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Signs of the Times  •  11 October 2018 •  No. 174

¶ Processional. “I Am the Land,” a musical tribute to Salvadoran martyr and Archbishop Oscar Romero, by E. Ethelbert Miller and Richard J. Clark, performed by the Seraphim Singers. (7:21. Thanks Rose.)

¶ Invocation. “Dear Jesus: Don’t do that. Don’t go saying “I come not to bring peace, but division.” You’re scaring us. Don’t you know there are children in the room!” —continue reading “Peace, peace but there is no peace,” a litany for worship inspired by Luke 12:49-53, Jeremiah 6:13-15, and former Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero

Above: Oscar Romero portrait carried by procession 2014. Photo by Jessica Orellana, Reuters.

Special edition
SAINT ÓSCAR ARNULFO ROMERO

This Sunday, 14 October, former Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romeo will be officially canonized—declared a saint—by the Roman Catholic Church during its 2018 Synod of Bishops in Rome.

        In 1997 Romero was declared a “Servant of God,” a process which makes him a candidate for sainthood. But the process stalled when the hierarchy worried if such a move would be too “political.” Then in February of 2015 Pope Francis decreed that Romero had died “for the faith” (in odium fidei); and then in May announced his beatification, the final step before canonization as a saint of the church. A quarter of a million Salvadorans attended Romero’s beatification service.

        When in 1977 Romero was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador, many in the government, wealthy landowners, the military, and the Catholic hierarchy were pleased. Romero was known as a traditionalist, compliant on matters of piety, doctrine, and relations with the state.

        They would be proven wrong. —continue reading “Saint Óscar Arnulfo Romero: Canonizing El Salvador’s beloved archbishop”

§  §  §

¶ Call to worship. “The saints of old don’t wear golden crowns, or sit on lofty perch, mouthing caustic comments on how poorly we yet-mortal souls measure up to the glory of days past. They, too, knew about keeping hope alive while getting dinner on the table, faucets fixed, carpools covered, and budgets balanced. After the ecstasy, there’s always the laundry.” —continue reading “All Saints Day,” a litany for worship for use on All Saints Day

¶ “For Romero the poor was the key to understand the Christian faith. He reformulated the maxim Gloria Dei, vivens homo (‘the glory of God is the living person’) of St. Irenaeus, into Gloria Dei, vivens pauper (‘the glory of God is the living poor person’).” —Hans Egil Offerdal

¶ Romero's candidacy for sainthood "languished for decades under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who expressed unease with his connection to liberation theology and his vocal denunciations of government killings and kidnappings.” —Joshua J. McElwee, NCRonline

¶ “[Jesuit priest Fr. Jon] Sobrino has said it for us [in his recent reflection on the 30th anniversary of Romero’s assassination]: ‘The church of Jesus is the one that God wants. It is both necessary and possible. We, the people of God, say ‘Give us Jesus back!’ A great cloud of witnesses with Romero in their midst has returned him to us.’” —“Another model of church is possible,” National Catholic Reporter, April 16, 2010

¶ Óscar Romero’s assassination death “was caused not from simple political motives, but from a hatred of the faith kneaded with the charity that would not remain silent in the face of the injustices that implacably and cruelly struck down the poor and their defenders.” —Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, at a Vatican press briefing on Feb. 4, on the eve of his beatification, quoted in Gerald O’Connell, America Magazine

Left: Art by Ricardo Levins Morales

¶ “Actor Raúl Juliá [who plays the archbishop in the 1989 movie, “Romero”] says something strange happened to him while he was filming. He became a Catholic. Again. "I had been a lapsed Catholic," he told New York Newsday columnist Dennis Duggan, "and I had what you might call a conversion back to my faith during the filming. I had stopped going to church. For years I saw only the negative aspects of my church." —Washington Post

¶ “Romero points the Church forward. This is the way we have to go. We have to walk with the crucified people today. Romero understood that, if it was not good news for the poor, it was not the gospel.” —Father Dean Brackley SJ

¶ “While emerging as an international figure, Romero cannot be understood without understanding the context in which he lived.

        “In Romero’s day, soldiers—in large part financed by the U.S. government—and militia death squads wrought terror on large sections of the population. Most Salvadorans continue to live in poverty; many have escaped to the United States, Canada and Europe in search of work.

