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Anxious About Empire

by Wes Avrum (editor), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

This collection of 13 essays was compiled when the United States was still the virtually unchallenged player on the world political scene, in the aftermath of Bush and 9/11; today, sharply reduced political and military influences puts these essays into a different perspective.  But some of the essays remain remarkably prescient, speaking to the issues of “loving neighbours in a globalized world,” “international justice,” “being Christian in an Age of Americanism” and emphasizing the “transnational nature of Christian discipleship.”  The essays still raise the basic issues of what the church’s message is and what discipleship urges on us.

Two essays especially focused my agenda. (Mennonite) Arthur Paul Boers draws on pastoral leadership as a component of counter-empire living, emphasizing the contribution of worship and of community; underscoring the need for mentors, saints and models, of testimonies of those who have stood against the empire and its war making preoccupation; the need for strategies in dealing with media (including the personal aspects of fasting and abstinence, p. 168).  Lillian Daniel outlines how the ordo (the typical Sunday morning order of worship), through text and liturgy, focuses on how “many of the questions about empire get hit upon with frightening regularity (p. 174).”  Through, e.g. the psalms, we in the empire are reminded that “we come from a long lineage of life’s losers” (p. 175).  The announcements, prayer requests, confession, passing of the peace, the offertory, the communion table—remind us that in the “bones of worship each Sunday we find the tools with which to recognize blasphemy when we walk the streets on Monday or watch the news on Tuesday. . . . Our salvation lies in the practices of worship that subverts the paltry promise of empire” (p. 182).

A wonderful book. —Vern Ratzlaff, pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

News, views, notes, and quotes

30 April 2015  •  No. 19

Invocation. “In the book of love's own dream, where all the print is blood / Where all the pages are my days, and all my lights grow old / When I had no wings to fly, you flew to me, you flew to me.” —“Attics of My Life,” performed by the Levon Helm band, written by the Grateful Dead’s Robert Hunger and Jerry Garcia

In case you missed last week’s 25th anniversary commemoration of the Hubble Space Telescope, view a few of its spectacular images.

Call to worship. A seven-year-old’s recitation of “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small.”

Speaking of creatures great and small. There are an estimated 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe. Of those, our own—the Milky Way—is some 90,000 light years across and contains some 200,000,000,000 stars. The average human body has about 37,200,000,000 cells.
       Extra credit question: If each of these heavenly bodies housed about the same number of human beings as does Earth, calculate the total number of cells.

This is “the greatest threat to the Grand Canyon in the 96-year history of the park.” —Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Dave Uberuaga, speaking of plans for Escalade, a private developer’s massive housing development, strip malls and tourist resort near the Canyon’s southern border. The prospect of jobs and economic development has divided the Navajo Nation in that area and provoked angry responses from nearby Hopi and Zuni Nations.
        “My mother was told by my great-grandmother, ‘You don’t go to the rim without a serious reason. You don’t go there just to look. You go there to pray.’” —Renae Yellowhorse, Navajo reservation resident

Hymn of praise. John Rutter’s musical rendition of “A Gaelic Blessing” sung by Millennium Youth Choir.

Not so woolly-headed after all: Realistic thinking about nonviolent struggle. A 12+ minute talk by Erica Chenoweth at TEDxBoulder about the success of nonviolent civil resistance.

Of everything I’ve read on the death of Freddie Gray while in Baltimore police custody, “Why Freddie Gray ran,”  an editorial in the Baltimore Sun, is the best. Also recommended, “The problem with wanting ‘peace’ in Baltimore,” by Kazu Haga, Waging Nonviolence.

Why the rest of the world is incredulous at Americans grousing over the “sluggish” US economy, now in the eight year of recovery from the Great Recession. Bets on this week’s professional boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao could reach the $100 million mark. Secondary market ringside seats are averaging $10,500 each, some as high as $30,000. The single event record for Vegas betting was $119+ million for 2014’s Super Bowl between the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks.

In better sporting news. Lydia Ko, the world’s top woman golfer, announced this week she will donate all her prize money from an upcoming tournament to earthquake relief efforts in Nepal. Should she win, the contribution would be $195,000.

“2 Americans killed on Everest.” Headline in USA Today. At last count, 6,000+ non-Americans also died in the devastating earthquake in Nepal (now counting 4 US citizens). Want to contribute? Here is a site profiling numerous reputable, engaged humanitarian relief organizations if you want to contribute to relief efforts.

Lection for Sunday next. If you’re willing to jump the lectionary tracks on Mother’s Day (10 May), consider focusing on the evocative character of “Wisdom” in Proverbs 8-9.

“We are all meant to be mothers of god. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to [God’s] Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture. This then is the fullness of time: When the Son of God is begotten in us.” —Meister Eckhart

Right: Design by Ken Sehested.

Speaking of Mother’s Day, see “A Brief History of Mother’s Day” and “Mother’s Day,” a litany for worship drawn from the words of Julia Ward Howe

“Bread and Roses.”  “As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days. / For the rising of the women means the rising of us all. / No more the drudge and idler, ten toil where one reposes. / But a sharing of life’s glories, bread and roses, bread and roses.” —The 1912 textile workers strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, is referred to as the “bread and roses” strike. Some say the phrase came from a James Oppenheim poem; others, from union organizer Rose Schneiderman. The poem was set to music by Carolina Kohisaat and, later, a different version by Martha Coleman.

This week marks the second anniversary of the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing 1,129, the majority of them women. It is the deadliest structural failure in modern history. Garments made there supplied numerous retailers in the US. Such costs are not factored in to calculations of “free” trade.

Song of lament. “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Discerning vocation. I recently had reason to respond to a friend’s ache and confusion over the apparent collapse of her aspired career: I think you already know there’s no getting around the discomfort—just never forget that the Discomforter’s purpose is to guide and not to punish.

 “I remember the first time I encountered the image of God as a laboring woman. I was reading Isaiah” for a seminary class. When I got to the “middle of chapter 42, I was stopped cold: ‘For a long time I have held my peace, I have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant’ (v. 14). What came to mind was an old photograph, “grainy, black-and-white” of “a woman in a hospital bed . . . her face knotted in agony. . . . You could practically hear a low, loud groan emerging from her throat.
            “So there I was sitting on my sofa, reading Isaiah picturing . . . God’s face contorted in struggle; God groaning the way that a laboring woman groaned . . . and I felt profoundly uncomfortable. I felt disturbed.” (In addition to depicting God as a laboring woman, Isaiah also likens God to a midwife and a nursing mother.)
        These images “compel me in their suggestion of a divine body that suffers, changes, swells, and leaks. For me, a divine body that leaks is also a divine body that discomfits.” —Lauren F. Winner, “Divine contractions,” The Christian Century

Photo at right by Jennifer Loomis, from her book “Portraits of Pregnancy: The Birth of a Mother.”

