Recent

Who are you?

A litany for worship inspired by Isaiah 11:1-10

by Ken Sehested

 

When we are asked—Who are you?—what shall we say?

We are followers of Jesus who believe that doing justice and loving mercy are intimately tied to walking humbly with God.

And if asked—What is you mission?—how do we respond?

Our mission is to nurture spiritual formation in ways that support prophetic and redemptive work in the world.

And what do these things look like?

In the Prophet Isaiah’s vision, one day wolf and lamb, leopard and calf, cow and bear, child and viper, shall rest fearlessly in each other’s presence.

And this is why we long to know God, because acquaintance with the Beloved brings health and healing to the earth.

“They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org
Using language from the Circle of Mercy Congregation’s vision and mission statement, along with language from Isaiah 11.

New secrets, waiting to be found

A post-election sermon, based on Isaiah 65:17-25

by Ken Sehested

 

Circle of Mercy Congregation, 13 November 2016
Principal text: Isaiah 65:17-25 • Other lections: Psalm 118; Luke 21:5-19

        “The parents have eaten sour grapes,” writes the Prophet Ezekiel (18:2), “and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” There are a lot of teeth on edge these days: a lot of bared teeth, grinding teeth, teeth with fangs. Last Tuesday night, as the electoral results began to shock the nation, commentator Van Jones spoke very emotionally: “You have people putting children to bed tonight and they are afraid of breakfast. They’re afraid of ‘How do I explain this to my children?’”

        I went to bed Tuesday night long before the final results but after the news anchors’ faces began to blanch as the number began piling up, telling a different story from their teleprompters’ received wisdom. The next morning I wasn’t surprised at the outcome, but it did feel like a punch in the gut.

        As I sipped coffee, my mind was racing, almost in a panic. I began a mental check list of all the potential ramifications of a Trump administration: healthcare; the nuclear deal with Iran; massive tax cuts for the wealthy; white backlash of all kinds against people of color, of Muslims, of the queer community; the status of immigrants; the gutting of environmental regulations; privatization of Medicare and Social Security; Supreme Court nominees; the undoing of modest banking reform regulations . . . . On and on until I felt a bit dizzy.

        Then Nancy came into the kitchen where I was sipping coffee. “I’m SSOOOO glad I don’t have to preach this Sunday,” a little too gleefully.

        “There is that comfort,” I said sarcastically. Months ago, when I said yes to this assignment, none of us knew what an uphill climb it would be to speak to this week’s news.

        I believe—and this is certainly not an infallible judgment—I believe that as a nation we are in trouble, maybe catastrophic trouble, and we need to figure out what to do.

        There is plenty of trouble in this week’s lectionary readings. We read my take on Psalm 118 as the call to worship. Though my rendition did not stick to wording of that Psalm, it did stay with the text’s whiplash. Did you notice how it moved from agony to ecstasy and then back again? Like a rollercoaster, at breakneck speed, from heights to depths so fast that the blood drains from your head, and then from your feet. Back and forth between trust and tremor, hope and horror, confidence and cataclysm, assurance and anxiety.

        Trouble. Trouble for sure.

        Then if you turn to today’s Gospel lesson in Luke, you’ll read some of Jesus’ unsettling warnings about the coming troubles, of wars and insurrections, earthquakes and famines, arrests and persecutions and betrayals. Trouble, nothing but trouble.

        But then he closes with 8 simple words: “By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

        So we have this warning: Trouble—no getting around it. And we have this counsel: Endurance. What will that look like?

        This election is among the most bizarre and vitriolic campaign ever. For the first time in history a woman was the nominee of a major party, and yet her opponent garnered 10 points more of women’s votes. 81% of the personal-morality-boosting evangelical Christian population aligned themselves with an admitted serial divorcee and adulterer, a man facing multiple counts of sexual assault and financial fraud, a man who famously said he could shoot somebody in broad daylight on a busy street and still get elected. According to exit polls, fully a quarter of his supporters admit he is neither qualified nor has the temperament for someone with access to nuclear launch codes, who’s bragged about wanting to “bomb the you-know-what” out of our enemies.

        Having said all these things—and it’s not because I am a big fan of Hillary Clinton—having said all this I hasten to add that Trump did not do this to us. Trump did not generate the sometimes vile hatred. He focused it. He voiced it. He gave it shape. But the anger was already there, and we are responsible for addressing it with something more than shouting and threats.

        Forget about moving to Canada. (You probably heard the Canadian immigration website crashed late last Tuesday night.) We may not like our nation right now, but we must—urgently—love our country.

        Only half the eligible voters in this country voted. And half of those just gave a middle-finger salute to the nation. We need to figure out why and do something about it.

        Trouble ahead, for sure. There are many ways to diagnose the resentment Trump’s campaign has energized. Van Jones called it “whitelash,” a white backlash. Whatever conclusion you reach, clearly a great many people in this country are living with a deeply-felt loss of status. Whether you do analysis based on race or class or gender or rural/urban divide, the end result is still an awful lot of very angry people, many among them who could care less about Donald Trump’s actual policies.

        So what have we learned, and what shall we do in the face of this trouble? I want to suggest four resolves needing special attention as we move forward.

        1. In a Facebook post Wednesday morning Missy Harris put her finger on the first thing we must resolve: “The truth is that no matter what the outcome of what we have woken up to this morning, I will be okay. My family will be okay. But many will continue not being okay and will continue living in fear for their lives and their children's lives. We must never be okay with this.”

        Most of us here will be OK, but our OKness must extend to those at risk.

        On Wednesday alone the stories of ginned up bullying is frightening.

        •A cell phone video at York County (Pennsylvania) School of Technology recorded some students walking the hall with a Trump campaign poster, chanting “white power.” [1]

        •Middle school students in a Detroit suburb chanted "build the wall" during lunchtime, leaving Latinx schoolmates in tears. [2]

        • Someone at New York University (my alma mater) Tandon School of Engineering wrote "Trump" on the door of Muslim students’ prayer room. [3]

        This week a friend circulated a note with a quote from the early 20th century journalist and social critic H.J. Mencken, who wrote: “As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.”

