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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

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.”

#  #  #

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

by Ken Sehested

 

      Unfortunately, it’s too easy to write off Tim Nolan’s decision to commit civil disobedience at the U.S. Supreme Court, calling for the closure of the Guantánamo prison for the suspects in the U.S. “war on terror,” as political looney-tune. But no less a public figure than former Secretary of State Colin Powell has stated:

      "Guantánamo has become a major, major problem . . . in the way the world perceives America and if it were up to me I would close Guantánamo not tomorrow but this afternoon. . . . Essentially, we have shaken the belief the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantánamo open and creating things like the military commission. We don't need it and it is causing us far more damage than any good we get for it," Powell told NBC's Meet the Press in June 2007. [Reuters News]

      Powell is neither a pacifist nor alone in his convictions. Recently, four previous U.S. Secretaries of State (three Republicans, two Democrats) joined Powell in calling for the prison’s closing [Atlanta Journal Constitution, 3.27.08], as are each of the major-party candidates (Clinton, McCain, and Obama). Even current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates tried early in his tenure to close the facility. [23 March 2007 CBS News report]

      Nolan, a member of Circle of Mercy Congregation, a nurse practioner, spouse to Amy and father of three young children in Asheville, N.C., didn’t undertake the action lightly. He’s done this before, including last year’s “Witness Against Torture” action, that one on the 5th anniversary of the opening of Gitmo.

      Over coffee this morning, he outlined the substantial case against the prison based on U.S. and international law. “The legal charade of this Administration’s justification is astounding. The invention of terms like ‘unlawful combatants,’ the suspension of habeas corpus, which is the foundation of our jurisprudence. And the systematic use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ formerly known simply as torture.”

      But Nolan, whose medical work is focused on low-income people living with HIV/AIDS, does not base his conviction merely on legal or political grounds.

      “Actually, this action is an outgrowth of prayer.” As it was for the majority of the 200 who paraded from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to the steps of the Court—each in the distinctive orange jump-suit of Guantánamo prisoners and wearing the black hoods made famous from a similar prison, Abu Ghraib, in Baghdad. Most in the action are rooted in, or inspired by, the faith-based Catholic Worker Movement.

      “I think of prayer as the portal to seeing the world in a new way, through God’s eyes,” Nolan commented. “Prayer isn’t an escape hatch from the agonies of history, but a means of confronting history in redemptive ways.”

      The day—Friday, 11 January—began with a rally on the National Mall, co-sponsored Amnesty International and more than 100 other human rights organization. Shortly after noon some 400 persons embarked with legal permits and a police escort on the 45-minute silent walk, two abreast and in pouring rain, to the Supreme Court. After arriving the 200 in theatrical orange garb kneelt on the sidewalk in front of the Court. During discussions the previous day, 36 had volunteered to risk arrest by mounting the Court stairs toward the entrance.

      As this unfolded, another 45 volunteers, who earlier passed through security at the Court (in plain dress) and assembled inside to read a statement and unfurl a banner. With no attempt to resist arrest, those on the steps were arrested and charged with violating an ordinance prohibiting demonstrations on court grounds. Those inside were charged under a provision that makes it a crime to give “a harangue or oration” in the Court.

      “During the drive to D.C., during the strategy sessions the night before, all during the morning on the Mall, but most especially as we walked to the Court, I have to admit I was anxious, nervous, wondering if I was crazy,” Nolan said. “But all that melted away as we began climbing the steps. And as we were handcuffed, facing those massive courthouse pillars, I felt free and calm, with a sense that—in the face of this massive injustice [the existence of the Guantánamo prison and numerous other secret prisons of torture]—I was exactly where I wanted to be and needed to be.”

      All were handcuffed and taken to a trailer at the side of the building for processing by Court police. Instead of offering their own names, each instead gave the name of a Guantánamo prisoner. Four hours later they were escorted into the Court basement and processed again, and pictured, then seated along a hallway. At midnight, in groups of four, they were transported by D.C. police to disperse precincts; and then moved again, at 3 a.m., to the Central prison.

      By 9 a.m. the entire group was reassembled, hands still cuffed and now legs shackled, at the Superior Court holding cell in preparation for their arraignment. Again in groups of four they appeared before a judge, who provided two options. To accept or reject a “stint” (“to cease or desist”) order, pledging to not be arrested again for at least six months. Some chose to agree to this restriction. Others, like Nolan, who was finally released under bond at 5 p.m., refused and now face a maximum penalty of 60 days in jail, a fine, or both. A court date, probably in March, has yet to be established.

      “The most significant thing that happened in this 29-hour incarceration was the fact that, in my appearance before the judge, I initially gave the name of ‘Fazaldad’ and have it officially recorded in a court document,” Nolan said.

      Fazaldad (“no first name known,” according to Guantánamo records) is among the approximately 275 prisons still being held, some for over six years, in legal limbo and without recourse to legal action of any kind. Each of the “Witness” activists appearing before the judge that afternoon did the same thing, just for this purpose, before finally stating their real names.

      “Just yesterday,” Nolan said as we wrapped up our conversation, “I heard an interview with one of the first lunch-counter sit-in participants” (in Greensboro, N.C., whose anniversary was just commemorated). He talked about the fear he felt, as a black man approaching the taboo of a segregated lunch counter, as he first entered Woolsworth with the intention of breaking the law. But then he said something like, “When I did finally sit down, I knew it was right. And I knew I’d stay there come what may. It might mean a long stay in a hostile prison. Or it might even mean I’d be shipped home in a pine box. But I knew this was right. I knew I was where I wanted to be, where I needed to be.”

      “I immediately recognized that feeling,” Nolan said, smiling.

      Earlier I told Nolan about the experience of others from our Circle of Mercy, on a visit to our “sister” church in Cuba, how his story was told at a special “service of prayers for peace” the very night of his arrest. As you might imagine, the narrative had quite an impact on the gathered Cuban Christians, against whom our country maintains an illegal embargo.

      Such bonds, across borders and boundaries of every kind, are at the heart of our calling. And, sometimes, civil disobedience is a form of holy obedience.

 

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. This article was originally published in Baptist Peacemaker, July-August 2008. For more information: Witness Against Torture witnesstorture.org