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Pursuing God’s Presence

An annotated review of selected authors

by Nancy Sehested

My sermon this week is not on a particular biblical text but a review of other texts which have deeply influenced my personal formation as a follower of Jesus. My preparation involved lingering at my bookshelf, pulling out those books that were the most worn, the ones I return to again and again. It is not an exhaustive list, of course, but it offers a window into the writers who have become my companions for the inner journey. I spoke about them as God’s gardeners of my soul, people who have inspired me to live more fully and deeply. As you can see they are from a wide range of religions and from no particular religion at all. I have found them an encouragement to go more deeply into my own chosen path as a Christian. My hope is that this list will take you to your own reflection about the people who have deepened your soul.

Meditation by Eknath Easwaran (1910-1999)
In college and seminary I took courses on Eastern religions and Eastern mysticism. I was introduced to the Hindu teacher Eknath Easwaren. His 8-point program of meditation is a particularly helpful tool for someone like me who has difficulty quieting my mind. His method suggests meditating on sacred texts to begin your meditation. He thought memorizing St. Francis Prayer or the 23rd Psalm was ideal for beginners. His methods teach me still. He has many other books. Among them is an excellent biography of Gandhi, titled Gandhi the Man (1972).

Creative Prayer by Brigid E. Herman (1875-1923)
Brigid Herman was born in Prague and died in London at the age of 48. I was introduced to her tiny book by Sister Ellen, my spiritual director, who was a Roman Catholic sister. I’d never heard of a spiritual director until I met her. She came to me at a time in my early ministry when I was overwhelmed. I knew that I needed far more inner resources to survive the day to day work of pastoring. Sister Ellen was a wise and gentle guide. She walked me through lectio divina on the life of Christ. We met weekly for one year. She encouraged me to maintain a rigorous practice of one hour of centering prayer, lectio divina, and journaling 5 days a week. She introduced me to the rich, centuries-old history of Christian meditation and contemplative prayer. She gave me the book by Herman. It was written more than a century ago. Herman’s language is archaic, but then my language is often considered that way too. Yet her work is a basic primer on prayer, silence and contemplation. Sister Ellen taught me for one complete year. The day after we completed our one year commitment to meditative practices, she was killed in a car accident. I miss her still.

The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks
Jelaluddin Balkhi, known as “Rumi, was born in 1207 in Afghanistan, which was then part of the Persian empire. His family emigrated to Turkey. Rumi was a Sufi mystic who wrote numerous poems. One snippet of his poetry:
      The morning wind spreads its fresh smell,
      We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live.
      Breathe before its gone.

The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master translated by Daniel Ladinsky
Hafiz was a Sufi mystic who was born about 100 years after Rumi. He is considered the most beloved poet of Persia. He was born in Shiraz and lived from c.1320-1389.
      Some lines from his poetry:
      I am a hole in a flute that Christ’s breath moves through—Listen to this Music. Every Child has known God,
      not the God of names, not the God of don’ts, not the God who ever does anything weird, but the God who
      only knows four words and keeps repeating them, saying, “Come dance with Me.”

Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God translated by Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy
Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague in 1875. He wrote this book of love poems to God in about 1900. One part of one of the poem prayers:
I love you, gentlest of Ways, who ripened us as we wrestled with you. You the great homesickness
we could never shake off, you the forest that always surrounded us….

Other poets that I love include works by Denise Levertov, Mary Oliver, Annie Dillard, and Naomi Shihad Nye.

The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day
By Little and By Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day edited by Robert Ellsberg
Dorothy Day (1897-1980) was a journalist and social activist. She was a founder of the Catholic Worker Movement that offered direct aid to people who were poor along with non-violent advocacy actions on their behalf. She was arrested numerous times for her civil disobedience. She lived in a small room in one of the Catholic Worker houses in New York City alongside the people who she served. She did not think that works of mercy could be separated from works of peace. She wrote:
Neither revolutions nor faith is won without keen suffering.

Messengers of God by Elie Wiesel
Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel is a Romanian-born Jewish-American professor and political activist. He is the author of 57 books, including perhaps his best known book Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the concentration camps. He was born in 1928. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. I took a class with him when I was in seminary. I was captivated with his depth, honesty, and humanity. As a preacher I have benefited greatly from his books, especially his books that focus on biblical portraits. In class he said again and again that the worst stance in times of terror and violence is indifference.
      The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.
      The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's
      indifference.

The Writings of Thich Nhat Hanh
Thich Nhat Hanh was born in 1926 in Vietnam. He is a Zen Buddhist monk, writer, teacher, poet, and social activist. He lives in Plum Village in France. I have gleaned from his wisdom for many, many years. I left most of my books by him at the prison for the Buddhist prisoners to read. One piece of his voluminous writings:
      We humans have lost the capacity of resting. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal.
       We don’t allow our minds to heal. Our worries, stress, and fear make the situation worse.
      Meditation can help release the tension, help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that
      is very healing.

I Asked for Wonder by Abraham Joshua Heschel
Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in 1907 in Poland. He was a descendant of a long line of Hasidic rabbis. He was a theologian, poet, mystic, writer, teacher, social activist and historian. He arrived in America in 1939. He marched for civil rights with Martin Luther King, Jr. He gave himself to the social issues of his time, resisting racism, economic injustice and the Vietnam war. He taught for many years at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. The day before his death he insisted on going to the federal prison in Connecticut to wait for his friend, a Catholic priest, to be released after doing time for civil disobedience. He stood in the freezing snow. He died the next day on a Sabbath evening. A few years before his death in 1972 he prayed:
I did not ask for success. I asked for wonder. And You gave it to me.

Three books by Howard Thurman:
Deep is the Hunger, Jesus and the Disinherited, and With Head and Heart
Howard Thurman was born in Daytona Beach in 1899 and died in San Francisco in 1981. I heard him speak at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC in 1980. Dr. Thurman was a pastor, theologian, philosopher, professor, dean, writer, and mystic. It is said that during the times when Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed for his civil disobedience, he took with him two books. One was the bible and the other was Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited. I kept that book within arm’s reach of my desk during my 13 years as a prison chaplain. It provided one of the best interpretations of the temptations of those who are in powerless situations. Thurman wrote about the ways in which oppressed people can be tempted to live out of fear, deception and hate. He offered the radical way of Jesus, naming the power of love to transform and heal. Some of his words on that topic:
      Jesus’ message focused on the urgency of a radical change in the inner attitude of the people. He
      recognized fully that out of the heart are the issues of life and that no external force, however great
      and overwhelming, can at long last destroy a people if it does not first win the victory of the spirit
      against them.

The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance by Dorothee Soelle (1929-2003)
Dr. Soelle was a peace and environmental activist. She was a feminist theologian who was one of my seminary professors. Among her many books is this one that integrates her thoughts on resistance and mysticism. She was an interdisciplinary thinker with formal studies and degrees from her German homeland in philosophy, ancient languages, literature and theology. She couldn’t sing worth a toot, but that never stopped her from belting out hymns with great gusto and joy. From this book:
      I am neither professionally anchored nor personally at home in the two institutions of religion, the
      church and academic theology. It is the mystical element that will not let go of me… I can simply say
      that what I want to live, understand, and make known is the love for God. And that seems to be in
      little demand in those two institutions.

An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943
Etty Hillesum died at Auschwitz at the age of 29. She was a Dutch Jew who began her diaries about the same time as a younger Dutch girl, Anne Frank, began her diaries. Anne Frank was hidden in a house only a few miles from Etty’s room in Amsterdam. Some of my friends who began reading this book never got past the first half of it. Etty was self-absorbed with many sexual escapades. To me that part of the story makes her very human. And if you keep reading you discover a young woman who went through a transformation. As her outer world became increasingly small, Etty’s inner world became increasingly large.
      The sky within is as wide as the one stretching out above my head.
She flung open every door of her heart, unafraid to explore all corners of her being. She searched the darkened rooms, with only her longings as light, and did not stop until she found where love was hiding. She refused to allow her enemies to control her spirit. She chose love of her enemies rather than hatred. Her writings came to me at a critical time in my journey when enemies surrounded me in the public struggle for women’s pastoral leadership in the church. Becoming just like my hateful enemies was easy to pull off. My heart went to war many times. But Etty urged me to choose a path of true freedom, a path of peace, a path of mercy. My book of her diaries is in shreds. Etty remains one of my most beloved teachers. Her heart beat with love in the ruins of hate. In one of her letters to God:
      Dear God, these are anxious times. Tonight I lay in the dark with burning eyes as scene after scene
      of human suffering passed before me….I shall try to help You, God, to stop my strength ebbing
      away, though I cannot vouch for it in advance. But one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me:
      that You cannot help us, that we must help You to help ourselves. And that is all we can manage
      these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in
      ourselves. And perhaps in others as well…I shall bring You all the flowers I shall meet on my way…I
      shall try to make You at home always. Even if I should be locked up in a narrow cell and a cloud
      should drift past my small barred window, than I shall bring you that cloud, oh God, while there is
      still the strength in me to do so.

prayerandpolitiks.org. Nancy Sehested is co-pastor of Circle of Mercy Congregation in Asheville, NC. This sermon was preached in June 2014 at High Country United Church of Christ in Boone, NC.