        I immediately responded:

        “I am a fan of Mencken’s wit but not his political judgment. It is the ‘plain folks’ of the land that are, in fact, among the biggest losers in this election. That some find it rather easy to manipulate them, yes, that much is true. That they deserve it, no. It is we, the unplain, the cosmopolitans, who are complicit in this disaster. And we shall continue our complicity until we find the wherewithal to fashion movements sturdy enough to topple from their duplicitous thrones the gangster-bankster class, along with their illicit aspirants.”

        I do think people like me, and many of you, have a greater responsibility for the mess we’re in than we know. Consciously or not, we have been infected with the Democratic Party elite’s conviction about “deplorable” human beings.

        This week grassroots organizer George Lakey wrote very perceptively. “We can build the scale of our movements by frankly admitting that alienated white working-class people are right: Both major parties are together destroying the country on behalf of the 1%. It may be hard for college educated activists to admit that the working-class view is more accurate than the belief of graduates of political science courses. However, the sooner the humility arrives, the better.” [4]

        And then there’s this insight from a photojournalist. “For better or for worse, we will only get through this if we begin to understand the emotions of those we disagree with in a way we haven’t figured out. Emotions are a bit like facts—once they exist, you’ve got to deal with them rather that wishing they’d just go away. The only true emotional solvent is empathy.” The author went on to describe a situation he faced at a Trump rally. He was working with another reporter, when a man in the audience came up and began screaming at them, calling them “media scum.” His colleague had the presence of mind to calmly ask the man his name. And that simple act defused the fury, and the accuser then began to tell the story of how he felt dismissed by the political status quo. [5]

        Parker Palmer said it better than anyone I know: "Beneath the shouting, there’s suffering. Beneath the anger, fear. Beneath the threats, broken hearts. Start there and we might get somewhere."

        A friend called last week to ask “What on earth are you going to say [about the election outcome]?” I responded, “Don’t know yet—still sorting through my own emotional reactions . . . something between flamethrowing and fetal crouch.”

        Those are typically our immediate reactions to threat. Reactive, or deactive. Act out or opt out. Aggressive, or indecisive. Fight, or flight.

        Our first resolve is to be vigilant, in every way we know how, in protecting the first strike targets of bullies of every sort. We must be prepared to disrupt what passes for “peace” in doing so.

        2. The second, equally urgent resolve is to listen attentively, with empathy, to the anger of those who in fact have no stake in the gangster-bankster ruling class. They are being used as surely as others who have no place at the table.

        These two resolves sometimes seem to be in opposition to each other. Prophetic work, pastoral work. Advocacy, and empathy. They’re not. Of course they involved different tactics, and some people are more adapt at one or the other, but these two vocations must collaborate and inform each other if we are to fulfill our mission.

        3. Then there’s a third important resolve if we’re to be about the work of peacemaking, rooted in justice and tempered by mercy. It’s so obvious it took me three proofreads of this text to realize it was missing.

        People of equal intelligence, compassion and commitment have been, and likely always will be, disagreeing about how to translate our dream for a beloved community into a unified strategy for how to get there. We need to be emotionally prepared to not only tolerate dissent within the ranks but to make it work for us.

        4. Finally, and most importantly, there is a fourth resolve.

        Several weeks ago Sydney wrote an amazingly empathetic, visionary poem. (And yes, I know I may be biased.) She talked about those “who walk with me to the world of peace.” And it ended with “I walk to a new world, finding all the new secrets, waiting to be found.”

        And this brings us to today’s text from Isaiah and its treasure trove of secrets, waiting to be found. You already know some of them. You can see some of them have been wonderfully illustrated, hanging here on the wall.

        “New heavens, new earth . . . delight in my people . . . no more weeping . . .  God answers . . . wolf and lamb together!” The secret to our ability to persevere, despite the turmoil and trouble, is to stay connected to the vision of new heavens and new earth, to the Kingdom of God, to the Beloved Community, to the God Movement. This is the key unlocking everything else, which is why it is so important to return week after bruising, troubling week to communities of conviction like this one. Ironically, it is in the midst of trouble that our hearts are most prepared to receive what is surely Good News for a world mired in vengeance and retaliation. A Mexican proverb says is well. “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we are seeds.”

        A brief anecdote from the Jewish sage Martin Buber, and then I’m done.

        “Once they told Rabbi Pinhas of the great misery among the needy. He listened, sunk in grief. Then he raised his head. ‘Let us draw God into the world,’ he cried, ‘and all need will be quenched.’ God’s grace consists precisely in this,” that God wants divine attention to be won by humanity, so much so that God relinquishes divine prerogative to enter the troubled world of human enmity.

        Let us draw God into the world, sisters and brothers. This vision only comes to those who risk, to those willing to suffer on behalf of these treasures waiting to be found, maybe—in extreme circumstances—even to die for the Promised Land. But remember: we are seeds whose burial has the power to regenerate the world.

        May it be so, even now, even today.

#  #  #

[1] http://kutv.com/news/nation-world/reports-of-racially-charged-incidents-at-york-vo-tech

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewbpQEGwxQY

[3] See Sean O’Kane’s “Day 1 in Trump’s America” for other examples of post-election hatemongering. https://medium.com/@seanokane/day-1-in-trumps-america-9e4d58381001#.6yrnnejd7

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

[4] George Lakey, “Without emphathy for Trump voters, movements can’t succeed,” Waging Nonviolence http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/43323/

[5] Dominick Reuter, “On the Election” https://medium.com/@dominickreuter/on-the-election-5a946af1d090#.o69e0shp9

Covenant Vows for new and renewing members

A litany for worship

Background: Circle of Mercy Congregation has no indefinite members.
Each year, on the anniversary of our founding, both new and renewing members join
in a covenant reaffirming our vision and mission, on the first Sunday of Advent
(or second, if the first falls on Thanksgiving holiday weekend).

