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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)

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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.

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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

Caught in the mess, caught in the mercy

An invitation to the Table

by Nancy Hastings Sehested

It was field day on the prison yard. A couple hundred inmates were competing in basketball and volleyball games and relay races. The cooler of fruit punch ran out, but they had a water fountain on the side of the building. But Montel was in a wheelchair and couldn’t reach the fountain. He wheeled over to the staff tent and asked for a cup of water from the staff cooler. Several staff said no. Then he turned to me, the chaplain, and asked for water. I said no.

I couldn’t sleep that night. Why didn’t I give a man a cup of water? Jesus said something specific about that, and if anyone gives a cup of cold water. . . .

First thing the next morning, I went to his housing unit to see him.

I wanted to cover my shame with an apology. I wanted him to know I was a good person and not like the others. I waited. An officer said it took awhile for Montel to get ready each morning.

Twenty minutes later he came out. “Montel, I came to apologize to you,” I blurted. “I’m really sorry that I didn’t give you water yesterday out on the yard.”

“What?” he said. “You came down here at 8 o’clock to tell me that? Chap, this ain’t about you. This whole damn mess ain’t about you.” With those words, Montel turned his wheelchair around and went back to his cell.

I stood on the concrete floor unable to move my legs. My mind raced. I’d wanted absolution. Instead I got the whole damnable truth. It’s not about me.

And yet it is about me and about you and about Montel and how we are all caught in the whole damnable mess. James Baldwin said, “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”

Caught. Both Pharisee and tax-collector stood alone. Both in their own way sought some public parcel of ground to stand on to justify some measure of goodness.

Jesus’ disciples gathered with him around a table in a time when they were caught in fear and confusion, uncertain about where they stood. Jesus offered these words:

This is my body broken for you. Take and eat.

This is my cup poured out for you. Take and drink.

This is the table for the caught. Caught in the mess. Caught in the mercy. Come, the table is set for us all.

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Confrontation at the Cannonball

The Dakota Access Pipeline controversy

Introduction to a special issue of “Signs of the Times” (4 November 2016, No. 94)

by Ken Sehested

        By now, DAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline) has become a familiar acronym to many in the US. The confrontation near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, where the Cannonball River joins the Missouri River, is cleft by a thin barricade.

        On one side is law enforcement: Morton County sheriffs, augmented with state police, National Guard troops, sheriffs from other states and oil company private security personnel, all heavily armed and supported by surveillance airplanes and helicopters, armored vehicles, even “sound cannons” (“Long Range Acoustical Devices” emitting ear-splitting noise).

        On the other, unarmed members of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation (who name themselves “Water Protectors”) and their supporters, which now number in the thousands. It is thought to be the largest gathering of Native Peoples in the last century, and for that reason remarkable, though you wouldn't know it given the bloated media attention to  our maniacal election season.

        The issue at stake is corporate commerce (which brings public tax revenues as well as private profit) versus Lakota Sioux cultural heritage and protection of water for the Standing Rock Sioux nation. For some of the Lakota, and many of their climate advocate supporters, there is also the fact that another major fossil fuel pipeline only deepens the trauma of our burning planet.

         The $3.8 billion pipeline would carry more than a half-million gallons daily of highly volatile crude oil extracted, by means of fracking (hydraulic fracturing), from North Dakota’s Bakken and Three Forks oilfields to existing pipelines in Illinois some 1,172 miles away.

        Both Amnesty International, the highly-regarded human rights organization, and the United Nations, have sent observers to monitor potential human rights violations. For a confrontation of this size, thus far the violence been relatively minor.

        The ball is now in the court of the Army Corps of Engineers, which controls the easement where the DAPL would tunnel beneath the Missouri River. In September President Obama instructed the Corps to reexamine the legitimacy of its previous permit.

        Not all the Water Protectors and their allies exercise the nonviolent spirit of Dorothy Day or Caesar Chavez, though their unarmed presence is remarkable given the tensions. Not all the law enforcement personnel have Mayberry Police Chief Andy Taylor’s disarming demeanor. No doubt there are hot-heads in both encampments. We can only hope that this swelling reservoir of mutual contempt does not escalate with fatal consequences triggered by an isolated, careless outburst.

