumann, “Their Dying Wishes,” New York Times

Lectionary for Sunday next. “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption” as “heirs of God and joint heirs in Christ.” —Romans 8:15

Grandmas can be tough when they need to be. “Keromela Anek tossed her naked body back and forth in the roadway, blocking a government convoy in the remote village of Apaa, Uganda which was to be redistricted to help facilitate the sale of the peoples’ land to South African investor Bruce Martin, who hoped to use the heavily forested, currently-populated area for sports game hunting.” —Phil Wilmot, “Meet the Ugandan peasant grandmother who terrifies her president”

A new survey report of the financial service industry in the US and the United Kingdom documents what many suspect: unethical or illegal behavior is endemic to the financial services industry. Released Thursday by University of Notre, the study shows that a third of those making $500,000 annually “have witnessed or have firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace.” Nearly one in five feel unethical or illegal activity essential for success. And half believe regulatory agencies are ineffective.
        •“The pattern of bad behavior did not end with the financial crisis, but continued despite the considerable public sector intervention that was necessary to stabilize the financial system,” William C. Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said in a speech late last year on Wall Street culture. “I reject the narrative that the current state of affairs is simply the result of the actions of isolated rogue traders or a few bad actors within these firms.”
        •Many of those surveyed said they had signed (or been asked to sign) a confidentiality agreement that would prohibit them from reporting illicit activity to regulatory authorities. —Andrew Ross Sorkin, “Many on Wall Street Say It Remains Untamed”
 
Surprise, surprise. “The day after the above report was issued, news came that five global financial institutions agreed to plead guilty to multiple crimes and pay about $5.6 billion in penalties for manipulating foreign currencies and interest rates.” Attorney General Loretta Lynch called the crimes “a brazen display of collusion” causing “pervasive harm.” —Deidre Fulton, “Latest Guilty Pleas Prove Big Bank Criminality ‘Rampant,’ But Jail Time Non-Existent”

Numb-ers. In 2013 the cumulative earnings of the top 25 hedge fund managers ($21.1 billion-with-a-b) was 2.5 times the income of every kindergarten teacher in the country combined.

And. . . “Just the annual bonuses for just the sliver of Americans who work just in finance just in New York City dwarfed the combined year-round earnings of all Americans earning the federal minimum wage." —Nicholas Kristoff, “Inequality Is a Choice,” New York Times

Quotes to stir reflections. Collecting quotes has been an important way to deepen my own thinking, to remember keen insights—a kind of compost for the soul. The “quotable quotes”  section on this site is one repository. Here are two (free) electronic sources of daily insights to which you can subscribe: Inward/Outward from The Church of the Saviour and The Daily Dig, from Plough, a ministry of the Bruderhof Community. And another favorite source of quotes is Spirituality & Practice.
        Have sources of your own? Post those in the reader comments section at bottom.

Intercession. “Now, I don’t know much but I can tell when something’s wrong, and something’s wrong, but some holy ghost keeps me hangin’ on.” —Mavis Staples, “Holy Ghost”

The thrill is gone. Years ago, after moving to Memphis (Tennessee, not Egypt), I dubbed it “the city where two Kings died”—Elvis and Martin. With the “King of the Blues’” recent passing, make that a trinity. Born in the Mississippi Delta, Riley B. (later “B.B.” for “Blues Boy”) King’s first recordings were produced by Sam Phillips, who later founded the famous Sun Records in Memphis.
        My one personal connection with King came when my wife performed the wedding of King’s tour manager and Ruby Wilson, “Queen of Memphis” and a regular performer at B.B. King’s Blues Club. King was the best man. That evening, using a stage door pass, we were escorted to the front table at his club on Beale Street, feet away from the man-his-own-self.
        King’s Grammy Award-winning “The Thrill Is Gone”  was playing in my mind when writing “Oh foofaraw,” a call to worship. Ruby Wilson’s rendition of “Just a Closer Walk With Thee”  is my favorite. (Ruby blew out the sound system in our church when she sang for us one Sunday.) If you want a New Orleans-style version of that old hymn, listen to Joshua Stewart & The Bourbon Street Stompers.

Hymn of confession. “I Need Thee, O, I Need Thee,” Sam Robson—nine-part harmony, and he does them all.