 

{Leader}  In this watchful season, we gather ’round the table of bounty to embrace newcomers to our Circle and to renew our covenant vows. To these new ones, we ask: Do you know where you are, what are you promising, and what is being promised to you?

{New Members}  What place is this? Remind us of what we need to know.

This is a sanctuary of refuge amid the empire of enmity. Here hungry ones find food, and proud ones are scattered. Here mountains are brought low and valleys are lifted up. Here mercy trumps vengeance, and the whole earth learns to magnify God. Do you wish to be here?

Yes, we do. We have heard of such a place, where cries can be made and are tenderly heard. Where good tidings are told. Where voices find strength and the Gentle Shepherd embraces all who approach.

Be clear before you speak. Are you prepared to love God more than breath itself? To follow Jesus as the Spirit gives you vision? Are you prepared to know and be known in this Circle of companions?

Yes, we are ready. And now are you also ready? You have come here before us. Does any special honor come from that?

No honor save one: Of welcoming you into this Circle. It isn’t always easy here. We share in the conflicts common to all creation. Sometimes the vision seems slow, and weariness overtakes us. But joy sustains, and grace is sufficient. Our guiding creed is the Rule of Mercy. To its Author alone do we pledge faithfulness.

Then let us announce our intent together:

{All together, in unison}

 The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, because God has anointed us to bring good news to the poor. God has sent us to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of Jubilee! Here we stand, together, servants of the One who turns us into friends. Here we stand, keeping watch, listening for the singing of angels, the approach of Magi, and the Advent of Hope Unbound.

Blessed One, who brings strength in the struggle for a new heaven and a new earth; who brings comfort when life unravels and hope is harsh; make us submissive in the manner of Mary. Give us wombs of welcome, for each other, for strangers in our path, even as for your Presence and Purpose. Let it be with us according to your word. Amen!

—written by Ken Sehested

Watching and Waiting in a Half-Spent Night

A sermon prior to covenant Sunday

Ken Sehested
Circle of Mercy, 28 November 2004
Matthew 24:36-44

Background to this sermon. Circle of Mercy Congregation has no indefinite members.
Each year, on the anniversary of our founding, both new and renewing members join
in a covenant reaffirming our vision and mission, on the first Sunday of Advent
(or second, if the first falls on Thanksgiving holiday weekend).
See "Covenant Vows for new and renewing members.")

            One summer, during my college days, I worked with a road construction crew in Waco, Texas. It was some of the hardest work I’ve ever done . . . or, maybe not because the work was so hard, but the working conditions were so severe, when you factor in the hot Central Texas heat, frequently working close to hot asphalt paving equipment. And the constant cloud of dust broiling up from bulldozers and scrapers.

            I came home every evening, drank a quart or more of water and fell into bed, just to gather enough energy to cook dinner.

            Occasionally I fell asleep. One day in particular, it was a deep sleep.

            I suddenly awoke with a start. Some unfamiliar noise roused me. The first thing my eyes saw were my two roommates, fast asleep. Then I noticed the half-light, half-dark of the sun just beneath the horizon. Then my clock.

            OH, MY GOD! It’s seven o’clock. I’m supposed to be at work at 7 o’clock.

            So I leapt out of bed, threw on my clothes and shoes, stumbled down the stairs, into my car, and raced over to the worksite.

            But no one was there!

            OH, MY GOD! No one’s here!! They’ve moved to another location, and I’m too late to find out where. I’ll get fired for sure.

            My first thought was: Go home, call the office, find out where they’re working today, show up late with a sheepish apology and promise I’ll never do it again. But I was too embarrassed to make such a call. So my mind starts working up a description of some illness that’s kept me in bed for the day.

            As I turned my car around and started heading home, it suddenly occurred to me that the smudge pots were still lit and arranged for traffic direction. That’s usually the first thing we did every morning—we douse the flames and move the pots back out of the way.

            And then something else began dawning on me: The fading light seemed awfully funny somehow.

            Suddenly it hit me. It wasn’t early morning, and I wasn’t late for work. Actually, I was nearly 12 hours early.

            It was still evening. About 7:30 p.m. When I got back home, my roommates were up and preparing dinner. And worried about me: “What made you bolt out of the house, squealing tires down the driveway?”

            It’s the most disorienting feeling I’ve ever had in my life. My roommates spent the whole summer laughing about that episode.

            Staying awake, paying attention—“walking in the light,” in the words of the Prophet Isaiah—are important images for the spiritual life, particularly during Advent.

            Advent is the season of half-spent night, when we “wait for the Lord, more than those who watch for the morning.”

            Half-spent night, when we know that there is a power to redeem, but it’s nowhere on the horizon, and we wonder if our dark vigil is a silly exercise.

            Half-spent night, when, in Isaiah’s fantastic imagination, we are urged to envision the day when nations shall beat their swords into plowshares. What are the political prospects of anyone getting elected on such a platform.

            Half-spent night—or, as the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the church in Rome, “the night is far gone, the day is near . . . now is the moment for you to wake from sleep.”

            “Stay awake,” Jesus admonished in this strangely apocalyptic teaching in Matthew. “Stay awake, get ready, pay attention.”

 

            Unfortunately, we are often world-weary people, victims of too many half-spent, sleepless nights. And left wondering if we’ve been duped.

            There’s a line in a new recording by Tom Waits: “I want to believe in the mercy of the world again.” And so do we. But is it possible, when there’s such overwhelming evidence to the contrary? I mean just look at the world . . . open your eyes to what’s going on all around us! What kind of fool do you think I am? If swords-into-plowshare were a stock option on the futures market, would you invest?

