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by Ken Sehested

“Oh Lord, I’ve made you a place in my heart,
and I hope now you leave it alone.”
—Greg Brown, sung by Dar Williams, Richard Shindell & Lucy Kaplansky

It’s not what you think. (The arrest.) Nothing salacious or seedy here. My friend BJ was handcuffed for committing an act of civil disobedience to call attention to our worsening climate crisis.

Betty Jane Crandall is an unlikely lawbreaker. An 80-year-old retired elementary school teacher, mild mannered, host of one of our congregation’s two ongoing weeknight Bible study groups focused on the Sermon on the Mount, widow of a Presbyterian minister, and Sunday school teacher for our preschoolers—not to mention a source of constant encouragement to me personally.

After a video of the march in downtown Asheville, NC was posted online, one of BJ’s nieces called to celebrate her “badass aunt.”

The march gathered in front of the National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI), which archives and monitors global climate data for the federal government, was organized by the local chapter of Extinction Rebellion, an international movement now active in 56 countries. Local organizers specifically chose Valentine’s Day “to express love and support for NCEI scientists who . . . tell the truth about climate change.”

Right: Betty Jane Crandall, arrested 14 February 2020 during a march calling attention to the climate crisis, Asheville, NC. Photo by Marc Mullinax.

In all, nine of our members took part in the protest (from the Latin, “publicly witness”), including three of the 16 arrested. The Valentine’s Day theme of love and support for climate scientists is amazingly appropriate. In the first two years of our current administration, more than 1,600 scientists have left their federal posts. Twenty percent of high-level appointee positions are vacant. Some 700 scientists have left the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Though rooted in stories of undue suffering by an early Christian saint, Valentine’s Day is now reserved for arousing romance, expressed in mawkish sentiment, and marketed in all manner of sugar and cocoa products. Chubby cherubs, shooting arrows of love at the heart, are featured on flirty cards professing affection. Fine dining reservations are hard to get that evening.

Tons of candy go on sale the next day. This season’s romance is flighty. It’s more fling than vow. The calories are empty.

The confusion of “heart” and “romance” in modern usage is a sign of our spiritual affliction and relational crisis. For us, the heart represents moodiness, volatile attention, impulsive emotion—parallel to the biological effect of sugar highs followed by lethargy and indifference.

§  §  §

In the pietist-revivalist tradition of my rearing, “giving your heart to Jesus” was often associated with intense emotion. The fickle results require equal emphasis on “rededicating your life to the Lord” as part of the hymn of invitation appeal.

In Scripture, though, the heart is the steady organ of the human body, and decisions made there are life-determining. The heart is the location of sturdy conviction and strenuous choice. Decisions made in the heart shape all other arrangements and warrant endurance in the face of conflict.

In Hebrew thinking, the heart represented the deepest level of a human personality, representing the true picture of the person. The Latin word credo, from which we get the word "creed," comes from two words which together mean "I give my heart to."

The Psalmist sings: "It is well with those who deal generously and lend, who conduct their affairs with justice . . . Their hearts are steady, they will not be afraid" (112:5-9).

In Matthew, Jesus makes this striking claim: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (6:21).

The Acts of the Apostles reports: "Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which they possessed were their own, but they had everything in common" (4:32).

And do you recall Zacchaeus’ “confession of faith in Jesus Christ as his personal lord and savior”? “Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” To which Jesus responded, "Today, salvation has come to this house" (Luke 19:8-9).

The heart is not the seat of fantasy. It is where questions of trust and allegiance and power are negotiated and sealed. The heart is where bet-your-assets decisions are settled—in particular, the kind that will get you in trouble with the world.

No doubt there are innumerable ways, among a myriad of circumstances, to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly in the Way of Jesus. Holy obedience comes in many forms. One of them might include civil disobedience. And handcuffs.

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See photos from the Extinction Rebellion march in Asheville.

Watch this 20-minute video of the march.

Ken Sehested is curator of prayerandpolitiks.org, an online journal at the intersection of spiritual formation and prophetic action.

by Ken Sehested

The story begins on a Saturday, before dawn, while still in high school. I began my 12-hour shift of pumping gas, doing oil changes, and washing cars in my hometown along the South Louisiana bayous.