On the theme of “calling.” Béla Fleck, arguably the world’s greatest banjo player, grew up in a home with minimal music. But he came enchanted with the sound of the banjo after hearing Earl Scrugg’s theme song to the television sitcom “Beverly Hillbillies.” You never know where revelation will strike, sometimes like dry lightning from rainless skies.

Hillbilly Bach. This Béla Fleck banjo rendition of Bach’s Violin Partita #3 will scramble your genre brains.

Preach it. “In what historian Daniel Rodgers has termed our ‘age of fracture,’ the individual self has become the locus of liberation, and the shopping mall and smartphone the sites of redemption.” —Robert Westbrook, The Christian Century

Call to the table. “There is room at the table for everyone,” Carrie Newcomer.

Right: Fritz Eichenberg, “The Lord’s Supper”

Hymn of commitment. “The Race,” The Steel Wheels

Benediction. “Nothing is exempt from resurrection.” —Kay Ryan, “Waste”

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

• “After the ecstasy, the laundry,” a sermon Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 29; John 3:1-17

• “Lovers in Dangerous Times, a sermon on Romans 8:12-25

• “Send Me,” a litany for worship inspired by Isaiah 6:1-8

• “Oh foofaraw,” a litany for worship inspired by Jeremiah 15:16-19

• “On reading Malcolm X’s Autobiography,” an essay marking the 50th anniversary of its publication

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor. Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.

Your comments are always welcomed. If you have news, views, notes or quotes to add to the list above, please do. If you like what you read, pass this along to your friends.

After the ecstasy, the laundry

Ken Sehested
Texts: Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 29; John 3:1-17

 

         It was the first football game of my senior year of high school. We traveled west-by-northwest, paralleling the Louisiana coastline, to New Iberia, where that bottle of spicy Tabasco sauce in your kitchen cabinet was made.

         Sometime during the first half—I can’t remember when—I was knocked unconscious. (It was the second of a half-dozen concussions I got playing football, which some people would say explains a lot about my behavior.) All I remember is that I came to at half-time, sitting in the visiting team locker room. My teammates were milling around gulping water. One of my coaches stooped low and said something like: “Are you about ready to rejoin us, Sehested!”

         And I suddenly became aware that I had been quoting to myself, over and over again, the familiar line from the King James Version of John’s Gospel: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (3:16). It was as if I were chanting a mantra—something, anything, to bring me back to consciousness.

         As most of you know, that line is part of the climactic conclusion to the story of Nicodemus’ night-time rendezvous with Jesus. Nicodemus, identified in the text as “a man of the Pharisees” and “a ruler of the Jews.” Given the hostility of the authorities toward Jesus, Nicodemus preferred the cover of darkness for his conversation. Obviously, he was a dissenter from his peers with regard to this teacher from Galilee. His tone was respectful, even admiring: “We know you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs apart from the presence of God.”

         Jesus sidesteps the compliment and gets straight to the point: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.” Or, in more accurate translation, “born from above.” Not born from the sky; but born from a place where human ingenuity and technological prowess are powerless to effect—born from a source which we do not control or manipulate.

         Last week I began the sermon asking you to say what immediately and instinctively comes to mind when you hear the word “Pentecostal.” Most of the them were not complimentary. Our more refined religious sensibilities are a little troubled by the thought of exuberant emotional display.

         I’m pretty sure we’d get the same results to the phrase “born again.” A large slice of the Christian community usually distinguish themselves specifically as “born-again” Christians—as opposed to others who merely claim to be believers (but probably haven’t really gotten saved yet). When the Pentecostals and the born-again-ers draw the boundaries of Christian faith, folk like us are liable not to be included. And in reaction, we have ceded to them the copyrights to two of our most important narratives.

         In their defense, when our Pentecostal and born-again friends look at us they see Christians eager for bottom-line belief, cut-rate conviction and pain-free discipleship. Faith on the cheap. They see people who think Jesus was just engaging in hyperbole when he said that you must lose your life if you would find it. Instead of the trauma of transformation, a little therapeutic intervention will do. And my guess is that they are right about us as least as often as we are right about them.

         Last week I mentioned that where Easter represents God’s Resurrection moment, Pentecost represents God’s Resurrection movement. Pentecost is when the disciples are invested with the power to live into this redemptive future. As is customary throughout biblical literature, fire and wind are images of the potency of God’s presence in the affairs of human experience. And there is a kind of violence to them, if you think of turbulence and turmoil and trauma as violent images. Pentecostal power is disruptive power. It is the kind of power that turns things upside down; that challenges the status quo; that speaks up even in the face of threat. Pentecostal power is risky business, and could even draw blood—though this power represents the willingness to shed our own blood rather than require it of others. In a culture consumed with demands for security, Pentecostal power seems reckless, foolish.