 

            Maybe you’ve heard the story of Michael May, a 43-year-old man who lost his sight after a chemical explosion when he was a young child. Last year he agreed to undergo experimental eye surgery, developed by medical researchers based on some scientific breakthroughs and technological developments.

            To everyone’s astonishment, the surgery has restored sight in one of his eyes. What’s even more astounding, however, is the fact that while May can now identify simple shapes and colors, and can spot the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains from his northern California home, can marvel in the vibrancy of plants and flowers, and can see objects in his way when he walks down the sidewalk, researchers now know that full recovery of sight is more than an optical issue.

            What they’re finding is that while May now has the capacity to “see” things, seeing things and interpreting their meaning are very different things. May still has great difficulty with three-dimensional patterns and other complex objects such as the faces of family and friends. He still strains to describe the difference between a man and a woman. He describes a cube as a square with extra lines.

            In other words, “seeing” means more than having a functioning eye ball. In order for sight to be fully useful, what we literally see has to be interpreted in meaningful ways. Which is to say: Vision, like language, is something that must be learned.

            Next Sunday represents a significant new marker in our common life. It’s the third anniversary of our meeting together. For the first year, we dated regularly. Then, in the second year, we decided to go steady, and for the first time people actually made pledges of financial support. This year we got engaged—we hammered out common language to describe who we are, what we do, what we believe in and long for. So, if you carry forward that metaphor, next Sunday is something of a wedding day, since for the first time we’re actually asking you to formally declare if, and how, you plan to affiliate with this body.

            (Each of you has a packet which contains the latest versions of our founding documents, along with a card which asks you to indicate your affiliation and your financial pledge for the coming year. Please bring this card with you next Sunday and we will ritually collect them as part of our liturgy.)

            Many of us have wedding jitters. What if this doesn’t work out? What if the thrill of romance fades? Can I put up with people that might irritate me?

            Here we are, watching and waiting in a half-spent night, trying to decide if the meager light available is merely the foretaste of the coming dawn—or maybe it’s the beginning of a long, dark night. Is it sunrise or sunset? It’s possible to get confused.

            The strange teaching from Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel indicates that no one knows exactly what lies ahead. “About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Abba.” But whatever the case may be, we will need each other’s help learning to see, learning to interpret, learning to discern the movement of the Spirit amid the world’s chaotic and conflicting claims.

            If the prospect of this kind of covenanted community seems like good news, join us next Sunday for the festivities.

Go to the hallowed abode

A litany for worship inspired by Psalm 122

by Ken Sehested

In the face of endless aggrievement and obstinate bereavement, despite hope-contempting fear on display in every mother’s tear,

Let us go, let us go to the hallowed abode of the One who brings solace and cheer.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, where Abraham’s children contend; pray, too, for the peace of Asheville*, each fracture and failure amend.

I was glad when they said unto me: Let us go to the house of earth’s pardoning decree.

“I will seek your good” is the Blessed One’s word to be uttered and anchored in covenant guaranty.

Speak peace to the nation, to every relation, to each hollow and meadow, every inch of creation. Let mercy defend, and gracefully mend; each stranger, each straggler, welcome and befriend.

*Substitute the name of your city
©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

News, views, notes, and quotes

Signs of the Times  •  11 November 2016  •  No. 96

Processional. “God is watching us / God is watching us / God is watching us / From a distance.” —Bette Midler, “From a Distance

Special issue
Post-election perspective and provocations

Invocation. “My church and my country could use a little mercy now / As they sink into a poisoned pit it's going to take forever to climb out / They carry the weight of the faithful who follow them down / I love my church and country, they could use some mercy now.” —Mary Gauthier, “Mercy Now

Call to worship. “We need the Buddhists and the Baptists / Quakers and Catholics, too / atheists and agnostics / the Muslims and Jews / We need people of all nations / all colors and all creeds /  to put an end to war, now / put an end to greed.” —Jon Fromer, "Gonna Take Us All" (Thanks Dick.)

Hymn of praise. “Praise the Lord! Sing hallelujah! Come our great Redeemer praise. I will sing the glorious praise of my God through all my days. Put no confidence in princes, not on human help depend. They shall die, to dust returning; all their thoughts and plans shall end.” —“146 Hallelujah,” performed at the second Ireland Sacred Harp convention, 2012

Exit polls head-scratching conclusions.

        •Despite the fact that for the first time in history a woman was a major-party candidate, Trump received more women’s votes (53%) than Clinton (43%).

        •Stunningly, 81% of personal-morality-boosting evangelical Christians voted for Trump.

        •The American public’s temperament is no less under suspicion. Only 56% of eligible voters did so. Combined with the facts that (a) neither candidate secured even 26% of the voting population’s ballots and (b) Clinton actually tallied more votes than Trump, I’d say we have some tough questions to answer about our assumptions to democracy.

     •Interestingly—and this surprised me—exit polls found no evidence to suggest that income status affected the likelihood for Trump support.

Unheralded history in the making. Ilhan Omar (left) is the first Somali-American state legislator, winning a seat in Minnesota’s House on Tuesday. For more see Deidre Fulton’s “Lights in the Darkness: Celebrating Down-Ballot Progressive Victories,” commondreams.org.

Confession. “CNN commentator Van Jones spoke some of the most emotionally-wrenching remarks on election night. ‘You have people putting children to bed tonight and they are afraid of breakfast. They're afraid of 'How do I explain this to my children?’ He then went on to coin a poignantly appropriate term to describe the electoral results: whitelash.” —continue reading Ken Sehested’s election coverage, “Listening for whispering hope: Polling the electoral whitelash

¶ “For better or for worse, we will only get through this if we begin to understand the emotions of those that we disagree with in a way we haven’t figured out so far. Emotions are a bit like facts in that once they exist, you’ve got to deal with them rather that wishing they’d just go away. The only true emotional solvent is empathy, followed by sympathy (and if you don’t know the difference, it’s more vital than ever to learn it).” —Dominick Reuter, “On the Election

¶ “Grief is the tax we pay on loving people.—Thomas Lynch

Outbreak of schoolhouse hatemongering

        •A cell phone video at York County (Pennsylvania) School of Technology recorded some students walking the hall with a “Trump/Pence” campaign poster chanting “white power.”

