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5 March 2015 • No. 12

¶ Invocation. “It happens often among us that praise is either escapist fantasy, or it is a bland affirmation of the status quo. In fact, doxology is a darling political, polemical act that serves to dismiss certain loyalties and to embrace and legitimate other loyalties.” —Walter Brueggemann (See Ken Sehested’s “The Work of Praise”  posted on this site.)

¶ Not just a pretty face. National Geographic researchers say in 1996 there were one billion monarch butterflies making their annual trek from the US to wintering grounds in Mexico. By 2004 that number was cut in half. Now the estimate of surviving Lepidoptera is about 33 million. In mid-February the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced a $3.2 million grant to conversation efforts. This week the Natural Resources Defense Council sued the US Environmental Protection Agency in an attempt to get stronger restrictions on the chemical glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

¶ Radio for great music and greater stories. If you’ve never caught an "eTown"  radio broadcast, look for it (or listen to past programs on your computer). Begun 24 years ago by Nick and Helen Forster, the weekly program has a lineup of live music—and each week they give an eChievement award (nominations come from listeners) to someone making positive social change in their community, with a 6-7 minutes live or telephone interview with each week’s recipient each week. These are the kinds of small, courageous stories from which large movements begin.

¶ This week’s Call to Worship: “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,”  This Saturday is the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” when horse-mounted sheriffs, local police and state troopers waded into 600 unarmed marchers on the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, demanding the right to vote. Few remember that Dr. King was absent—in fact he had become discouraged that the struggle in Selma would accomplish anything. Two weeks later King would lead the successful Selma-to-Montgomery march that caught the attention of the nation. Some other memorabilia include:
        •A video clip from that confrontation.
        •A USA Today story, “Remembering the martyrs of Bloody Sunday.”
        •Some background to the song “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.”
        •National Public Radio story on the man after whom the Edmund Pettus Bridge  was named

¶ King would be preaching about this. “In less than two years, if current trends continued unchecked, the richest 1% percent of people on the planet will own at least half of the world's wealth. That's the conclusion of a new report from Oxfam International stating the rate of global inequality is not only morally obscene, but an existential threat to the economies of the world and the very survival of the planet. ‘Do we really want to live in a world where the one percent own more than the rest of us combined?’ asked Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International.” —“Richest 1% Percent To Have More Than Rest of Humanity Combined,” Jon Queally, Common Dreams

¶ Confession. “C.S. Lewis abominated religious triumphalism. In ‘The Four Loves,’ for instance he laments the crimes committed by Christians, summoning us to make ‘full confession . . . of Christendom’s specific contribution to the sum of human cruelty and treachery. Large areas of the World will not hear us till we have publicly disowned much of our past. Why should they? We have shouted the name of Christ and enacted the service of Moloch.’” —Ralph Wood, review of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” movie adaptation of Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia,” Christian Century

¶ Words of assurance. “When someone love you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth.” —Billy, age four, from Breathing Together, edited by Richard Kehl

¶ A few notes from the Department of Justice’s recently released report on the Ferguson, Missouri’s police department. While 67% of the city’s population is African American, that community received, over a three-year period studied by investigators:
       •85% of traffic stops, 90% of tickets
       •93% of arrests
For minor incidents like jaywalking, blacks made up
       •95% of the cases
       •92% of disturbing the peace charges
       •were twice as likely to have their vehicles searched, but 26% less likely to have contraband
       •all victims of 14 cases of the department’s K9 unit bite incidents were African American.

¶ Intercession: When prayer and care intersect. “In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see. In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way. When someone suffers, and it is not you, they come first. Their suffering gives them priority. . . . To watch over another who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God.” —Elie Wiesel

¶ “The summer before my senior year of college, my parents adopted a cat. When they found him he was covered in dirt and matted fur. He hung his head low and did not purr. When you ran your hand over him, he was skin and bone to the touch. Then my parents took him to the vet where he was groomed. They took him into a home where he received nourishment and love. Day by day, he became more confident and started to reveal more of his personality. He began to purr. He was like a brand new cat.
        “Some weeks later, my step-dad brought up this transformation. Speaking to the condition in which he was originally found, he said, ‘If being in those conditions does that to a cat, imagine what it does to a human being.’”  —Alison Paksoy, “Unsettled by truth: A border awareness experience,” reflecting on a BPFNA-Bautistas por la Paz “Friendship Tour” in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico

¶ For more about immigration, see “Out of the House of Slavery: Bible Study on Immigration,”  by Ken Sehested.

