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How well I remember standing there on the
Sidewalk in Santa Fe in front of a jewelry store
           where you'd just picked up your rings.

My wife of twenty-seven years, me, the two of you.
The two of you trying your best not to melt into the
           pavement under the weight of emotions;

The two of us with eyes watering from the
Holy smoke from some nearby burning bush,
           wondering if we should take off our shoes.

We went to a Lyle Lovett concert that night,
And as a concluding encore he sang that old
Gospel hymn, with its refrain,
           while on others thou art calling,
            do not pass me by . . .*

And, sure enough, a cool breeze broke the heat and
Made us shiver. Such delight. Such pure delight,
           nestled within the sun-soaked faces

And scuffed boots of year after multiplied year
Of faithfully-attentive gaze and lovesome
           perseverance.

I stumble into grace just
           remembering.
Here's hoping the rains find your pastures.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Written to commemorate a decade of covenant ties (unrecognized by state authorities) with the purchase of rings. *Line from “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior,” Fanny Crosby.

Who among you believe that
grieving and lamentation
are symptoms of despair.
Not so!
Only the hopeless are silent
in the face of calamity—
silenced because they no
longer aspire even to be heard,
much less heeded. The labor
of lament, on the other hand,
is premised on the expectation
that grief’s rule will be bound
by the Advent of Another.
The liturgy of grief transforms
the pain of lament into passion
for an outcome forged in justice
and tempered in mercy. Such an
outcome is not ours to impose
by strength of will or accomplished
by force of threat; yet it does demand
of us relentless struggle and steadfast resolve.

Come, you whose beds are awash
in weeping, you whose portion is
tear-mingled wine and bread of mourning.
Come, come to the mountain
of Refuge. There the Spirit,
as with Jesus before, kneels
ready to bathe your feet with her tears.
Hear this Word of assurance, you
of wavering endurance: the
moment nears when those sowing
in tears will reap shouts of
extravagant joy.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Written for an ecumenical “Service of Lament and Healing” following the August 2014 killing of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, MO. Inspired by Ps 6:6; 42:3; 80:5; 102:9; Luke 7:38;

We kill and bomb
Murder and maim
Target and terrorize mostly
      (for high-tech armies)
from great distance
the better not to see actual faces
or severed limbs, or intestines oozing through
holes where belly buttons used to testify
to being a mother-born child

But then we apologize
     Sorry
           So sorry
                 Deeply regret
                       Such a tragedy!
                             Sorry, sorry, sorry

We do everything we can to limit civilian casualties
“This isn’t Sunday school”
     (one politician’s actual words)
Didn’t have those children in our sights
Impossible to see, at 10,000 feet,
     whether Kalashnakovs are present
Smart bombs aren’t flawless
Flawed intelligence
     (as if a test score were at stake)
Military necessity
Rules of engagement need refining
S**t happens
We gave them advance warning
War is hell

The unintended consequences and inevitable
eventualities in hostile force-reduction and
counter-insurgency strategic operations
      (See s**t happens)
Freedom isn’t free
Do unto others before they do unto you
Asymmetrical warfare
      (“Why don’t they come out and fight like men!”)
No independent verification of claims of civilian massacre
     (aka, no one left standing)
 “This is no My Lai” (Vietnam, where as many as 504—
      the Pentagon says only 347—unarmed women,
      children and old men were killed by U.S. troops, no
      weapons recovered, for which one soldier was
      convicted, spending 4 months in prison.) 

We fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here
     (which is why the U.S. needs 1,000 or so military
      bases outside its borders, dozens with golf courses)

Won’t happen again, unless it does, then
                                   Sorry, Sorry, Sorry
Video, and sentiments, at the top of the hour
     They left us no option
           Forced into this corner
                 Them or us
                       Hearings to be convened
                             We’ll get to the bottom of this
We need to wait ’til all the facts are in

But only eyes, no heads, will roll:
     foreign-born blood being cheap as it is
If war is the answer
     the question must be really stupid

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Written in 2002 after hearing one too many public officials rationalize “collateral damage”against innocent victims of U.S. military strikes.

In the beginning, darkness covered the face of the deep.