Right: Graffiti painted Wednesday on a wall at a busy intersection in Durham, North Carolina

        •Middle school students in a Detroit suburb chanted "build the wall" during lunchtime on Wednesday, leaving Latinx schoolmates in tears, hours after Donald Trump became president-elect of the United States, according to school officials. ABC News

        •On Wednesday morning someone at New York University (my alma mater) Tandon School of Engineering wrote "Trump" on the door of Muslim students’ prayer room. See Sean O’Kane’s “Day 1 in Trump’s America” for other examples of post-election hatemongering.

¶ “Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”  ―John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Hymn of lamentation.My Strange Nation,” Susan Werner.

Inspiring news. “Two days after a black Mississippi church was torched and marked with ‘Vote Trump’ graffiti (below), more than $180,000 has been raised to repair it. Thousands of people pledged to raise money for Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville by Thursday (3 November) afternoon, far exceeding the original goal of $10,000. ‘Responses have been pouring in from all over the world, and they’re truly extraordinary,' writes J. Blair Reeves Jr., who organized the GoFundMe fundraising initiative. ‘Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, atheists and many more, from all over the United States and many other countries.’” Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service

¶ “The election of Donald Trump arose from a profound spiritual, cultural, and political crisis in American society. Two halves of the country both feel themselves left out–and have turned to attacking each other, rather than transforming the system that keeps them both under debilitating pressure. . . . We need to crystallize this outburst into a broadly embracing movement of movements that can pursue acts of nonviolent, loving, empowering creativity.” Rabbi Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Center

¶ “Grief can destroy you—or focus you.—Dean Koontz, Odd Hours

Words of assurance. “Everyone in the world has gone to bed with fear or pain or loss or disappointment.” Listen to Maya Angelou recite her poem, “And Still I Rise(2:52).

¶ “Heaven knows we never need be ashamed of our tears, for they are the rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.” —Charles Dickens

Hymn of intercession. “I am marching every day / I’m meeting trials on my way / Short of blessings, but I’m going on just the same / Folks complaining on every side / Except me, Lord / I’m satisfied.” —Maria Muldaur, “It’s a Blessing” (Thanks, Stan.)

¶ “‘Trump’s victory is a powerful slap to those promoting the benefits of democratic mechanisms,’ tweeted Hamza al-Karibi, a media spokesman for Syrian jihadist group Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.” —Ishaan Tharoor, “Islamist extremists celebrate Trump’s election win,” Washington Post

Commentary from a British journalist. “The fact that the messenger [Trump] is deranged doesn’t mean the message itself contains no significant truths. . . . It took the Brexit result [of the UK leaving the European Union] to pay attention to communities devasted by neoliberal globalization. . . . Trump is deluded about many things, but he’s right to insist the media and political classes are out of touch with the population. They exist in a fetid ideological comfort zone where radical change is considered apostasy at precisely the moment when radical change is both necessary and popular.” —Gary Younge, “Note to America: Don’t Be So Sure You’ve Put Trump Behind You,” commondreams.org

¶ “Love is an engraved invitation to grief.―Sunshine O'Donnell, Open Me

¶ “Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years. . . . But they’ve done nothing to change the vicious cycle of wealth and power that has rigged the economy for the benefit of those at the top, and undermined the working class. . . . What happens when you combine freer trade, shrinking unions, Wall Street bailouts, growing corporate market power, and the abandonment of campaign finance reform? You shift political and economic power to the wealthy, and you shaft the working class.” —Robert Reich, “Why the White Working Class Abandoned the Democratic Party,” Alternet

Post-election vow (something we all should have vowed long ago). “I am now going to pay more attention to teachers.” —Garrison Keillor, reacting to the election, “Done. Over. He’s here. Goodbye,” Washington Post

Stephen Colbert’s presidential election sign-off on “Showtime” (9:32) is worth the watch.

¶ “We can build the scale of our movements by frankly admitting that alienated white working-class people are right: Both major parties are together destroying the country on behalf of the 1%. It may be hard for college educated activists to admit that the cynical working-class view is more accurate than the belief of graduates of political science courses. However, the sooner the humility arrives, the better.” —George Lakey, “Without emphathy for Trump voters, movements can’t succeed,” Waging Nonviolence

Preach it. “To embrace hopelessness means regardless of how the story ends, the struggle for justice is what defines our very humanity.” —Miguel de la Torre, “The great white backlash,” Baptist News Global

Can’t makes this sh*t up. “The way I think about it is, the religions are all brokers. We're all selling the same thing: the guy upstairs.” —unnamed vice president of Fortune Internaitonal Group, a luxury real estate agency, who attends Vous Church, a Miami megachurch

¶ “Although it’s tempting to treat [Trump’s electoral victory] as a function of some colorblind anti-elitism, that cannot explain the unity of white voters in this election. Trump didn’t just win working-class whites—he won the college-educated and the affluent. He even won young whites. Seventeen months after he announced his candidacy, millions of white Americans flocked to the ballot box to put Trump into the White House. And they did so as a white herrenvolk, racialized and radicalized by Trump.” —Jamelle Bouie, “White Won,” Slate (Thanks Alan.)

Call to the table. “There will be a shining river / There for you and there for me / There will be a sweet forever / There we will meet, and we will sing / Glory hallelujahs / Golden bells will ring / There all will be forgiven / In that land called sorrowfree.” —Kate Campbell, “Sorrowfree

¶ “Jesus can save your soul, but John Wayne will save your ass.” Commentary from Alan Bean on why, incomprehensibly, many in the evangelical world are enamored with Donald Trump.