“House to house, field to field”

Reflections on a peace mission to the West Bank

By Ken Sehested
Thursday, 18 April 2002

Yesterday came suddenly; but it seemed to go on forever. My arm no longer aches; yet the stone hurled as a curse by a young Jewish settler in Hebron struck a more tender target. Not even the bruise remains; but my heart still hurts.

Only two days prior I began a 24-hour journey to the illegally-occupied lands of the West Bank of the Jordan River. It's a long way from Clyde to the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem where we spent our first two nights. Except for the similar terrain of hills and hollows, the regions are a universe apart. The mountains of Western North Carolina may be the world's oldest; but the recorded history of ancient Palestine is among the most intense.

I am here as part of an emergency delegation arranged by Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), an organization committed to nonviolent intervention in situations of violent conflict. We are soldiers without weapons, save for the power of the Spirit to disarm nations as well as hearts. We claim neither special personal virtue nor public valor, but only this: that our lives have been gripped by the biblical vision of lion and lamb living together in peace (Isaiah 11:6); by God's promised Jubilee, when all "shall sit 'neath their own vine and fig tree, and none shall make them afraid" (Micah 4:4); by the assurance that one day all tears will be dried, when even death will come undone (Revelation 21:4), when creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay (Romans 8:21).

We have been invited to Hebron, south of Jerusalem. Beginning March 29, many cities in the West Bank, including Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and Jenin, have been invaded and occupied by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). The CPT staff of U.S., Canadian and Palestinian citizens was afraid Hebron would be next.

Hebron: Reckoned by some to be the world's oldest continuously-inhabited city. Hebron: Burial place, in the Ibrahimi Mosque, of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah. Hebron: Initial site of King David's throne.

Hebron: Home to 130,000 Palestinians and 400 heavily armed Jewish settlers, the former guarded by a 10-member Palestinian Authority security force, the latter by 2,000+ IDF soldiers. It was in Hebron that a Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, opened fire in February 1994 with an automatic weapon on the crowd gathered for Friday noon prayers in the Ibrahimi Mosque, killing 29 and wounding hundreds. Bullet-chipped marble and masonry are still visible. Similar damage, from a 2001 shooting, is visible on the wall of the CPT office facing a Jewish settlement and IDF rooftop post.

The U.S. "war on terrorism" has provided the perfect public relations cover for Israel's incremental measures designed to take full control of the West Bank—measures which are in direct conflict with repeated United Nations resolutions and the Geneva Convention, and subsidized with $10 million per day in U.S. foreign aid.

By the time our direct flight from Toronto landed in Tel Aviv, the threatened invasion of Hebron appeared to have passed. So after a day of training in Jerusalem, our 14-person delegation was split into three groups destined for three cities, including Hebron where my group was assigned.

Yesterday came early

Tuesday evening our leaders got word of a planned vigil in an East Jerusalem (Arab) neighborhood where a Palestinian family was scheduled for eviction. The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions was seeking assistance in bolstering their opposing presence.

"The police probably won't arrive until 8 a.m., but we need to be ready," was the message from Jeff Halper, co-founder of the Committee. It was agreed that supporters would gather at 6:45 at a familiar location near the affected house and walk together. Which meant our group was up before dawn for the half-hour hike.

Legal wrangling, involving 500-year-old deeds, had come to a head, and the tenants were to be removed—one more small act in the larger drama of Israeli annexation. The 2,700-year-old complaint of Isaiah comes to mind as we approached our destination:

"Woe to you who join house to house, who add field to field,
until there is room for no one but you. . . ." (5:8).

There were a dozen of us initially, some prepared to risk arrest. Then another dozen drifted in, and another, until the street was clogged and the press hovered. Police arrived a little after 8 a.m., surveyed the crowd, then left. No one knew when, or if, they would return. By mid-morning our group decided our presence was no longer needed, and we agreed to continue our journey to Hebron.

Under normal circumstances the 40-kilometer drive would take 35 minutes. But nothing is normal here. We encountered the first military check-point within minutes.

No, we were told, we could not continue on this highway. Why? Security threats. Terrorism. Oddly, no such threats applied to vehicles with Israeli tags and Jewish drivers, which breezed through the road block. This particular road is not among the growing network of Jews-only highways, but the effect is the same.

Our taxi, a boxy-shaped Ford van, turned around and took back roads winding through the countryside and several tiny villages, a scenic but rugged trip over broken, sometimes precipitously narrow pavement along the edges of steep cliffs. Meeting an oncoming vehicle was always a carefully orchestrated maneuver.

After more than an hour the road came to an unnatural end. Massive cubic-yard concrete barricades forced our halt. We would continue on foot. After a quarter of a mile there were more barriers and beyond them more taxis waiting to resume the trip. Thousands of Palestinian workers and merchants endure this daily travail. Whole trucks are unloaded at one barrier, carried by hand or push-cart to the other, then reloaded onto different trucks.

House to house, field to field, even road to road: The everyday acts of humiliation and aggravation mount, the reservoir of bitterness deepens.

Finally, we disembark in a bustling market in downtown Hebron and begin the half-mile walk to the CPT office in the town's Old City. The hike involves crossing a line from one area controlled by the Palestinian Authority to another controlled by the IDF. The latter was under curfew, meaning all citizens are confined to their homes. Such lock-downs are randomly-called and can last for days. It's quite possible for a family to run out of food during such curfews. "Internationals" like ourselves are exempt from this form of collective house-arrest, as are members of Jewish settlements.

Crossing from one zone to the other felt like entry into some twilight zone—from the crowded, noisy streets to a ghost town where nothing moved except the occasional cat, the wind-generated flapping of tarps stretched across market stall entrances, and the occasional IDF patrol. For three more blocks we walked along the narrow, abandoned streets—some cave-like, with housing built above—past padlocked shop doors spray-painted with a Star of David and epitaphs like "Arabs are filthy pigs" or merely "This is Israeli land."

Yesterday came with naked malice

Yesterday came suddenly, early, and with naked malice. After settling into our quarters at the CPT office (including a briefing on water conservation—all water is used twice before reaching the sewer), we got a rooftop visual tour of the city. An IDF command and fire outpost was perched in camouflage netting on an adjacent roof. Two other encampments were visible blocks away. The fearful racket resulting from their designated mission would become apparent on subsequent nights, once with the coordinating presence of Apache attack helicopters, "Made in America" along with the modified M-16 rifles carried by the IDF.

Later that afternoon we began our "patrol," one of the more common tactics in CPT's mission of offering public presence and being available to intervene in potentially provocative encounters involving soldiers/settlers and Palestinians. As we made our way along one major road—eerily deserted, devoid of traffic—a rock thrown from behind skipped along the pavement near our feet. I turned to see a young boy, no older than ten years, scurrying to find another stone to toss. Then another, and another. His young arm and inexperienced aim made it immediately obvious that no real threat was imminent. But his sinister grin and apparent delight in this mischief froze me in my tracks. Seconds later I suddenly became aware that one of his insults was coming straight at my head, so I instinctively raised my arm, which absorbed the impact. The collision of stone with flesh is an ancient animus in this part of the world, where rocks are more commonplace than dirt.

A few minutes later our unwanted and unwelcomed presence was reinforced, again by settler children. As the six of us continued our stroll, two preadolescent girls, followed by a slightly-older third, were approaching. The two in front bore facial expressions suggesting intrigue and curiosity, maybe even a cautious smile. But as our paths converged—ours on the sidewalk, theirs a few feet out in the empty roadway—the third girl nonchalantly veered in our direction. Without warning she doused us with the contents of her chocolate milk carton. And I recall hearing giggles from the other two, very much like those I remember from my own daughters' pajama parties of years past.

Physically we were unscathed, but I was left emotionally trembling. A palpable nausea extended downward from my gut into my legs and upward into my chest and shoulders. There is something especially poignant and frightening about the petty violence of children.

Dodging bullets would have been easier.

