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12 March 2015 • No. 13

¶ Invocation. “Be humble for you are made of earth.” —Serbian proverb

¶ Southern Appalachian mountaintops are now a bit safer. “After five years of action by Earth Quaker Action Team, PNC Bank announced a shift in its policy on March 2 that will effectively cease its financing of mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia.
        “This marks a major turnaround for the nation’s seventh largest bank, which for years refused to budge on this issue. After more than 125 actions, their desire to continue business as usual proved no match for Earth Quaker Action Team, or EQAT, and our allies.
        “As more and more banks stop financing mountaintop removal, we expect the coal companies to have more trouble over the next few years securing financing for extreme extraction.” —“How a small Quaker group forced PNC Bank to stop financing mountaintop removal,” George Lakey

¶ According to a report by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection employees have since 2011 been banned from using terms like “climate change,” “sustainability,” and “global warming.”

¶ Hymn of praise. If you haven’t heard it, or need to hear it again (and maybe again and again), listen to “Glory,” by Common and John Legend, from the move “Selma,” which won the 2015 Best Original Song at the 87th Academy Awards and the 72nd Golden Globe Award.

¶ Awesome. When eight-year-old Girl Scout Lily DeRosia, of Rochester, New York, heard the news that workers at a cookie factory in Louisville, Kentucky, which makes Girl Scout cookies, were being mistreated, she got her troop members and leader to sign a letter to Kellogg brand CEO John Bryant, saying “We want to sell cookies made by a company that cares about there (sic) workers.”

¶ “If you think you're too small to be effective, you've never been in bed with a mosquito.” —anonymous

¶ Hard to say if this is funny or sad. “Parody of ‘contemporary’ church” (thanks, Abigail)

¶ Intercession. Shortly after this photo was taken, RJ, a member of my congregation (at right), now serving with Christian Peacemaker Teams, was taken into custody along with several others by Israeli Border Police in Hebron, Palestine, for interfering with police work (i.e., taking photos of police interaction with Palestinian citizens). All were released after an hour; but such detainments are becoming more common. That photo inspired a new poem, “For RJ: The One who shields from detainment’s constant threat.”  See this site for more information about CPT's work.

¶ Women’s History Month is an annual recognition highlighting the contributions of women in history and contemporary society. It is commemorated in March in the US, the United Kingdom and Australia, corresponding with International Women’s Day on 8 March. In Canada the commemoration is in October, corresponding with “Persons Day” on 18 October, marking the anniversary of a pivotal constitutional case in 1929 decision making it legal for women to be elected to the country’s Senate.

¶ I can’t help but remember when, some years ago, my wife preached in a Baptist seminary chapel service on the school’s “Women in Ministry” day. She began by expressing thanks for the occasion but also looking forward to the day when the seminary established a “Men in Ministry” day.

¶ Last week the US Postal Service issued a new “Forever” stamp featuring the portrait of Maya Angelou and a quote from the first volume of her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

¶ The first “International Women’s Day” was in 1911. In 1980 US President Jimmy Carter issued the first presidential proclamation declaring the week of 8 March as Women’s History Week, saying “I urge libraries, schools, and community organizations to focus their observances on the leaders who struggled for equality—Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Tubman, and Alice Paul.”

¶ It’s hard to imagine anything like this happening now in Congress. In August 1981 a bipartisan Joint Congressional Resolution co-sponsored by Sentator Orin Hatch (R-Utah) and Representative Barbara Milulski (D-Maryland), authorized (Public Law 97-28) and requested the President to proclaim the week beginning 7 March 1982 as “Women’s History Week.” In 1987 Congress approved Public Law 100-9 designating March as Women’s History Month.

¶ Tenth anniversary of Dorothy Stang’s martyrdom. Sister Dorothy Stang,  a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, was an American-born woman who first went to Brazil in 1966, later becoming a Brazilian citizen. Over the next 40 years she built schools, established child nutrition programs, and worked with poor farmers in the Anapu region of the Amazon Forest, actively resisting illegal loggers and ranchers in their attempts to displace local communities. On 12 February 2005, while walking a dirt road on the way to a community meeting, two men assassinated her. The Roman Catholic Church later declared her a martyr.
       Following Sister Dorothy's death, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio da Silva put nearly 20,000 of the Amazon's 1.6 million square miles in the Anapu region under federal environmental protection. Brazil’s Human Rights Minister, Nilmario Miranda described her as “a legend, a person considered a symbol of the fight for human rights in [the Brazilian state of] Para.” Sister Dorothy (“Dot” to the people with whom she worked) was often pictured wearing a t-shirt with the slogan: “A Morte de floresta é o fim da nossa vida,” which is Portuguese for “The Death of the forest is the end of our life.”

