Recent

by Ken Sehested

I’ve consciously adapted the title of one of my intellectual and spiritual mentors, Dr. James Cone (of blessed memory) for this reflection, in light of the 21 February anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965; and in reaction to the recent announcement by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that it will reopen the case against those convicted of that murder.

Already in 2020 the New York City district attorney announced that it had launched an investigation into the murder, for which three members of the Nation of Islam had been convicted. Malcolm X (Malik Shabazz) had broken with the organization’s policy of Black separatism, though not from his convictions regarding systemic racism.

In recent days a former New York policeman’s deathbed written confession—claiming that the police and the FBI collaborated in arranging Shabazz’s murder—is raising the investigative stakes. (For more on this see Julia Jacobo, ABC News.)

Right: Painting by Derek Russell.

Why is this noteworthy? Well, for starters, the truth is always worth the trouble. More importantly, though, we need to assess the culpability of law enforcement. It has already been established beyond all reasonable doubt that the FBI (and the US Army intelligence service) engaged in illegal monitoring of Dr. King and  other civil rights leaders. William Sullivan, head of the FBI’s domestic intelligence division, wrote in a report after the 1963 March on Washington that King was “ ‘the most dangerous Negro in the country.”

If King—consistently and emphatically committed to nonviolence—was considered a threat, one can only imagine their assessment of Malcolm X.

Writing in his 1991 book, “Malcolm, Martin, and America: A Dream or a Nightmare?” Cone said:

“Martin and Malcolm are important because they symbolize two necessary ingredients in the African-American struggle for justice in the United States. We should never pit them against each other. Anyone, therefore, who claims to be for one and not the other does not understand their significance for the black community, for America, or for the world. We need both of them and we need them together [italics in original]. Malcolm keeps Martin from being turned into a harmless American hero. Martin keeps Malcolm from being an ostracized black man.”

It’s important to recognize that both men experienced a widening and deepening of their respective visions during their lifetime—amazing short lifetimes, since both were killed at age 39. Following his 1964 hajj to Mecca, Saudi Arabia—fulfilling the ritual mandate for all Muslims, where he experienced a transforming global, multiracial immersion—Malcolm controversially broke with Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam and its message of Black separatism.

After the civil rights movement’s initial goals of integrated buses, water fountains, and lunch counters, King began to see the complex web of racial, social, and economic factors that must be confronted before meaningful change could occur.

He spoke of the triple threats of racism, materialism, and militarism; and he provoked much contention, a year before his assassination, when he very publicly and forthrightly condemned the war in Vietnam, linking domestic oppression with international aggression. And paid a huge price. The last public opinion poll assessing his popularly found that only a third of the country supported his activism. The “dream” which four years earlier captivated the imagination of many lost its luster; and King’s memory, domesticated.

§  §  §

This past week I pulled up a reflection (“On Reading Malcolm X’s Autobiography: Marking the 50th anniversary of its publication”) written six years ago to commemorate the golden anniversary of that book. I was grateful that that essay has held up reasonably well, given recent history, particularly with the mobilizing work of Black Lives Matter and the renewed controversy over US history in light of repeated incidents of the killings of unarmed Black folk.

Our nation is grappling with the question of whether race is incidental to our history. Or is it baked in? Just how deep is this archeological dig into racism’s roots, this de-romanticizing of US history? And what are we going to do with the mounting pile of embarrassing artifacts?

Going forward, there are many things to be learned, particularly by those of us in the “white” community. (As has been said, “nobody was white until we got to America.”) Two things are certain for those willing to make the long journey toward the Beloved Community.

First, we must center the voices of those who have felt the lash, endured the chains, all who have been pushed to the margins. The consistent testimony of Scripture is that God’s attention and ire are aroused by the blood of Abel, “crying to me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10); by the enslaved Hebrews toiling Pharaoh’s brick yards (Exodus 2:23); when the landless poor are not given rights to the harvest (Leviticus 23:22); when the moans of the destitute reach the ears of Heaven (Psalm 146:7).

Furthermore, the Most High announces that provision for the poor is a form of holiness (Proverbs 14:31) and “knowledge of God” is confirmed in heeding the pleas of the destitute (Jeremiah 22:16); when the very presence of Jesus is acknowledged in the presence of the imperiled (Matthew 25: 31-46); when Jesus’ own Christology (in response to John the Baptist’s disciples asked him “are you the one?”) ignored metaphysical abstraction and instead offered this messianic confirmation: “Go tell John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor” (Matthew 11:2-6).