Yesterday's over, but tomorrow's outta' sight

There is a popular saying here: Stay in the Middle East for a week, and you think you can write a book. Stay for a month, and you think, well, maybe an essay. Stay for a year, and you don't know what to say.

Does the conflict here lend itself to simple solutions? No. But fatalism is no less dishonest.

Later in this journey I overheard a fragment of a conversation between one of my fellow travelers and a journalist. The latter exclaimed: "Truth? You want truth? There is no truth here. This is the Middle East!" I wanted to butt in and respond: If there's no chance for truth, there's no possibility for a solution. And if there's no solution that makes you a scavenger, earning a living on people's misery!

There are many and diverse things to be said, however humbly. The following is my top-ten list of things needing to be highlighted.

1. The nation of Israel was created as a refuge for Jews escaping Europe's holocaust ovens, an episode unparalleled in the history of human savagery—in its systematic intention and implementation if not in sheer magnitude. Indeed, the brutal legacy of anti-Semitism (in which the Christian community shares responsibility) in many parts of the world is well-documented. Nevertheless, the Jewish safe-haven that is Israel was built on the backs of an indigenous population, one that is also Semitic, 726,000 of whom were displaced from their homes and ancestral lands.

2.Theological claims that the land of ancient Palestine was promised to the Jews by God may be emotionally satisfying but cannot be privileged in a world where gods, like gang leaders, inhabit every other block. Palestinians (both Christian and Muslim) and Jews each have legitimate claims to the land, which if not shared could become a perpetual killing field, maybe even trigger an international nuclear exchange.

3. I am among those raised on “cowboy and Indian” movies in North America, where the latter were stereotyped as barbarous, untrustworthy and bloodthirsty savages who prey on the weak and innocent. A similar portrait of Arab peoples has been painted by modern movies and news programs. Until that field of vision changes we will continue to be clueless in reading history and in charting a redemptive future.

4. The so-called "Oslo Accords" is utterly inadequate in its projected division of land between Israel and Palestine. The proposed map of the Palestinian nation is more like a patchwork of reservations, each encircled by, and thus controlled by, Israel. Jeff Halper has noted, the fact that 95% of the Occupied West Bank would be part of the new Palestinian nation is a grossly misleading statement. Inmates occupy some 95% of a prison. It's what happens with the other 5% that matters.

5. There is significant and growing evidence that Israeli leaders have no intention of returning illegally occupied lands to Palestinian control. Such policies of encroachment (particularly with the expanding settlements) amount to ethnic cleansing.

6. It is certainly true that Arab “terror networks" exist and must be stopped (just as there have been Ku Klux Klan and other terror networks in the U.S. for over a century). However, addressing terrorism by military means is, in the words of John Paul Lederach, like trying to kill flowering dandelions by hitting them with a golf club.

7. The violence of Palestinian terrorists doesn’t occur in a vacuum. "The first and worst violence," according to Uri Avnery, former member of the Israeli Knesset, "is the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land." Virtually every major human rights organization (including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and even B’tselem, the leading Israeli human rights body) insist that Israeli demands for Palestinians to “stop the violence” actually turns reality on its head.

8. Many statements, from governments and non-governmental bodies (including churches), have been made decrying the violence on both sides of this conflict. Such statements are actually disingenuous in that they ignore the dynamics of power in the conflict. If both sides were to immediately cease all hostilities, the resulting "peace" would leave Israel in an overwhelmingly dominant position. Any peace agreement that refuses to acknowledge the imbalance of power is destined to harden the realities of injustice and thereby sow the seeds for the next war.

9. The recent plan approved by the Arab League, acknowledging both Israeli and Palestinian rights to exist within secure borders, must be affirmed as the framework for a just peace. It is not unfair to ask if Arab nations are sincere. But there is only one way to find out.

10. Finally, while the United Nations is the proper forum for negotiating a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians, numerous national and regional governing bodies will have distinctive roles to play. Among those must be a commitment by the U.S. to leverage its massive financial aid to Israel as incentive for good-faith bargaining.

# # #

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. A condensed version of this article was printed in the July-August 2002 issue of The Other Side magazine.

Signs of the Times

¶ “One of the few missing ingredients in the wonderful new film Selma is the centrality of music during the Selma-to-Montgomery, Alabama march. A tiny snippet of field recordings from the march can be heard at the very end of the movie's credits, but otherwise the movie ignores the constant singing that emboldened the marchers during the four-day, 54-mile trek. Not surprisingly, Pete Seeger—who died a year ago at age 94—was there to help lift the marchers' spirits, as he did for every progressive crusade during his lifetime.” —Peter Dreier, “At Selma and Around the World, Pete Seeger Brought Us Closer Together"

¶ The folk at The Prophetic Collection recently highlighted an amazing two-minute video of thousands of starlings creating fluid art, midair. Unmitigated grandeur.

¶ “Closing my eyes and holding still. It’s the end if I get mad or scream. It’s close to a prayer. Hate is not for humans. Judgment lies with God. That’s what I learned from my Arabic brothers and sisters.” —Associated Press report of a four-year-old tweet by Keji Goto, Japanese freelance journalist and Islamic State hostage recently killed by his captors

¶ Bittersweet news. George Stinney, a 14-year-old African American in Alcolu, South Carolina, was the youngest person to be executed in the US, allegedly for killing two white girls. In 1944 it took an all-white jury 10 minutes to deliberate his case following a three-hour trial in which no witnesses were called in his defense. Stinney was so small he had to sit on a telephone book in the electric chair. The Civil Rights Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ), directed by Northeastern University law professor Margaret Burnham, in cooperation with pro bono lawyers and a SC judge, reopened the case, and on Wednesday 14 December, SC Circuit Judge Carmen Mullins exonerated Stinney. CRRJ is working to document every racially motivated killing in the American South between 1930 and 1970. So far, they've documented about 350 cases. Most of the crimes received little attention when they were committed, and often, even the family members of the victims don't know how their relatives died.

¶ Sweeter news from South Carolina. On Wednesday, 28 January, the “Friendship Nine”—students from SC’s Friendship College—were exonerated by former SC Circuit Court Judge John C. Hayes III, nephew of the judge who convicted the students 54 years ago. The group was arrested following the 31 January 1961 crime of sitting at a downtown lunch counter and, refusing bail, were sentenced to 30 days of hard labor in the country prison. The group’s original defense attorney, Ernest Finney Jr., who went on to become the first black chief justice of the SC Supreme Court, formally read the motion in the Rock Hill municipal court hearing. The city’s attorney who helped prosecute the Friendship Nine in 1961 was present, this time to shake hands with the civil rights attorney who represented the convicted men. Rock Hill’s current prosecutor Kevin Brackett apologized to the eight men still living. Watch the dramatic moment caught on film.

¶ Patriotism’s, and piety’s, imported paraphernalia. In 2013, of the $213.8 million in imported fireworks, $203.6 million of that amount came from China. And of the $4 million spent on imported US flags, China’s share was $3.9 million. Also: China is now the largest Bible publisher (12.4 million copies in 2013).

¶ There are a variety of comparative indicators to monitor how the US economy is recovering from the Great Recession. One that stands out in my neck of the woods is the growth in Medicaid coverage (the government-funded health insurance for people living at or below an income level equal to 133 percent of the poverty line). In our county, an all-time record number of persons are being covered. Significantly, the current total is 29 percent higher than 2007, the year just prior to the recession. The figure does not include another 12,000 that would be covered if North Carolina expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
       Part of the reason is that while the number of new jobs being added is significant, a much higher proportion of them are low-waged. A recent study from the National Employment Law Project revealed that:
       •Lower-wage occupations were 21 percent of recession losses, but 58 percent of recovery growth.
       •Mid-wage occupations were 60 percent of recession losses, but only 22 percent of recovery growth.
       •Higher-wage occupations were 19 percent of recession job losses, and 20 percent of recovery growth.

¶ What’s more, the recession squeezed those of modest income in unexpected ways. A number of wealthier communities in Western North Carolina (the mountain views are luxurious)—those with high concentrations of vacation homes for the wealthy—came to depend on the taxes generated by high-end houses. But when construction slowed, taxes waned; and now tax increases on modest homes are set to rise dramatically to keep county coffers solvent.