¶ In 2011 the Obama administration released a report, “Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being,”  the first comprehensive federal report on women since the report produced by the Commission on the Status of Women in 1963.

¶ Former President Jimmy Carter, in his 2014 book,  A Call to Action: Women, Violence, and Power, argues that the world’s discrimination and violence against women and girls is the most serious, pervasive, and ignored violation of basic human rights.

¶ The National Women’s History Project’s 2015 theme is “Weaving the Stories of Women’s Lives.”

¶ Ain’t I a Woman? Here’s an inspiring 3-minute reenactment by Kerry Washington of Sojourner Truth’s extemporaneous speech at the May 1851 Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

¶ Confession. “Violence against women hurts everyone, including men. We invite our brothers to take up this cause, and be free from the limiting strictures of our modern definition of masculinity!” —Eve Ensler. Watch Tony Stroebel’s 2-minute video, “ManRise,” using Ensler’s text.

¶ Words of assurance. "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world." —Marianne Williamson, A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles.

¶ Look for it. “The Hunting Ground,” an Academy Award-nominated film about sexual assault on US college campuses, is now in release in selected cities.

¶ On Monday the United Nations issued a report saying that violence against women around the world “persists at alarmingly high levels in many forms.” Among its findings is the reality that 35% of women around the world have experienced either sexual or physical violence.

¶ Preach it. “She [the woman pursued by the dragon in Revelation 12] is a woman of power. If she were not, the dragon would not have bothered. But he persists. Her power is a threat to all that he stands for. But her trust in a God of life and love saves and sustains her. God bears her up on wings. A dance that God began with Eve continues through time.” —Joyce Hollyday, Clothed With the Sun: Biblical Women, Social Justice & Us—still the best book of reflections on women in the Bible

¶ Lection for Sunday next. “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. . . . No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me.” —Jeremiah 31:33-34

¶ O Lord, I’ve made you a place in my heart, and I hope that you leave it alone.  —Greg Brown

¶ For more on “heart religion,” see Ken Sehested’s sermon, “Religion of the Heart”  and a litany for worship, “Heart Religion."

¶ “She marched, so I can vote. I will never not vote again.” —Krystall Leek, student at Berea College, speaking about Ann Beard Grundy who, as a Berea freshman in 1965, had participated in the 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Grundy, originally from Birmingham, was a member of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham when it was bombed in 1963. The two were part of a group of Berea students and alumni who participated in the recent 50th anniversary march. Among the stories Grundy told of the 1965 trip to Selma was that their bus driver got so frightened about driving into the tense Selma atmosphere that he stopped 40 miles from the city and refused to continue, doing so only after the Berea students refused to pay him if he didn’t complete the journey. Story by Aamer Madhani, “50 year later, Selma still inspiring,” USA Today.

¶ “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” —legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead

¶ “There is Kayla Mueller’s America and there is Chris Kyle’s America and we can’t identify with both. There is Kayla Mueller’s Christianity and Chris Kyle’s Christianity and the two religions have little in common. Kyle or Kayla; who’s your hero?” —by Alan Bean, one of my favorite commentators on questions of faith and justice.

¶ Altar call. “The test of sincerity of one’s prayer is the willingness to labor on its behalf.” —St. John Chrysostom

¶ Benediction. “Live long and prosper” were the parting words of Mr. Spock, on “Star Wars,” played by Leonard Nimoy, with hand raised, two fingers apart, forming a “V.” Nimoy himself said the idea for this salute came from his Orthodox Jewish childhood.
        This shape of the Hebrew letter “shin,” Nimoy said in a 2013 interview as he made the famous “V” gesture, is the first letter in several Hebrew words, including “Shaddai” (a name for God), “shalom” (meaning “peace” and still a common word for saying hello or goodbye), and “Shekhinah” (the shining presence of God, often thought of as a feminine presence). The hand sign—using both hands—has been used by rabbis for hundreds of years for the ritual of Priestly Blessings, performed on various Jewish holidays and other special events.

Featured this week on prayer&politiks:
•A new poem, “For RJ: Freedom from detainment’s threat,”  following her detainment by Israeli police in Hebron, Palestine
•“Religion of the Heart,”  a sermon based on Jeremiah 31:31-34, lection for 22 March
•“Heart Religion,” a litany for worship, inspired by Jeremiah 31:33-34
• “The Cost of freedom entails moral accountability: The need for truthtelling about the CIA’s torturing practices,” a newspaper op-ed

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©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. Leave news, views, notes and quotes of your own. If you like what you read, alert your friends. Word-of-mouth is our best (not to mention our only) publicity.

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

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