¶ Sweet news. Random House announced recently it will publish three new “Dr. Seuss” books based on materials found in 2013 by the good doctor’s widow and his long-time secretary while cleaning his office space. The author, whose real name was Theodore “Ted” Seuss Geisel, died in 1991 at the age of 87. First up, scheduled for this July, is What Pet Should I Get. My personal favorite Seuss tale is The Butter Battle Book.

¶ Even sweeter news. Surely there discussions to be had with “millennials” (generally those born in the two decades after 1980), including questions around the “hook up” culture of sexual relations, along with that age group’s general suspicion of covenant ties of any kind, including the none habits of religious affiliation. I’m no partisan of steepled religion; but religious communities are among the few intergenerational institutions left in our culture which foster communal support in the forming of virtues.
        Yet there is ample, and generally overlooked, news of substantial vision and conviction in this generation for the common good, particularly around racial justice, climate change and income inequality.
        Recently my own city’s newspaper featured a front-page, above-the-fold feature story reporting significant involvements by students in several local colleges, “A new wave of activism: Young people fight for justice.” See the “Student Activism” website for the bigger picture.

¶ Fossil fuel investments skid. In the same newspaper, different section, was a story about how another student group in our region influenced the school’s board of directors to divest holdings in fossil fuel stocks. (I’m proud to say my seminary, Union of New York, did this last year.)
        Now comes a report from the prestigious Bank of England saying that “As the world increasingly limits carbon emissions, and moves to alternative energy sources, investments in fossil fuels . . . may take a huge hit.”
        The report, in the Guardian, also quotes former US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who said in 2014: "When the credit bubble burst in 2008, the damage was devastating. We’re making the same mistake today with climate change. We're staring down a climate bubble that poses enormous risks to both our environment and economy."

¶ Speaking of community-formed values. Ethicist Willis Jenkins "believes we stand little chance of significantly addressing a problem like climate change by simply being the moral voice or trying to change someone’s worldview. He writes in The Future of Ethics that we need instead a ‘view of culture in which morality is learned in bodies, carried by practices, and formed into repertories that teach agents how to see and solve problems.’ There is more hope, then, in our liturgies, our songs and our works of charity than in any finger-wagging or attempts at the moral conversion of oil company executives.” —Ragan Sutterfield, “Prayers with feet: Faith and hope at the People’s Climate March,” Christian Century

¶ Lection for Sunday week. “For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed” (John 3:20).

¶ Hear the word. “There is a crack, a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in.” —Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

¶ Altar call. Conservatives are exactly right, of course, to ask liberals about the integrity of moral posture shorn of personal risk.
        “It is hard to know, even in one's own case, whether a commitment that costs nothing has any substance. Doubt is aroused particularly by a consideration of American liberals in a global setting. If the wealth of the entire world were redistributed according to the requirements of equal justice, most American liberals would suffer a large and unpleasant change in circumstances. The fact that any such redistribution, within the foreseeable future, is not even a remote possibility, is precisely what makes the moral posture of liberals so questionable. Deploring the poverty of the common people in Asia and Africa is for most of us morally invigorating and at the same time agreeably inexpensive. —Glenn Tinder, "Liberals and Revolution," The New Republic, 1979

¶ Billionaire industrialists and conservative patrons Charles and David Koch recently announced they will donate $889 million for the 2016 political campaigns, double what they funneled into the 2012 elections. This new gravy bowl total will likely eclipse the amount raised by the Republican Party as a whole—and the latter has to be publicly disclosed where the former does not. Now, of course, the Democrats will beat the bushes for their own deep-pocket patrons, and thus the campaign finance dance ups the beat.
        Remember: It was the former Italian dictator and “father of Fascism” Benito Mussolini who said, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