¶ It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe in it. —comedian George Carlin

¶ In case there was till a question. The gulf between rich and poor people in America has hit a new record. A December 2014 analysis by Pew Research Center finds that the wealth gap between the top 21 percent of families and everyone else is the widest since the Federal Reserve began collecting such income data 30 years ago. Last year, the median wealth of upper-income families ($639,400) was almost seven times that of middle-income families and nearly 70 times that of lower-income families
The findings follow another Pew analysis published last week which finds that US wealth inequalities along racial lines have dramatically worsened since the Great Recession, with the gap between whites and blacks at its highest in 25 years. According to that study, which also looks at Federal Reserve data, in 2013 white household wealth was 13 times that of black households and 10 times that of Hispanic households. —Wealth Gap Between Rich and Poor Americans Highest on Record, Sarah Lazare, Common Creams, December 18, 2014

¶ Just one week after Scotland announced its moratorium on fracking, the Welsh government voted on Wednesday to block the toxic method of shale gas extraction until it is proven safe from environmental and public health standpoints.

¶ Other news of import—ISIS, measles, Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll’s goal line call at the end of the Super Bowl—has drowned out coverage of the ongoing talks in Geneva by representatives of the United Nations Security Council member states (Britain, China, France, Russia and the US), plus Germany, with Iran over its nuclear power production plans. Critics of a deal, both in the US Congress and in Tehran’s parliament, are busy trying to scuttle the talks. In a significant breach of diplomatic diplomacy, House Speaker John Boehner unilaterally invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which considers Iran its chief nemesis, to address a joint session of Congress next month prior to the 24 March deadline of the Geneva negotiation. See Circle of Mercy Congregation’s “We Say No Again” public statement (first adopted in 2007, reaffirmed in 2012) opposing war with Iran.

¶ Friends doing training in the Middle East recently reported on a remarkable encounter in Jerusalem. A friend-of-a-friend connection led them to a few days of lodging with a gay couple, Moshe and Ahmed.
“It was a divine appointment. We had a great time as tourists, but that's not what was interesting. Moshe is a secular Jewish Israeli. Ahmed is a Catholic Christian Palestinian Israeli (who doesn't attend church but thinks Pope Francis is the best news in a long time) working as a human rights lawyer. Moshe is doing work in human rights education with young people. He got his life turned around when he attended a program at the Center for Humanist Education at the first Holocaust museum in the world—not Yad Vashem, but the Ghetto Uprising Memorial up in the north coast of Israel. They brought together Jews and Arabs for a program that first studied the Holocaust and then studied the Nakba” [“the catastrophe,” when more than 700,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes when the nation of Israel was founded in 1948].
“Michael connected us with Ir Amim, an Israeli non-governmental organization that is trying to do education about the situation of Jerusalem related to peace process possibilities. They gave a fantastic 4-hour free tour of East Jerusalem. Our guide, a former Israeli tank commander, gave one of the most thorough and devastating critiques of the Separation Barrier and the politics and hypocrisy behind it I've ever come across.”

¶ Responding to the above testimony, a reverential expression seemed to appear on my computer screen of its own volition: The greatest joy in being able to circulate widely is the discovery of all the holy, redeeming anomalies God has stashed in every zip code and time zone, every latitude and longitude, every clime and GPS coordinate—and for all we know, in every galaxy as well!

¶ Christian Peacemaker Teams’ work in Hebron, on the West Bank of Palestine, is of personal interest partly because I’ve been there and partly because a member of my congregation is now a full-time member of that team. If you’d like some brief accounts of their work, view their recent newsletter. The last item in that report includes a five-minute video of Israeli security forces arresting two 10-year old Palestinians for allegedly throwing stones at police. (See Ken Sehested’s “House to House: Reflections on a peace mission to the West Bank.”)

¶ Every year, prior to Valentine’s Day (celebrated in a surprising number of countries), children in our church create homemade Valentine’s cards to send to inmates, observing St. Valentine’s Day as the occasion to remember those in prison. Here is a little background.
       While the existence of St. Valentine is not in doubt—archeologists have unearthed a chapel built in his honor—reliable accounts of his life are scarce. Which is why, in 1969, the Vatican removed St. Valentine from its official list of feasts.
       In ancient Rome lived a man named Valentine (in Latin, Valentinius). He was a priest and a physician but was not free to express his Christian faith without the threat of persecution. He tended to his patients by day and prayed for them by night.
       Eventually however, he was arrested for his faith and executed on 14 February 270 during one of the persecutions ordered by Emperor Claudius II Gothicus. In 496, Pope Gelasius I declared 14 February as St. Valentines Day.
       It is told that a jailor in the Roman prison had a daughter who was one of Valentine's patients before he was arrested. He tended her for her blindness, but when he was arrested she still had not regained her sight. Valentine asked the jailor for some parchment and ink. He wrote the girl a note and signed it "From your Valentine." When she opened the note, a yellow crocus flower fell out of the parchment and it was the first thing she had ever seen. She had received her sight. The crocus is the traditional flower of St. Valentine.

¶ Bumper sticker. “Spirituality” doesn’t make hospice calls.

¶ Another foreign affairs quiz. The East African nation of Somalia recently ratified the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, described as “the most ratified international human rights treaty in history.” Which two countries have yet to ratify? South Sudan is one. Go here for the second.

¶ Like good cholesterol, there’s good socialism. The first bill approved (overwhelmingly so) in January by the 114th Congress renewed a federal program providing supplemental insurance covering acts of terrorism. First approved after the 11 September 2001 terrorists attacks, the current renewal will double (over a course of five years) the previous $100 million threshold.

¶ Benediction. The Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him) said: When God created the creation, he inscribed upon the Throne, “My Mercy overpowers My wrath.” —Imam Bukhari and Muslim b. al-Hajjaj ahadith, or official collections of oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad

Featured this week on prayer&politiks
Resources for Lenten preparation (four litanies and a meditation on fasting)
       •Lent is upon us
       •Disillusionment
       •Bright sadness
       •Come Into the Desert
       •Fasting: Ancient Practice, Modern Relevance
“Hallelujahs and Heartaches, Too,” a poem celebrating a 25th anniversary pastorate

©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) for noncommercial purposes.

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Hallelujahs and heartaches, too

Kyle Childress: Quarter century and counting

by Ken Sehested

What a day! What a day! Not to mention a year, twenty-five
of them piled head-to-toe, some of them a bit fuzzy now
                  (thank God!),
others like constellations whose radiance
         still guides during dark nights of the soul.
Little did you know, a quarter-century ago,
         what your profession would involve,
where your convictions would take you,
                  the joys then unimaginable,
         the sorrows ruthless beyond belief.
         And the "ordinary" days, the days
                  for which songs are never composed,
                  for which cakes are never baked,
                  for which poems are never rhymed
                  nor hymns inspired,
for which hardly anyone but the Beloved (Above you)
         and your beloved (beside you) took note.

Scores upon scores of hallelujahs and heartaches, too.
         Cares that kept you up at night
         and joys that set you moving
                  at the first sight of dawn’s light.

If you could have known then what you know now,
would you have allowed those installation words
         to be spoken in your ears,
         those welcoming handshakes
         to bind you flesh to flesh?
Would you, instead, have run
         screaming from the sanctuary,
         faster than Jonah in a speed boat,
        further than Tarshish multiplied many times over?
Bemoaning the day of your birth,
         more bitterly than Jeremiah?
         Cursing God more boldly than Job,
         demanding a grand jury indictment of the Most High?

Might you have sought an easier Gospel to declare—
         a compliant, more digestible announcement,
                  something less thorny,
                           less disturbing to patrons,
                           something more likely to win friends
                  and salutations from chambers of commerce?
How many times have you been tempted to soften the
         Word, to something like:

thus recommendeth the Lord?

Would you have preferred a cool breeze and votive candle
         to Pentecost’s raging wind
                  and flaming tongues of fire?
                           Maybe a luxury hotel room
                                   to the Nativity’s barn-yard stable?

Did another life, away from East Texas sweat, tempt you?
A more pedigreed station, greater notoriety,
and better access to a major airport?
A city whose name everyone can pronounce?

Wouldn’t it all have been easier if Jesus had
         turned those rocks to bread.
        Or cut a deal with the devil
                  in order to accomplish salvation’s end?
Or to undertake a few magical feats
         to pack the sanctuary and grow the budget?
                  What harm could that have done?

                                                But, no. Nooooo.
You knew, down in your toes if not in your head,
        there is no skipping from the crib
                 to the cross
                 to the Crown of Glory.
         No shortcuts to bypass those ordinary days.
         No passing the cup of those agonizing experiences.
         No surge protection against joy’s electrifying arc.

For there is no ordinary in ordination’s destination.
        In this bondage, and this alone,
                  does freedom break out.
         In this submission, does liberty emerge.
         In such precarious life does restlessness
         encounter the peace that passes all understanding.

Be still. Fear not. The Promise endures, even
         on those days when
         you think your work’s in vain.
                 Live large, my friend.
                           Laugh often,
                                   and love well.