        “At the time of Romero’s appointment, those who clamored for change openly expressed disappointment. Romero was perceived at the time as timid and allied with the wealthy. He was, critics said, a man chosen so as not to disturb the powerful, who saw the emergence of liberation theology and the growing movement in the Church for a ‘preferential option for the poor’ as a threat.” —Peter Feuerherd, “The Ongoing Legacy of Oscar Romero,” Franciscan Media

¶ “You have just heard in Christ’s gospel that one must not love oneself so much as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and that those who try to fend off the danger will lose their lives, while those who out of love for Christ give themselves to the service of others will live, like the grain of wheat that dies, but only apparently. If it did not die, it would remain alone. The harvest comes about only because it dies, allowing itself to be sacrificed in the earth and destroyed. Only by undoing itself does it produce the harvest.” —John Dear, “Archbishop Romero’s Conversion”

¶ “In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 March as the ‘International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims’ in recognition of the role of Archbishop Romero in defence of human rights. Romero actively denounced violations of the human rights of the most vulnerable people and defended the principles of protecting lives, promoting human dignity and opposition to all forms of violence.” —“Óscar Romero,” Wikipedia

¶ For more on the US role in the Salvadoran military government’s brutal reign of terror, see Raymond Bonner’s “Time for a US Apology to El Salvador,” The Nation

§  §  §

Óscar Romero quotes

¶ “A church that does not provoke crisis, a gospel that does not disturb, a word of God that does not touch the concrete sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed—what kind of gospel is that?”

¶ “As a Christian I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will be reborn in the Salvadoran people.”

¶ “Thus, the poor have shown the church the true way to go. A church that does not join the poor in order to speak out from the side of the poor against the injustices committed against them is not the true church of Jesus Christ.”

¶ “Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.”

¶ “The guarantee of one’s prayer is not in saying a lot of words. The guarantee of one’s petition is very easy to know: how do I treat the poor? The degree to which you approach them, and the love with which you approach them, or the scorn with which you approach them – that is how you approach your God. What you do to them, you do to God. The way you look at them is the way you look at God.”

¶ “Let my blood be a seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be realized.”

¶ “Whoever believes that my preaching is political, that it provokes violence, as if I were the cause of all the evils in the republic, forgets that the word of the Church is not inventing the evils which already exist in the world, but illuminating them. The light illumines what already exists. It doesn’t create it. The great evil already exists, and the word of God wants to do away with those evils. It points them out as part of a necessary denunciation so that people can return to good paths.”

 ¶ “Aspire not to have more, but to be more.”

¶ “A preaching that makes sinners feel good, so that they become entrenched in their sinful state, betrays the gospel’s call. . . . A preaching that awakens, a preaching that enlightens – as when a light turned on awakens and of course annoys a sleeper – that is the preaching of Christ, calling: Wake up! Be converted! That is the church’s authentic preaching. Naturally, such preaching must meet conflict, must spoil what is miscalled prestige, must disturb, must be persecuted. It cannot get along with the powers of darkness and sin.”

¶ “Of those who are condemned it will be said: They could have done good and did not.”

 ¶ “It would be sad, if in a country where murder is being committed so horribly, we were not to find priests also among the victims. They are the testimony of a church incarnate in the problems of its people.”

 ¶ “A church that suffers no persecution but enjoys the privileges and support of the things of the earth—beware! It is not the true church of Jesus Christ.”

¶ “It is very easy to be servants of the word without disturbing the world: a very spiritualized word, a word without any commitment to history, a word that can sound in any part of the world because it belongs to no part of the world. A word like that creates no problems, starts no conflicts.”

¶ One cannot be “a true follower of the gospel, if one does not draw from the gospel all the conclusions it contains for this earth, that one cannot live a gospel that is too angelical, a gospel of compliance, a gospel that is not dynamic peace, a gospel that is not of demanding dimensions in regard to temporal matters also.”

 ¶ “There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.”

 ¶ “The transcendence that the church preaches is not alienation; it is not going to heaven to think about eternal life and forget about the problems on earth. It’s a transcendence from the human heart. It is entering into the reality of a child, of the poor, of those wearing rags, of the sick, of a hovel, of a shack. It is going to share with them. And from the very heart of misery, of this situation, to transcend it, to elevate it, to promote it, and to say to them, ‘You aren’t trash. You aren’t marginalized.’ It is to say exactly the opposite, ‘You are valuable.’”