Indeed, the cries of Creation itself, groaning as a women in labor (Romans 8:8:19), is commended as the proper posture for people of faith, signifying the Spirit’s rebellion against the rule of enmity in the world now known.

Second, coming to terms with racism will be unpleasant and will not happen quickly. Having scales pulled off our eyes will sting and disorient. But the pain is not for humiliation but the proffer of healing and right-relatedness. It is in our own interests to make this journey, ever drawn by the beatific vision of Creation’s promise, purpose, and provision.

§  §  §

Lent’s traditional emphases are prayer, almsgiving, and fasting. Its siren call is to turn—to turn back from wanton, gluttonous, and calloused ways to the journey toward shared dignity, to justice and righteousness, to relinquishing privilege, looted assets, and addictive habits.

This turning necessarily involves a kind of purging; and the Spirit’s voice resounds as shrill and demanding—not unlike the voice of Malcolm X, among the most prophetic voices in our nation’s history. His breath of fire is not for our incineration but for our refinement. We submit to it not because we long for punishment but because we have been captivated by a dream as big as God.

§  §  §

In the Bible the word “sin” has multiple synonyms, nuances, and associations. In modern English, I think the best synonym for sin is “cluelessness.” This variant is the most serious simply because it is the hardest to expose and thus the most resilient. It has survived all manner of legislative proscription, social sanction, and moral exhortation. It is instructive, I think, that Jesus’ final petition is that such receive Heaven’s most merciful response because “they know not what they do.”

§  §  §

Speaking personally, there was a period of years, moons ago, when I experienced a crippling sense of personal shame and social despair when realizing my own complicity in systemic racism. The shame wasn’t because I had enslaved anyone; or had committed blatant acts of discrimination.

It was because I realized how clueless I was. And if I was this clueless in this regard, chances were I was equally clueless about a whole range of other forms of unconscious bias.

Simultaneously I feared that the same applied to larger society, that we as a people were also structurally complicit, trapped in a naiveté that prevented us seeing the truth about our wounded history that continues to color current behavior.

I recalled the word of Msimangu in Alan Paton’s novel “Cry, the Beloved Country,” set in apartheid-era South Africa. “I have one great fear in my heart, that one day,” Msimangu said, “when they [white people] are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.” And I wondered, heartbroken and despondently, with the Apostle Paul’s feverish, fated plea, “Who can deliver me from this body of death?”—only without the subsequent affirmation.

There came a time, though, when quotes from three of my heroes bore me up from the sloughs of shame and despair. Not to make me innocent, but to allow me to be responsible, able-to-respond, freed from humiliation’s disabling power to move forward with courage and perseverance for the work of repair. (This process did not occur all at once, mind you, but over a period of years—it took time to soak in, and still threatens from time to time.)

These are those quotes.

The first is from James Baldwin, writing in “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation.”

“There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously.  You must accept them and accept them with love. For those innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.”

Second, two statements from Maya Angelou.

“Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it,” and “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

Finally, one from Malcolm X himself.

“Don’t be in such a hurry to condemn a person because he doesn’t do what you do, or think as you think. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.”

§  §  §

Each of these are grace notes, hopeful disclosures, stemming from the pivotal word embraced by people of faith: Repentance is not for punishment but for the power of beginning again. Not with a clean slate—we will ever bear our scars. But the goodness of the Good News is that we can begin again, we can orient ourselves and our society toward the holiness which radiates neighborliness, restoring right relations and just kinship and social policies, knitting together the warp of Heaven with the woof of Earth.

Only by such grace-impelled, hope-provoked work—and it is laborious, sometimes sweaty, difficult, persevering, frustrating work—can we be saved.

Thanks be to God.

#  #  #

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

by Ken Sehested
Shrove Tuesday 2021

This past Sunday one of our members, Stan Wilson, offered the “call to the table” in our congregation’s zoom worship screen-gathering. He led with a suggestion that was equivalent, in my hearing, to a thunderclap.

“How about for Lent this year we give up Donald Trump?”

It was a table invitation (we celebrate the Eucharist every week) and an altar call rolled into one. And it certainly had my name on it.

The last four years in the US have been a national demolition derby, a Three-Stooge-esque comedy of incompetence and disrepute, a racketeer’s paradise and grifter’s playpen—only with real-world torment, particularly for those here and abroad with little shelter from the abuse.