First thing when we opened was to transfer product displays and stacks of new tires outside. The radio was on—the station owner loved the Cajun and Zydeco music on the local station. Then the music stopped, momentarily, for a bit of news. The announcer was saying something about Martin Luther King Jr.

“That Martin Luther Coon, he ain’t no Christian,” Mr. Dediveaux muttered toward the radio in an emphatically derogatory tone. “Everywhere he go there’s trouble.”

It would be years before it occurred to me the same was likely said about Jesus.

As the product of a piety-saturated, apolitical religious environment (except when liquor and gambling policies were on the electoral ballot), I was largely oblivious to the Civil Rights Movement. But by the time I entered seminary, the history and figures of the era became an obsession. I read everything I could get my hands on.

One of my purchases was an oversized book filled with photos of Dr. King and a host of other movement luminaries. To this day I retain the vivid memory of being caught up in a bewildering epiphany as I turned from one page to the next. As if my gut had goosebumps.

It took me a few seconds to comprehend the prophetic disclosure that unfolded. The photo was of Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta sitting at a piano, their infant daughter Yolanda perched on Martin’s lap, as he and Coretta sang from an open hymnal.

As my eyes began searching out the details, there it was. The hymnal cover was clear. It was the Broadman Hymnal. The hymnal I grew up with. Published by the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination that formed over the express conviction that even missionaries could own slaves.

At one time I could quote from memory the page number of dozens of titles in that hymnal. As I came to discover, a good many churches that hosted Civil Rights Movement mass meetings—churches that were threatened by cross-burning Klan torches—did their singing from the Broadman.

I also learned that terrorism on American soil has a long history.

That moment—that photo—stands among my life’s greatest revelations. I came to realize that the language of faith can have many different, even competing meanings, just as any chemical compound, minus even one element, turns into something else altogether.

My life’s preoccupation since then has been sorting out the redemptive notes from the enslaving.

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©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Excerpted and adapted from a longer article, “Prettifying prophets: A Martin Luther King Jr. birthday remembrance.” /blog/2018/02/04/prettifying-prophets.2402318

by Ken Sehested
23 September 2019

Stirred by correspondence with three friends, and punctuated by two historic events, the past week has been a whirlwind of emotions.

My good friend Greg is the smartest person I personally know when it comes to understanding the complex web of factors behind impending environmental collapse. He also has a keen moral vision. A high school math teacher, his convictions are rooted in spiritually-formed personal integrity. He’s taken part in dozens of environmental direct actions, including several stays in jail, for acts of civil disobedience.

Right: Photo by Brian Gordon, Asheville Citizen-Times

A frequent topic of conversation is this gnarly dilemma: How do you tell the truth about what we’re up against without counseling despair?

Just last year the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that humankind has a bare dozen years left before dramatic, potentially catastrophic climate change occurs. And just this week the World Meteorological Organization reported that ecological collapse is proceeding faster than previously thought.

The really scary thing is that we likely won’t know where the point of no return is before we actually cross it.

I rely on Greg to sharpen my intelligence and deepen my spiritual attention. We alert each other to resources from time to time. Last week I sent him the link to Robert Jensen’s “,” a review essay of Naomi Klein’s new book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal.

Greg had seen it, but added, “I don't think I have any insights, really. I just struggle to live with what I know. Then again, I also know that I tend to gravitate toward pessimism, so I try to let that realization counterbalance my darkest moments. But all in all, I feel virtually hopeless about the our chances of avoiding catastrophic climate change and ecosystem collapse.”

§  § §
“Storm coming / No way it's gonna miss us now / Storm coming /
Don't be frightened by the sound of it / Don't be frightened by the sound.”
—Justin Townes Earle, “Frightened by the Sound”
§  §  §

One of the reasons it is difficult to get people to comprehend the enormity of the crisis we face may be the metrics we use. Scientists agree that unless we significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions, to maintain earth’s temperature rise to 1.5° Centigrade (2.7° Fahrenheit), we face almost certain environmental calamity, compounded by increased political instability and global violence caused by competition for vital resources.