The state of our disunion. “Before we go into hard core resistance mode, we should listen carefully to the fear and sense of loss that was strong enough to overlook the obvious lack of decency. While it is hard to overlook the hot froth whipped up around race and gender we just don’t know how much was also about the loss of moral credibility of the privileged. We just elected one of the most weirdly privileged insiders of them all, but I know that’s most of his supporters were certainly not. We won’t get anywhere if we don’t listen.” —Gary Gunderson, “apart

On the lighter-and-totally-off-the-topic wonderful news. “A Loma Linda University research team, led by Lee Berk, DrPH, has confirmed that the consumption of dark chocolate (cacao) benefits brain health.” Adventist News Network

For the beauty of the earth. Full moon rising over Mt. Victoria Lookout, Willington, New Zealand. (3:45 video, accompanied by Dan Phillipson’s “Tenderness” instrumental. Thanks Paul.)

Altar call. “When I closed my eyes so I would not see / My Lord did trouble me / When I let things stand that should not be / My Lord did trouble me.” —Susan Werner, “Did Trouble Me

Best one-liner. “Vengeance is a lazy form of grief.” —Nicole Kidman’s character in the 2005 movie “The Interpreter”

LECTION & ELECTION. During election week members of Circle of Mercy Congregation, Asheville, NC, are creating art—using phrases from Isaiah 65, the lection for Sunday 13 November—as a reminder of our post-electoral horizon. Get a free copy of the “Isaiah 65 coloring book(22 pages) for your own use.

Benediction. “After Tuesday, may you still find us with Jesus, walking unafraid, unfaltering . . . undone only by your Spirit swirling in and around us all.” —continue reading Nancy Hastings Sehested’s prayer, “After Tuesday.”

Recessional. “The birds they sang / At the break of day / Start again / I heard them say / Don't dwell on what / Has passed away / Or what is yet to be. / Ah the wars they will / Be fought again / The holy dove / She will be caught again / Bought and sold / And bought again / The dove is never free. / Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in.” —Leonard Cohen (R.I.P), “Anthem

Lectionary for Sunday next. “Speechless Zechariah, / befuddled cleric, / schooled in the theory of divine history / but unacquainted with its Advent. / For us, too, / encountering the One / who promises the impossible / is a confusing, confounding prospect. / New life issues with a scream, / but is forged in the ordeal / of muted mouth.  —continue reading Ken Sehested’s poem, “Boundary to benedictus: A meditation on Zechariah"

Just for fun. Black swans surfing on Australia’s Gold Coast. (1:07 video)

#  #  #

Featured this week on prayer&politiks

• “Listening for whispering hope: Polling the electoral whitelash

• “After Tuesday,” electoral season pastoral prayer by Nancy Hastings Sehested

• “Boundary to benedictus: A meditation on Zechariah,” a poem

 
Other features
• “What Are You Reading and Why?a new batch of annotated book reviews by Vern Ratzlaff 
• “Why is it hard to say thanks? 10 reasons,” preparation for Thanksgiving
• “On saying thanks,” a poem for Thanksgiving

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

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.

Listening for whispering hope

Polling the electoral "whitelash"

by Ken Sehested

“The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
—Ezekiel 18:2

        “What on earth are you going to write [about the election outcome]?” a friend wrote this week.

        “Don’t know yet—still sorting through my own emotional reactions . . . something between flamethrowing and fetal crouch,” I responded.

        I went to bed Tuesday night hours before the final tally, but not until the news anchors’ faces began to blanch as the number began piling up, telling a different story from their teleprompters’ received wisdom. Early on I instinctively doubted polling guru Nate Silver’s prediction that Clinton had a 78% chance of winning. Trump had confounded too many predictions over the past 18 months.

        Nevertheless, despite my measure of realism, the next morning it felt like a gut punch when I turned on NPR and heard the outcome.

        “I’m so glad I don’t have to preach this Sunday,” Nancy said, coming into the kitchen as I sipped coffee.

        “There is that comfort,” I said sarcastically. Months ago I agreed to sermonize this Sunday.

        “Talked to Jessica,” she said. “This morning Sydney [our too-tender-hearted 8 year-old granddaughter] was so upset at the election result they kept her home from school.”

        My avenging impulse (I am, as Caesar Chavez wrote, a violent man learning to be nonviolent) went to Jesus’ stern warning against any who would cause a little one to stumble, saying “it would be better if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”

        Then I instinctively altered John the Revelator’s similar indictment of imperial hubris: “Then a mighty angel took up a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying ‘With such violence Donald Trump and all his Towers will be thrown down, and will be found no more.’” Even the dust drowned.

        Just last week I was joining in syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts’ imprecatory prayer.  “I don’t want the GOP defeated," he wrote. "I want it immolated. I want it razed to the foundation, reduced to moonscape, left unlivable even for cockroaches. I want it treated like boot heels treat ants and furnaces treat ice cubes. . . .”

         As if domestic forewarnings were not sufficiently alarming, the spokesperson for one of several jidahist groups in Syria tweeted, “Trump’s victory is a powerful slap to those promoting the benefits of democratic mechanisms.”

§  §  §

        Then I remembered that quote about the need for suspicion when God persistently looks and thinks like we do.

§  §  §

        The exit polls in this election have produced some head-scratching conclusions. Some for-instances.

        •Despite the fact that for the first time in history a woman was a major-party candidate, Trump received more women’s votes (53%) than Clinton (43%).

        •Stunningly, 81% of personal-morality-boosting evangelical Christians voted for Trump. In 2011, only 30% of white evangelicals said a notoriously immoral candidate can fulfill their duties in office. This year, 72% took that position. I guess the other 9% just winged it on this one, as in other ways: Nearly a quarter of his supporters also acknowledged that The Donald lacks presidential qualifications, and just as many knew he doesn’t have the temperament for one with access to nuclear launch codes.

        All in all, an emotive middle-fingered salute to The Way Things Are.