On the twenty-fifth anniversary of Kyle Childress’ pastorate at Austin Heights Baptist Church, Nacogdoches, Texas, 8 February 2015. ©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Fasting: Ancient practice, modern relevance

When we hear the word “fasting”—an historic Lenten emphasis—the initial image is associated with dieting. For most of us in North America, fasting is a foreign and somewhat threatening notion , conjuring notions of self-depreciation and ascetic mortification.

In Scripture, fasting is among the most common acts of religious piety. Yet it also comes in for severe judgment.

“Why have we fasted, and thou seest it not?” whined the people of Isaiah’s day. To which Yahweh thundered in response, “Is not this the fast that I choose: to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house. . . ?” (58:6) Similarly, in his only explicit listing of behavioral qualifications for entrance to heaven—when sheep will be sorted from goats—Jesus’ short list includes care for the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the prisoner. That’s all. No mention of fasting or any other form of “pious” behavior or doctrinal orthodoxy.

So why consider fasting? If spiritual disciplines are not a means of bargaining with God—for a better deal here or a bigger mansion later—why bother? Not because we are bad, although “unrighteousness” is a symptom of our predicament. But because we are blind, because we have become “conformed” to the world’s way of doing business, have lost sight of God’s intention. Such loss of sight will not give way to moral vigor or heroic willfulness. If we are to regain our sight we need to develop personal and communal practices (another way of saying “spiritual disciplines”) which clarify vision, which remind us to Whom we belong and to Whose purposes we are called.

Fasting can be an effective tool for affecting appetites which are forever getting out of control.

The Struggle With Appetites

The struggle to control appetites is a pertinent issue for those of us who live within a wealthy, gluttonous culture. When tens of thousands of children die daily from starvation and nutrition-related diseases, the fact that our media is crowded with advertising for diet plans is proof enough that something is wrong.

In 1960 the “self-storage” business was unheard of. Now there are more than 50,000 such facilities in the U.S., offering nearly 1.8 billion square feet of space. It’s estimated that if every human produced produced as much trash as the average U.S. citizen, we would need four additional planets the size of the earth to hold it all.

On a larger public scale, the issue of uncontrolled appetites is identified by Book of James as the root of war. “What causes wars?” he asks. “Is it not your passions”—your cravings, your appetites—“which are at war within you? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war” (4:1-2).

Seen in this light, our personal and corporate cravings are interconnected afflictions. Fasting encourages us to acknowledge our own personal inclination to gluttony and gives us a remedial step toward restored health. It also helps us identify with the gluttony in which we participate on a larger scale.

By fasting we come to sense the deeply spiritual roots of our own personal and corporate consumptive tendencies. We begin to understand the intimate connection between spiritual dysfunction and material distress.

Some Practical Hints

If you want to experiment with fasting during Lent, here are a few suggestions.

•As with advice for physical exercise, begin modestly. A week of fasting, or even a full day, may be too big a step. Try missing lunch, at least one day each week.

•Use that time to pray, to read Scripture or other devotional material. Clip newspaper accounts of violence and offer intercessory prayer. Begin your evening meal by mentioning these stories and offering prayer. If you have children, involve them.

•If physical health prevents you from missing a meal, substitute appropriately: a small bowl of rice, a handful of raw vegetables or a piece of fruit.

•Another way to fast is to forgo certain kinds of food or beverages during Lent: meat, sugar, caffeine, or chocolate. Or snacks between meals.

•Fast from certain other behaviors (or forge new ones). Put the television in the closet for Lent. Swear off the mall. If you work too many hours, reduce that schedule to free time for your family, for your own rest and renewal. Consider rising before dawn each morning to write in a journal or walk around your neighborhood, pausing to offer appropriate prayers: at the houses of your neighbors; at your local school; in front of local businesses; at the local health clinic.

Whether adhering to ancient traditions or creating new ones, let your imagination ride alongside your resolve.

Conclusion

At whatever point you begin, make it a point of challenge, not fearfulness. The point of fasting from food is not calories. Rather, it is to gain control over our appetites.

Bringing personal habits under control, adjusting them so that they nudge us toward health rather than heart attack, toward life rather than death—these are reasons for fasting. And as we do this, we become aware of the need to bring public, corporate habits (policies) under control; we face the need for policies that nudge our nations toward health and life.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Come into the desert

The time has come to flee Pharaoh’s national security state for the insecurity of the wilderness.

Led by the Spirit and sustained by angels, we head to the desert for a throw-down with the Devil.

Fear not. God will sustain you. Your clothes will not wear out, your feet will not swell.

And yet we tremble: Why have you led us from the prosperous land of shopping and shiny plastic things on this highway to the danger zone?

What could be wrong with harvesting bread from stones? And a little Vegas-style magic?

Why not lay claim on all the world’s kingdoms? Wasn’t Jesus “exceptional”?

And don’t we, his followers, get a piece of that action?

Can God spread a table in the wilderness without Wall Street backing?

Come into the desert, O people of Mercy, to find the One whom your heart most desires.

Inspired by Matt 4:1–11 & Deut 8:1–10. ©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org.

Turn Strong to Meet the Day

A Son's Tribute to His Dad: Glen Leroy Sehested

This past Friday night [26 January 2001] I had what will undoubtedly be among the most enduring experiences of my life, sitting by my father's hospital bed from late evening until dawn. Keeping vigilance. It turned out to be his last night. I was not tempted to sleep. I had much work to do.

Part of what I did was to write. Here are some of those thoughts.

"Tonight I sit by my father's hospital bedside, straining emotionally in rhythm to his labored breathing. His breaths are short and shallow; his exhales are punctuated, frail muscles from chest to stomach rippling in brief contortion, emptying the lungs in desperation for the next gulp of air. Only occasionally does his body relax, save for the percussion of scarred lungs doing their best against impossible odds.

"He seems to stay alive by sheer strength of heart, a heart whose jerking pulse fairly rattles the aortic vein running up his neck. His heart has always had the stamina of a plow mule. Only now his other organs can no longer keep up."

In dying, as in living, he worked harder than most.

"Tonight my Dad is dying. He knows, and we know, there is nothing more to do except to wait and to pray. And so I read aloud to him from the Psalms. From Paul's letter to the Romans. From the Gospels. And I sing, all the lines from all the hymns so familiar to us both. When I forget the words, I hum.

"Does he hear? Some, I suspect. Probably in depths beyond which the mere mind can go. And that is enough.

"If I beg for his life, I know it is for my own sake more than his, for his days have been full and his time is now ripe. From comments made in recent days, during fleeting moments of lucid thought, we know he is ready for this harvest."

I pray we shall be, too.

All of us in the family were deeply touched by the sheer number of you who came here last night during visitation hours and recounted, with genuine emotion, the important ways my Dad had touched your life or the lives of those you hold dear: by faithfulness and trustworthiness in friendship; by visits in your home or at your hospital bed; by lighted eyes and cheerful greeting as you entered the church house, home to a community of faith so near and dear to his heart.

The testimonies of affection accounted by one after another after another were amazing. Who would have thought it so of a man who considered himself too unlettered to lead; too slow of tongue to speak; too common of birth to command respect.

But he did lead; he did speak; and your outpouring of affection is eloquent testimony to the respect he did in fact command.

My purpose in this tribute to my Father—to my mother's Beloved, to my and my sister's Daddy, to my children's Papa—is not to romanticize him, to apply heavy cosmetics to make him more winsome than he was. He was made of flesh and blood, like us all. He was not always the easiest person to live with. Who among us is?

He was not a saint—at least not in the sentimental, silly way we use that term. He had some hard edges. He was not perfect, and sometimes his sense of responsibility overshadowed his capacity for joy.

Early in his adult life my Dad gave up dancing, on religious ground. And Lord knows he couldn't carry a tune in a bucket! I suspect that this past Saturday afternoon, when St. Peter greeted him at heaven's gate, the first angelic assignment Dad was given was to take dancing lessons! When the day finally arrives for his dancing granddaughter to cross over Jordan, Dad will be ready; and the two of them will cut a rug from one end of heaven to the other.

And after that, singing lessons!!

Brothers and sisters, the good news of the gospel is that our flaws and failures and unflattering features do not define who we are in the eyes of God. What defines us are two things that, without question, characterized my father.

One is the practice of forgiveness. The last intelligible words he spoke came Saturday morning and were mumbled with great effort to my sister Glenda. She wrote them down. "I ask that everybody forgive me for any time I've hurt them and I want everybody to know that I forgive them if they ever hurt me. Everybody." He repeated for emphasis. "Everybody."