At the conclusion of the Senate’s farcical impeachment verdict, I felt like breaking big things and throwing little ones.

I need a decompression. Stan’s suggestion came at the right moment.

This does not mean (and what follows are my commentary) retreating into a shell of blissful ignorance and private cheeriness. Nor will I become a devotee of the Biden administration’s governing posture, though nonetheless it is a great relief.

What I will do, though, is follow Frederick Douglass’ admonition: “Let us look at the other side [of the rule of injustice] and see if there are not some things to cheer our heart and nerve us up anew in the good work of emancipation.”

In his long, parting soliloquy recorded in John’s Gospel, Jesus urges his disciples to “be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world” (16:33). The predicate to this encouragement, though, was the warning that “in the world you will face persecution.” That reality has not changed.

Even now we must “see if there are not some things to cheer our hearts and nerve us up anew.” This year these texts will frame my Lenten prayers.

#  #  #

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Introduction. I composed the following note
to a friend after he was defrauded and defamed
by someone who should know better—and as
I began to write, an eschatological vision emerged.
Apologies in advance for the colloquial references.

                                    §  §  §

Oh, I hatehatehate this. You already know (but
sometimes it’s hard for the heart to hear from
the head) that there are dumb-*ss people in the
world, even that part of the world that’s supposed
to be cordial and well-mannered, that there’s

really nothing you can do but endure them, and
count on Jesus to take them to the woodshed
for a good whuppin’ when the time comes, even
though that won’t make you feel better, or Jesus
for that matter, and maybe the Holy Spirit

intervenes in all this craziness and reminds
Jesus, and this dumb-*ss, about what’s what,
and the Great Jehovah God shows up, laughing
and laughing and laughing (you’d swear it was
just like Mac Bryan’ cackle) and everyone gets

the giggles and start a food fight, only it’s ice
cream, ice cream is flying everywhere, all your
favorite flavors, with pauses for a little Havana
Club rum, and everyone gets tipsy, and the ice
cream is just good-good, and then someone

brings in a platter of tostonies [fried plantains],
and everyone’s stomach is cast iron so no one
gets sick from all the ice cream and rum an
tostonies, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit start
dancing to “Hava Nagila” (“Let Us Rejoice”) and

the Great Jehovah God is still laughing, and
Martin Luther King and J. Edgar Hoover show
up with their hands around each other’s throats,
along with Denise McNair and Bull Connor, and
they start eating some of the ice cream and

sipping rum, and Hulk Hogan and his wrestling
buddies show up, and Andy drove over from
Mayberry, along with Barney and Opie and
Aunt Bee, who’s brought apple pie and leftover
county fair funnel cakes and week-old Krispy

Kremes (which are fine if you put them in the
microwave for a few seconds) and everybody
starts whistling the show’s theme song (and,
oh, I didn’t mention Floyd, too, only he has
pink hair!), and then the Bailey Mountain

Cloggers are announced, and, Lo and Behold,
everyone—even James Brown—joins the
clogging, including your whole extended family
(the breathing and the breathless together) and
every person—I mean everyone—is just as

good at clogging as the Bailey Mountainers,
and suddenly you spot Billy and Ruth Graham
in the audience (Franklin refused to come) and
someone invites them to join in the dance, and
then, Lo and Behold, Jose Martí arrives with

Fidel riding on his shoulders, and then, in the
distance, you hear over the noise “She loves
you, yeah, yeah, yeah,” as the skiff carrying
Paul and John and Ringo and George,
Beethoven in tow, docks on Havana’s north

shore, then they climb up on the Malecón sea
wall, and the Great Jehovah God is still laughing
and suddenly has a cramp in Her rib cage from
all the laughing, and Barney knows a home
remedy, but Aunt Bee tells Barney to get out

of the way, she know what to do, and, Lo and
Behold, Chief Hatuey [the great 15th century
leader of the Taíno, indigenous people of the
Caribbean] enters from the side door, leading
a group of Spanish Conquistadors, and they’re,

like, can’t keep their hands off each other, queer
as lace and lilac, and Hatuey takes J. Edgar
over in the corner for a heart-to-heart, and Anita
Bryan joins them, and both J. Edgar and Anita
come out of the closet, and the Great Jehovah