Then the Breath of Heaven swept across the waters, blessing the sea with all manner of creatures.

The sea knows its Maker and roars its applause; the fish therein leap at the sound of God’s voice.

Through the baptismal waters of the Red Sea did the Israelites escape their tormentors and emerge to freedom’s demand.

Surely, says the Prophet, the day will come when the whole earth will be covered with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Through the waters of obedience did Jesus enter the Way. By the Galilee Sea did he call disciples; on its waves did he come to them; by his power, its storm subdued. On its shore he revealed his resurrection insurrection.

But now, on our border, the sea has been poisoned. The deeps, made for praise, now drowning, voice hushed.

Poisoned sea, impoverished soul. Hear now our plea; come, make us whole.

The oil of sweet gladness, the mark of rejoicing, now chokes the earth’s womb, its legacy crushed.

Poisoned sea, impoverished soul. Hear now our plea; come, make us whole.

The fowl overhead, the fish down below, are fouled by the rupture of greed-driven lust.

Poisoned sea, impoverished soul. Hear now our plea; come, make us whole.

Have mercy upon us, bring our hearts to repentance; and bind us again to your covenant trust.

Poisoned sea, impoverished soul. Hear now our plea; come, make us whole.

Let us now pray for the ocean and the life it supports.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Written following the 2010 BP (British Petroleum) Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

by Ken Sehested

Wondrous was the
occasion of your birth,
which I knew not,
and hardly
since.

But mere acquaintances, distant
and casual as we are,
participated in jubilance by
proxy reflected from
the eyes of those whose
longing and labor lifted
your name in splendid recognition,
and reverence, even as
they lifted your flesh
from mucous
incubation.

Odd, how the tears
of delight, and those
of distraught, bear the
same salty
savor.

Life is as of a piece;
but such a short piece?
Against such we rage.
Against such reckless cellular
blunders we scream irreverent rant
and exhaust our hearts
howling divine
complaint.

Mute the
dust, bitter the ash,
sharp the
ache.

What affirmation escapes such
peril? Will the dust praise
you? begs the songstress. Speak
faithfully? Be rescued
from the calloused bonds
of muted
laud?

Pit-driven, sackcloth-arrayed, let
the arraignment commence:
What profit is there in death? The
accusation brooks no easy alibi.
The interrogation promises no
recanting of
lament.

Only this: promise that
cries will be heard, that
exhausted hearts will resurrect,
that tears will dry and feet again
move to the rhythm
of animated
bounty.

Only this: confidence that
the dust is not that of
abandonment, but
of adama, of earth, earth
from which all adam receive
breath, and shall again, on
that rapturous occasion when
creation comes
unbound.

But not soon, never soon
enough. And the terms of such
promise, such confidence,
sight unseen, include perilous
exposure to repeated unraveling
of hope. Risky indeed,
this breathly
work.

Hearts must be steeled
for such raw encounter. Terror
must be displaced. For that, draw
close all lovely flesh and
know the promissory note
of such embrace: When
mourning’s assault submits to
morning’s assent; when
reverence, and recognition, echo
dawn’s wondrous
delight.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Pentecostal power has little to do with
exaggerated religious emotion. But
such power, when granted,
has everything to do
with passion, with conviction.
It’s not your mind that
you lose—it’s your heart,
which falls head-over-heels
in love with the vision of dry bones
re-sinewed and aspired to life.

When such power erupts, they
probably will call you crazy.
“Have you lost your mind?!”
Yes, we will say, because
these days the mind has
become acclimated to a culture
of war; has become inured to
the ravages of poverty in a culture
of obesity; has become numb
to ecological wreckage.

When Pentecostal power erupts, all
heaven’s gonna’ break loose.
The boundaries will be compromised;
barriers will be broken; and
borders will be breached.
Economies of privilege will be fractured
and the politics of enmity will be impeached.
The revenge of the Beloved is the
reversal of Babel’s bequest.

“I will pour out my Spirit,”
says the LORD: Poured out
not for escape to another
world beyond the sky but
here, amid the dust. Poured out
not on disembodied spirits but
“upon all flesh.” It is to the
agony of abandonment that Heaven
is aroused. Queer the One Who
fashions a future for the disfavored.