The practice of forgiveness is the very heart of the believer's vocation.

No matter your intelligence, your brilliance, your education—it will fail you. No matter your eloquence of speech—the sound will fade. No matter your royalty of birth or prestige of name—these will grow more stale than last week's casserole. What will endure, what matters in the eyes of God, in the heart of Christ, in the breath and power of the Spirit, is our willingness to confess, to God and to each other, and receive forgiveness.

This is my father's testimony, and I believe it to be the sure and faithful testimony of Scripture.

This my Dad would do. This we are called to do: To confess our failures and accept the gratuitous mercy of God not as an isolated act, but as a daily discipline.

The flip side of being forgiven by God, of course, is to practice forgiveness with each other. Jesus went so far as to say that the measure of forgiveness we receive from God is in direct proportion to that which we give each other. The two notes are of the same measure, the two steps are of the same spiritual journey. Being forgiven, by God, and practicing forgiveness, with each other, are mirror reflections of the same reality.

And what is the practice of forgiveness other than the pursuit of justice and the proffering of mercy? These habits, and these habits alone, hold the promise of peace.

"What doth the Lord require of you," thundered the prophet Micah, "But to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."

My father taught me about the promise of peace in the pursuit of justice and the proffering of mercy. I can recall, for instance, as a young adolescent the many Friday nights I spent helping my Dad build a simple sanctuary for the Primera Iglesia Bautista, a Mexican-American congregation in Snyder, Texas. I think my Dad built that humble structure almost single-handedly; in doing so he crossed many of the racial and class barriers which have plagued our nation from its beginnings.

My father was experienced in caring for the destitute, in visiting the sick, in welcoming "strangers." Some of you here were recipients of his merciful presence and, simultaneously, were transferred to the seat of mercy in the process.

I have no question that my father's influence was a pivotal factor in my own chosen ministry of making peace, of pursuing justice, of calling the church to its ministry of reconciliation.

Just last night my wife Nancy discovered a note card in Dad's Bible, with a wonderful quote that is both a call to worship and a call to action. I don't know where he got it, but I know it must be old because the words were typed on an ancient manual typewriter, probably the one I inherited from my folks many years ago. This quote, as much as any other, sums up the deepest longing of my father's desire to follow in the footsteps of Jesus:

Every morning,
Lean thine arms upon
The windowsill of heaven,
And gaze upon
The face of thy Lord;
Then with this vision in mind,
Turn strong to meet the day.
[source unknown]

"Lean on heaven," is my Dad's testimony, "and turn strong to meet the day." So may we all.

Amen.

Ken Sehested
Chauvin Funeral Home
Houma, Louisiana
January 29, 2001

Zinn and the Mechanic

Commemorating the anniversary of Howard Zinn’s passing, and that of my father

This past Tuesday, 27 January 2015, was the fifth anniversary of the passing of Howard Zinn, the historian, activist and playwright who guided many an innocent, blinded-by-the-might nativist (folk like me) to understand the not-so-exceptional history of their country. Zinn was best known for his A People’s History of the United States, of which Matt Damon’s character in the movie Good Will Hunting says, “That book will knock you on your ass.”

Such a posture, of course, is the starting point of every meaningful spiritual journey (and, typically, includes repeated encounters with that hard ground).

Tuesday was also the 14th anniversary of my father’s passing. It would take multiple levels of interpretive work for my Dad to understand Zinn’s writing—something I never accomplished. But I kept at it because I believe that—at the core of his sense of honor, and honor was key—he knew the way of the world favors the devious. He consistently refused to give himself to that dishonoring system, though he was mostly skeptical at the prospects of release from its sway.

He knew the world as relentlessly hard, even treacherous, and suspected joy unreliable. Decades ago, when I—giddy as a goose—called home to say their first grandchild was on the way, Dad was the first to speak, and he said, “Can you afford it?”

Dad never grew comfortable with the fact that I refused to make “affordability” the determining factor in life choices. (Though I gained much stature in his eyes when I married, my wife who she is. And more so with each granddaughter. Safe to say, I surely married, and fathered, “up.”)

I invite you to read acclaimed novelist Alice Walker’s remembrance of Howard Zinn, her teacher and later a friend and collaborator. To mark the anniversary, below are a few favorite quotes from Zinn’s writing. (If you haven’t already, see as well the quote at the conclusion of the Signs of the Times No. 7.)

• “Why should we accept that the 'talent' of someone who writes jingles for an advertising agency advertising dog food and gets $100,000 a year is superior to the talent of an auto mechanic who makes $40,000 a year?” [Mechanic that he was, Dad would have especially appreciated this—though I’m pretty sure he never saw $40k pay, even with 37 years with the same company.]

•“We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

•”Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders . . . and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem.”

•”Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”

•”There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”

•”Most wars, after all, present themselves as humanitarian endeavors to help people.”

•“I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.”

•” I don't believe it's possible to be neutral. The world is already moving in certain directions, and to be neutral, to be passive in a situation like that, is to collaborate with whatever is going on.”

[My homily at Dad’s funeral is posted here.]

# # #

Signs of the Times

First, let’s look at a few profiles of individuals in our “cloud of witnesses.”

¶ This coming Saturday, 31 January, is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Merton, OCSO (Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance), the Roman Catholic community to which he was admitted on 13 December 1941 as a postulant at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. Few if any figures in Christian history have more effectively rewoven the torn fabric of faith segregating personal from public, salvation from liberation, prayer from politiks. It remains a supreme irony that a monk—especially one vowed to an order known for its discipline of silence—would become at mid-20th century in the US among the most articulate commentators on a host of social concerns, as well as an enduring spiritual guide to generations since, here and elsewhere, among a wildly diverse group of Christians and other people of faith.
       •My singular favorite biography of Merton is Jim Forest’s Living With Wisdom: A Life of Thomas Merton (revised 2008), especially for his three-dimensional depiction of Merton.
       •Merton’s Trappist superiors refused to allow publication of his extensive correspondence around the Cuba missile crisis and the ongoing threats of nuclear war. In 2006 Orbis Books published the edited collection, titled Cold War Letters (by Christine M. Bochen, foreword by James Douglas). The book is available online in pdf format.
       •For a brief summary of Merton’s influence, see James Martin, SJ, “7 Ways Thomas Merton Changed the World.”

¶ Read Ken Sehested’s profile of Tom Fox, "Keep to Jesus." Fox was the Christian Peacemaker Teams staff member who was kidnapped and eventually executed by jihadists in Iraq in 2006. (While you’re at the ReadTheSpirit website, browse through Dan Buttry’s “Interfaith Peacemaker” collection of stories. These are great popular education tools for interfaith understanding.

¶ Many forget that Christian Peacemaker Teams was “the first to publicly denounce the torture of the Iraqi people at the hands of US forces,” long before Seymour Hersh’s groundbreaking expose in 2004 of the torture at Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison. —Amy Goodman, “Democracy Now!” radio broadcast, March 2006

¶ Speaking of Goodman, in her report of Tom Fox’s death, she described Christian Peacemaker Teams as “a non-missionary organization that has been documenting the abuse of Iraqi detainees,” clearly an indication of how warped the notion of Christian “mission” has become.

¶ February is Black History Month in the US. “Unbought and Unbossed. That was the slogan of maverick politician Shirley Chisholm (D-NY), who shattered barriers, spoke her mind, stood up for the disadvantaged, and in 1968 became the first black woman ever elected to Congress. After her election to Congress, Chisholm scored another historic first in 1972 when she declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President.” —US Postal Service, on the issuance of a commemorative stamp in Chisholm’s honor

¶ Romero. On 7 January the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints ruled that former Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, El Salvador, is to be considered a martyr, murdered in odium fidei (Latin for “hatred of faith). This step pushes forward an 18-year process to have Romero named a saint. Romero was assassinated by right-wing death squads while celebrating Mass in March 1980, one day after his radio broadcast sermon calling for soldiers to lay down their guns and end the repressive government’s rule. The Plough Publishing House published The Violence of Love, a marvelous collection of Romero quotes. They also offer a free ebook download and audio book.

¶ Quotable. “I was terrified. But I also knew that if I did not embrace this fear, it would one day own me.” —Lynda Blackmon Lowery, the youngest person on the 1965 Selma-Montgomery march, recently interviewed on National Public Radio about her book, On the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March

¶ The kind of progressivism which guts prophetic speech. “I’m a secular person. I’m not against religion. I think religion is good. But it has its place—inside the chapel.” —doctoral candidate at Duke University, founded by Methodists and Quakers in North Carolina in 1938, who was grateful the private school reversed its original decision allowing the Muslim call to prayer to be broadcast each Friday from the Duke Chapel’s tower

¶ #UseMeInstead. Recently the North Miami Beach police department was exposed for using mug shots of black men at their target shooting range. After an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Facebook group took up a conversation about this news, a group of ELCA pastors began sending their own photos, in clerical garb, to the police department with the message “Use me instead.”