¶ Benediction. “In the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst babel, speak the truth. Confront the noise and verbiage and falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, preach the Word, defend the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death's works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience.” —William Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land

                                                                                                                Artwork at right ©Julie Lonneman

Featured on the prayer&politiks site this week:
      •“The Work of Praise,” a poem about "worship, where questions of worth are determined and competing claims of power are decided"
      •"Out of the House of Slavery: Bible Study on Immigration"
      •"Buttered hot biscuits," a litany for worship

©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—maybe you have a quote to share or a news bit to post. If you like what you read, alert your friends. Word-of-mouth is our best (not to mention our only) publicity.

¶ Lenten invocation. “I am the vessel. The draught is God’s. And God is the thirsty one.” — former United Nations General Secretary Dag Hammarskjöld in Markings, his personal journal, posthumously published, now considered a classic of spiritual devotion

¶ Oscar good news. Citizenfour, the film chronicling the decision made by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to expose wrongdoing to the world by leaking details of the agency's top-secret global surveillance operation to journalists, was awarded the Best Documentary Film award at Sunday night's Academy Award. "The disclosures that Edward Snowden revealed don't only expose a threat to our privacy but to our democracy itself," said Laura Poitras, the film’s director.

¶ In case this question ever crossed your mind, the US government has 17 different intelligence agencies. Here’s the annotated listing.

¶ More Oscar good news. Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1  won the Oscar for short documentaries. “The suicide rate among veterans is staggering and beyond heartbreaking. About 22 veterans kill themselves every day, and this has been going on for years. It used to be that the suicide rate for civilian men the same age was higher than the rate for veterans, but that’s changed.” —film director Ellen Goosenberg Kent

¶ Yet more Oscar good news. Despite the gazi$$ion in box-office receipts (six times the amount of other nominees combined), American Sniper did not receive the “best picture” Oscar, a sign that “money can’t (always) buy me love.”

¶ In other cinematic news. Last week’s “Signs of the Times” focused on “faces.” My one foray into cinematic art, “Journey to Iraq,” a seven-minute video featuring the faces of ordinary Iraq people, with a Darrell Adams background rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Lay Down Your Weary Tune,” is again relevant.  (Here’s the link for postings from that trip, “Journey to Iraq” and “Caitlin Letters.”

¶ Lenten confession. “We are a little lost here in America. Too many of us have tuned out, and too many of us are deeply tuned in to the wrong things. . . . Our renegade national soul has given itself up to petty outlawry. . . . Imagination always has been the way out—a faith in that which seems impossible, a trust that not every mystery is a murder mystery, and that not every mysterious creature is a monster. Imagination is the way out—a belief that safety is not necessarily the primary (or even the secondary) goal of democratic citizenship, and that a self-governing political commonwealth does not always come with a lifetime guarantee. Yes, we are a little lost here in America, but we can find our way, and the best way that we can find is the one that seems like the least secure, the darkest trail, the one with the long, sweeping bend in the road that leads god knows where.” —Charles P. Pierce, “Goodbye to All That,” Esquire magazine

¶ Still waiting for this wisdom to inform policy. Last week US State Department spokesperson Marie Harf (on Chris Matthews MSNBC “Hard Ball” talk show) ignited a firestorm when she remarked, “We’re killing a lot of [ISIS fighters], and we’re going to keep killing more of them. . . . But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need, in the longer term . . . to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups.” We need to ask, she continued, “what makes these 17-year-olds pick up an AK-47 instead of trying to start a business?” Reporting the story, Steve Benen said “The right [wing press] went from zero to apoplexy in record time.”
        Interestingly enough, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen made the same point in 2008, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee: "No amount of troops in no amount of time can ever achieve all the objectives we seek," he said, adding later: "We can't kill our way to victory."

