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16 July 2015   •   No. 30

¶ Invocation. Who among you believe that / grieving and lamentation / are symptoms of despair. / Not so! / Only the hopeless are silent / in the face of calamity— / silenced because they no / longer aspire even to be heard, / much less heeded. The labor / of lament, on the other hand, / is premised on the expectation / that grief’s rule will be bound / by the Advent of Another. (Continue reading “The Labor of Lament” by Ken Sehested

A newly hatched sea turtle (right) makes its way to the ocean. Photo by Courtney Campbell, “The Pendulum,” Elon University Student News.

¶ Shores of hallelujah! “In Florida, sea turtles are making a comeback. The green turtle is leading the way. It's a species that a few decades ago was close to disappearing from the state, and the scope of its recovery is virtually unprecedented for an endangered species in the United States,” says National Public Radio host Robert Siegel. “As a scientist, I have to be a little bit careful about how I throw the word miracle around, but yes, I agree that, in this case, it is really quite extraordinary. —Lou Ehrhart, University of Central Florida researcher who has counted sea turtle nests in this refuge since the mid-'80s.

¶ A sign of the times if there ever was one. A day before announcing he is running for the GOP presidential nomination, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed legislation slashing $250 million from the state’s higher education budget—at about the same time the Wisconsin Senate $250 million in public funds for a new Milwaukee Bucks basketball arena.

¶ But there’s also this sign of the times. “The massacre at the AME church in Charleston is just the latest in a string of racially charged events that have broken my heart. There are a lot of things to fix in this country, but history says if we don't address this canker, centuries in the making, these things will continue to happen. No matter what level privilege you have, when the system is broken everybody loses. We all have to speak up when injustice happens. No matter what.” —Rhiannon Giddens (you may know of her former bluegrass/Americana band, The Carolina Chocolate Drops), speaking of her “Cry No More” spare musical performance—drum, solo and chorus—in response to the Charleston massacre.

¶ Unvarnished history. The controversy over the Confederate Battle Flag has pushed us all (not just Southerners) to face a less varnished version of history, particularly with regards to the language of freedom. Two additional reminders of our more complicated history:
        •In 1619, the year before the Mayflower arrived in New England, the Virginia immigrant community took delivery of African slaves from a Dutch trading ship.
        • “Having fled European conformity, the Puritans [of “New England”] sought conformity of their own. The irony was not lost on the Old World. ‘Every party cries out for Liberty & toleration,’ said the Lord Bishop of Salisbury, ‘till they get to be uppermost, and then will allow none.’
        “Anyone who did not believe as the Puritans did ‘shall have free liberty to keep away from us’ said the Massachusetts minister Nathaniel Ward in 1647.” —quoted in Jon Meacham, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation

¶ Confession. “If we can let ourselves go in prayer and speak all that is in our minds and hearts, if we can sit quietly and bear the silence, we will hear all the bits and pieces of ourselves crowding in on us, pleading for our attention. Prayer’s confession begins with this racket, for prayer is noisy with the clamor of all the parts of us demanding to be heard. The clamor is the sound of the great river of being flowing in us.” —Ann and Barry Ulanov, “Primary Speech”

¶ Breathtaking. The recent agreement by the P5+1 nations (US, China, Russia, United Kingdom, France and Germany) with Iran about its nuclear production capacity is a breathtaking achievement, one which required 20 tough months of negotiation, on top of a decade before that of European diplomatic work with Iran. Now, though, resistance both in Iran and in the US will stiffen. Communicate with your congressional leaders: Be loud and proud of diplomatic solutions.

Above right: Diplomats from the United States, the UK, France, China, Russia, Germany and the European Union have been negotiating with the Iranians since 2013. Photo: Carlos Barria.

¶ “The Iran nuclear deal, translated into plain English,” a good primer on the agreement.

¶ This “US-Iran relations: A brief guide”  from the BBC provides needed perspective.