“. . . and his arms were made agile . . . by El-Shaddai [“the Almighty”] who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb.” —Genesis 45:24-25

“Only those with wombs of welcome . . . can magnify God heal the earth.” —Ken Sehested, “Annunciation”

“There'll be icicles and birthday clothes / And sometimes there'll be sorrow.” Mother’s Day is not always happy. In 1964 at age 21, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s boyfriend left her, pregnant. She kept it a secret from her family and gave her daughter up for adoption. Her 1970 song “Little Green” speaks to that experience. This grief is also behind her song “River”: “Oh, I wish I had a river so long / I would teach my feet to fly / I made my baby say goodbye.”
       She and her daughter reunited in 1997. Sometimes joy catches up from behind.

Joni Mitchell, by Mardeen Gordon, embroidered replica of Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” cover painting.

If you buy flowers in the days leading up to Mother’s Day, there’s a 70% chance they come from Colombia, which has the dubious distinction of having the world’s longest-running civil war (since 1948, deepened further in 1964) as well as the country with the largest population of internally displaced persons. These realities sustain the paltry income of flower industry workers (about $250 per month), and the intentional removal of import duties by the US on Colombia flower imports as one element in it “war on drugs” campaign make for a thriving cash crop economy. Colombia receives more US military assistance than any other country in the western hemisphere.
        •The Mennonite Central Committee annually sponsors “Days of Prayer and Action for Colombia,” which includes extensive worship and advocacy materials for local congregations.
        •Since 2012 the government of Cuba, supported by the Norwegian government, has sponsored peace negotiations between the Colombian government and Colombia’s largest insurgent group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
        •The US war on drugs has had a host of unintended consequences, including the killing of an American missionary Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter when their plane, suspected to be smuggling drugs, was shot down over Peru. Watch this dramatic five-minute video of CIA pilots tracking the plane arguing that the Bowers plane “does not fit the profile.”

Hymn of Assurance. “All the Weary Mothers of the Earth.” —Joan Baez

Preach it. An inspiring 50-second video of Colombians saying, “La Paz de Mañana Empieza Hoy (Tomorrow’s Peace Starts Today)"

Former Wall Street slave market. “Walk down the canyon of Wall Street and you'll come across several of Lower Manhattan's 38 historical markers, most of them celebrating achievements in fields like finance and skyscraper-building. But soon a new marker will raise a more ominous subject: how New York City was built on the backs of slaves. It will be the city's first acknowledgement on a sign designed for public reading that in the 1700s New York had an official location for buying, selling, and renting human beings,” beginning in 1626. —Jim O’Grady, “City to Acknowledge It Operated a Slave Market for More Than 50 Years,” WYNC News

Harper's Magazine illustration of the New York City slave market in 1643. Harper's/Wikipedia Commons.

        The forerunners of some of the same financial institutions now ensconced in the area—like Aetna, New York Life and JPMorgan Chase—bankrolled the Southern plantation economy even after these Manhattan slave markets disappeared. (Though, one could argue, it's now just a different kind of slavery—fully as legal, morally justifiable, and socially acceptable as the other kind once was. We need a new breed of abolitionists.)

Seasoned Supreme Court observers report that Tuesday’s oral arguments over same-sex marriage revealed mixed opinions. Judge Anthony Kennedy wondered if the topic needs more time for public discussion, saying the consensus on one-man-one-woman marriage arrangements has been in place for millennia.
        Of course, the same is true for polygamy (not to mention slavery), a practice limited to the wealthy who could afford extensive property holdings, which included women. It’s right there in the Bible. Exodus 20-21 has multiple references to women on lists of property, including the last (20:17) of the Ten Commandments.
       But Judge Kennedy's comment illustrates what we often forget: Lasting social change requires shifts both in public policy and in public consensus. At least half of the work doesn't happen in DC. It happens on streets whose signs are familiar to you.

Call to the table. “We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of the world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end has magnitude.” —Jack Gilbert, “A Brief for the Defense”

Art at left ©Julie Lonneman.

Benediction. The Brooklyn Rider string quartet’s “Walking on Fire” is emotive rehearsal for what lies just outside the sanctuary door—and for which the sanctuary is not an escape but a preparation. Cf. Isaiah 43:2.

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

• “A brief history of Mother’s Day”

• “Mother’s Day,” a litany for worship

• “Netting the Absurd: Fishing on the other side of what we think possible,” a sermon by Nancy Hastings Sehested

 

©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.

 

Netting the Absurd

Fishing on the other side of what we think possible

Nancy Hastings Sehested
John 21:1-14

While standing in line at a bookstore a small girl in front of me turned around, looked up at me and said, “I’m scared of spiders.” I’m not accustomed to such forthright honesty in a check-out line. As far as I could tell there wasn’t a spider in sight. I thought I should be bold and confess my fears too.

“I’m scared of lightning,” I said.

“Oh, I’m not scared of lightning,” my little friend said. “I just get under my bed. You can do that too. It makes the ‘scaries’ go away.”

Don’t we wish that getting under our beds would make the “scaries” go away? Of course, how much time would we be spending under our beds if we named all our fears?

This past week we observed the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. What would you name as some of the scaries of our earth home? Climate changes and environmental disasters bring out the “scaries” in us for good reasons.

What’s next? What will happen next? What do we do next?

Maybe that was what Peter was wondering when he decided to go fishing. What’s next?

With Jesus’ appearing and disappearing like a shooting star in the night, Peter was confused, disoriented, and wondered what was next. What would become of their small band of followers in Jesus’ radical movement? And hadn’t he been a leader, even called “Rock” by Jesus? Was their movement dead in the water? What next?

Peter couldn’t sit still. He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t go forward. When all else failed, he went to the familiar…fishing. Some of the disciples joined him, “Hey wait up. We’re going with you.” They went back to the same place that they’d been called just a few years before…to the seas.

It was a long hard night of fishing. They cast the nets and hauled it in again and again. Peter stripped down for the strenuous work. Near the break of day their empty nets matched their empty hearts. Nothing.