God laughs and laughs, and—goodnesssakesalive
—Donald Trump arrives and tells everyone he’s
going to crawl on his knees from Seoul to
Pyongyang as a ritual petition for Korean
reconciliation and, after he finishes, all 7+

billion of us are gonna squeeze into Oz’s
Sydney Opera House where Barack Obama’s
gonna sing “Amazing Grace,” and Mahalia
Jackson’s gonna sing “How Great Thou Art”
with Bishop Tutu singing harmony along with

Patsy Cline, Sinéad O'Connor, and The Supremes.
Elvis, of course, is taking all this in, trying to
decide what he can add to the mix (he’s chatting
with Muddy Waters—they’ll likely do something
together with Pavarotti and the Beach Boys, lyrics

by John Prine, accompanied by Duke Ellington,
Jerry Lee Lewis, and Yo-Yo Ma, punctuated
with Zydeco riffs). Hope there’s enough ice
cream for everyone. Even dumb-*sses deserve
ice cream. I’d hate to have to clean all this up

in the morning. But, you-know, ashes are coming,
not just for the dumb-*sses but for all (!) of us
worthier, well-mannered folk as well—I’d end
with a more congenial, less-ashy conclusion
but as Tony Campolo would say,

        “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming.”
Lent's woe will one day yield to Easter's weal.

#  #  #

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Today, 1 February, is the feast day of St. Brigit of Kildare. It brought to mind one of my favorite prayers, which I designed as a piece of art (below).

As it happens, today is also the sixty-first anniversary of the Greensboro, NC “sit-in” movement, when students at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University demanded to be served at a segregated Woolsworth lunch counter.

The extraordinary decision by those students to commit nonviolent resistance against injustice was not done on impulse. Much preparation went beforehand. This tactic had been tried before but did not spark of movement.

This one did, triggering similar protests in 55 cities and 13 states. (For more, see “How the Greensboro Four Sit-In Sparked a Movement” in History.)  One of my dear friends, then a student at Wake Forest University in nearby Winston-Salem, was among the first white students to join that action.

Right: On the second day of the Greensboro sit-in, Joseph A. McNeil and Franklin E. McCain are joined by William Smith and Clarence Henderson at the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. Photo: Greensboro News and Record

The coincidence of St. Brigit’s feast day and the Greensboro confrontation is a fitting framework to think of the kind of formation people of faith must undertake.

Clearly we need a beatific vision in the manner of Brigit’s prayer. I would say “mystical” vision, but the word in English mostly draws up images of hermits or vaporous apparitions. But, yes, a mystical vision, illimitable, a “thin space” experience where Heaven’s ecstasy and Earth’s agony overlay.

A mountaintop experience, not unlike that of the story of Jesus’ “transfiguration,” when Jesus takes three of his disciples to a peak, where a glorious vision unfolds, with appearance by the Prophets Moses and Elijah.

Blustery Peter suggests tabernacles be built there. But no sooner had the rapturous moment ended, Jesus—ignoring Peter’s impetuous request—says something to the effect of fugetaboutit and leads the three back down the mountain where he is immediately confronted by a man whose son had a “spirit” causing the boy to convulse, grind his teeth, and foam at the mouth, which some commentators think may have been epilepsy.

Jesus heals the boy. And thereby establishes the link between the ecstasy and epilepsy—between mountaintop spiritual experience and the healing of Earth’s destitute, diseased condition.

You may recall that this story in Mark’s Gospel (chapter 9) comes immediately after Jesus’ conversation with his disciples, asking, “who do the people say I am?” Peter gets it right—but not quite right. Then Jesus speaks to them of the trouble to come, of his suffering and eventual crucifixion by Rome’s anti-terrorism task force. Whereupon Peter, in his insolence, adamantly rejects the notion that a sovereign should even suffer, much less die.

We should also be thinking here about Martin Luther King Jr.’s “mountaintop” speech in Memphis, where he had gone to support striking sanitation workers. Some consider that speech to be his most electric elocution.

“I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man.”

He continued, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” The “glory of the Lord” is linked with the demand of sanitation workers for better pay and working conditions.

If you’re going to confront history’s ruinous condition, you got to be infected with some sense of glory to sustain you through the hard times your advocacy will surely provoke.

To sustain the struggle at hand we need Brigit’s visionary prayer, King’s “Dream,” Jesus’ Beatitudes. But make no mistake, the lexicons of these visions—their field of vision, their fleshly context—is infirmity, is animosity, is in every circumstance of the Beloved Community’s rupture.