¶ Few here are aware of what Iranians have long known: Their country is surrounded by 48 US military bases. (Indicated by yellow stars on the map at left.) And that in 1953, with assistance from our British allies, the US overthrew the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed the dictator Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, to maintain access to the country’s oil reserves.

¶ “A new stage will begin, long and complex, on the road toward normalization, which will require the will to find solutions to the problems that have accumulated over more than five decades and hurt ties between our nations and peoples." —Cuban President Raul Castro, in a Wednesday speech on Cuban TV

¶ Making way for a new embassy. A worker (right) removes the "Cuban Interests Section" sign just days prior to the building being accredited as the Cuban Embassy, Wednesday, July 15, 2015, in Washington. Currently the Cuban Interest Section in US is under the auspices of the Swiss Government and located in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington. Photo by Bill Gorman, AP.

¶ Tongue-in-cheek satire from The New Yorker's Andy Borowitz. “Our adversarial relationships with Cuba and Iran took years of frostiness and saber-rattling to maintain,” Harland Dorrinson, the executive director of the Washington-based Institute for Infinite Conflict, said. “Thanks to the President, decades of well-crafted hostility have been thrown out the window.”

¶ Call to the table. "Call me foolish, but I'm guessing God would trade a little suffering piety in favor of more belly laughs." —Scott Pomfret, author of "Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir”

¶ The Pope is on a roll. “It was the strongest language I can remember a pope using about the rights of the poor and about social justice,” said James Martin, SJ, editor-at-large of America magazine. “In a stunning, nearly revolutionary, speech on Thursday in Bolivia, Pope Francis said that working for justice is not simply a moral obligation. For Christians, it is a commandment. ‘It is about giving to the poor and to people what is their right.’"

¶ Here is a sampling of Francis’ commentary, most of these in his 9 July address to participants of the second World Meeting of Popular Movements, Santa Cruz, Bolivia, an international body that brings together organizations of people on the margins of society, including the poor, the unemployed and peasants who have lost their land. (The Vatican hosted the first meeting last year.)

       •"Colonialism, both old and new, which reduces poor countries to mere providers of raw material and cheap labor, engenders violence, poverty, forced migrations and all the evils which go hand in hand with these, precisely because, by placing the periphery at the service of the center, it denies those countries the right to an integral development. That is inequality, and inequality generates a violence which no police, military, or intelligence resources can control."

Pope Francis donned a worker's hard hat to greet people in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, on July 9. Photo: Alessandro Bianchi.

      •"The new colonialism takes on different faces. At times it appears as the anonymous influence of Mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain 'free trade' treaties, and the imposition of measures of 'austerity' which always tighten the belt of workers and the poor.”
        •"Do we realize that that system has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature?"
        •"Let us say NO to an economy of exclusion and inequality, where money rules, rather than service. That economy kills. That economy excludes. That economy destroys Mother Earth."
        •"Something is wrong in a world where there are so many farm workers without land, so many families without a home, so many laborers without rights, so many persons whose dignity is not respected."
        •“Today, the scientific community realizes what the poor have long told us: harm, perhaps irreversible harm is being done to the ecosystem. The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished. And behind all this pains, death and destruction there is the stench of what [fourth century saint] Basil of Caesarea called 'the dung of evil.' An unfettered pursuit of money rules."

¶ Preach it. “Prophetic grief is different from pathetic grief. Pathetic grief is angry, mad, vicious, bitter, always blaming others. And then there is sympathetic grief, where we pass out sympathy but do not necessarily enter into the other person’s tragic moment. But then there is prophetic grief, where we stand inside of the other’s wounds, and hurt, and blood, and tears, and sorrow.” —Rev. Otis Moss Jr.