A voice from the shoreline yelled out to them. “Hey guys! Good morning! Catch anything for breakfast? No? Try fishing on the other side of the boat.”

Who was this guy? Hadn’t they tried everything? Hadn’t they already given it all they had, tried every possible spot already? But they had nothing to lose. They tried it one more time. They threw their nets on the other side of the boat. Lo and behold….fish! So many fish they weren’t strong enough to haul it in.

One of them yelled, “It’s Jesus!” Peter threw on his clothes and jumped into the sea and swam to shore. The others pulled the haul of fish with the boat to reach shore.

Jesus had a fire going and invited them to throw some of those fish on it. Peter joined the haulers and pulled in the load of fish. One hundred and fifty-three fish in un-ripped nets.

One hundred fifty-three. It’s a number that has stumped theologians and historians trying to figure out the symbolic significance. Pope Gregory the Great was great in coming up with the idea that the sum of the numbers 1 through 17, multiplied by 3 (the number of the trinity) adds up to 51 and multiplied by 3 again makes 153. Historian Jerome thought there were 153 species of fish corresponding to the 153 known nationalities.

How about another explanation? Someone said, “Wow! Look at all this fish. I wonder how many there are?” And don’t fisherfolk count their fish? No matter how you count it, 153 was an absurd number after a night of nothing.

Can you imagine all those disciples pulling the fish out of the net and counting, “One, two, three, four….” And while they were putting the fish in piles, Jesus was standing there ignored. Maybe he kept tending the fire, amused by their choice of what to do next when he was standing right there among them.

In the resurrection stories Jesus had a knack for sneaking up on people, and looking not much like himself. Mary thought he was a gardener. She recognized Jesus by his voice. Thomas thought Jesus was dead man. He recognized Jesus by his wounds. Disciples on the road to Emmaus thought he was a stranger. They recognized him by his supper table blessing of bread. Disciples huddled in the upper room thought they’d seen a ghost. They recognized him by his storytelling. Peter and those disciples fishing all night long….they thought Jesus was an opinionated shore line fish consultant. They recognized him by his cooking.

With every story we see Jesus appearing as a mischief-maker…letting things play out, maybe with a twinkle and a grin….playing along with whatever the misperception seemed to be in the moment….and then doing something very simple and mundane….and ordinary….and suddenly there was a new way of seeing.

In the quest for the historical Jesus we discover the hysterical Jesus. Jesus was funny! Easter absurdities. Tragedy resurrected can become comedy. This is our story. Fish on a different side of the boat. Throw those nets out again. Net the absurdities of life that is still being hauled out of the dark nights into the dawn of a new day.

Friday April 24 was the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble telescope. Jason Kalirai, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute spoke of one image that really changed everything. In December of 1995, the telescope stared for ten days at a tiny patch of apparently empty sky. The patch was named the Deep Field, revealing more than a thousand undiscovered galaxies. It made researchers realize that earth is even smaller than we thought. “We're basically sitting on a rock orbiting a star, and that star is one of a hundred billion in our galaxy," Kalirai says. "But the Deep Field tells us that galaxy is one galaxy out of a hundred billion in the universe. I think Hubble's contribution is that we're not very special. I think it's exciting. It gives us a lot more to learn about…If we're not very special, you can continue to ask that question: 'What's next?' "  (NPR 4.24.15)

What next indeed. There’s a galaxy of difference between people who ask with resignation and despair, “What’s next?” and people of curiosity and expectation who ask, “What’s next?” It can mean the difference in netting some absurdities that we couldn’t have imagined. Just think about some of the things people once thought absurd. Abolishing slavery? Women with voting rights? Civil rights laws? State-sanctioned same gender marriages? Absurd!

We are in the midst of a community of people who throw our nets on the other side of the boat to catch the absurd. Our curious and faithful community knows how to ask, “What’s next?” We know that every day is Earth Day. We give ourselves to the small and big efforts of being merciful to our common earth home.

In the summer of 2013, eight of our members joined the Walk for our Grandchildren. It was a one hundred mile walk from Camp David to the White House. Mahan at 78 years old was the oldest walker and his 11-year-old granddaughter Leigh was the youngest walker to make the whole journey. At the rally, Mahan threw out the net with other grandparents to say, “We make it together or we don’t. We can speak out and act out with a sense of urgency…It’s not time to re-tire. It’s time to re-commit.”

One of our consistent encouragers in our community is Greg Yost. He has a gift for writing with clarity and passion about our common concern for our earth. In deciding to make the walk, he wrote these words:

I used to be isolated. I'd sit in front of a computer screen and read scientists' predictions about the consequences of carbon pollution and I'd feel so low, not just because the predictions were depressing, but also because it seemed no one was paying attention. It was difficult to talk about, to be that guy who brought it up to friends and family, at work or at church. Good, otherwise emotionally healthy people have filters in place to screen the stuff that is depressing or scary, and especially if they feel like there's nothing they can do about it, anyway. For a long time, climate change was simply getting caught in the filters.

But that's been changing. At some point in the last few years I feel like the tiny little trickle of awareness I had about the enormity of the climate challenge became one tributary to a gathering river of people. These folks aren't just worrying or wringing their hands, either. Like any good river, they're moving. We're taking action. I've even learned how to do it myself and it's actually not so hard. You just empty your hands, setting aside a few parts of your life for a moment to ready yourself for work that needs doing. Then you think about what you love and want to protect, you roll up your sleeves, and you wade in. (excerpt from “Why I am Walking,” July 12, 2013)

Greg carries pictures of his high school math students to every environmental action he participates in. He gave copies of the photos to the judge at his trial for his December arrest in the non-violent action at the construction site of the $4 billion LNG export facility of Dominion Resources in Maryland.

I am responsible for these young people even after I clock out of my teacher job. Because the battle for their future is being waged right now in Cove Point, Maryland, I have to report for duty.

We gather here each week to remember our holy orders, to prepare ourselves to report for duty again. Whatever the call, personally or communally, it means what its always meant when Jesus is around…fishing on the other side of what we think is possible. It means casting into those same waters to discover gifts from the sea hidden just below the surface of our perception.

As we throw those nets in the waters with all the love and courage we can muster, we might just haul in some Easter absurdities. And we’re sure to see Jesus with a twinkle and a grin, smiling at the haul, offering us bread, feeding us again. It is there the question lingers, “So what’s next?”