§  §  §

¶ Resources

• Archbishop Oscar Romero will be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church on Sunday 14 October. Watch this short (4:17) video summary of his life. —Romero Trust

• “Oscar Romero: 20th Century Martyr,” (1:38). —interestmedia

• “Oscar Romero Animation,” a short (4:46) video illustrating the life and legacy of Romero.

• Watch this brief (1:17) video summary’s of Romero’s life from The Plough.

• The Plough Publishing House published The Violence of Love, a marvelous collection of quotes from Romero sermons. They also offer a free ebook download and audio book
        You can also read the book online, from the Romero Trust.

• Watch this brief (2:58) trailer from the biopic of Romero’s last sermon,  from the 1989 film, “Romero,” starring Raúl Juliá, which focuses on the last three years of the archbishop life. Unfortunately, the film is mostly silent on the history of US involvement with El Salvador’s oppressive government.

• For more background on Romero, see Dan Buttry’s brief biographical summary.  (Dan’s website has hundreds of such short biographical sketches of peacemakers from around the world and of a host of religious traditions.)

¶ Altar call. “You may never enter a lion’s den, or travel through a war zone, or hear a prison door close behind your act of conscience. Mostly, you don’t get to custom-design the witness you bear, the woe you endure, or the promises you make to mend the world as it crosses your path. By and large, you weigh the choices that come your way without the fanfare of stardom’s spotlight, your picture in the paper, or even angels whispering in your ear.” —continue reading “All Saints Day,” a litany for worship for use on All Saints Day

¶ Benediction. “Stand amazed, you betrothed of unimagined Grace. Your siege is ending. In those days the remnant of pardon will arrive from every far-flung hill and hamlet. Among them will be the shamed and forsaken, the exposed and exploited; the blind and the lame and the laboring women.” —continue reading “Unimagined grace,” a litany for worship inspired by Jeremiah 31

Left: “If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people.”

¶ Recessional. “Romero,” by The Project on their album “Martyrs’ Prayers.”

¶ Lectionary for this Sunday.

        “The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

        “Allahu Akbar,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

¶ Lectionary for Sunday next.

        “Unimagined grace,” a litany for worship inspired by Jeremiah 31

        “Faith on the run: Why I’m still a Baptist,” a Reformation Day sermon rooted in Mark 10:46-42 and selections from Hebrews 11

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor, as are those portions cited as “kls.” Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.

Feel free to copy and post any original art on this site. (The ones with “prayer&politiks.org” at the bottom.) As well as other information you find helpful.

Your comments are always welcomed. If you have news, views, notes or quotes to add to the list above, please do. If you like what you read, pass this along to your friends. You can reach me directly at kensehested@prayerandpolitiks.org.

Signs of the Times  •  3 October 2018 •  No. 173

¶ Processional. Thousands of students and faculty from the Catholic-run St. Scholastica’s College dance en masse to protest violence against women and children on 14 February 2018, in Manila, Philippines. The annual dance, dubbed One Billion Rising, is held every Valentine’s Day. This year’s performance came shortly after the brutal Philippine President Duterte gave orders for his troops to shoot female dissidents to his regime in the vagina to render them “useless.” (1:15 video.)

Above: Happy 50th anniversary to the Redwood National Park in California, home of the some of the world’s largest trees.

¶ Invocation. “I am an older woman now / And I will heed my own cries / And I will a fierce warrior be / 'til not another woman dies.” —Ventus Women’s Choir, “Warrior”

¶ Call to worship. “Worthy, worthy the One who conceived the earth and gave birth to bears and basil and beatitudes alike. At the sound of your Name the trees rejoice, for you are clothed with honor and clad in beauty. So now, every hill and habitation, every honey bee and human heart, rejoice and give thanks. For the One who set the ocean’s tide, Who rides the wind with wings astride, shall never abide the tumult of pride. The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work!” —continue reading “The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

¶ Hymn of praise. “Tebe pojem” (“I Sing to You”), performed by Vila, a Serbian Orthodox Singing Society.