The groaning of creation is both
an ache and an assurance. We
dare not insulate ourselves from
the one, lest we be deafened to
the other. Birth is at work.
Though the labor is prolonged,
provision is tendered.
Pentecostal power is the wherewithal
by which we wager our lives on
the surety of this promise.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Pentecost Sunday, 4 June 2006
cf. Ezekiel 34: 1-14; Acts. 2:17; Romans 8:22

O Wondrous One,
who rides the skies and
consorts with the earth,
who haunts the heavens,
hounding mere mortals
with the expectation of ecstasy,
come and incite us to
Heaven’s revolt against
earth’s revenge.
Revive hungry hearts
wandering this arid land
with the aroma of your presence.

Fire of Heaven,
scorch away the encrusted
results of living so long
outside the breath of your lungs.
Rekindle your blaze
in the marrow of our souls.
As Jesus was raised
in Easter’s Resurrection Moment,
now animate your people
on this Pentecost Sunday,
and breathe new life into your
Resurrection Movement.

O Majestic One,
whose passion spills into flesh and blood,
bless the one who kneels in this assembly.
She is fruit of your womb,
anointed with your presence,
acknowledged by these witnesses
as an arsonist of the Spirit.
As with our ancient sister Mary,
draw forth from her lips
the subversive announcement of
Heaven’s claim on earth’s abandoned.

Bread of Heaven,
with our hands implant your
fingerprint on her forehead, sign
of contradiction and scandal
to the gods of this age,
of blessed bounty
or the age to come.
Make her voice strong,
her feet nimble.
May she ever revel as one
made in your image.
Give her death-defying courage,
holy rage and tender mercy.
Instill salty savor,
leavening wisdom,
and guiding light.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Written and then adapted for the ordination services of several friends.

As each take your leave
now charting your own courses
I pause and ponder your absence
with dreaded joy:
joy that your wings have spread
so far so fast,
dread at the silence filling the air
which your voices once stirred.

It wasn’t that long ago that I
maneuvered surgeon’s scissors
and severed the cord which tied
you to your mother.
That I did so—
snip, then a brief spurt of blood—
without fainting
is surprising.
I took it as a hopeful sign,
that I would not faint as a father.

The memory of those similar,
separate exertions— the extent of
my labor in bringing you to life
so disproportionate to that of your
mother’s— has occupied my
thoughts with more than passing
recollection in recent weeks.
It is as if that rupture served,
with each of you, as prophetic
announcement of what was to come.
It has taken many measured steps
and years and come, no doubt,
too slowly for you,
too quickly for us;
but now the significance of that
severance is fulfilled.

Each of you are occasions for delight,
in ways unique to the wonder
of your separate ways.
The seeds I have sown in your life-soil
(and that of your mother’s,
but here I will speak for myself)
will continue to sprout
for countless seasons to come
and mark you in ways of which
I alternately rejoice and repent.
It is up to you to cultivate,
including pruning and plucking
and uprooting,
as needed.

But your leave-taking also prompts me
to inventory the ways your lives
have cultivated my own,
beginning with your births.

I was a mere bystander in your
gestation, of course. But I now
know about the connection, on either
end, between the passion and pain
in every act of creation.
All hopeful planting finally unfolds
with tender shoots tearing their way
through resistant ground.
The earth must be disturbed;
the womb must be rent;
the cord must be cut.

Every birth is an act of dangerous hope:
The cord which nourishes can also choke;
the body which shelters can also poison;
the tempestuous journey from watery
womb to inaugural breath is subject to
countless perils threatening giver and gift.

Why life should begin with a blood-soaked
Scream is a mystery. But such are the terms
for the flow of milk.

One day, says the prophet,
against overwhelming odds and
much reliable evidence,
the flow of tears will be dried
and death itself will be undone.
As it now stands, though,
history’s outcome seems to favor
those who turn lions loose on lambs,
those who squelch every scream
and rob the suckling of its breast,
and plug birth canals
with fists of fury and fits of ambition.