¶ “ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company, knew as early as 1981 of climate change—seven years before it became a public issue, according to a newly discovered email from one of the firm’s own scientists. Despite this the firm spent millions over the next 27 years to promote climate denial. The email from Exxon’s in-house climate expert provides evidence the company was aware of the connection between fossil fuels and climate change, and the potential for carbon-cutting regulations that could hurt its bottom line, over a generation ago. . . .” —Suzanne Goldenberg, “Exxon Knew of Climate Change in 1981, Email Says – but It Funded Deniers for 27 More Years”

¶ Next week—26 July—marks the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Americans With Disability Act. The Interfaith Disability Advocacy Coalition has several free resources for use by local congregations, including a bulletin insert (to raise awareness), “Suggested Steps for Congregations” (to expand employment opportunities), and “That All May Worship: An Interfaith Welcome to People with Disabilities.”
        •For some keen theological reflections by one living with the aftereffects of traumatic brain injury, see Tamara Puffer’s “Nogginnotions” blog.
        •Also see “By the Beautiful Gate,” a call to worship for use in a service commemorating the “Americans With Disability Act” passage in 1990.

¶ Altar call. “Make a mess, but then also help to tidy it up. A mess which gives us a free heart, a mess which gives us solidarity, a mess which gives us hope.” —Pope Francis, to a crowd of young people in Paraguay

¶ Benediction. “Shalom Aleichem" (Peace Be Upon You), by The Shuk, a Jewish roots-rock, genre-crossing musical group.

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

• “The Labor of Lament,” a poem about the healing capacity of lament

• “By the Beautiful Gate,” a call to worship for use in a service commemorating the “Americans With Disability Act” passage in 1990.

©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.

9 July 2015  •  No. 29

¶ Invocation. Listen, O people of the Way, and take note. Your ancestors were once illegal aliens in the land of Southern Appalachia. Boat people, all of you, undocumented immigrants. Scots-Irish trash; crackers and kaffirs, wetbacks and wops; gooks, goyim, gringos and gypsies. / Strangers we were, with no stake in the Promise; hopeless, helpless, beggarly-born. (Continue reading “Strangers we were,”  by Ken Sehested.)

¶ Hymn of praise. Kate Campbell, “Jesus and Tomatoes Coming Soon,”  Get your own “Jesus and Tomatoes Coming Soon” bumper sticker ($5 postpaid) at katecampbell.com.  While you’re there, sample the tracks from her fabulous new album, “1000 Pound Machine.”

¶ Good read. “How a White Supremacist Became a Civil Rights Activist: The story of a KKK leader’s transformation shows us that we need not live forever with the kind of violence we saw in Charleston last week.” —Araz Hachadourian, Yes! Magazine

¶ Title Nine this. The men’s 2015 world cup soccer game payment was $576 million, nearly 40 times as much as for women’s $15 million prize. The US men’s team is ranked 27th in the world. The women’s team ranked #1. National Women’s Soccer League salaries range from $6,000 to $30,000. In aggregate, the women make 98.6 less than men. —Mary Pilon, “The World Cup pay gap: What the U.S. and Japan didn’t win in the women’s soccer final”

¶ “In the immediate aftermath of the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, the the US House of Representatives epresentatives Appropriations Committee quietly rejected an amendment that would have allowed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the underlying causes of gun violence.” —“Quietly, Congress extends a ban on CDC research on gun violence”

¶ The first of 12 Republican Party presidential candidate debates is less than a month away. The field will be culled to the top 10 (of 16 current or probable) candidates based on polling. “A big field does not allow depth of discussion of issues—‘these are debates for the age of Twitter,’ says Princeton political historian Julian Zelizer—and encourages grandstanding and showboating by candidates desperate for attention. ‘My favorite part of the campaign,’ said Patrick Millsaps, Newt Gingerich’s presidential campaign chief in 2012. ‘It’s not great for democracy,’ said Zelizer, ‘but it’s good TV.’” —Rick Hampson, “10-Candidate Debate: Circus, cattle call or not mess?”