Heaven’s promise is heard in the midst of Earth’s affliction. Peter’s hesitation over Jerusalem’s confrontation is also our own. Such is the training and testing ground of our spiritually forming work.

#  #  #

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

by Ken Sehested

“Can’t we go to a restaurant? I’m tired of eating groceries.”
—Dennis the Menace cartoon

Our local paper has a weekly section devoted to cuisine—that’s the classy word for food—and often reviews the plentiful restaurant scene in this city that’s a magnet for tourism.

This week’s focus was captioned “No more dishes: 13 family-style meals ready for takeout.”

The third paragraph in the article begins, “Some local restaurants have responded to cooking fatigue with carryout family meals.”

“Cooking fatigue” is a new thing? A pandemic burden? An onerous affliction imposed by the ruthless virus? An encumbrance prompting urgent prayer-petitions for relief from Heaven itself? Is this one of the causes of the Capitol coup? (“We’re-sick-and-tired-of-Big-Government-requiring-us-to-cook-all-our-meals!”)

The first featured food establishment mentioned in the article notes that the cost of a meal for two is a mere $39. A veritable steal!

My mind’s council has a variety of voices and opinions that require my consultation on all but the most trivial of choices. One of them is a notorious penny-pincher.  (His name is Earl, in case you wanted to know; and he always buttons the top button on his shirt—even though he doesn’t wear a tie! So irritating!!)

Earl always clears his throat loudly when preparing to speak.

“Did you know, pray tell” (he always feigns piety with his “pray tells”), “that the average Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program) allowance for a family of two is $260 per month? At that rate, said family would be able to afford 6.66666 of those $39 meals from the aforementioned eatery,” adding, redundantly—he’s forever being redundant, so irritating—“that’s 6.66666 meals per month.”

As always, Earl breaks out in a crooked little sarcastic grin before he sits down. So irritating. Plus he always finds a way of complicating perfectly innocent choices with facts.

I should also add that Earl always does math in his head. Even though he has one of those industrial-sized manual crank adding machines that sound, well, so cranky. Did I mention Earl is irritating?

As it happens, I have a number of friends in Cuba and, having traveled there frequently enough, I know the struggle to find sufficient food. Particularly given the economic pressures caused by Covid, compounded by the 60+ years of the US embargo of that country. Cuba provides food rations for all of its citizens, which once provided the minimum of calories, but does so no longer.

(The United Nations General Assembly has, for 29 years running, voted all-but-unanimously to condemn the US embargo. But who’s counting, right?)

Yet we, in the world’s wealthiest nation (truly exceptional), with grocery stores and bodegas stacked high with products of every imaginable choice, are experiencing “cooking fatigue.”

Rudely interrupting, Earl also noted that fully one-fourth of children in the US are not sure where tomorrow’s meals are coming from. Not to mention that we spend nearly $96,000,000,000 annually on pet food—which nearly equals Cuba’s gross domestic product. (Those folk are coming for our cookies!)

I mean, watayagonna do with this guy! He probably doesn’t read many $39 meal reviews.

#  #  #

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

by Ken Sehested
US Presidential Inauguration • 20 January 2021

In the spring of 2016, when our pastors were planning the preaching schedule for the fall, I agreed to take that duty for Sunday 13 November. None of us were paying attention to the electoral calendar.

Long story short, it turns out I was preaching the Sunday after Donald Trump's election.

“Glad I don’t have to,” my normally very supportive spouse mentioned the following day.

My 8-year-old granddaughter was so distraught when she woke up to the election news that her parents let her stay home from school.

I felt pretty much the same.

A friend who learned of this assignment wrote me to ask “what on earth are you going to say?” I wrote back, “Don’t know yet—still sorting through my own emotional reactions . . . something between flame throwing and fetal crouch.”

I knew immediately that with this venal man’s inauguration, some of the ruinous legacy of our national history was catching up to us. Yes, our country has better angels; but also potent devils; and that some of those would be unleashed.

Because our virtues as a nation are considerable, we tend to think our vices unremarkable. Such is not the case.

“Make America Great Again” is a slogan in service both to national amnesia and to reinforcing our country’s complicated caste system.

On that post-election Wednesday morning a vengeful scream was bubbling up my esophagus. Few are immune to such wrathful emotions. I am, as Cesar Chavez wrote, “a violent man learning to be nonviolent.”