¶ Act of bravery. “Because an Afghan was being deported on her flight to Istanbul, activist Elin Ersson refused to sit down. What happens in the next minutes shakes everyone on board.” (3:00 video. Thanks Michael.)

Right: Illustration of Christian Blasey Ford, by many_bothans

¶ Confession. “Men: Our hearts sag with sorrow when the history of such misery is unveiled. / Women: Such truthfulness comes at a cost. But worthy is the truth. / M: What good can come from such vile remembrance? Can we not safely and silently dispose of such memory? / W: No, not safely. Heaven still hears. The roots are deep. The seeds are dormant. The brutal harvest continues.” —continue reading “Limb by limb: Repenting and repairing a legacy of violence against women,” a litany for worship

¶ “It is too soon to measure the consequences of your testimony, Dr. Ford, though there have been endless media assertions that this confrontation between you and Judge Kavanaugh was a test of #MeToo (even the headlines put on one of my essays framed it that way). There are so many problems with that framework.

        “One is that #MeToo is only one fruitful year in a project for the rights and equality of women that goes back more than 50 years by one measure, almost 180 by others. Another is that what all this has sought to change is patriarchy, an institution that is thousands of years old. The test of our success is in the remarkable legal and cultural shifts we have achieved over the past 50 years, not whether or not we have changed everyone and everything in the past year. That we have not changed everything does not diminish that we have changed a lot.” —Rebecca Solnit, “,” Common Dreams

¶ Hymn of supplication. “Hold On,” Isaac Cates & Ordained.

¶ Revelatory exercise. Men ask why women are so pissed off. Jackson Katz, a prominent social researcher, illustrates why by reference to a simple exercise he’s done with hundreds of audiences.

        “I draw a line down the middle of a chalkboard, sketching a male symbol on one side and a female symbol on the other.

        “Then I ask just the men: What steps do you guys take, on a daily basis, to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? At first there is a kind of awkward silence as the men try to figure out if they've been asked a trick question. The silence gives way to a smattering of nervous laughter. Occasionally, a young a guy will raise his hand and say, 'I stay out of prison.' This is typically followed by another moment of laughter, before someone finally raises his hand and soberly states, 'Nothing. I don't think about it.'

        “Then I ask the women the same question. What steps do you take on a daily basis to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? Women throughout the audience immediately start raising their hands. As the men sit in stunned silence, the women recount safety precautions they take as part of their daily routine.” — Jackson Katz, “The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help”

¶ Break the silence. Listen to Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s reading of Amanda Palmer’s poem, “Protest,” musical background by composer Jherek Bischoff. (2:48 audio) —Poetiosity

¶ Words of assurance. “All the weary mothers of the earth will finally rest; / We will take their babies in our arms, and do our best. / When the sun is low upon the field, / To love and music they will yield, / And the weary mothers of the earth will rest.” —Joan Baez, “All the Weary Mothers of the Earth”

¶ Professing our faith. “In the divine economy it is not the feminine person who remains hidden and at home. She is God in the world, moving, stirring up, revealing, interceding. It is she who calls out, sanctifies, and animates the church. Hers is the water of the one baptism. The debt of sin is wiped away by her. She is the life-giver who raises men [sic] from the dead with the life of the coming age. Jesus himself left the earth so that she, the intercessor, might come.” — Jay G. Williams, “Yahweh, Women and the Trinity,” Theology Today 32 (1975) 240.

Right: Photo by Finnigan Baker at the Seattle women’s march.

¶ When imagination is hitched to workable solutions. “Thistle Farms residential program [in Nashville, Tennessee] is called Magdalene. It provides a two-year home where women can stay for free. . . . It’s a simple model, but it’s critical for survivors of trafficking, addiction, and prostitution to have the space and time to heal.” —watch this brief (4:35 video) narrated by Rev. Becca Stevens

¶ Hymn of resolution. “As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men— / For they are women's children and we mother them again. / Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes— / Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses!” —“Bread and Roses,” Bronwen Lewis

¶ Short story. “Something extraordinary at LAX today. I was at the gate, waiting to get on my plane. A toddler who looked to be eighteen or so months old was having a total meltdown. His young mom, who was clearly pregnant and traveling alone with her son, became completely overwhelmed.” —continue reading Beth Bornstein Dunnington, “Women Surround Crying Mom Whose Toddler Was Having A Meltdown At The Airport” (Thanks Sally.)