         Pentecostal power harkens back to earlier narratives, like the call of Isaiah, where the invitation to faith appears in the fantastic vision of a six-winged seraph wielding a hot coal to the lips. There is a kind of searing to our customary hopes and dreams and presumptions. And sometimes it turns us into troublemakers.

         In the church’s liturgical calendar, this Sunday we move out of the series of seasonal dramas into a period sometimes referred to as “ordinary time.” Since December it’s been one special event after another: First, Advent; then Christmas and Epiphany; followed by Lent, leading to Holy Week, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection; and finally, Pentecost. But now that dramatic pattern shifts. Now comes the days and weeks of equilibrium. Some would even say, mundane living. It’s when the church calendar settles down and lots of people go on vacation. “After the ecstasy comes the laundry.” [The phrase is the title of a Jack Kornfield book.]

          It’s not nearly as exciting to live into ordinary days. But that’s where we are. The outbreak of drama will ever be part of our communal vision: I hope to God that people will continue to be called to desert walks, like Kim and Annika did last week; to cross boundaries, which landed Linda in prison; to visits to Cuba, still considered our nation’s nearest, most hated enemy; maybe to kidnapping, even execution, in Iraq, like our Christian Peacemaker Teams friends endured.

         But the fact is, the vast majority of our energy and time is spent deciding how best to live disarmed lives in the ordinariness of human life. I went to Iraq myself, but I am convinced that those of you who teach our children’s Christian education classes week in and week out make a more lasting contribution to the Beloved Community for which we dream. Linda’s jail term got more press coverage, but the fact is that her years of patient work partnering congregations here in the U.S. with others in Central America will bear a fuller harvest. Joyce has a wider audience for her stories on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation process, but her coverage of the same process in Greensboro will press us more directly to unearth the racial violence closer to home. And the work of Christians for a United Community right here in Asheville—with which several in this Circle are personally involved and all of us invested through our church’s financial support—most immediately poses the demand for transformation right in our own neighborhoods.

         Don’t get me wrong: I hope we shall always foster a large and global vision for Pentecostal power. But if it has integrity, it will always be rooted in what William Blake called “minute particulars.” In other words, after the ecstasy comes the laundry.

         It will mean, for instance, that we here in this Circle will constantly work at living unarmed lives with each other, even in the midst of inevitable differences of opinion. Even as we attempt to practice good stewardship of our common purse, I hope we will always remain open to considering options that run the risk of bankruptcy. I hope we will continue to find ways to surround our young ones with affection but also will challenge to live beyond their comfort zones. I hope we will always offer mercy to each other in the midst of failure, but never let such failures be the defining shape of our individual and corporate lives.

         And when we hear the voice of God asking, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” I hope we shall urge each other forward and yell ourselves hoarse cheering each other on.

         Even in the midst of our ordinary days I hope we will keep an eye out for that six-winged seraph circling overhead.

#  #  #

Circle of Mercy, 11 June 2006

©Ken Sehested @ prayerand politiks.org

Lovers in Dangerous Times

Ken Sehested
Text: Romans 8:12-25

“We are lovers in dangerous times.” —Bruce Cochburn

“Faith is not belief in spite of the evidence. Faith is life lived in scorn of the consequences.” —Clarence Jordan

            This text from Romans is of special significance to me. I first discovered it—or maybe I should say, was first understood it—when I was in seminary. I was in the midst of a raging internal struggle, peeling off the layers of privatized religious faith centered around the survival of my petty little ego . . . .

            That’s what I thought getting saved was about—getting saved from God’s wrath and hell’s torment, kind of like getting saved from Daddy when he was angry, or getting called on in class when I didn’t know the answer—only much bigger—which means I had to straighten up, act right, say yessir and yesmam, play nice, get my homework done, strive not say any dirty words or look at dirty pictures or have dirty thoughts, and try my best to pretend I actually enjoyed going to church.

            Actually, I did a fairly good job at all those things—except, maybe, the dirty thoughts part.