        •The American public’s temperament is no less under suspicion. Only 56% of eligible voters did so. Combined with the facts that (a) neither candidate secured even 26% of the voting population’s ballots and (b) Clinton actually tallied more votes than Trump, I’d say we have some tough questions to answer about our assumptions to democracy.

        •Interestingly—and this surprised me—exit polls found no evidence to suggest that income status affected the likelihood for Trump support.

§  §  §

        A cell phone video at York County (Pennsylvania) School of Technology recorded some students walking the hall with a “Trump/Pence” campaign poster chanting “White power.”

        Middle school students in a Detroit suburb chanted "build the wall" during lunchtime on Wednesday, hours after Donald Trump became president-elect of the United States, according to school officials. —ABC News

        On Wednesday morning someone at New York University’s (my alma mater) Tandon School of Engineering wrote "Trump" on the door of Muslim students’ prayer room. (See Sean O’Kane’s “Day 1 in Trump’s America” for other examples of post-election hate mongering.)

§  §  §

        CNN commentator Van Jones spoke some of the most emotionally-wrenching remarks on election night. "You have people putting children to bed tonight and they are afraid of breakfast. They're afraid of 'How do I explain this to my children?”  He then went on to coin a poignantly appropriate term to describe the electoral results: whitelash.

        To be sure, Donald Trump is pretty much the poster boy for misogyny (and we can be thankful that, because of this campaign, more people know what that word means). To be sure again, there are powerful economic forces compounding our class divide evidenced by swelling levels of income economic inequality, though its perpetrators include both the Republican and Democratic parties. And to be sure yet again, there is an enormous cultural divide in this country pitting rural and urban communities, driven both by competing economic interests and popular media.

Above: LECTION & ELECTION; During election week members of Circle of Mercy Congregation, Asheville, NC, are creating art—using phrases from Isaiah 65, the lection for Sunday 13 November—as a reminder of our post-electoral horizon.

        But we would be hard pressed not to say whitelash. At the outset of the last century W.E.B. DuBois, in The Souls of Black Folk, said “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of color line,” though with this election a more global picture comes into view, given Trump’s emphatic, repetitious disparaging of Mexicans and Muslims and all manner of racial dog-whistling. In this sense, as William Faulkner noted, the past isn’t dead—it isn’t even past.

        Compounding domestic racial tension is a virile, broader nativism holding the rest of the world in contempt. Is this what will make America “great” again?

§  §  §

 “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and
brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death.”
—2 Corinthians 7:10

§  §  §

        Asking what are we to do? is always appropriate—but I find it frustrating, too, because too often the question is asked as if there were a grocery list. Something far more demanding is at stake.

        I’ve long felt that the church’s loss of its rituals of lament is our greatest frailty. We hardly know how to moan together—grieving for loved ones lost, to be sure, but moaning, too, over the state of our neighborhood and nation and the nausea of the earth itself. The work of grief—grief, not shame—is not an exercise in despair but in fact is premised on the expectation that trouble’s rule will one day come undone. The liturgy of grief transforms the pain of lament into passion for an outcome forged in justice and tempered in mercy.

§  §  §

"Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak / Whispers the oe’r fraught heart and bids it speak."
—William Shakespeare, “Macbeth,” Act 4, Scene 3

§  §  §

        The work of reconciliation will involve an extensive list of personal and congregational initiatives, along with advocacy with other people of faith and conscience for larger public policies—local, national and global—that nudge the arc of history toward justice. Among them are complex issues requires our best intelligence and moral passion. But as we go charging into that thicket we need forming—predispositioning—as to our proper role and posture.

Right: Art: by Dan Trabue

        The soured grapes of wrath and generational trauma ferment with a fury we hardly understand and catch us up in a bedeviled history beyond our knowing. The work of unraveling the tangled knots, treating the festered wounds, and restoring neighborly bonds and bounds will require more than seasonal attention and pious enamel.

        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)

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

After Tuesday

Electoral season pastoral prayer

Nancy Hastings Sehested
Sunday 6 November 2016

Thank you God, for the shaping from the saints in our lives…for the foolish and the wise ones, the serious and the silly ones, the reserve and the overbearing ones, the mischievous and the obedient ones…lives whose presence have broadened and enriched our own.

Free us from regrets by your grace. Strengthen us by the witness of your hope-bearing and love-embracing saints before us. May these days make saints of all of us in perseverance in the struggles, in resistance to evil, in reliance on your Spirit.

After Tuesday, may we pick up where we never left off…feeding the hungry, teaching and tending the children, listening to the lonely, comforting the broken-hearted, healing the sick, raising all those who are dead and disheartened in spirit.

After Tuesday, may we be found among that countless number who still practice the politics of praise for your creation, and who have always made art of your divine deal of reconciliation.

After Tuesday, may we be counted among that number who still lives for your great dreams for humanity again and again and again…bolstered by the resolve that we are stronger together when we sacrifice together for the common wealth, the common good, the common cause of justice and peace.

After Tuesday, may you still find us with Jesus, walking unafraid, unfaltering…undone only by your Spirit swirling in and around us all.

After Tuesday, may we be convinced more deeply than ever that nothing, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from your love.

Through the Christ of love, we pray and pray and pray. Amen.

©nancy hastings sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

 

 

 

Isaiah 65 coloring book & “After Tuesday” pastoral prayer

Reaffirming rainbow promises in light of an electoral deluge

This week members of my congregation are adding artistic colors to one or more of the 22 pages of an “Isaiah 65 coloring book.” Adults have been encouraged to decorate one or more page as they watch elections results Tuesday night.

Each of the pages has a phrase pointing to a profoundly different future, taken from Isaiah 65 (plus one from a similar text in Isaiah 11 and from Mary’s hymn of praise in Luke 1) each against a rainbow background, the sign of God’s re-creational covenant in Genesis 9.