Left: Religion News Service photo by Emily McFarlan Millerpg

        But that’s not the point. The relative moral character of the two constituencies is not the issue. The issues at stake include the historic injustices and indignities heaped on this nation’s indigenous population—and you will not be able to understand the DAPL controversy without historical perspective, of how land was stolen, literally, at least 371 treaties broken or fraudulently altered—and the very real possibility that the planet is near, or at, the point of no return in terms of a sustainable atmosphere, an atmosphere which is literally choking because of human-generated CO2 emissions emitted by burning fossil fuels.

       The really scary thing is that we will not know when the environment’s tipping point will arrive until it already has. The complex ecological chain of cause and effect is something like a tsunami (without the early warning system), barely discernible until it crests with cataclysmic affect.

       In his sterling essay, “Reckoning at Standing Rock,” which traces the roots of our present dilemma back to our nation’s founding impulses, Paul VanDevelder writes, “In the end, says the Western writer William Kittredge, reconciliation will be America’s only way out of that legacy of dishonor, the only sensible path to a future worth living — our Last Chance Saloon.”

       My hope is that this issue of “Signs of the Times” will provide a remedial course in understanding what’s at stake, and that you will be not only convinced but convicted to turn your own justice-fed, peace-inspired dreams into deeds, at whatever point, in whatever place, for whatever direction the Spirit leads.

       We are, largely, innocents who must lose our innocence to inherit a future other than the fatal consequence of our transgressions. We have hard work to do, patient work, risky work, but worthy, inspiring, hopeful work.

       Take a hand. Make your vow. Gird your loins. Step over your threshold. Prepare for turbulence, maybe threat. Treasure that envisioned future beyond every available horizon. Never forget that history belongs to the interceding intercessors.

P.S. When approaching Native American Indian culture (or any culture other than your own), do so with humility. There is a lot of culture-vulturing out there—duty-free, new-agey fluff and hucksterism passing as spirituality, as if it were a shiny bauble, free for the taking, stripped of actual grounding in communal life and material relations.

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©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Longing from below

An Advent meditation

by Ken Sehested

      Advent is a season of great longing, specifically for those longing “from below.”

      The longing is a revolutionary one, however, and frightening to those in charge, who have much to lose if existing hierarchies are breached. Such anxiety is what fueled Herod’s terror against male babies.

      This narrative parallels the ancient scene in Egypt when Pharaoh, sensing an internal threat, orders the Hebrew midwives to kill the baby boys. (That narrative is the first case of civil disobedience recorded in Scripture.)

      Those in power long for continuity; and, given the current state of the US economy, that longing is more like an anxiety. Yet the promise is made specifically and only to “those that sit in darkness.” Both Herod, and previously Pharaoh, were terrified by this longing.

      To those in power now, undocumented immigrants are the ones to fear.

      The New Testament Christmas story is a story of terrorism. And the Gospel authors are clear that competing claims are being made. Here’s some background to the New Testament language surrounding Jesus’ birth, which describes the ideological conflict being played out:

      We sometimes forget the backdrop to the nativity story, particularly of the great Caesar Augustus who ruled the known world. Many inscriptions describing Caesar’s divine status can still be found. There you can read about the “gospel”—literally, euaggelia, the same root word in Greek we Christians use when we speak of evangelism. In Rome’s imperial world, gospel was the good news of Caesar’s having established “peace and security for the world.”

      Before Jesus, Caesar was described as “savior” who brought “salvation” to the world. Because of this, citizens were to have “faith” in their “lord.” The words “faith” and “Lord” are the same ones in the Jesus story. Elsewhere Caesar is referred to as the “redeemer” who has “saved the world” from war and established “peace on the earth.”

      Do you see where this is going? Can you feel the sharp relief of those nativity stories rising from the ornamental rendering we give them each Christmas?

      The birth narratives are more than sweet lullabies. These are incendiary stories. They are bold contradictions to Roman imperial authority. No wonder Herod was troubled when the magi told him of the birth of a new king!

      All of which is to say, Advent is a dangerous season, when competing visions and loyalties go head-to-head. Jesus’ birth was considered a subversion of present arrangements. It is no less so now—though Christmas itself has been thoroughly domesticated to serve reigning economic and political purposes.

      To those who now sit in the region of the shadow of death, fear not. Move on in the confidence that, should you be swallowed in some hidden crevasse, you’ll discover it’s only the fold of your Lover’s arm.

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

News, views, notes, and quotes

Signs of the Times  •  27 October 2016  •  No. 94

Processional. “When the Saints Go Marching In,” Louis Armstrong.