            Despite my best intentions, when I entered seminary my heart was still governed pretty much by the theological assumption behind that bumper sticker I recently bought on-line. It has one of those traditional 19th century painting of Jesus, only in this one Jesus has one eyebrow slightly cocked upward; and the caption says:

            “Flatter Jesus, or he’ll torment you in hell.”

            “Faith is life lived in scorn of the consequences,” wrote Clarence Jordan.

            “For in hope we were saved,” said Paul in today’s scripture text. And in the lyrical text of Bruce Cockburn, “We are lovers in dangerous times.”

            Faith  . . .  hope . . .  and love. These three abide.

            Much of church history is the story of offering faith and hope, usually at discounted prices, as a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card to people afraid to match their own moral virtue against that of an insatiably prudish and severely high-minded God.

            Or, in a consumerist culture like ours, hope looks like what I did every year as a kid, right after Thanksgiving dinner was finished, when I got out the new Sears catalog, turned to the toys section, and begin carefully studying each items listed. The first time through I circled all the possibilities. It was outrageous, of course—even I knew that. So I’d have to go through several more rounds of elimination to pare down to merely extravagant what would be my letter to Santa Claus.

            For in hope we were saved. For in hope we are being saved. For in hope we will be saved. For the Apostle Paul, the tense of the word “save” is fluid. If you do a word study of his use of the word “save” and its synonyms, some are past tense, even more are present tense, but the majority are future tense.

            And, in fact, the future tense—we will be saved—is the dominant one in this text. Not just we—we humans; much less me, my own private self. But the whole of creation, groaning as in the labor before childbirth. Waiting, groaning inwardly, hoping for adoption, for the redemption of our bodies.

            [Note here there is no language about having our “souls” saved. This is an earthy, fleshy affair we’re talking about.]

            It was the discovery of this text about all of creation waiting for redemption—along with a wealth of other texts that underscore the earthly, fleshy affair of salvation history—that finally unlocked my imprisonment in a theological worldview that was little more than a pious form of egotism and self-centeredness. What I was being saved from—what we are being saved from; what, finally, we all will be saved from—is exactly this kind of stingy, self-centered way of living.

            “Faith, hope, and love . . . these three things abide,” Paul wrote in one of his other epistles. How do we understand the relation of these three elements?

            Faith is the vision factor, the intuition that a different world is possible, that an alternative to the present world order rooted in injustice and vengeance and violence is available.

            If faith is the vision factor, then hope is the confidence factor. Faith assures that something else is possible, hope marshals the assets needed to live in the direction of this vision, this new world order.

            And if hope is the confidence factor, love is the operational factor. Love is Captain Picard who, after articulating a course of action, executes it with the words: “Make it so.” Love is what actually plunges us from theory to practice.

            Of these three abiding things—faith, hope and love—the greatest of these is love, Paul wrote. Only because love is the actual reality check on faith and hope. Anybody can speak of faith and claim hope. Love is where the rubber meets the road.

            “By this shall all know you are my disciples,” Jesus said, “if you love one another.” Not “if you have faith,” or “if you have hope,” but “if you have love.”

            It’s not that love is better than faith and hope. Paul is not establishing a theological hierarchy of virtues. It’s just that love is evidence that faith and hope are actually present. Love is the incarnation, the visible shape, of faith and hope.

            In the terminology of the New Testament, these three words—faith, hope and love—are often used interchangeably. The use of one often presupposes the meaning of all three. They are distinct acts in a single drama of salvation.

            Most of us don’t much care for salvation talk. We associate it with religious bullying. It’s embarrassing to come up on a street preacher breathing salvation fire at the top of his lungs. Back in the days when airlines had smoking sections, I frequently booked a seat back with the smokers, thinking I’d be less likely to sit down next to someone who wanted to talk about faith, who wanted to know if I was saved, if I was born again, if I’d given my heart to Jesus. Faith talk has this deep association with religious arrogance. Which is why we tend to stay away from it, except in the confines of church life—and then only in very moderated, modernized and dispassionate terms.

            I believe we need to get back to immoderate, thoroughly unmodern and very passionate terms.

            I believe faith is risky business, that lives are at stake, even the life of creation itself.

            I believe that faith’s claim on us is inconvenient, will interrupt the stable course of our lives, and will cause us to do things the world considers foolish, reckless, even impolite.

            I believe that faith will call into question the rule of fiduciary responsibility—of making the most money in the shortest period of time; that it will provoke us to cross boundaries of political expediency, of social conformity and of cultural exclusion.