¶ “The Islamic State group is composed of the detritus of wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Chechnya, Yemen. It was fuelled by the destruction of Iraq. Can deliverance be really found in the violence that forged it?” — Vijay Prashad, “Barbarians Are Made, Not Born,” al-Araby al-Jadeed English

¶ I’m not generally a fan of columnist Kathleen Parker. But she began her column last Sunday by writing, “There’s a 2001 feel to President Obama’s request for authorization to use military force and the nauseating sense that we’ll be at war indefinitely. . . . Obama himself has said that this war will extend well beyond his tenure, thus signaling that hell awaits his successor.”

¶ "The American people and the governing class have accepted that war has become a permanent condition. Protracted war has become a widely accepted part of our politics." — retired Army Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich, quoted in “Death toll in Afghan war nears 1,000,” by Craig Whitlock, Greg Jaffe and Julie Tate, Washington Post. Bacevich’s several books are among the best writing on this topic.

¶ Prayer of intersession. “The only way I know to pluck from the hearts of enemies their desire to destroy us is to remove from their lives the sense that, for their own physical and spiritual survival, they must.” —novelist David James Duncan, "When  Compassion Becomes Dissent: On the post-9/11 struggle to teach creative writing while awaiting the further annihilation of Iraq," Orion Magazine

¶ In his 2010 book Obama Wars, journalist Bob Woodward quoted former Defense Secretary Robert Gates as saying, in a State Department dinner for then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai, “We’re not leaving Afghanistan prematurely. In fact, we’re not ever leaving at all.”
        And this from former commander of US troops in Afghanistan General David Petraeus: “I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. You have to stay after it.  This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”

¶ Obama Administration officials no longer use the phrase “War on Terror.” The President prefers “Overseas Contingency Operation.” Another phrase is simply “the long war,” which since 2001 has its own designated service medal (at right), given to military members who serve a tour of duty (30 consecutive days or 60 non-consecutive days) in a designated anti-terrorism operation. The duration requirement is waived for those wounded or killed in such duty.

¶ Lotta’ water under that bridge. “On January 21, 2013, Barack Obama was inaugurated for his second term as president of the United States. Just as he had promised when he began his first campaign for president six years earlier, he pledged again to turn the page on history and take U.S. foreign policy in a different direction. ‘A decade of war is now ending,’ Obama declared. ‘We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.’” —Jeremy Scahill, “Perpetual War: How Does the Global War on Terror Ever End?, epilogue to Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield

¶ Through an unusual set of circumstances, I had an invitation last week to appear on Bill O’Reilly’s popular Fox News show to talk about nonviolent alternatives to US military strikes against jihadist-flavored opponents whatever-the-name. I declined. I made a vow during my last trip to Iraq, a dozen years ago, just prior to “Shock and Awe,” to never again engage that network’s reporters. The foxifying of journalistic integrity across the board is surely one of the great threats to democratic traditions.
        Anyway, I knew I’d never get beyond questioning the assumption behind muscular military advocates’ derisive interrogation, something like, “Well, violence may have made a mess of things, but you think nonviolence can do better?” And the disdainful “see there!” when proponents of nonviolent strategies for resisting injustice can’t conjure on the spot a magic spell for pulling our collective ass from the fire.
        In case you’re interested, here’s Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” take on Fox , an unusually long, for him (10 minutes), opening monologue.

¶ Speaking of O’Reilly, it appears he was caught in a wee fib (he’s got lots of company of late), when a Mother Jones magazine article questioned O’Reilly’s claim of covering a war zone during the 1982 Falkland Islands (“Malvinas,” to the Argentines) war between Argentina and Great Britain, when in fact he was in a hotel in Buenos Aires some 1,200 miles from the fighting. O'Reilly threatened a New York Times reporter, promising to come after the reporter "with everything I have" if he felt that any of the reporter's coverage about his Falklands war controversy was inappropriate, adding “You can take it as a threat.”

¶ Last week the United Nations’ Mission in Afghanistan’s annual report revealed that civilian casualties in the country increased 22% in 2014. The 10,548 casualty figure was higher than any year since record-keeping began in 2009. Of that number, 3,699 were killed. The number of women and children wounded or killed also reached a new record.