Sing praise all you creatures, wild animals, creeping things, flying birds. —Psalm 148

Invocation. “Psalm 53,” Aramaic chant by Archimandrite Serafim.

Mom needs to know. “No matter how old you get, it's safe to say your mom will always worry about you. Jonathan Quiñonez was feeling burnt out from working as a consultant in Brussels, Belgium, when he decided to quit his job and travel the world.” But he managed to assure his Mom “I’m fine” with a series of dramatic photos. —Today

Call to worship: All Hallows Eve. “We come again to a time when mortals / play out the battle of good and evil. / Before the goodness of the saints is delivered to us, / We must face the dark night / Don our courage / Wear it like a shield and / Say BOO! to the darkness / before it engulfs us.” —continue reading Abigail Hastings’ “Hallowed Week: A call to worship for All Hallowed Eve and All Saints Day"

All Saints. “In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a pocket handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.” —Frederick Buechner

¶ “There is no sinner like a young saint.” ―Aphra Behn

¶ “In truth, all human beings are called to be saints, but that just means called to be fully human, to be perfect—that is, whole, mature, fulfilled. The saints are simply those men and women who relish the event of life as a gift and who realize that the only way to honor such a gift is to give it away.” —William Stringfellow

¶ “When I give people food, they call me a saint. When I ask why there is no food, they call me a communist.” —Hélder Pessoa Câmara, former Catholic Archbishop in Brazil

Hymn of praise. “No greater love hath any than to yield / Privilege and pow’r to welcome and to shield / The least, the lost, the whole creation healed / Alleluia! Alleluia!” —continue reading new lyrics to “For All the Saints” by Ken Sehested

“A saint is simply a human being whose soul has … grown up to its full stature, by full and generous response to its environment, God.” —Evelyn Underhill

¶ “Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed that easily.” —Dorothy Day

¶ “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.” —Oscar Wilde

Confession. “I admit that I ain't no angel / I admit that I ain't no saint / I'm selfish and I'm cruel and I'm blind / If I exorcise my devils, well my angels may leave too / When they leave they're so hard to find.” —Tom Waits, “Please Call Me, Baby”

¶ “For centuries the leaders of Christian thought spoke of women as a necessary evil, and the greatest saints of the Church are those who despise women the most.” —Annie Besant

¶ “From somber, serious, sullen saints, save us O Lord.” —St. Teresa of Ávila,16th century Spanish mystic and Carmelite nun

¶ “The Reformer is always right about what's wrong. However, he's often wrong about what is right.”  ―G.K. Chesterton

Professing our faith. “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.” —continue reading Ken Sehested’s “All Saints Day,” a litany for worship 

The inference of this scientific finding for homo sapiens is all too obvious. “Howler monkeys [see photo at top] are the loudest land animals on Earth, capable of bellowing at volumes of 140 decibels, which is on the level of gunshots or firecrackers. Not surprisingly, male howlers frequently use this power to advertise their sexual fitness, catcalling females with their ear-splitting roars. But in a beautiful twist of expectations, scientists have now found that the louder the monkey’s calls, the smaller the monkey’s balls. A team based out of Cambridge University came to this conclusion by comparing the size of dozens of monkeys’ testes with the hyoid bones located in their voice boxes, which revealed a negative correlation between decibel levels and testicular endowment.” —Becky Ferreira, Motherboard

Words of assurance. “Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” Alabama.

Tensions between the US and Russia are escalating dramatically, with standoffs in Ukraine and Syria and now over alleged Russian computer hacking designed to influence the US elections. On the latter, that’s a little like a pot calling the kettle black.
        There’s a running joke in Latin America that goes like this:
        Question: Why has there never been a coup in the US?
        Answer: Because there’s no US embassy in Washington, DC.
        “For more than 100 years, without any significant break, the US has been doing whatever it can to influence the outcome of [other countries’] elections―up to and including assassinating politicians it has found unfriendly.” —Ryan Grim and Arthur Delaney, Huffington Post

It sounds so much better when you call it “intelligence gathering.” “When President Obama receives his daily intelligence briefing, most of the information comes from government cyberspies, says Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence under President George W. Bush. ‘It’s at least 75%, and going up,’ he says.” —Michael Riley, “How the US Government Hacks the World”

Left: "All Saints Day," painting by Wassily Kandinsky.