¶ Hymn of intercession. “Song from a Secret Garden,” violin instrumental by Tolga Sünter.

¶ Word. “The enemy of feminism isn’t men. It’s patriarchy. And patriarchy is not men. It is a system. And women can support the system of patriarchy just as men can support the fight for gender equality.” —Justine Musk (Thanks Keith.)

¶ Vocabulary update: mantrum: when a grown man throws a tantrum; when he can’t have his way. —Urban Dictionary

¶ In its recent General Convention in Austin, Texas, the Episcopal Church took steps toward considering revision of the Book of Common Prayer to include more gender-neutral wording and more “inclusive and expansive language” for God and humanity. (The 1979 version is the current edition. The original was first published in 1549.) For a good, brief overview on “What the early church thought about gender” see David Wheeler-Reed’s article in Religion News.

¶ Preach it. “Whatever else the true preaching of the word would need to include, it at least would have to be a word that speaks from the perspective of those who have been crushed and marginalized in our society. It would need to be a word of solidarity, healing, and love in situations of brokenness and despair and a disturbing and troubling word of justice to those who wish to protect their privilege by exclusion.” —Letty Russell, in Preaching As Resistance (Thanks Rose.)

¶ Why many women haven’t reported sexual harassment. “I think the answer is, it's a little bit like asking the slaves why they didn't complain about the masters. The power was on the other side, and it went all the way up through to the top of these companies, and you really had very little power as a young female working almost exclusively for men. There was kind of nobody to complain to, including HR departments.” —New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer, author of “Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas,” interviewed by Terry Gross on “Fresh Air”

¶ Want some historical background? See “Herstory of Domestic Violence: A Timeline of the Battered Women’s Movement.”

¶ Can’t makes this sh*t up. "The anti-patriarchy movement is going to undo ten thousand years of recorded history. You watch. The time has come. Women are gonna take charge of society." —former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon (who is alarmed, not comforted, by this assessment), quoted in Eliza Relman, Business Insider

¶ Happy birthday, Mohandas Gandhi (b. 2 October 1869). “Noncooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.”

¶ Call to the table. “We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God’s compassionate love for others.” —Clare of Assisi

¶ The state of our disunion. “What boy hasn’t done this [attempted rape] in high school?” mockingly asked Gina Sosa, failed congressional candidate from Miami, one of a group of Republican women speaking to CNN last week about an allegation of attempted rape against a then-17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, now a nominee for the Supreme Court. —quoted in columnist Leonard Pitts

¶ Best one-liner. “There is rape because there are rapists, not because there are pretty girls.” —Leni Robredo, Vice President of the Philippines, denouncing President Rodrigo Duterte’s remark that rape will exist “as long as there are many beautiful women”

¶ For the beauty of the earth. Watch this brief (3:48) video displaying the beauty of California’s Redwood National Park.

Left: Cartoon by Jeff Koterba, Omaha World Herald

¶ Resource. 57% of women have been harassed on Facebook. To counter that, the folk at vpnMentor (“Empowering Internet Safety”) have created “The Empowering Internet Safety Guide for Women” with practical solutions to reduce vulnerability.

¶ Altar call (the potential fallout). “I was . . . wondering whether I would just be jumping in front of a train that was headed to where it was headed anyway, and that I would just be personally annihilated.” —Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, in her opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court, Thursday 27 September

¶ Benediction. "When it comes to saving what needs saving, being merely nice and pliant won’t win the day, or the life. Sometimes we need to dig in our heels and do some hollering." —Jan Richardson

¶ Recessional. “I can see a world where we all live / Safe and free from all oppression / No more rape or incest, or abuse / Women are not a possession / You’ve never owned me, don’t even know me / I’m not invisible, I’m simply wonderful / I feel my heart for the first time racing / I feel alive, I feel so amazing.” —Tena Clark and Tim Heintz, “Break the Chain”

¶ Lectionary for this Sunday.

        “Bold confession amid bitter complaint,” a sermon anchored in Job 23:1-17, Psalm 22:1-15, Hebrews 4:12-16 & Mark 10:17-31

        “Prosper the work of every generous hand,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 90

¶ Lectionary for Sunday next.