Circle of Mercy
April 26, 2015
 

©Nancy Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

News, views, notes, and quotes

23 April 2015

“Signs of the Times” is taking a week off, to make room for springtime house and yard projects. But I have added some new material to prayer&politiks, including ”Liturgical reform and worship renewal,”  commentary from last weekend’s Alliance of Baptists Convocation; and a new litany for worship, “Adelante—Keep Moving Forward.”

In light of the upcoming “National Day of Prayer” (7 May), see “Prayer: The Intersection of Personal and Social Transformation.”

Pass it on.

—Ken

P.S. Former US President Dwight Eisenhower typically began his cabinet meetings with silent prayer. In the middle of one such meeting, after forgetting to do so, he blurted out, “Oh, g*ddamn it, we forgot the prayer.”

A brief history of Mother’s Day

by Ken Sehested

Mother’s Day is celebrated in many cultures. Although others are given credit for founding the observance, Julia Ward Howe led in establishing what some believe to be the first observance of Mother’s Day in the U.S. (2 June 1872) after witnessing the carnage of the U.S. Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War in Europe. The Mother’s Day festival, she wrote, “should be devoted to the advocacy of peace doctrines.”

Born in New York City in 1819, Howe—author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”—was a published poet, author, and advocate of better treatment for prisoners and those living with mental and physical disabilities.

Howe’s concept of Mother’s Day was considerably different from today’s celebration. Her idea was to mobilize women as agents of resistance against the policies that led to injustice and war. In her Reminiscences she wrote: “Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of human life which they alone bear and know the cost?” Realizing it would require fundamental change to end war, she later wrote: “Let the fact of human brotherhood be taught to the babe in the cradle, let it be taught to the despot on the throne. Let it be the basis and foundation of education and legislation. . . .”

The final observance of Howe’s version of Mother’s Day was held in Riverton, New Jersey, on June 1, 1912. The printed invitation on that occasion noted that “this festival . . . is a time for women and children to come together; to . . . speak, sing and pray for ‘those things that make for peace.’”

Parallel efforts to establish a regular observance in honor of mothers were made by several others. Mary Towles Sassen, a Kentucky school teacher, started conducting Mother’s Day celebrations in 1887. Frank E. Hering of Indiana launched a campaign for the observance in 1904. Also in 1904, Anna Jarvis, regularly credited as the founder of the observance, began her campaign for a nationwide commemoration. She chose the second Sunday in May and began the custom of wearing a flower.

On May 9, 1914, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed a joint resolution of Congress recommending that Congress and the executive departments observe Mother’s Day. The next year, the President was authorized to proclaim Mother’s Day as an annual national observance.

 

Information for this history was drawn from material created by Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament Education Fund.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Mother’s Day

A litany for worship, drawn from the words of Julia Ward Howe

Women: Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears!

Men: Speak up, that all may hear!

W: Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.

M: Say it loud, say it proud!

W: Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

M: Oh, brothers, can you hear?

W: Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

M: Tell it straight, sisters!

W: We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

M: Don’t hold back now—make it plain!

W: From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own; it says, “Disarm, disarm!”

All together: Disarm, disarm: every heart! every nation!

 

Excerpted and adapted by Ken Sehested from Julia Ward Howe’s “Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World,” September 1870, where she called for a “Mother’s Peace Day: A time for women and children to speak for the things that make for peace.”

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Prayer: The Intersection Between Personal and Social Transformation

A collection of quotes for meditation

Selected by Ken Sehested

 

§ To clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world. —Karl Barth

§ Concern for peace, whether Jewish or Christian, is part of the purpose of God for all eternity. God is by nature a reconciler, a maker of shalom. For us to participate in the peacemaking purposes of that kind of God is not just morality. It is not just politics. It is worship, doxology, praise. —John Howard Yoder

§ When the economy is geared to the arming of the heavens rather than the development of the heart, neighbors and nations must learn to cry out their dissatisfaction together. —Joan Chittister, OSB

§ The demand for radical love of God is indistinguishable from the radical love of those who have no claim on us. So prayer comes to focus on that vortex: where freedom to give and receive the abundance of God’s love spills over into, comprehends, includes, becomes the essence of the splendour of love of the vulnerable and the dispossessed. —Charles Elliott

§ Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics. —Charles Péguy

§ The more a person wants to live in the absolute of God, the more essential it is for this absolute to be rooted in the midst of human suffering. —Br. Roger of Taizé Community, France

§ The object of redemption is not that we should be rescued from the world, but that we should be rescued for it. For life! —John Douglas Hall

§ To be healed is a prelude to becoming a healer. —Daniel Berrigan

§ Meditation has no point and no reality unless it is firmly rooted in life. —Thomas Merton

§ The fruit of silence is prayer. The fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service. —Mother Teresa

§ Even if a man were in rapture like St. Paul and knew of one who was in need of food he would do better by feeding that person than by remaining in ecstasy. —Meister Eckhart

§ Only when we are lured out of ourselves, attached to something greater, are we moved to righteousness. —William Willimon

§ We imitate whom we adore. —St. Augustine

§ But we are his people. We have eaten at his table. We have heard his word. We are identified as the odd ones of the world, called to be at odds with the world, ordained to call into question the world’s way of doing business. —Walter Brueggemann

§ When you say [something is] “impossible” you ought to say, “relative to my present state of ignorance it’s impossible.” —Mortimer Adler

§ The joy of the resurrection seduces the miser in each of us into spend-thrift love. —John Shea

§ If you want to change people’s obedience, you must change their imagination. —Paul Ricoeur

§ The world is waiting for new saints, ecstatic men and women who are so deeply rooted in the love of God that they are free to imagine a new international order. . . . Most people despair that [it] is possible. They cling to old ways and prefer the security of their misery to the insecurity of their joy. But the few who dare to sing a new song of peace are the new St. Francises of our time, offering a glimpse of a new order that is being born out of the ruin of the old. —Henri Nouwen

§ Prayer is more than something I do. The longer I practice prayer, the more I think it is something that is always happening, like a radio wave that carries music through the air whether I tune in to it or not. —Barbara Brown Taylor

§ In our age, we need more than almost anything else to restore the political dimensions of mystical vision and the visionary dimensions of political action. . . . The vision of God and the identification of oppression [go] together. Out of the sense of divine holiness and justice [come] a sense of the viciousness of injustice and sin. Knowledge of God [leads] to a deeper knowledge of human realities. —Kenneth Leech

§ The test of sincerity of one’s prayer is the willingness to labor on its behalf. —St. John Chrysostom