Hymn of intercession. “Listen, smith of the heavens, / what the poet asks. / May softly come unto me / your mercy. / So I call on thee, / for you have created me.” —“Heyr himna smiður” (“Hear, Heavenly Creator”), 12th century Icelandic hymn, performed by Gréta Hergils

Short take. G.K. Chesterton once wrote that reformers are often right about what’s wrong but sometimes wrong about what’s right. I recalled that quote this week after reading of the passing of Tom Hayden, a leading figure in the anti-Vietnam War movement who navigated the transition from movement organizing to an 18-year stint in the California state legislature. In a 1986 opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times Haden wrote “I will always believe the Vietnam War was wrong. I will never again believe that I was always right.”

        This side of Glory, this tension will remain. Climbing that high peak for a glimpse of the Promised Land will involve much disagreement as to the details of ascent. That doesn’t mean aiming for the middle-of-the-road. As another political agitator, Jim Hightower, so aptly puts it in the title of one of his books, There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.

Reformation as “democratizing access to the holy.” “Much of the history of the church is the story of the unfolding details of who gets to say and do what in the life of the believing community. It is the story of an increasingly complex bureaucracy detailing who gets to approach God on behalf of the people and approach the people on behalf of God. The early baptist impulse was to say that the unlettered and the unwashed also testify to the work of the Holy Spirit. The unanointed, the unlettered, the non-ordained also have access and also are called to speak to the difficult choices involved in following Jesus.” —continue reading Ken Sehested’s “The baptist impulse: Notes toward a renewal of baptist identity”

When only the blues will do. “Many Rivers to Cross,” Joe Cocker.

Preach it. “The world is waiting for new saints, ecstatic men and women who are so deeply rooted in the love of God that they are free to imagine a new international order. . . . Most people despair that [it] is possible. They cling to old ways and prefer the security of their misery to the insecurity of their joy. But the few who dare to sing a new song of peace are the new St. Francises of our time, offering a glimpse of a new order that is being born out of the ruin of the old.” —Henri Nouwen

Can’t makes this sh*t up. “A secret FBI study found that anger over US military operations abroad was the most commonly cited motivation for individuals involved in cases of ‘homegrown’ terrorism.’” —Murtazaa Hussain and Cora Currier, The Intercept

Post-election challenge. “Only turning our hearts to what is moving and enraging Trump’s supporters can trump Trump and the trumpery he spews into the body politic. And that is the real issue facing America—far deeper than one presidential election.” —Rabbi Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Center

For more commentary on our post-election vocation, see Ken Sehested’s “Vote, or don’t: The issues are larger than the election.”

Is this what “make America great again” means? “Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those of us who don’t?” —seen on a bumper sticker

Call to the table. “The Soul of Man Never Dies,” Ricky Skaggs and Tony Rice.

The state of our disunion. “Citing worries about the sharp rhetoric of the 2016 presidential campaign and other safety concerns, school districts across the country that host polling sites are opting to cancel classes on Election Day. . . . A 51% majority of likely voters express at least some concern about the possibility of violence on Election Day.” —Aamer Madhani, USAToday
        “Since the polls are starting to shift quite a bit towards Hillary Clinton, I’ve been buying a lot more ammunition,” says Rich Darling, an engineer from Michigan. —Susan Page and Karina Shedrofsky, USAToday

For the beauty of the earth. "Spider at work" (2:27 video). The silk spun by spiders to create their webs is the strongest biological material in the world, it’s tensile strength greater than most kinds of steel.

Altar call. “All of Me” is what we should be humming on our way forward. —Thomas Gansch & James Morrison of the Schagerl All Star Big Band

Benediction. “God Be With You Till We Meet Again,” The Lower Lights.

Recessional. “When the Saints Go Marching In,” Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Session Band.

Lectionary for Sunday next. “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you, ‘Violence!’ and you will not save? We pound the doors of Heaven, shouting “Listen! Pay attention! Are you asleep!” Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.” —continue reading Ken Sehested’s “Pound the Doors of Heaven,” a litany for worship inspired by Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4

Just for fun. Four cellists, one instrument. Wiener Cello Ensemble playing Maurice Revel’s “Bolero.”

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks

• “Hallowed Week: A call to worship for All Hallowed Eve and All Saints Day,” by Abigail Hastings

• “All Saints Day,” a litany for worship 

• “For All the Saints,” new lyrics to an old hymn

• “The [small-b] baptist impulse: Notes toward a renewal of baptist identity”

• “Pound the Doors of Heaven,” a litany for worship inspired by Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4

 
Other features

• “Vote, or don’t: The issues are larger than the election”

©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.