1.5° sounds like an awfully modest goal. That’s because we fail to grasp the gravity of the math.

We tend to think of addition instead of multiplication, of incremental increase rather than quantum leaps. Our fledgling minds are playing checkers while Mother Nature is playing 10-dimensional chess.

For instance: Ten to-the-power-of one is 10. Ten to-the-power-of 10 is not 20. Ten to-the-power-of 10 is 10,000,000,000.

Or, in another gauge of scientific measurement, think of how the power of earthquakes are calculated using the Richter Scale. A 1.5 magnitude quake is more than five times bigger, and releases more than 11 times more energy, than a 0.8 quake.

Or, imagine this: A plaza bigger than a football field, with mousetraps filling the space, side by side, from end zone to end zone. Each with cocked arms, upon which a ping-pong ball rests. Overhead, a red-tailed hawk flies by, losing its grip on a scavenged mouse, which falls, hitting one of the traps. The spring loaded arm launches the ping-pong ball some distance away, striking another. But the first ball doesn’t plop—it bounces. Now in quick succession two balls fly, striking two others. Then four balls fly; then eight; then 16; then 32; then 64; then 128. And so on and so on, until thousands are in the air.

This is what environmental scientists mean when they speak of a negative climate feedback loop, when one distress indicator triggers countless others, with multiplying effect. Human efforts to rectify the damage simply can’t keep up with the cascading wreckage.

§  § §
“If you defile the land, it will vomit you out.”
—Leviticus 18:28
§  § §

Then came last week’s historic Youth Climate Strike marches, mobilizing millions of people, led by young people in 185 countries, to demand effective political action to address our anthropogenic folly. Beginning in the Pacific Islands, through Australia and southern Asia, throughout Africa and Europe, culminating in hundreds of actions in the Americas. Even in places like Afghanistan, an active war zone, through the streets of Kabul protected by an armored military carrier.

It’s hard to believe that barely a year ago 15-year-old Greta Thunberg launched a solitary (and ridiculed) vigil outside the Swedish parliament demanding a more robust response to climate failure. Just a little girl—who also happens to live with autism.

News this morning of Thunberg’s address to the UN Climate Summit in New York sent me to a video of her comments. (Listen to this one minute excerpt.) It was breathtaking, and I furiously wrote this imagined caption to go with a Facebook post, adding the weblink to a brief excerpt from her remarks:

 “The Lord God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; Sovereign of every potentate; Mother of every orphan, widow, and stranger; Father of the prodigal, the afflicted, the shamed; Friend of the friendless and Advocate of the abandoned—this One assembles the nations and creatures and every star’s orbit, to declare the following.” [Then posting the weblink to Thunberg's comments.]

Karen, another friend, quickly responded, saying “The clip of Greta is incredibly powerful. But I am shaken right now because I started to read the responses to her comments” [which are brutal]. Even Fox News had to issue an apology when one of its contributors described Thunberg as “a mentally ill Swedish child who is being exploited by her parents and by the international left.”

Yes, I replied, the anonymity of social media provides cover for the most base and cruel human sentiments. These, however, do not represent the most powerful resistance to significant cuts in greenhouse emissions, from suited, board-roomed men, and a few women—who control not just powerful companies but countries as well—who will not be making social media comments but will be wielding enormous financial power to resist meaningful change.

There are thousands of fossil fuel corporate executives, lobbyists, and petro-funded legislators around the world allied against what they see as a threat to economic prosperity. Few of them are motivated by explicitly evil motives. Few wear “black hats” or have larcenous, arsonist intentions.

They are “blind” (to use a biblical metaphor). To the hammer, as the Russian proverb puts in, everything looks like a nail.

§  § §
“For the world has grown full of peril.
And in all lands, love is now mingled with grief. . . .
Yet hope remains while the Company is true.”
—Galadriel, to Celeborn, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”
§  § §

So then, how do we tell the truth about the crisis we face without counseling despair or drifting into cynicism?