§ Paradoxically, this total Instruction [God’s Spirit moving in our lives] proceeds in two opposing directions at once. We are torn loose from earthly attachments and ambitions. And we are quickened to a divine but painful concern for the world. He plucks the world out of our hearts, loosening the chains of attachment. And he hurls the world into our hearts, where we and He together carry it in infinitely tender love. —Thomas Kelly

§ Mysticism is not an escape from reality, but the opposite. It is a prayerful penetration of reality. —Ellen F. Davis

§ Christian mysticism is neither a kind of pantheistic infinity mysticism, nor an esoteric mysticism of exaltation, tending toward the self-redemption of the individual soul. It is—putting it extremely—a mysticism of human bonding. The God of Christian faith is found only in the movement of God’s love toward persons, “the least,” as has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Only in this movement do we find the supreme nearness, the supreme immediacy of God. And that is why mysticism, which seeks this nearness, has its place not outside, beside, or above responsibility for the world, but in the center of it. —Johannes Metz

§ f you do the prayer, the prayer will do you. —Fr. Thomas Keating

§ At the center of our pain, we glimpse a fairer world and hear a call. When we are able to keep company with our own fears and sorrows, we are shown the way to go, our parched lives are watered, and the earth becomes a greener place. Hope begins to grow, and we are summoned to the work that will give us a feeling of wellness and make possible that which we envision. —Elizabeth O'Connor

§ It is not sufficient to discuss the present crisis on the informational level alone. . . . We need to help each other process this information on an  affective level, if we are to digest it on the cognitive level. —Joanna Macy

§ What we do with our lives outwardly, how well we care for others, is as much a part of meditation as what we do in the quietness and turning inward. In fact, Christian meditation that does not make a difference in the quality of one’s outer life is short-circuited. It may flare for a while, but unless it results in finding richer and more loving relationships with other human beings or in changing conditions in the world that cause human suffering, the chances are that an individual’s prayer activity will fizzle out. —Morton Kelsey

§ We trust God when we are able to let go, despite our pain and fears, and leap into life. —Jean Blomquist

§ It is in solitude that compassionate solidarity grows. In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us, that the roots of all conflict, war, injustice, cruelty, hatred, jealousy, and envy are deeply anchored in our own heart. In solitude our heart of stone can be turned into a heart of flesh, a rebellious heart into a contrite heart, and a closed heart into a heart that can open itself to all suffering people in a gesture of solidarity. —Henri Nouwen

§ Liturgy is a microcosm of the work which God is doing in the world, and it is there that salvation is being worked out. Liturgy must never become an alternative world to that of social reality. —Kenneth Leech

§ The job of the peacemaker is to stop war, to purify the world, to get it saved from poverty and riches, to heal the sick, to comfort the sad, to wake up those who have not yet found God, to create joy and beauty wherever you go, to find God in everything and in everyone. —Muriel Lester

§ Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision. —Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

§  [Attempts to separate “spiritual” concerns and “social/political” concerns] . . . have been front and center ever since Pharaoh unsuccessfully tried to persuade Moses that religion had nothing to do with Egypt’s domestic policy on the status of nonindentured servants. —Robert McAfee Brown

§ The best definition of the Gospel message I ever heard is that the Gospel is the permission and command to enter difficulty with hope. —Donna Schaper

§ Sometimes the “center” to which our centering prayer calls us is smack dab in the middle of the world’s decentered, disoriented, disabled and dysfunctional life. —Ken Sehested

§ How would it change the shape of social struggle if we understood that we wrestle not just against flesh and blood but also against principalities, against powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies?  What are the practical implications of putting on the whole armor of God and praying at all times in the Spirit (Eph. 6:10-20)?  How would it change the nature of our wrestling if we did so in the context of continuous Bible study and singing and worship? . . . 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

§ Lead me from death to life, / from falsehood to truth; / lead me from despair to hope, / from fear to trust; / lead me from hate to love, / from war to peace. / Let peace fill our heart, / our world, our universe. —World Peace Prayer, adapted from a mantra in the Hindu Upanishads

§ Ora et labora. Work and pray. —The Rule of St. Benedict

§ If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. —2 Chronicles 7:14

§ . . . thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. —Jesus

 

©Ken Sehested @ prayerand politiks.org

Adelante—Keep Moving Forward

by Ken Sehested

Come close, sisters and brothers, all you who have journeyed to this House of Memory, to this Table of Delight. All you anear, welcome!. All from afar ¡bienvenido!

I was glad when they said unto me, “Let us join the assembly of mercy to hear again the mandate of peace.”

The journey is long, and sometimes hard, and we ask anew: ¿Es una buena lucha? Is the struggle good?

¡Es una buena lucha! It is good indeed!

O Blessed One of Heaven, whose claim breaches every earthly border, hear both the sorrows that rise in burdened sighs and the joys that arouse the dawn.

Confide again the psalmist’s promise that tear-sown labor will unfold in jubilating harvest. 

We gather here, scattered parts of one body, living as we do

In the echo of the rolled stone, with its foretaste of insurrection,

Between Easter’s announcement and Pentecost’s disclosure,

Between the Resurrection moment and the Resurrection movement.

¿Es una buena lucha?

¡Es una buena lucha!

O Wisdom’s Table, surety of incarnation’s stable and every tomb’s disable,

Grant persevering power,

Firmeza permanente,

Faithful endurance.

¡Adelante!

Keep moving forward!

All singing:
      We are marching in the light of God. . . .
      Marcharemos en la luz de Dios. . . .
      Siyahamba ekukhanyeni kwenkhos. . . .

 

Text references include Psalm 122:1, Psalm 126:5, Proverbs 9:1-6, Hebrews 12:1, Revelation 2:10.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Liturgical reform and worship renewal

Ken Sehested, Alliance of Baptists Convocation
17-19 April 2015 [expanded version]

 

Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and
to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods.
The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement,
seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to
destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.
—Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

            I don’t think I ever heard the word “liturgy” until I went to an ecumenical seminary. Before then, I thought Lent was what balled up in your navel when you wore cotton t-shirts. It’s not that the Southern Baptist churches of my rearing didn’t have a liturgical year. We did. It started with Valentine’s Day (usually a youth banquet), followed by Easter, Mother’s Day, Vacation Bible School, Fourth of July, youth camp, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas; and, of course, the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for Home Missions and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for Foreign Missions, and a floating date for the annual revival. For the truly rigorous, there was also Watch Night prayer service on New Year’s Eve.