§  §  §

We typically attend to the lectionary texts for our congregation’s weekly worship; but I wandered off that trail, immediately thinking of the Ezekiel passage: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge” (18:2).

I closed that sermon with the following paragraphs.

The soured grapes of wrath and the ferment of generational trauma are coming with a fury we hardly understand; and I fear it will expose us to a bedeviled, long forgotten history. The work of unraveling the tangled knots, treating the festered wounds, and restoring neighborly bonds and bounds will require more than seasonal attention and a coat of pious enamel.

In the days to come, we must more earnestly tend the springs of hope, map those locations, become guides for those dying of thirst. Hope, as Krista Tippett wrote, “is a choice that becomes a habit that becomes spiritual muscle memory. It’s a renewable resource for moving through life as it is, not as we wish it to be.”

To move toward healing streams, though, we must be subjected to godly grief’s refining fire; we must lose our innocence if we are to stand with the innocent; we must breach the boundaries that obstruct a critical assessment of our own complicity; we must return to the edge of our seats, listening to the Spirit’s plea from above whispered by voices from below.

“Then when the night is upon us, / Why should the heart sink away? / When the dark midnight is over, / Watch for the breaking of day. / Whispering hope, / O how welcome thy voice, / Making my heart in it's sorrow rejoice.” (Hymn lyrics by Septimus Winner)

§  §  §

Many of us, on this very day, are whispering hope that the reign of a calloused grafter is being exiled to his palatial resort, taking his grifter family with him.

I am among the many breathing a sigh of relief. And yet. . . .

This aria in our nation’s oratorio will echo for some time to come.

•Some 75% of Republicans still believe the election was stolen. About 45% of them thought the insurrection attack on the US Capitol was just fine.

•Our public health care system—underfunded for decades to grant “freedom” to health profiteers—is at its breaking point.

•Ten months of Covid deaths in the US now equal the troop fatality rate from four years of bloody combat in World War II.

•The richest in our nation have seen their wealth surge in the midst of our national crisis, while a great many citizens may never recover financial stability.

•The promissory note of racial justice has not yet cleared.

•And our biosphere's point-of-no-return looms, made all the more frightening because we likely won’t know we’ve crossed that catastrophic boundary until it’s already in the rear view mirror.

And yet . . . and yet.

People of faith know about redemptive power of penitence.  Repentance. Turning around.

Maya Angelou’s witness is enduring: “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

The compounding gloom from daily headlines and the furrowed brows of “breaking news” commentators are our false prophets. Not simply because they are inaccurate about what they say (though some intend deceit); but that there is more to be said than they are able to film or photograph.

§  §  §

Several years ago, during my eight months of living with my frail Mom and my sister, Glenda, during her dying days, Mom said to me, “Sorry you have to go to so much trouble, son.”

And I responded, “Mom, trouble is where you go with people you love.”

Which reminds me of the sage encouragement of former Congressman John Lewis when he said, with a sly grin, “Get in some good trouble.”

Don’t do it merely for charitable reasons. Do it for your own spiritual health. For in the midst of trouble—when assets run low and prospects are dim—is often the place where hope, beyond human calculation, breaks out.

The Spirit’s Word from above is whispered by voices from below.

§  §  §

It was amongst the company of beaten civil rights marchers that folk found the resolve to sing, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around.” Such music may arise in sanctuaries, but it propelled bodies into streets and every place where life is at risk.

That’s the purpose of sanctuaries: where identity is formed; where communities of conviction are fashioned; where weak knees are strengthened and trembling hands are soothed; where hearts are captured by the beatific vision, a vision so potent that it galvanizes and focuses energy and talent and assets in unfettered allegiance.

Allegiance to the psalmist’s foretelling of the day when “justice and peace will embrace;” to the prophet’s disclosure of the day when swords will be forged into plowshares; to be captivated and animated by Jesus’ prayer, “Thy kingdom . . . on earth as it is in heaven.”

We need not turn a blind eye to the “and yet. . .” realities that bedevil our body politic. But sustaining resources are available and allow us to say, “Nevertheless.”

Another world is not only possible, it is promised, and its scouting party is already showing up in a neighborhood near you.

Ask for directions. See for yourself. Look for an investment with your name on it, a place where your agency matches the world’s urgency.

#  #  #

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org