        “The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

        “Allahu Akbar,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

¶ Just for fun. “Kids meet an opera singer.” (6:36 video. Thanks Laurie.)

#  #  #

Featured this week on prayer&politiks

• “The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

• “Allahu Akbar,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104
 
Other features

• “Limb by Limb: Repenting and repairing a legacy of violence against women," a litany for worship

• “She was not: The Bible’s most vividly brutal story, and why we must read and remember it,” a sermon

• “Remembering Jephthah’s Daughter,” a litany for worship inspired by Judges 11:29-40

Below: Painting by Cuban artist Lázaro Caballos. This art was created as the logo for a training of women prison chaplains in Cuba. The text from Proverbs (at top) translates: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” The text resonates with the Gospel of Luke’s account (2:19) where it is said that Mary “treasured all these words in her heart” following the shepherds’ pilgrimage (angels never appear to lowly shepherds in the world as we know it), Zechariah’s hymn (“to guide our feet into the way of peace,” 1:79), and Mary’s own credo, including the seditious lines about the hungry being filled with good things and the rich sent away empty” (1:53).

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor, as are those portions cited as “kls.” Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.

Feel free to copy and post any original art on this site. (The ones with “prayer&politiks.org” at the bottom.) As well as other information you find helpful.

Your comments are always welcomed. If you have news, views, notes or quotes to add to the list above, please do. If you like what you read, pass this along to your friends. You can reach me directly at kensehested@prayerandpolitiks.org.

Signs of the Times  •  26 September 2018 •  No. 172

¶ Processional. “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor,” musical setting by Irving Berlin of Emma Lazarus’ poem on the Statue of Liberty, performed by the Portland Choir & Orchestra.

Above: The Monarch butterfly, which each year migrates freely over the borders between Mexico, the US, and Canada, has become the symbol of immigrant rights groups. Photo by Michael Sewell Visual Pursuit via Getty Images.

¶ Invocation. “O Troubler of every tyranny, inspire again the bountiful harvest beyond the speculator’s reach and the broker’s control. May the quarrel of your love reverse the rule of theft and restore an economy of grace. Holy the Name, whose blessing is bestowed on every hungry heart—and who prospers the work of every generous hand.” —continue reading “Prosper the work of every generous hand”

¶ Call to worship. “Pray Without Ceasing,” composed and performed by Currie Burris, hammered dulcimer.

¶ “Brilliant orange-and-black monarchs are among the most easily recognizable of the butterfly species that call the Americas home. Their migration takes them as far north as Canada and, during the winter months, as far south as Mexico City. A single monarch can travel hundreds to thousands of miles.

        “The monarch migration is one of the greatest natural phenomena in the insect world. Monarchs are truly spectacular migrants because the butterflies know the correct direction to migrate, even though they have never made the journey before. They follow an internal ‘compass’ that points them in the right direction each spring and fall.” —for more see “Monarch Butterfly,” National Wildlife Federation

¶ Hymn of praise. “How Great Thou Art,” classic, a cappella rendition by Jenny Wootten Mann, Ider, Alabama, in an empty grain silo.

¶ Earlier this month you heard that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) transferred $200 million from the budgets of other DHS office, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard, to help pay the skyrocketing costs of detaining immigrant children.

        Now we’re learning that up to $266 million will also be taken for this purpose from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including Head Start, support for uninsured HIV/AIDS patients, women’s shelters, cancer research, and mental health facilities.

        “This is not a story about a historically large surge in arrivals” [of immigrant children], said Mark Greenberg, a former HHS official. “This story is about a significant slowdown in children being released from care” into the homes of relatives, out of fear that they too will be detained. —, Common Dreams

¶ Because of the efforts of Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and several other women, the City of Atlanta recently announced “it would no longer hold detainees on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The change, championed by immigration advocates as a ‘victory,’ came down the same day the Trump administration announced plans to allow the government to detain migrant children indefinitely, a reversal from current rules that stipulate minors can only be detained up to 20 days.” Pictured at left include Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (at podium) along with Michelle Maziar and Luisa Cardona of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs,  Georgia Rep. Bee Nguyen, and Shana Tabak, executive director of the Tahirih Justice Center. —Kimberly Lawson, Broadly