¶ “Blaming ‘religion’ for violence is like blaming ‘water’ for thunderstorms.” —Patton Dodd, “The Problem with Calling Terrorism ‘Religious,’” FaithStreet.com

¶ The fun stuff. “Automakers cast off the shambling, apologetic approach to auto shows and hit the big Detroit exhibition with high-risk, go-fast, eye-popping, whimsical cars and trucks that recall the pre-recession heyday. . . . ‘Happy days are here again,’ says Michelle Krebs, senior analyst, Autorader.com. ‘Performance cars, luxury cars, convertibles—the fun stuff.’” —James R. Healey, “Detroit puts pedal to metal,” USA Today, 13 January 2015

¶ Multicultural bumper stickers (same car). On the left side: “God Is Still Speaking,” United Church of Christ publicity slogan; and on the right, “Carolina Roller Girls: All-Girl, Flat Track Roller Derby.”

¶ Can you say flagitious? NBC announced 28 January it had sold all available ad spaces for Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast. No surprise here: Cost for a 30-second ad reached a record $4.5 million. USAToday reports that niche rental companies offer luxury homes in easy driving distance to this year’s game venue in Arizona for $250,000 for the week (though chartered jet and limo transport, chefs and butlers could nearly double that tab). Tickets for this year's game have sold on StubHub for $937 to $11,500.
Who am I rooting for? The the nuns at Our Lady of Guadalupe Benedictine Monastery in Phoenix, who are renting rooms to Super Bowl tourists for $300 per night and channeling the money directly into their community ministry budget. You go, girls!

¶ “The great novelist E.L. Doctorow once said that writing a novel is like driving at night with the headlights on. You can see only a little way in front of you, but you can make the whole journey this way. It is the truest of all things, the only way to write a book, raise a child, save the world.” —Anne Lamott, “A Call to Arms”

¶ “Call me foolish, but I'm guessing God would trade a little suffering piety in favor of more belly laughs." —Scott Pomfret, talking about his new book, "Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir,” National Catholic Reporter

¶ GUNS, GOD, GRITS, and GRAVY. That’s the title of a new book by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee who may again join the Republican presidential nominee parade. (The more common version of that traditional aphorism is “Guns, God, and Guts and sometimes Glory.”)

¶ In the two years since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut (fatalities included 20 children, 6 adult school staff, 20-year-old shooter Adam Lanza’s mother beforehand, finally turning the gun on himself, ending a long, untreated battle with mental illness) there have been at least 95 school shootings in the US, including 23 in which at least one person was killed.

¶ Every day in the US, on average:
      •32 are murdered with guns and 140 are treated for a gun assault in an emergency room.
      •51 people kill themselves with a firearm, and 45 people are shot or killed in an accident with a gun.
      The US firearm homicide rate is 20 times higher than the combined rates of 22 other industrialized countries.
      A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to kill or injure in a domestic homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting than to be used in self-defense. —bradycampaign.org

¶ The US Constitution’s second amendment reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." It takes little grammatical expertise to conclude that the second half is governed by the first. In other words, the right to bear arms is in service to “a well regulated militia” functioning as a state-supervised security force. We no longer have militias. The closest parallel is the National Guard. It wasn’t until 2012 that the Supreme Court ruled this right to individuals. This is the same Court that declared corporations—in “Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission”—to be “persons.”

At right: “Non-Violence (a.k.a. “The Knotted Gun”) sculpture at the United Nations. When the Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd learned his friend John Lennon had been murdered, he immediately began work on this sculpture, which was purchased by Luxembourg and donated in 1988 to the United Nations.

¶ In James Madison's initial proposal (8 June 1789) for a constitutional bill of rights, the wording related to the “keep and bear arms” provision was the following: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

¶ Founded by Union veterans shortly after the Civil War, the National Rifle Association (NRA) for most of its existence has catered to hunters and marksmanship competitions. That began to change in the racially-charged atmosphere of the ‘60s, and in 1977 the group began focusing on limiting Congressional oversight of gun control. Many consider the NRA the most powerful lobby in Washington, DC.

¶ “[I]f you are an American, you are statistically in less danger of dying from a terrorist attack in this country than from a toddler shooting you. And by the way, you’re 2,059 times more likely to die by your own hand with a weapon of your choosing than in a terrorist attack anywhere on Earth.” —Tom Engelhardt, “(Over)Bearing Arms in America"

¶ Must-see TV. PBS’ recent “Frontline” program focused on the National Rifle Association’s super-sized influence on legislators at every level. Local congregations’ discipleship training should include watching and discussing this 54-minute program.

¶ Hunters and shootists: You must be the vanguard of any movement to undermine the NRA’s chokehold on Congress, in order to get commonsensical firearm legislation.

¶ Disheartment. Most in the West are just now hearing about the suicide of Zainab al-Mahdi, a well-known 23 year-old Egyptian activist, who hanged herself last November, sending shockwaves through the dissident community. Mahdi marched in Tahrir Square in 2011 against the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak (whose government, at the time, received 25 percent of all US foreign aid). A member of the Muslim Brotherhood, she renounced the party’s corruption after its president, Mohamed Morsi, came to power in 2012 following the country’s first democratic election. Then, in July 2013, the Egyptian military overthrew Morsi. (Listen to Ahmad Amar’s haunting “Requiem for Zainab Mahdi”.)
A friend, recalling Mahdi’s political frustration, quoted her as saying “there is no justice—we're lying to ourselves just to live.” Which is why our hearts need to hear the following pastoral word as a benediction in the face of our own frustrations. . . .

¶ Benediction. “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.” —Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train

La Terreur – Special Edition on Terrorism

¶ WE NEED A PRIMER ON TERRORISM. This is not it, but it is a start.

You are encouraged to add your own comments, or offer a favorite quote, in the “reader comments” at bottom.

¶ Hundreds, probably thousands, of editors and commentary writers worked late into the night last week, scouring a thesaurus in search of uncommon adjectives sufficient to the task of communicating the heinous killings in and around Paris, France, beginning with the 7 January jihadist attack that killed a dozen in the editorial office of Charlie Hebdo magazine.

¶ Swallowed in global attention to this horror was the bombing, a day before, at the NAACP office in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Southern Poverty Law Center currently tracks 939 “hate groups” operating in 49 of the 50 states in the US, in addition to Washington, DC. These groups “have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”

¶ My personal grief is not mitigated by my distaste for Charlie Hebdo’s style of humor, which the creative artist Josh Healey describes as “such a problematic hero. Since the attacks, the American media has taken to calling the French publication a ‘satirical’ magazine. . . . It is closer to the bastard lovechild of Bill Maher and Rush Limbaugh, with all of their nastiness and even worse jokes. . . . In a country [France] and an era (post-9/11) where Muslims face rampant discrimination and often violent exclusion, Charlie Hebdo's cheap shots at Islam added fuel to the racist fire. I understand the desire to make fun of organized religion in all its absurdities, but it's possible to do that without graphic cartoons of Muhammad being sodomized.” —Josh Healey, “I Will Grieve. I Will Laugh. But I Am Not Charlie

¶ Though if I were in France I would have been among the 4 million marchers last Sunday, publicly declaring “not afraid,” for principles are not bound by personal preferences.

¶ My local paper was among those who printed passionate and articulate perspectives on these atrocities. Though one sentence fairly took my breath away: “Even amid today’s tolerance in the US the occasional rogue Christian such as Timothy McVeigh will commit an act of terror.” In 1995, McVeigh, together with Terry Nichols, exploded a bomb at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

¶ Are our “rogues” limited to “occasional Christians” of recent memory? Does “today’s tolerance” not admit (among others) the history of Ku Klux Klan reigns of terror?

¶ Speaking of McVeigh: He confessed that he almost didn’t go through with the Murrah Federal Building bombing when he learned there was a daycare center in the building. But he decided that was unavoidable “collateral damage.” McVeigh was a veteran of the earlier 1991 Gulf War, and afterwards wrote in a letter to his aunt: “Killing Iraqis was hard at first, but after a while it got easier.”