This coming Sunday, 14 November, featuring the Isaiah 65 text, will be our first post-election gathering to discern what “After Tuesday” looks like and what it means for the living of these days. Artwork created by members will be displayed in our sanctuary next Sunday.

You can download the 22-page Isaiah 65 coloring book by clicking on the icon below.

Nancy Hastings Sehested offered her “After Tuesday” pastoral prayer during our season of prayer and All Saints observance, as we surrounded ourselves with a “cloud of witnesses” providing buoyancy in this turbulent season.

Ken Sehested

Download

"After Tuesday"

Pastoral prayer by Nancy Hastings Sehested
Sunday 6 November 2016

Thank you God, for the shaping from the saints in our lives…for the foolish and the wise ones, the serious and the silly ones, the reserve and the overbearing ones, the mischievous and the obedient ones…lives whose presence have broadened and enriched our own.

Free us from regrets by your grace. Strengthen us by the witness of your hope-bearing and love-embracing saints before us. May these days make saints of all of us in perseverance in the struggles, in resistance to evil, in reliance on your Spirit.

After Tuesday, may we pick up where we never left off…feeding the hungry, teaching and tending the children, listening to the lonely, comforting the broken-hearted, healing the sick, raising all those who are dead and disheartened in spirit.

After Tuesday, may we be found among that countless number who still practice the politics of praise for your creation, and who have always made art of your divine deal of reconciliation.

After Tuesday, may we be counted among that number who still lives for your great dreams for humanity again and again and again…bolstered by the resolve that we are stronger together when we sacrifice together for the common wealth, the common good, the common cause of justice and peace.

After Tuesday, may you still find us with Jesus, walking unafraid, unfaltering…undone only by your Spirit swirling in and around us all.

After Tuesday, may we be convinced more deeply than ever that nothing, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from your love.

Through the Christ of love, we pray and pray and pray. Amen.

How you can support the Standing Rock action opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline

(See “Signs of the Times: 3 August 2016, No. 95” on the prayerandpolitiks.org site for additional background.)

by Ken Sehested

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.
—Edmund Burke

Posted below are links to 5 “how to help” articles. (There is overlap in the first four.) I haven’t researched the veracity of these, but neither do I think there’s reason to suspect their recommendations. As with any such decision, using common sense is always required.

•“10 Ways You Can Help the Standing Rock Sioux Fight the Dakota Access Pipeline,” Jay Syrmopoulos, The Free Thought Project.com

•“How You Can Help Standing Rock Activists Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline,” Rachael Prokop, Greenpeace

•“How You Can Support Standing Rock,” Thane Maxwell, Yes! magazine

•“How to Support NoDAPL,” Ea O Ka Aina

•“How to Contact the 17 Banks Funding the Dakota Access Pipeline.” Here are CEO names, emails, and phone numbers—because banks have choices when it comes to what projects they give loans to.”—Emily Fuller, YES! magazine

Basically the list of actions boil down to short-range and long-range needs. The short-term ones are things like:

•join the protest (at this point it looks like the organizers are still welcoming allies on the ground, particularly those willing to help with the massive logistical challenges like food preparation and cleaning of all sorts)

•contribute money (a variety of options are listed in the articles) or supplies

•advocate by communicating with public officials—the ones closest to the action, especially)

Long-range needs are diverse, and include things like:

•communicating with public officials who have the capacity to shape longer-term goals, like developing the infrastructure for alternative energy sources

•lobbying the financial institutions that support the various companies that work on constructing and managing the pipeline (and fossil fuel development in general)

•supporting organizations like 350.org or Beyond Extreme Energy that have national and even international visions and mechanisms for change toward a future beyond fossil fuels

•using all available media to communicate facts and perspective, everything from personal conversation to social media and mainstream media

The inspiring campaign at Standing Rock will be wasted if that inspiration, that energy is not funneled into a movement pressing for substantial long-term policy shifts, altered financial priorities and cultural renewal for the common good.

I would also add there are even longer-range needs. These include the entire spectrum of personal to public shift in awareness and policy options in the struggle for a healthy, sustainable and just world.

•I believe personal spiritual transformation is an ongoing need for us all, because the deepest roots of violence inflicting the world must be addressed in ourselves. (I subscribe to Caesar Chavez’s confession: “I am a violent man learning to be nonviolent.”)

•To be effective, the work of personal spiritual renewal must be done in community—however formal or informal, and in fact most of us are connected to more than one such community.

•To be actually transformative (there’s a whole lot that passes for spiritual transformation that are really disguised forms of narcissism and self-centeredness) the change involves linking with others to alter public consensus and public policy.

•Unfortunately, public advocacy is often too narrowly defined as influencing elected officials. Substantive change will be resisted, because there are people profiting from the status quo. Our politicians rarely pursue unpopular positions without sufficient support from their constituency.

•Such transformation must also involve deeper analysis—learning that peels back the lies we have been taught, learning “alternative” history, finding creative ways to listen to those voices not being heard, finding ways to bring to the table those currently excluded.

•Such transformation must be aware that the work is difficult; that it requires various forms of discipline (the word “discipline” is rooted in the word “learning”); that it requires perseverance; that it will likely, in one way or another, be risky and painful. (There is, as Jesus said, a kind of dying that must take place before living can begin.)

Finally, the key factor in deciding among the multitude of things you might do is discerning what on that list makes your heart leap up. No one can do everything; and sometimes we can only do one thing. Focus on doing that one thing well—then if you have extra time and energy, do another, and maybe another.

As the old saying goes, after all is said and done, there’s usually a lot more said than done. Focus on the doing, however small that may seem in the larger picture. You’re not in charge of the larger picture.

#  #  #

Postscript

The day after publishing the “Signs of the Times” column on this topic, I came across an article which is the single best, most concise overview of the issues involved:

•“Dakota Access pipeline: the who, what, and why of the Standing Rock protests,” Sam Levin, The Guardian