¶ We should all be delighted that, during last week’s three-day White House summit on confronting violent extremism, President Obama emphatically denied that military strikes against al-Qaeda and ISIS represent a war against Islam, saying “Nor should we grant these terrorists the religious legitimacy that they seek. They are not religious leaders. They are terrorists."
        Yes, thank-you-Jesus. But what do we do with the fact that since 2001 we have launched military strikes against seven countries with Muslim majorities (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Syria), not to mention a majority-Muslim province in the Philippines?

¶ Words of assurance. “Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.” —Hafez, 14th century Persian poet

Above, Divan of Hafez, Persian miniature, 1585

¶ Black History Month profile. You may not know her name, but you have been affected by the legal battles she won and the precedents she set that helped shape civil rights, women’s rights and human rights. A brilliant lawyer and distinguished federal judge for over forty years, Constance Baker Motley (1921-2005) quietly helped change the course of American history. She is one of many unsung civil rights heroines who waded into the Big Muddy of American racism, but whose name today remains relatively unknown. —Marta Daniels, “Justice is a Black Woman: The Amazing Constance Baker Motley," Common Dreams

¶ Ancient text for the week. “Proclaim God’s deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that the Lord has done it.” —Psalm 22:31

¶ Modern text for the week. "For as long as I live, I will not let this suffering be normal.” —Kayla Mueller, in a 31 May 2013 interview about her work with Syrian refugees. Kayla was kidnapped in August 2013 by ISIS, which recently claimed she was killed in an airstrike

¶ Altar call. War zone photojournalist Lynsey Addario has made the rounds of talk shows of late, as part of a promotional tour for her book, It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War. I’ve not yet read the book, but it is interesting that she speak of her work as “bearing witness.”

¶ Benediction. Our congregation’s music coordinator, Brian Graves, has introduced us to a 19th century Shaker hymn tune, “And Now My Dear Companions,” by German immigrant Augustus P. Blasé, a member of the Watervliet, New York community, performed by the beautifully harmonic Rose Ensemble  and a slower, more contemplative instrumental version by William Coulter and Barry Phillips.  Brian wrote new lyrics to the tune, renaming it “God, In Your Mercy,” and has given me permission to post those new lyrics and his commentary.

Featured on the prayer&politiks site this week:
     •An older poem, “Elegy for an Ash"  and a brand new one, “Slalom”
     •”Dueling Psalms,”  a litany for worship combining verses from the
        Psalms 22 and 23
     •”God, In Your Mercy,”  new lyrics to a 19th century Shaker hymn
     •“Journey to Iraq” and “Caitlin Letters,”  columns from Iraq

©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 like what you read, alert your friends. Word-of-mouth is our best (not to mention our only) publicity.

¶ Invocation. Hearts open to Thy Face, like the flower to the sun / Hearts open to Thy Face, come and trace / The tears that stain our face, the joy that shall displace / All sorrow by thy grace, mercy bound, mercy bound / All sorrow by thy grace, circle ‘round. —new verse to “What Wondrous Love Is This"

Artwork at right ©Julie Lonneman, used with permission.

¶ One of the young people in our congregation is spending her junior year of high school as a foreign exchange student in Oman, located on the Arabian Peninsula’s southeast corner. Her blog posts have been remarkable, but a recent one is the most articulate statements I’ve seen on the struggle for intercultural understanding. She’s given me permission to share the link for that commentary.

¶ Confession. “In an unusually frank admission, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said that American law enforcement stands ‘at a crossroads,’ acknowledging in a speech at Georgetown University that ‘There is a disconnect between police and the communities they serve. . . . All of us in law enforcement must be honest enough to acknowledge that our history is not pretty.’” —USAToday

¶ Remembering Marcus Borg. “It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed when we see injustice, greed and a broken world with so many needs. Sometimes it’s just too much and we become paralyzed. . . . Asked how to avoid becoming overwhelmed, theologian Marcus Borg said, ‘It’s like being part of a quilter’s group. Don’t worry about the entire quilt; just focus on your square.’” —Tom Peterson, Pick Your Issue, Thunderhead Works. Artwork at left by Tom Peterson, used with permisison.