¶ “Between 1880 and 1940, white Christians lynched nearly five thousand black men and women,” in virtually every state in the US mainland. The satirist Mark Twain referred to our nation as “the United States of Lyncherdom.” African American Baptist leader Nannie Helen Burroughs wrote a century ago that the US “is the most lawless and desperately wicked nation on the globe,” and that lynching “was no superficial things . . . it is in the blood of the nation.” —quoted in James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, which I would say is a must read

¶ When I was in seminary in New York I learned that the largest Ku Klux Klan organization in the US at the time was based in Connecticut.

¶ View the flash movie of “Without Sanctuary,” by James Allen, to view a catalogue with commentary of lynching photographs, many of which were made into postcards. (These are painful images; but I fear if we refuse to look, we may never grasp this backdrop of terror which impinges on us still.) In 1908 sending postcards with photos of lynching victims (some with the caption “Wish you were here”) became so common that the US Postmaster banned the cards.

¶ Terrorism has punctuated our history since the earliest days of undocumented European immigrants in North America. William Bradford, governor of the early Plymouth Colony, wrote of his Pilgrim community’s battle with the Pequot Indians at Mystic River, beginning with the torching of the Pequot village: “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and [we] gave the praise thereof to God.”

¶ There isn’t a legal consensus on the definition of terrorism. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” The first problem with this statement is the adjective “unlawful,” which implies that governments can’t be charged with terrorism. And then there’s the fact that more than a few actions by colonists fighting loyalists to overthrow British rule of the American colonies were terroristic.

¶ I have stood at the Canadian monument in the Saint John, New Brunswick harbor commemorating the British loyalists who fled there from the American colonies during the US Revolutionary War after persecution—some instances of which would be judged war crimes by the International Criminal Court—at the hands of pro-independence insurgents.

¶ To fight terrorism by military means . . . is like hitting a fully grown dandelion with a golf club. —John Paul Lederach

¶ In Errol Morris’s Oscar-winning 2003 documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, the former US Secretary of Defense—remembered as the chief architect of the war in Vietnam and later combating global poverty as head of the World Bank—is portrayed as “a figure at one moment horrifying and at the next startlingly human,” writes Chris Herlinger in a Religious News Service story.
“The horror comes as McNamara reflects on his role as a military aide to General Curtis E. LeMay in the firebombing of Japan in World War II. McNamara practically leaps into Morris’s camera and loudly declares: ‘On [a] single night, we burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo—men, women and children.’
“The human, even vulnerable, moment comes with the candid acknowledgment that LeMay had later told the young McNamara, ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ ‘And I think he’s right [McNamara said]. . . . What makes it immoral if you lose, and not immoral if you win?’” —"McNamara’s Conflicts on War, Peace, Morals, Ethics," Christian Century

¶ Drone terror. “‘Drones [which can hover for hours, even days, over a potential target] may kill relatively few, but they terrify many more,’ Malik Jalal, a tribal leader in North Waziristan, told me. They turned the people into psychiatric patients. The F-16s might be less accurate, but they come and go.” The sound made by Predator and Reaper drones can be heard from the ground like a flat buzzing noise. —Steve Coll, “The Unblinking Stare: The drone war in Pakistan, The New Yorker

¶ One of the earliest records of a suicide attack is the story of Samson in Hebrew Scripture: “Then Samson said, ‘Let me die with the Philistines.’ He strained with all his might; and the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So those he killed at his death were more than those he had killed during his life” (Judges 16:30).

¶ The Roman senator and historian Tacitus, quoting the words of the Caledonia, Calgacus, describing the Roman imperium: “Robbery, butchery, rapine, the liars call Empire; they create a desolation and call it peace.”

¶ We forget that Menachem Begin, former Prime Minister of Israel who in 1979 famously signed the Camp David Accord peace treaty with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (both of whom shared the Nobel Peace Prize for this diplomatic breakthrough), was the commander in 1946 of Irgun, a Jewish paramilitary group (freedom fighters? terrorists?) in Palestine, which bombed the Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people, and in 1948 massacred over 100 Palestinian Arabs in the village of Deir Yassin.

¶ We forget that the requirement of Jews to wear round, yellow “Jew badges” did not originate with the Nazis. It was the church’s Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 who set this standard.

¶ The contemporary use of the term “terrorism” can be traced to the French Revolution (1789-1799). After its initial honeymoon with humanitarian values—“liberty, equality, fraternity”—political infighting turned into a bloodbath (la Terreur–the Terror): 16,594 executed by guillotine, another 25,000 by other forms of executions.

¶ “In Iraq, when we first started, the question was, ‘Where is the enemy?’ That was the intelligence question. As we got smarter, we started to ask, ‘Who is the enemy?’ And we thought we were pretty clever. And then we realized that wasn't the right question, and we asked, ‘What's the enemy doing or trying to do?’ And it wasn't until we got further along that we said, ‘Why are they the enemy?’” —General Stanley McChrystal (ret.), former head of US forces in Afghanistan, in “Generation Kill,” interviewed by Gideon Rose in Foreign Affairs

¶ Arguably the first terrorist threat came from Lamech, sixth generation descendent of Cain (who committed the first murder recorded in Hebrew Scripture): Lamech said to his wives: "Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold" (Genesis 4:23-24). Do you see how violence easily becomes a self-perpetuating cycle?

¶ “No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up!” —Lily Tomlin

¶ “In the Bible, there is really only one story: that of a people struggling to leave empire behind and set out to follow God.” —Wes Howard-Brook and Anthony Gwyther, Unveiling Empire: Reading Revelation Then and Now

¶ Lee Griffith’s The War on Terrorism and the Terror of God (2002) is on my top-ten list of the most important books I’ve read in my lifetime. It’s far and away the best book I know combining historical recollection, social analysis, biblical insights and theological reflection. (Presciently, his finished manuscript was at the publisher on 11 September 2001—so they asked him to add a postscript.)
Below are a few quotes from the book.

¶ “The actions of a European power in invading and colonizing another nation is not terrorism because it is an action by a state, but any violent objections from colonized people are now grist for study as ‘terrorism.’” —Lee Griffith, The War on Terrorism

¶ “It was not ‘Muslim extremists’ who brought horror to Rwanda; it was Christians killing other Christians. It was not some ‘demonic’ cult group who planted bombs in Northern Ireland; it was Christians trading brutality with other Christians. It was not ‘atheistic communists’ who instituted a reign of terror to enforce apartheid in South Africa; it was Christians kidnapping and torturing and murdering other Christians.” —Lee Griffith, The War on Terrorism

¶ Whatever human natural inhibitors to aggression, “these are totally subverted by the distance modern weaponry places between the attacker and the victim. So, perfectly good natured people who would not dream of spanking a child can drop incendiary bombs which maim and kill dozens of children.” —Lee Griffith, The War on Terrorism
Art at right ©Julie Lonneman, used with permission.

¶ Or Hellfire missiles launched from Predator drones. It’s estimated that 200 children have been collaterally damaged (i.e., killed) by US drone strikes. Does the fact that we don’t see them (unlike video of ISIS’ beheading of 15 people) make this more tolerable?

¶ Benediction: “And above all, take hope in Christ crucified and resurrected. It is the resurrection which is the terror of God to all who believe that death should have the final word. It is the promise of the resurrection which renders null and void the victories of all who shed blood.” —Lee Griffith, The War on Terrorism

Featured in this issue:
•“Testimony in a Time of Terror,” a litany for worship
•“Epilogue,” Dreaming God’s Dream: Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Special note from the editor: I relinquished my pastoral staff duties with Circle of Mercy Congregation as of this month, to focus on writing and maintenance of this site. In many ways, this is my dream job. Unfortunately, it doesn't come with built-in income. I hope—eventually—to get a modest part-time salary from prayer&politiks readers. I hope—eventually—you will consider this resource worthy of your dollars. Just as much, however, I need visibility for this site. You can provide enormous help by circulating the link, along with your personal recommendation, to friends and acquaintances you think might be interested.

In the immortal words of Guy Clark (Cold Dog Soup):
     There ain't no money in poetry
     That's what keeps the poet free
     I've had all the freedom I can stand.

Daily Manna

Pursuing God’s Presence

An annotated review of selected authors

“House to house, field to field”

Reflections on a peace mission to the West Bank

Signs of the Times

Hallelujahs and heartaches, too

Kyle Childress: Quarter century and counting

Fasting: Ancient practice, modern relevance

Come into the desert

Turn Strong to Meet the Day

A Son's Tribute to His Dad: Glen Leroy Sehested

Zinn and the Mechanic

Commemorating the anniversary of Howard Zinn’s passing, and that of my father

Signs of the Times

La Terreur – Special Edition on Terrorism

At left, ©Julie Lonneman, used with permission.

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At left, ©Julie Lonneman, used with permission.

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