It requires that we not close history to a fated outcome. For instance, who would have thought, one year ago, that Greta Thunberg’s paltry protest would launch millions into the streets? The alternative to cynicism, says Rebecca Stolnit, involves “a recognition that we often don’t know what is going to happen ahead of time, and an acceptance that whatever takes place will usually be a mixture of blessings and curses that will unfold over considerable time.”

It requires that we foster the kind of hope that is more than wishful thinking, a hope that is anchored in a beatific vision, of a Beloved Community, to which we are drawn and not merely shoved. Duty will inspire struggle for a season; only beauty, for a lifetime.

Frankly, despair is a form of self-possession if not outright arrogance. “Cynicism loves itself more than the world; it defends itself in lieu of defending the world” (Solnit, Call Them by Their True Names).

As my friend Karen reminds me, we are definitely in a struggle, one that will raise calluses on hands and blisters on feet—and maybe bloody outcomes. Which shouldn’t surprise people of the Way, since the pioneer of our faith was lynched.

There’s a storm coming.

Yet “Our struggle is not against enemies of flesh and blood, but against rulers and powers, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness,” which requires that we “take up the whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:12-17). Not to protect divine honor but to testify to and reflect the Beloved’s relentless pursuit of Heaven’s agenda “for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2).

Tell the truth about the storm breaking over us. But also remember that what has been promised is greater than what is present. Beyond our frightful calculations is a love that will not let us go. Neither should we.

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P.S. Another friend, Daniel Hunter, has just published a “Climate Resistance Handbook” filled with creative, practical ideas on how to bring about actual change. This book is being offered free for electronic download.

©ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

• “Hear this, O People of the Dream,” a litany for worship commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

• “Dream On: Martin Luther King Jr., the Beloved Community and post-holiday resolve”

• “Faithful Witness: The testimony of Scripture and of Martin Luther King Jr.” a collection of texts

• “Martin Luther King's birthday commemoration,” a litany for worship

• “We, too, have a dream,” a litany for worship commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday 

• “When the dream gets a bit dreamy,” on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech

• “Prayers of Martin Luther King Jr.,” a brief collection compiled by Nancy Hastings Sehested

• “Dr. King didn’t do everything: We miss the significance of the Civil Rights Movement if we attribute everything to Dr. King"

• “Write the vision, make it plain,” a sermon on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday

• “Hold Fast to Dreams: Defaulting on the Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” lecture for a theological conference 

• “Prettifying Prophets: A Martin Luther King Jr. birthday remembrance”

• “Litany for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day”

• “Martin Luther King Jr. in Cuba: A Cuban pastor's story of King's influence,” Rev. Francisco Rodés

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by Ken Sehested

        The needs of a beloved had me racing to the emergency room late Monday evening, near the end of Dr. King’s birth-honoring holiday. Then, often enough, comes the tedious waiting, including finding things to occupy your time when the hours drag on. My eyes fell on one of those large monitors that crowd the walls of every room. When not in use by medical personnel, it reverted to a series of in-house hospital notices.

        One wished a “happy holiday” (likely irritating the “Merry Christmas” culture-warring patrons). Another reminded staff of new parking regulations. Another solicited volunteers for the hospital chorus which performs at special occasions; another warned about “medication diversion,” referencing the epidemic of prescription drug misuse; another announced the hospital’s medical insurance plan.

        The one that really engaged my attention was a message urging staff to nominate candidates for the hospital’s “Spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. Award.” (The deadline was a week earlier, so this one and the “happy holidays” note suggest the communications team was still on holiday.)

        Immediately after the King award promotion was headlined, “Renew your holiday glow,” promoting $45 deals on microdermabrasion and “botox treatments—$8 per unit.”

        The juxtaposition of the two ads made me think of cosmetic treatment of social disfigurement; of the fresh evidence in recent months of our body politics’ racial sepsis; of mainstream appropriation of Dr. King’s “dream” for public relations purposes; and this T.E. Lawrence poem:

        All people dream: but not equally.
        Those who dream by night
        in the dusty recesses of their minds
        wake in the day to find that it was vanity.
        But the dreamers of the day
        are dangerous people,
        for they may act their dream with open eyes
        to make it possible.