In their hideous vision every natal cord
becomes a slaver’s chain; every spilling
of blood, a grasping demand rather than
a gratuitous gift. Even now, says the psalmist,
their “eyes swell out with fatness,”
gorged in assault against creation’s
gestation and promised deliverance.

You, beloved daughters, serve as reminders
that life cannot be had on the cheap;
that every new future foreseen in joy
will endure all tearful failures; that strength
of hand and valiance of heart must be
coupled with wombish welcome to that
unnameable (and thus unmanageable)
Promise that death’s ascendance will
be crushed.

Such vision persists; such milk flows;
and by it we are kept from perishing.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Written in 1999 to mark the college and high school graduations of his daughters, Jessica and Alayna.

Oh, God, our help in ages past
our hope for years to come
We gather here in the sanctuary of your earth
under the vaulted dome of the sky.
We gather as your tiny flock, as a people
called out by faith in your future.
It is because we have our lives anchored in
your promised future
that we're able to pause and look back.
We gather here, your tiny flock,
to remember events mostly forgotten.
We gather here, your tiny flock, in the rain,
and we are reminded that the rain brings us
a rainbow,
a sign of your promise
never to leave us alone
never to forsake us.
No, never alone,
protected in the stormy blast
which still blows through the lives
of your little ones.
Your rainbow promise gives us the courage to recall
the death and destruction delivered on this ground
so many years ago,
the hatred and brutality—all but forgotten in our day—
inflicted on the innocent lives
of our brothers and sisters.
We listen, our hearts quivering, to catch the sound
of the cries of the ground
which absorbed so much blood.
We look about, our hearts repenting,
that such destruction still infects your family, your creation.
We remember, our hearts attentive,
that even the tiny sparrow catches your attention.
And thus we are confident, our hearts still hopeful,
that those fallen here so long ago
are still precious in your sight;
that those gathered here
are still called to herald the good news of your peace,
that your peace will one day hallow this ground
and that all shall come, from every race,
to rejoice in each other
as brother and sister
and you as Abba, Father,
as Amma, Mother.
Your Kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Amen

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Prayer written in May 1990 for the first public commemorateion of the 1866 Memphis Massacre, a race riot in Memphis, Tennessee, which claimed the lives of 46 people and wounded another 80. Ninety homes, four churches, 12 Freedman's Schools (for emancipated slave children) and many black businesses were burned. It began when a wagon driven by an African American refused to pull over and allow a white-driven wagon to pass.

O happy day when friends return from
afar, safe, unharmed, fingers, toes and
taste buds intact, hearts strong (though
weathered from the journey), long past
ready to put suitcases away, for more

walks in the woods and the familiar
faces of bloodkin and soulfriends.
Long past ready for snuggling with
familiar soil and hugging delicious
necks, belly-button to belly-button,

with time to relish memories of the
year now sprinted by. Good times
past, and sweet; hard times, too,
and some sour, and surely too
many miles, ever struggling to

understand and be understood, and
hot-sweaty times, clothes pasted to
skin but also with salt-scented
Caribbean breezes, all this, and more.
Not to mention having stood, time after

time, exposed to the breath of the Spirit.
And not the soft-gentle-sentimental kind,
more like the squall of a wind tunnel,
like jalapeño concentrate, like the
towering, lightning-filled cumulus sky

whose signature inscribes so many Cuban
late afternoons. Time to rest from such
rigor. The heart can take only so many
leaps and adrenaline darts. Time to soak
and saunter and ponder
     what it means
       to be nothing,
            yet everything,
               at the same
                  time.

No doubt, there is a tearing in returning,
a certain severing of immediacy with mercy
on that far edge. But the seeds of your
learning were surely planted deep. Time
now to let them grow and blossom and

bear fruit to both nourish and delight
the rest of us—we who tracked your
movements from this distance, who
marked the calendar, whose faces lit up
when your names appeared in our email

in-boxes (knowing how much work was
required of you for each and every one)
—for we sense that you bear in your bodies
the compass readings toward a new horizon
by which we, too, can set our sights and

plot our journey. All that you have sought
and seen and savored—with provisions no
greater than the child at Jesus’ impromptu
picnic—shall feed a multitude and to spare.
Let the banquet begin.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Celebrating the return of good friends from a year spent in Cuba.