¶ Also from Thunderhead Works, two laugh-out-loud, short videos spoofing the more frivolous forms of climate change activism: “Follow the Frog”  and “Celebrity Brainstorm”

¶ “When the Ku Klux Klan burns a cross in a black family’s yard, prominent Christians aren’t required to explain how it isn’t really a Christian act. Most people realize that the KKK doesn’t represent Christian teachings. That’s what I and other Muslims long for—the day when these terrorists praising Muhammad or Allah’s name as they debase their actual teachings are instantly recognized as thugs disguising themselves as Muslims.” —Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, former National Basketball Association Most Valuable Player, now a New York Times best-selling author and filmmaker, in Time magazine

¶ In “Epidemic of Facelessness,” Stephen Marche begins by reporting that a Brit was recently sentenced to 18 months in prison for tweeting violent messages to a member of Parliament. Anyone who spends much time on the internet knows about the vicious anonymous verbal abuse and threat known as “trolling.”
        Marche uses this one incident to reflect on the larger forces of facelessness in modern culture and how the phenomenon actually affects the neurological and cultural basis of the capacity for empathy. From the face “comes the sense of inevitable obligation, the possibility of discourse, the origin of the ethical impulse.”
        “Without a face, the self can form only with the rejections of all otherness, with a generalized, all-purpose contempt. . . . A world stripped, not merely of ethics, but of the biological and cultural foundation of ethics.”
        “[I]n everyday digital life engaging with the trolls ‘is like trying to drown a vampire with your own blood,’ as comedian Andy Richter put it.” But ignoring the problem gets us nowhere. “There is a third way, distinct from confrontation and avoidance: compassion. . . . Trolls breed under the shadows of the bridges we build.”
        “The neurological research demonstrates that empathy, far from being an artificial construct of civilization, is integral to our biology. And when biological intersubjectivity disappears, when the face is removed from life, empathy and compassion can no longer be taken for granted.” —New York Times

¶ Many years ago, on the first Sunday following our congregation’s opening of a shelter for homeless men in our building, Pastor Mel Williams preached a sermon entitled “Naming the Poor.” He urged us all to become acquainted with these guests, getting to know them as more than “street people,” learning that behind each face was a name and a personal story. (See “Pastoral Principles for Prophet People”)

¶ Face of (whose?) God. “America is beyond power, it acts as in a dream, as a face of God. Wherever America is, there is freedom, and wherever America is not, madness rules with chains, darkness strangles millions. Beneath her patient bombers, paradise is possible.” —character in John Updike’s novel, Rabbit Redux

¶ Most of us know—from observation if not from direct personal experience—that when anonymous “issues” take on particular “faces,” minds change. For instance, in more traditional Protestant congregations, opposition to the ordination of women softens when the woman in question is homegrown, someone whose face is recognizable and respected. Similar transformations occur when mental illness strikes someone we love; or when someone known and loved comes out of the lgbt closet.

¶ Sam Keen’s 1991 book, Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination, is one of a number of books documenting how a nation’s war preparations require public relations efforts (a.k.a. propaganda) to rhetorically and visually depict the enemy as barbarian, even beastly, i.e., to remove the traces of actual faces and replace them with horrific characteristics.

¶ Scientists studying infant development have long noted the importance of “face time” between infants and mothers (and fathers, too) in the child’s emotional and social development. And the more interactive the parent’s face, the more animated the infant’s.

¶ Drone warfare is but the latest technological advance that allows greater distance between the trigger of deadly force and the result of such power. Even greater anonymity is allowed. Targets are but electronic blips on a monitor, and the “pilots” located thousands of miles from the battlefield. The distinction between lethal force and the simulation of computer games is virtually eliminated. The further the face, the lessor the trace of human empathy and thus the shrinking power of grace to melt enmity and sustain community. (A host of material is available on the web, including articles by these two friends: Michael Neuroth’s “The True Cost of Drone Warfare”  and Ed Kinane’s “The Ghastly, Remotely Piloted, Robotic Reaper Drones.")