        Even then—way back, 30 years now, during my days in Atlanta, the King family homestead—friends in the African American activist community privately debated committing acts of civil disobedience during the city’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday parade, because of the encroachment of corporate sponsorship and the prevalence of military bands.

        US Director of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson (like King, a Morehouse College alum), when he was general counsel of the Department of Defense, said incredulously in 2011 that King would have supported our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: "I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world." As if, despite massive political costs—exacted even from fellow civil rights leaders—King never publicly denounced the war in Vietnam, was vilified by former allies in the media, was the target of illegal surveillance by multiple federal agencies, and was named by a Federal Bureau of Investigation memo as “the most dangerous Negro leader in the country.”

§ § §

        Dreams must be sorted and dreamers assessed. Some are more like trophies, bolted onto pedestals from where they can be admired without risk.

        Some dreamers can be copyrighted, thus protecting the public from risky exposure to freedom’s more incendiary demands.

§  §  §

        “Selma” director and screenwriter  Ava DuVernay, whose film dramatizes that city’s 1965 “Blood Sunday” march for the right to vote, lacked the mountain of cash needed for the King Estate’s permission to actually quote King’s speeches from the period. Doing so requires the kind of deep pockets of companies like AT&T, Chevrolet, Apple and Mercedes, which have MiLKed that legacy to enlarge market share. Once you’ve been to this particular mountain, with its promised-land vista of a different sort, gates go up, guard dogs prowl, armed security teams patrol.

§  §  §

Some dreams generate more yawns than Sleepytime tea. Some fade more quickly that new blue jeans in a bleach-laced wash cycle. Escalated sentiment is easily disposed. Iconic mascots can be kept on a leash.

§  §  §

        The first official call for a national holiday in King’s honor was sounded in January 1979 by then-President Jimmy Carter in a speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta marking the 50th anniversary of King’s birth. “[King] spoke of the America that had never been,” Carter said, “of the America we hope will be.” Fourteen years later another president, Ronald Reagan, under the pressures of an upcoming reelection campaign, signed the King Holiday bill into law. But in doing so he could only muster a toothless piety, “love thy neighbor as thyself.” No economic policies challenged; no legislative agenda reordered; no human rights violations—domestic and foreign—brought to light; no voting rights expanded or tax policies examined; no foreign interventions recalled.

        Of course, now there are no longer any “whites only” water fountains or waiting rooms or bus seats. The Klan’s political protection by local authorities has mostly ended. Bank loan officers and real estate agents have to be far cleverer to maintain racially targeted practices. Yet the wealth gap between white and black families is at its highest rate in 25 years. Economic disparity generally, regardless of racial lines, is at or near an all-time record. A report issued last Monday, just hours before my sprint to the ER, an international agency reported that if current trends hold, the richest 1% of the world’s population will soon own half the world’s wealth.

§  §  §

“Dead men make such convenient heroes,” Carl Wendell Himes Jr. wrote. “They cannot rise to challenge the images we would fashion from their lives.”

§  §  §

        The dream on phrase that titles this commentary has a double meaning. In colloquial English, dream on translates as an indictment: “you can’t be serious!” It refers to groundless fantasy, half-witted sentiment, the nutritional equivalent of a cone of cotton candy with a coca-cola chaser.

        “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams,” Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov, whereas “active love is labor and fortitude.” “You can crush the flowers, but you can’t stop the spring,” said Alexander Dubcek, leader of the Prague Spring uprising of 1968. The sort of dreaming that Dr. King envisioned is available when backs are against the wall, when hope for a different reality—anciently promised to soul, society and soil—is on the prowl, and resurrection threatens every established rule, every woeful rank, every tear-soaked regime.

        Time for post-holiday resolve, powered by the beatific vision of the Beloved Community, drawing us forward, dreaming still, despite the threat of more bloody Sundays. But take courage and be of good cheer. . . . (cf. John 16:33)

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©Ken Sehested is curator of prayerandpoliitiks.org