            It’s a pretty substantial calendar; we just didn’t call it “liturgical.”

            Sunday worship services had a very predictable lineup, including 3 hymns, a choir special, sermon, altar call, with prayers and announcements mixed in. Not exactly the Book of Common Prayer, but fully ritualized nonetheless.

            There’s good news and there’s bad news about renewed interest in liturgical reform and revitalization of worship. The good news is that some of us baptist-flavored folk are coming out of our historical shell, discovering a much deeper and wider worship tradition, moving beyond the anti-Catholic reflex which shaped so much of our worship life, not to mention going back further into pre-Augustinian history to recover the more earthy-fleshly part of the church’s history commonly referred to as Celtic Christianity. The openness to more sensuous and artistic forms of worship are bringing needed refreshment.

            On more than one occasion I’ve mentioned to my congregation that if I had the power to unilaterally reshape our common life, it would be in two ways: One, that everyone would bring their bodies to church (and not just their brains). And two, that they would make space for mysticism. Mystical experience is more common than we assume. We just lack the language to identify and foster it.

            There’s also some bad news to this heightened interest in the move toward liturgical literacy.

            1. The powerful privatizing dynamic affecting our culture means fewer people are actually interested in communal practices. It’s a very short step between “me-and-Jesus” spirituality to the demographics of the “nones,” the dramatic rise in religious disaffiliation. Worship is normatively a communal undertaking. Tragically, the values of carnivorous capitalism have turned us into private consumers.

            I understand the disillusionment—even disgust—that the “spiritual-but-not-religious” sense in organized religion. But note the solitariness of so many emergent forms of spirituality: from centering prayer, lectio divina, walking the labyrinth, to the more generic practices of meditation and exercise regimens like yoga and Tai chi. According to newer-age spirituality guru Deepak Chopra, “Religion is belief in someone else’s experience. Spirituality is having your own experience.” But there is a profound difference between personal faith and private faith. When faith is privatized, spirituality becomes a voyeuristic escapade—and not that different from pornography, where the “other” is used rather than cherished, where personal fulfillment trumps common good. I live among the Southern Appalachians, among the oldest mountains on earth. Real estate ads for expensive homes highlight “great views.”  Spirituality—of the biblical sort—is more than great views.

            2. I sometimes fear that interest in expanded liturgical practices reflects the thirst for cultural novelty, even upward mobility, more than spiritual fluency. Nowadays, some people collect “experiences” the way others collect stock portfolios. Both of these realities are evidence of spiritual decay. Both inhibit our ability to bring the earth-tilting vision of faith to bear on a world predicated on violence.

            Will Willimon writes of overhearing the conversation between two church-goers. One asked the other why she came to worship. "I come to worship to be quiet, at peace, alone; to get rest and refuge from the problems that confront me in my everyday life," was the response. "What about you?"

      “Oh, I disagree," said the other. “I come to worship to get motivated to live a better life in the real world."

      One saw worship as an escape from the world while the other saw worship as motivation for involvement in the world. Both agreed that, whatever happened in worship, it was not an integral part of life in the real world.

            Let me mention briefly two theological themes I employ as guides toward a richer land of liturgical milk and honey.

            First: God is more taken with the agony of the earth than with the ecstasy of heaven. Be forewarned of any new practices which result in added insulation between your worshipping community and the battered neighborhoods in which it lives. It concerns me that interest in liturgical expansion too often reflects rising educational standards more than expanded Gospel imperatives. Be prepared to raise some hard questions if worship renewal does not heighten your congregation’s sensitivity to the world’s broken places.

            Second: There’s no getting right with God, there’s only getting soaked. In my experience, newer-age spiritualities are no less prone than the old-fashioned kinds in creating self-referencing forms of faith. The work of grace is to free us from self-absorption in ways that generate joyfully sustained alignment with God’s redemptive presence in the world.  If liturgy is limited to stress-reduction therapy, we have lost our way.

 

From theological reflection to concrete liturgical practices

            There is an expansive list of liturgical practices that may be employed to deepen the kind of worship that reminds us of God’s intention in creation and propels us on the road to the coming new heaven and new earth. Here are eight key commitments of my own congregation’s worship life. (I make no claim that we are good at these—only that we keep coming back to them for guidance and clarification.)

            1. From the beginning we said we wanted to be a singing church. Developing our musical culture was by far our most challenging pastoral work. Our members come from so many different musical cultures—literally from Quaker to Roman Catholic. We finally realized there wasn’t one musical culture out there to be discovered. We would have to develop our own, which meant a lot of trial and error, slowly accumulating an eclectic mixture of “go-to” music, from the spirituals, old hymns (some with new lyrics), Taizé and Iona chorus-type songs, as well as a number of modern hymns. Our Sunday service has music at eight different places.

            2. We also said from the beginning that we wanted to be a kid-friendly church. This is harder than you think! Our educational institutions have so enslaved us to the notion that important learning comes through cognition.

            There are many ways to experiment with this. One is surely having “children’s story” times that move beyond telling morality tales and object lessons. Creating a climate where our younger members participate in our “joys and concerns” times has been one of our successes. Using home-grown drama, providing worship leadership roles for children, making sure some of our music is lively, even having hand motions—these are but a few ideas.

            3. You may have noticed that one of the hottest new trends in worship renewal is . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . personal testimonies! We deep-water baptists thought we were moving to the big city when we stopped doing testimonies. Of course, the newfangled word for personal testimonies is “faith stories.” (The creators of National Public Radio’s “This I believe” and “StoryCorps” series understand the dynamic power of this practice.) Unfortunately, many in our churches are intimidated by public speaking. One of the most important pastoral tasks is to work with members to help them develop a framework for indicating what they believe by way of specific personal narratives.

            4. Far and away the most favored time in our weekly service is our “joys and concerns” time. We have over the years managed to establish a free, unscripted space where both hallelujahs and heartaches can be shared, whether these be small and personal or large and public. There is no part of reality for which God is not passionately interested. I realize there are logistical problems for larger congregations (we average 60 for worship). And in our case it helps that we sit in a semi-circle (with the communion table in the center). It takes some cultural training. (e.g., We don’t need every detail of the doctor’s diagnosis.) Occasionally it gets long-winded. But the payoff is worth the risk.