¶ “If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war.” —Pentagon official defending U.S. military censors’ refusal to release video footage showing Iraqi soldiers being cut in half by cannon fire from helicopters, quoted in The Christian Century, 11 December 1991

 ¶ “Face” in Scripture.
       •The face of the deep was the first to be exposed to the “wind of God” in the creation story. (Genesis 1:2)
       •Moses’ shining face was evidence of his conversation with God. (Exodus 34:29)
        •“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)
        •God’s face is a refuge for the afflicted. “For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him. (Psalm 22:24)
        •The rejection of calculated violence: “[F]or not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own arm give them victory; but your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your countenance, for you delighted in them.” (Psalm 44:3)
        •To seek the face of God is the road to health, wholeness and peace, for humankind and for the earth itself. (e.g., 2 Chronicles 7:14)
        •The searing petition, “How long will you hide your face from me?”, is a common prayer of lament. (e.g., Psalm 13:1)
        •“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.” (1 Corinthians 12:12)
        •In John’s vision of the coming holy city, where tears are dried and death is no more (Revelation 21:4), all gathered “will see God’s face, and God’s name will be on their foreheads.” (22:4)

¶ Competing texts over danger and intimacy in seeing God’s face:
        •“So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved." (Genesis 32:30)
        •“[The Lord] said, you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” (Exodus 33:20)
       •“Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” (Exodus 33:11)
        •“Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.” (Deuteronomy 34:10)
        •“See, [God] will kill me; I have no hope; but I will defend my ways to his face.” (Job 13:15)

¶ Out of sight, out of mind. The death of your child, or one that you know, brings a convulsion of grief. The knowledge that 2.6 million children (whom we do not know) die annually from malnutrition and related diseases causes no tremor. As Soviet leader Joseph Stalin is credited with saying, “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.”

¶ The theme song for the sci-fi movie “Avatar” is “I See You,” a phrase repeated several times in the movie. The storied Na’vi people’s language has two meanings for the verb “see.” One is the commonsensical notion of the eyes providing visual stimuli to the brain. The other is a more complex meaning, to understand or comprehend or identify with. Thus, the greeting “I see you” is more than awareness of physical presence; it conveys empathy and relationship. This is what is meant when, in the Gospels, Jesus “saw” the faith of those bringing to him a paralytic for healing, after which he said to the man “your sins are forgiven.” (Matthew 9:2, which, a verse later, Jesus explains also means “stand up and walk.”)

¶ The first time ever I saw your face / I thought the sun rose in your eyes / And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave / To the dark and the endless skies, my love / To the dark and the endless skies. —Ewan McCall song, made famous by Roberta Flack’s Grammy Award winning rendition in 1972. Haven’t heard it in a while? Here’s one of several versions on the web.

¶ Conflict mediators know how important it is to find resolutions that allow all parties to “save face” (avoid humiliation).

¶ Of course, trying to “save face” in the pursuit of disastrous policies, like the US war in Vietnam, leads to quagmire. As former US President Lyndon Johnson complained, “While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.”

¶ A rabbi once asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun.
        “Could it be,” asked one of the students, “when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?”
        “No,” answered the rabbi.
        Another responded, “Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it is a fig tree or a peach tree?”
        “No,” answered the rabbi.
        “Then when is it?” the pupils demanded.
        “It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that it is your brother or sister. Because if you cannot see this, it is still night.” —Tales of the Hasidim by Martin Buber

¶ “The face of the enemy frightens me only when I see how much it resembles me.” —author unknown

¶ Sun and moon will be replaced / With the light of Jesus' face / And I will not be ashamed / For my savior knows my name. —"All My Tears,” by Julie Miller, sung by Emmylou Harris

Featured in this issue:
     •New lyrics to “What Wondrous Love Is This”
     •“Acquainted with grief,” a litany for Lent
     •“Pastoral Principles for Prophetic People”

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

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