¶ All total, seven states and over 200 cities and counties have approved some level of restriction in cooperating with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities. The cost for those who refuse ICE detention requests can run into the millions of dollars annually, since the federal government pays a daily rate for each detainee. —Center for Immigration Studies

¶ Confession. Both of these things are true. On the one hand. “I praise you [O God], because I am awesomely and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:14) “You have made [humans] a little lower than angels, and crowned them with glory and honor.” (Psalm 8:5) On the other. “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse—who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

¶ The Trump Administration recently announced plans “to remove court-imposed time limits on the detention of migrant children, proposing to end 20 years of judicial oversight and allow families to be held indefinitely in secure facilities as their cases wend through the immigration courts.” —Caitlin Dickerson, New York Times

¶ Words of assurance. “Oh you children ripped and torn / Battered, bruised and worn / Kyrie eleison / All who look hate in the face / Locked in hate’s embrace / Kyrie eleison / There is mercy enough, there is grace enough / There is love enough for all of us.” —The Many, “Lovely Needy People"

¶ “In immigration news, a review by the state of Virginia has confirmed immigrant teenagers were strapped to chairs and had mesh bags placed over their heads while being held at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center. But the state concluded this harsh treatment did not meet the state’s legal threshold of abuse or neglect. The state review came after the Associated Press revealed in June that children as young as 14 said they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells.” —Democracy Now (Thanks Janet.)

¶ Professing our faith. “Nurturing the faith of our young is the most important thing we do. Surely this involves insisting that freedom is more than the choice between an iPhone and a Samsung Galaxy.

       “Our failure is not that we ask too much, but that we ask too little. Last Sunday night, after braving the chilly water, the first thing our youth did was to emerge to serve communion to the gathered witnesses.” —continue reading “Getting soaked: A meditation on the recovery of baptismal integrity”

¶ Simple thing you can do. Over the past two decades the monarch butterfly has come dangerously close to extinction. But you can help save the species by sponsoring an acre of milkweed habitat today.

¶ Hymn of intercession. “ICE is loose over those streets. [*ICE = Immigrations and Customs Enforcement; ice = hielo] / We never know when we will be hit. / They cry, the children cry at the doorway, / They cry when they see that their mother will not come back.” —“Ice El Hielo,” La Santa Cecilia

¶ Offertory. “The Butterfly," Irish folk song performed on tin whistle.

¶ Preach it. " . . . the Bible tells us that those who fought for justice—those who spoke truth to power, those who refused to accept that injustice and inequality had to exist and that there was no better way—always found themselves hated, hounded, and heaped upon with false accusations simply because they believed in the necessity of speaking and working for the cause of righteousness and building a more just community. This lack of majority support is why the just must live by faith and must know exactly who we are.” —Reverend William J. Barber, II, Forward Together: A Moral Message for the Nation

¶ Two instances of great pastoral advice.

        “I was using my Instant Message service and voice recognition software last week to pray with someone. At the end of my prayer I said, ‘Amen.’ The software typed ‘I'm in.’ (Must be my Kansas accent.) First I laughed. Then I thought that is a pretty good substitution. Many people (including sometimes me) treat "Amen" as if it just means ‘The End.’ I wonder how my praying would change if I regularly included ‘I'm in’ as a declaration of my participation in the actions and presence I seek from God.” —Rev. Alan Selig, Facebook

        “The artist Laurie Anderson paid tribute to her late husband, Lou Reed, by outlining the shared rules for living that they had discerned together.
        •“Don’t be afraid of anybody.”
        •“Get a really good bullshit detector.”
        •“Be really, really tender.” —Gareth Higgins, “A Manifesto for The Porch”

¶ When only the blues will do. “Killing the Blues,” Malcolm Holcombe.

¶ Can’t makes this sh*t up. Major oil companies along the Texas Gulf Coast are lobbying Congress to spend $12 billion to protect their facilities from the rising sea, and intensified storms, caused by climate change! —see “Big oil asks government to protect its Texas facilities from climate change,” Associated Press

¶Short story. “Some of you may recall hearing the story of Manuel Jesus Cordova. He was in the news a couple years ago.  While sneaking across the border from Mexico, Cordova happened to find a 9-year-old boy, Christopher Buchleitner of Rimrock, Az,, alone and injured in the desert. As it happens, Christopher and his mom had been in a single-car accident when their van went over a cliff on a remote road in southern Arizona. His mother had been killed, and Christopher went looking for help. Cordova gave the boy his sweater and some chocolate and built a fire to warm the boy. It was that fire that drew the attention of the border patrol. Authorities say Christopher would likely have died had Cordova not stopped to protect him.