            5. Our most distinctive, homegrown liturgical practice is the “commissioning” rituals we plan for those in our Circle making significant life changes and/or journeys of faith. We’ve performed these for a host of circumstances, including: welcoming a new child (biological or adopted); doing trauma counseling training after disasters in Haiti and the Philippines; visiting our partner church in Cuba; preparing for an act of civil disobedience; sending our youth off to college; welcoming a troubled niece into the family for an interim stay, or a terminally-ill mother home from a medical facility to die with dignity. We ask the person(s) being commissioned to sit just beyond those serving communion, allowing others in the Eucharistic parade to offer a hand of blessing on the head and a word of encouragement in the ear.

            6. Speaking of the Lord’s Supper, we do it every week, by intinction, with a variety of servers, the congregation coming forward as we sing, sometimes soberly, sometimes brightly, sometimes animated with hands clapping, even bodies swaying. It’s the culmination of our worship. Until recently—when the cleanup process began to weary our collective hands—we had a potluck dinner immediately after worship (at 5 p.m. Sunday afternoons), with leftover communion bread going to the dinner table, making the connection between our ritual meal and the sacrament of our common table.

            7. The ritual observance of silence is typically the hardest habit to form, especially for those of us from wordy Protestant traditions. We do it twice, once between the welcome and the call to worship litany, then again following the sermon, 60 seconds each time. We were pleasantly surprised that even our young children quickly adapted. Each quarter we have a Taizé service of musical chants, lectionary readings, and more extended periods of silence.

            8. Maybe our steepest learning curve is designing sensuous worship, communicating through as many of the senses as possible. It doesn’t require exotic effort: banners, flowers, communion table cloth colors and timely artifacts, and worship bulletin art are common. Besides our frequent music, we are initially called to worship by chiming a metal prayer bowl. I keep hoping someone will volunteer to bake communion bread, just prior to worship in our rented space in an Episcopal church parish hall kitchen, for its aroma—since incense is out, given the allergies. “Passing the peace” during our opening hymn interlude allows hugs and handshakes. There’s the communion cup and bread—occasionally for dipping in honey, occasionally followed by foreheads anointed by oil, and occasionally with hands dipped in water in remembrance of baptismal vows. From time to time we are blessed by liturgical dance; occasionally with drama by our youth. And we have learned, mostly, not to be distracted by the cries of infants.

            Back to the Willimon story, about whether or not worship is the “real” world. For our liturgies to be renewed and revitalized—however high church or low, however quiet or exuberant, however traditional or innovative—we must become convinced again that worship involves a fierce ideological struggle over whose promises of power and strength and well-being are more worthy. To worship is to discern worthiness. Vital liturgy depends on bringing to worship our experiences of ongoing crucifixion in the world, alongside stories of resurrecting transformation. These are laid on the anvil of memory, of God’s saving activity in the past; and by wielding the hammer of ritual acts we forge ploughshares from each season’s bloody swords.

            Every day, ever hour, we are bombarded from every direction with claims that only the strong survive, that you get what you earn, that calculated violence holds the key to the future, that the meek may inherit the earth but not the mineral rights. Until these questions become front and center, all liturgical innovations, however vigorous, will remain “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” We must again understand that, in the words of Karl Barth, “To clasp hands in prayer is an uprising against the world’s disordered ways.”

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©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

News, views, notes, and quotes

16 April 2015  •  No. 18

Invocation. “Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes….” —Elizabeth Barrett Browning

In memoriam. Award-winning journalist and author Eduardo Galeano died this week at his home in Montevideo, Uruguay. He was best known for his critique of colonialism, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, which was banned for years by military dictatorships in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, which arrested and exiled him in 1973.

Connecting the calendar dots. 22 April is Earth Day. Shortly thereafter, on 27 April, the United Nations begins a scheduled review of the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (commonly referred to as NPT, “Non-Proliferation Treaty”) to assess progress toward its goal of a nuclear weapons-free world. Then, in August, marks the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
        One hundred ninety-one nations have signed the treaty. India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and South Sudan have not.
        Much has been made of the NPT as the basis of US negotiations with Iran over its nuclear capacities. What is often forgotten, however, is that Article VI of the treaty requires "Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations [toward the goal of] nuclear disarmament."
        In a dramatic 2009 speech, President Obama called for a non-nuclear world, and the citations in his Nobel Peace Prize mention his efforts to this end. Yet a September 2014 investigation by the New York Times reveals that the Pentagon has plans to modernize the US nuclear capacity, with as much as $1 billion in projected spending over the next three decades

Connecting more dots. “The movements that persevere are those that find a form of hope, even in dark times.” Attention to changing our personal carbon footprints, weatherizing buildings and put solar panels on roofs “is useful and important work, but, as the history of the climate movement demonstrates, this obsession over consumer behavior has limited benefit and tends to reinforce the mindset that created the problem in the first place. We got to this point of environmental crisis by buying into the notion that our value as people lies in our role as consumers. Furthermore, this focus on consumer activism naturally becomes a rich person’s movement. The mantra of ‘vote with your dollars’ means that those without many votes (dollars) don’t matter very much. —Tim DeChristopher, “This Activist Went to Prison for the Climate. Now He Wants Churches To Take Moral Leadership” 

The American Friends Service Committee, in partnership with the Peace & Planet Mobilization for a Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just, & Sustainable World, have created this rousing two-minute video linking peace, justice and ecological sustainability in preparation for the 24-26 April conference and mobilization in New York City (including an interfaith convocation on Sunday morning, 26 April).

Earth Day resources on the web from numerous denominational bodies.

See on this site, “The Earth is the Lord’s: A collection of biblical texts which reveal the non-human parts of creation responding to God’s presence, provision and purpose.”

Art (right) by Ken Sehested.

Suggested texts for an Earth Day observance: “In the book of Genesis, the narrative records this blessing given by Isaac to his son: ‘May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine’ (27:28). But the promise of plenty mutates to a point almost beyond recognition, as recorded in this complaint of the Psalmist (73:6-9) against inconsequential living: ‘[P]ride is the necklace [of the wicked]; violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out with fatness, their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth.’" —Ken Sehested

"Creation, we are taught, is not an act that happened once upon a time, once and forever. The act of bringing the world into existence is a continuous process. God called the world into being, and that call goes on. There is this present moment because God is present. Every instant is an act of creation." —Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Preach it. [The book of] “Amos does not conceive of the world as having components that are neatly separable into discrete categories: moral, physical, social, religious. Israel’s political disorder is a disturbance of creation itself.” —Ellen Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible

Hymn of assurance. Among my all-time favorite recordings is Bobbie McFerrin’s harmonic (and he sings all the parts) rendition of Psalm 23. If you’ve not heard it before, the pronouns will startle at first—but then you’ll be tempted to say, “I think this version was the original.”
        While you’re at it: If you’ve never seen the 4+ minute video of McFerrin using his voice to sound like an organ recital of Bach’s Prelude No. 1 while his performance audience sings Charles Gounod’s “Ave Maria” over the top . . . well, it’s just amazing.