            I believe that faith—faith that another world is not only possible but is assured—is the only asset which can break the political, economic and social stranglehold which currently governs the world.

            And not just the world out there, but the world in here, as well, in your life and mine—for our lives, too, are too often governed by fear and regret and anxiety and fretfulness—fretfulness over the prospect of scarcity, which is to say: Fretfulness that our fates are set and there’s nothing we can do about it.

            New worlds sound nice, we tell ourselves; and it’s a pleasant diversion to come here every week or so to fantasize, to engage in a kind of religious voyeurism. But the truth is that the world is not headed for salvation. The truth is the world is dirty and mean and to get along, to get even a little bit of my share, I’ve got to learn to be dirty and mean.

            What images or stories do you have that indicate what faith is? Not from the Bible or some other text, but from your own life, homegrown images?

            One of my favorites comes from a camping trip we took several years ago, in the Ouachita Mountains of Eastern Arkansas, with some friends from Memphis. One of our friends knows the area very well. In faith, he's a spelunker—that odd word we apply to people who like to go exploring in caves deep under the earth. Our friend is also a mountain climber, and he brought his ropes and harness along in case anyone wanted to do some repelling—another of those odd words for people who dangle down the side of mountains on a rope.

            Well, we decided to give it a try—but only off a beginner's cliff of, oh, twenty feet or so high. The particular harness we used was actually very safe. It was the beginner's model. The rope was tied through it in such a way that it would slid through very slowly. And the person on the ground beneath us, holding the other end of the rope, could at any moment stop your fall in mid-air simply by pulling tight on the rope.

            What better assurance could you ask for?

            That's exactly what I kept telling myself as I strapped in to that harness, turned with my back to the cliff's edge, and began inching backward, feeling for the edge with my feet, reaching it, then slowly leaning backwards—backwards, I tell you!—over the edge of that cliff, finally to the point where my body was perpendicular to the vertical cliff wall, then walking—or should I say creeping—down that sheer mountain side, with every muscle begging for mercy, with nothing but a rock floor beneath me. Let me tell you, 20 feet looks a lot higher when you're at the top looking down.

            Needless to see, walking backwards over a cliff, on purpose, is a very unnatural feeling. All of my common sense danger alarms were going off at once. But this is so safe, I kept repeating to myself, this is so safe.

            And my self kept screaming back, The hell it is!

            I finally reached the bottom of that 20-foot precipice; and after my adrenalin pump slowed enough to let my brain do some rational thinking, it occurred to me that the secret to this little exercise is very simple: You have to trust that rope is going to hold you. You can't know sure—for absolutely, positively, money-back guaranteed sure—that it will hold . . .  until . . . until you put your weight on it, until it's actually too late to turn back. By then, it will either hold or it won't.

            Oh, sure, you can examine the rope ahead of time. Put it through some stress tests. Make sure the rope is anchored to a solid place. Make sure the harness is in working order. But at some point you either lean back into the thin air or you don't.

            And if that's not enough, you then watch your 10-year-old do the same thing!

            Faith, brothers and sisters. Life lived in scorn of the consequences. We are lovers in dangerous times.

#  #  #

Circle of Mercy, 17 July 2005

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Oh foofaraw

by Ken Sehested

Dear God:
There was a time when your provision was like
a splendid feast,
      a delicacy for the eye,
            a delight to the palate,
                  an aroma so fine it buckled my knees.

But no more.
The thrill is gone.
      The aroma gags.
            I’ve had my fill of this swill.

Bitter the word, broken the promise, that once
thrilled and fulfilled and instilled life with flavor.

What went wrong? I have not gone carousing
with the merchants of squalor.
      The mark of your Name, once a source of joy,
           now brands with scorn.
      The weight of your hand, once a source of comfort,
                  now drags like a ball and chain.

My pain reeks, unceasing.
My wounds throb, relentless.
Your promise taunts
      like a desert mirage.
Your river of sustenance
      is swallowed in dust.

Oh, foofaraw! says the Beloved.
      Get over yourself! Your lips are flapping
            But your tongue’s lost its nerve.

Turn and face me, if you dare not despair.
For the love of Christ, get a grip on your gripes.

Inspired by Jeremiah 15:16–19. Reprinted from In the Land of the Willing: Litanies, Prayers, Poems, and Benedictions.

 

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org