        “Cordova was honored for the rescue by U.S. and Mexican officials at a border crossing station. Then he was arrested by federal agents and returned to Mexico. . . .

        “Beatriz Lopez, the Mexican consul general for Nogales, had this stunningly prophetic insight in her comments to the press about this incident: ‘The desert has a way of rearranging priorities.’” —continue reading “Out of the house of slavery,” a Bible study on immigration

¶ Call to the table. “My peace my peace is all I’ve got that I can give to you / My peace is all I ever had that’s all I ever knew / I give my peace to green and black and red and white and blue / My peace my peace is all I’ve got that I can give to you.” —Arlo Guthrie, “My Peace”

¶ The state of our disunion. “[A]s terrifying as it is, we know it’s not [Hurricane] Florence that wreaks havoc on North Carolina. It’s everything that comes after the storm, and everything that came before. . . . We already know where the flood waters will go. They will follow a slow, predictable path. We know who lives in low lying areas, we know what neighborhoods are on the south side of the tracks. . . . Floodplains read like maps of the economy and race. . . . Poverty has always been a flood and not a hurricane. It’s always been a slow, rolling disaster, with muddy gray water under an incongruent bright blue sky. It’s always been a slow build of mold between generations, of people making do with babies in faded red milk crates floated on mattresses down city streets. Look away.” —Gwen Frisbie-Fulton, Medium (Thanks Greg.)

¶ Best one-liner. “Socialism is a terrible thing till you’re a Republican standing on your roof in North Carolina.” —from the internet

¶ For the beauty of the earth. Watch this brief (0:19) video of a field of Monarch butterflies in their wintering grounds in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt pine-oak forests ecoregion on the border of Michoacán and State of Mexico. (Thanks Marti.)

¶ Altar call. “Come sisters, brothers gather near / We’ve come to share our worries / We fear what some folks have been saying about Latin Americans / the truth’s been misconstrued / There’s all kinds of talk ‘bout building a wall / down along the Southern border. / ‘bout building a wall between me and you / Lord, and if such nonsense should come true / then, we’ll have to knock it down.” —Che Apalache, “The Wall”

¶ Benediction. “The power to vanquish dragons is given only to those who know that relinquishment is the means of true possession; only to those who know that silence gives birth to authentic speak; only to those who recognize life emerging from the ash heap.

        “Hope is only provided to people with their backs against the wall, to those at the end of their rope, to the outnumbered, the outgunned, to those about-to-be-overwhelmed. Bold confession is not an escape clause to life’s apparent death knell. Rather, it is an invitation to grasp that which is available only to those with empty hands.” —continue reading “Bold confession amid bitter complaint”

¶ Recessional. “Todos Somos Ilegales" ("We Are All Illegals"), Residente, Tom Morello & Chad Smith.

¶ Lectionary for this Sunday. “Old Wounds, New Vision,” a sermon anchored in Job 1:1, 2:1-10.

¶ Lectionary for Sunday next.

        “Bold confession amid bitter complaint,” a sermon anchored in Job 23:1-17, Psalm 22:1-15, Hebrews 4:12-16 & Mark 10:17-31
        “Prosper the work of every generous hand,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 90.

¶ Just for fun. Lucille Ball and Dezi Arnaz, “I Love Lucy” comedians from an age ago, illustrate why people learning to speak English get frustrated with irregular pronunciation patterns. (2:14 video. Thanks Dee Ann.)

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks

• “Getting soaked: A meditation on the recovery of baptismal integrity”

• “Bold confession amid bitter complaint,” a sermon anchored in Job 23:1-17, Psalm 22:1-15, Hebrews 4:12-16 & Mark 10:17-31

• “Prosper the work of every generous hand,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 90

• “Old Wounds, New Vision,” a sermon anchored in Job 1:1, 2:1-10

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