¶ “In a determination that could have far-reaching implications for the agro-chemical giants like Dow Chemical and Monsanto, the research arm of the World Health Organization has declared that glyphosate—the key ingredient of widely-used herbicides such as Roundup—should now be categorized as a "probable carcinogen" for humans. —“Glyphosate, Favored Chemical of Monsanto & Dow, Declared 'Probable' Source of Cancer for Humans,” Jon Queally

Earth Day good news. A majority of Americans believe they are "morally obligated" to fight climate change, a new poll by Reuters/IPSOS has found. Of the 2,827 people surveyed in the poll, 66% said world leaders are ethically bound to reduce carbon emissions, while 72% believed that responsibility lay with themselves as well. In addition, 64% believe that rising greenhouse gases, which drive climate change, are caused by human activity. —Nadia Prupis, “Majority of Americans Agree Fighting Climate Change a “Moral Obligation"

Art (right) by Ken Sehested.

Less good news. If everyone in the world generated as much trash as the average US citizen, we would need 4.1 more planets the size of earth to hold it all. Which may be related to the fact that we have more shopping malls than high schools.

The photo at left of a sanitation truck captures our dilemma: “Waste Pro,” a large American flag, and the politically pious phrase “God bless the USA.”

Which may explain why we need more guns: The US has nearly as many gun dealers (129,817) as gas stations (143,849). As one of my own state’s legislators said it recently: “The more guns we have in society, the politer society will be.”  That would be Rep. George G. Cleveland, sponsor of one of several bills in the North Carolina legislature that loosen gun buying and concealed weapons restrictions.

Intercession. “Galileo was bluffing / It’s just a mess out here / There’s no compass to guide us / Through the flashes of violence and fear.” —“Sweet Disaster,” Whitehorse

Sam Cooke’s 1963 classic “A Change Is Gonna Come,” written after his own run in with racism, became something of an anthem for the Civil Rights Movement.
        Change is coming, too, in US-Cuban relations. President Obama’s announcement on Tuesday that Cuba will be dropped from the State Department’s list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” together with his decision in December to normalize diplomatic relations, needs to be framed in light of this Friday’s anniversary of the Central Intelligence Agency’s ill-fated “Bay of Pigs” invasion of Cuba in 1961.
        The move allows some loosening of economic relations, but most such restrictions are still governed by US legislation enforcing a widespread economic embargo of the country. Given Republican control of Congress, legislation ending the embargo isn’t likely to happen soon. Eventually, though, US businesses interest in access to 11 million new consumers will erode Republican opposition.

Which makes me remember a conversation in Camagüey some years ago with a member of our “partner” congregation. We asked Alexi, a computer programmer and lay leader in the church, if he thought the US embargo of Cuba would ever end. He thought for a minute, then said, “Yes, it will happen eventually.” He then looked away, awkwardly, and continued saying “What I fear, though, is that when it does, your country will simply buy my country.”

At left: Atlanta Falcon cheerleaders boost enhanced interrogators' morale at Guantánamo Bay.

Gitmo still a brutal reality.  "As Americans, we have a profound commitment to justice—so it makes no sense to spend $3 million per prisoner [per year] to keep open a prison that the world condemns and terrorists use to recruit," US President Barack Obama said in his January 2015 State of the Union address. "I will not relent in my determination to shut it down. It's not who we are. It's time to close Gitmo." Shortly after taking office in 2009 Obama signed an executive order requiring the close of the detention facilities. Its continuing operation is testimony to the resistance against such a move.

The military prison at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base on Cuba’s southeastern shore was opened 11 January 2002. A legal invention by President George W. Bush’s lawyers claimed that since the detainees were not on US soil, they would be considered “enemy combatants” and thus denied basic protections guaranteed by the US Constitution. White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez called the Geneva Conventions (on the wartime treatment of civilians and soldiers) "quaint." These are the same lawyers that invented euphemisms like “enhanced interrogation techniques” for things like waterboarding.
        •780 prisoners have been incarcerated there. Between 17-22 were under the age of 18. The current inmate total is 122.
        •Only 5% of detainees were captured by US forces. 86% were turned over by others in exchange for bounties.
        •Total operating expense of the prison to date: more than $5 billion
        •Wikileaks documents revealed the Pentagon considered at least 150 detainees were completely innocent.
        •Only nine detainees have been convicted of any crime.

Call to the table. “Finish, then, Thy new creation; / Pure and spotless let us be; / Let us see Thy great salvation / Perfectly restored in Thee.” —"Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," Charles Wesley (transcribed for classical guitar and performed by Jeffry Hamilton Steele)

Right, hundreds of origami birds forming art at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum.

The US assumed control over Guantánamo Bay, a 45-square-mile naval base, in 1903 as part of a transition agreement (including a US-authored Cuban Constitution which guaranteed the right of intervention in Cuba affairs) following the Spanish-American War, when the US gained control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam.

Ongoing saga. Given the attention to yet another police shooting of an unarmed black man—this one by a volunteer deputy in Tulsa, Oklahoma, while the victim was laying face down on the ground—news of settlement in an older case went largely unnoticed. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel this week announced that the city has agreed to provide $5.5 million in reparations to victims of former Police Commander Jon Burge who for two decades, beginning in the early ’70s, tortured more than 100 people, all but one African American men. The city has already spent $100 million on this case in settlements and legal fees. Burge, who spent less than four years in prison, still receives his pension.

Altar call: Why we need to know hard things. “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” —Ida B. Wells (1862–1931), African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, and anti-lynching activist

At left, cover of Ida B. Wells’ 1892 "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases."

Benediction. “One Love,” Bob Marley

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

• “Poisoned sea, impoverished soul: A litany of lament over a despoiled ocean”

• “The Earth is the Lord’s: A collection of biblical texts which reveal the non-human parts of creation responding to God’s presence, provision and purpose”

• “The Earth is the Lord’s,” a litany for worship

• “Holy Obedience: One Christian’s story of civil disobedience (calling for the closure of Guantánamo Bay prison)”

 

©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.