¶ Megamouth Donald Trump, currently polling second among Republican candidates, recently had some scurrilous comments about undocumented Mexican immigrants—comments which may force other GOPers to make more substantive policy proposals on the topic of immigration. This fall would be a good time to plan special Christian education programs on the topic. Among the resources you can consider are “Out of the House of Slavery: A Bible study on immigration,” and “Strangers & Aliens: A collection of biblical texts regarding the fate of immigrants.”  Litanies for worship: “Strangers we were,” inspired by Ephesians 2:11-12  and “You shall also love the stranger.”

Mexican artist Dalton Avalos Ramirez created this Donald Trump piñata (at right) as a response to Trump’s bloviations.

¶ Lection for Sunday next. “Come away . . . and rest a while” (Mark 6:31a). See “Steal away,” a litany for worship inspired by Mark 6:30-34.

¶ Hymn of assurance. “Steal Away,” Wells College Concert Choir.

¶ How did this association come to be? This area “is populated with too many still singing ‘gimme that old time religion’ and with extreme gun rights advocates believing that every person toting a loaded weapon at all times is best for America.” —letter to the editor, Asheville Citizen-Times

¶ Gimme that REALLY old time religion. “So now the LORD says, "Stop right where you are! Look for the old, godly way, and walk in it. Travel its path, and you will find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16a, b).
        •“But [the unrighteous] said, ‘We will not walk in it’” (Jeremiah 6:16c).
        • For “they have become great and rich, they have grown fat and sleek. They know no limits in deeds of wickedness; they do not judge with justice the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper, and they do not defend the rights of the needy” (Jeremiah 5:27b-28).
        • “Thus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place”  (Jeremiah 22:3).

¶ It was a “controversial sermon” earlier this year that got MidAmerica Nazarene University Chaplain Randy Beckum into trouble with his school’s administration. Some in his chapel audience were upset by his suggestion that Christians should take seriously Jesus’ injunction to love one’s enemies and his questions about Christians’ use of violence. The Olathe, Kansas, school’s president issued a statement affirming academic freedom, even when the opinions “may not reflect official policy . . . and our core values.” —Christian Century

¶ Competing text. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I am the baddest motherf**cker in the valley.” —Jamie Foxx as Marine Staff Sergeant Sykes in the movie “Jarhead,” about “Operation Desert Storm” in 1991 following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait

¶ Support our troops! “Members of the Texas-based Helping a Hero charity told ABC News that [former President George W.] Bush charged $100,000 for his 2012 speech at a charity fundraiser for veterans who lost limbs in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. The former president was also given use of a private jet at a cost of $20,000 and former First Lady Laura Bush was paid $50,000 to speak to the group last year.” —CNN

¶ “No one should be surprised, let alone dismayed, that the negotiations [between the US and Cuba] have been tense. After all, 50-plus years of outright hostilities cannot be undone in the course of a few meetings. Both governments are under pressure from factions within their own countries to preserve the status quo.” (Stan Hastey’s “Reflections on changes in US-Cuba relations.” )

¶ “In the two years since the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, there have been at least 94 school shootings, including fatal and nonfatal assaults, suicides, and unintentional shootings — an average of nearly one a week.” —“Analysis of School Shootings: December 15, 2012 – December 9, 2014,” Everytown for Gun Safety

¶ “More people are killed by 'white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims': 48 vs. 26 since 9/11, according to a study by the New America Foundation. (More comprehensive studies cited in a recent New York Times op-ed show an even greater gap, with 254 killed in far-right violence since 9/11, according to West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, compared to 50 killed in jihadist-related terrorism.)
        “But in a piece all about the ‘mismatch between public perceptions and actual cases,’ the entity most charged with making sure these match–the news media–doesn’t get much scrutiny. There is research on this question–such as a study from University of Illinois communications professor Travis Dixon, summarized in the Champaign/Urbana News Gazette.
        “Between 2008 and 2012, about 6 percent of domestic terrorism suspects were Muslim, or about 1 in 17, according to FBI reports. — Jim Naureckas, “That Most Terrorists Aren’t Muslim May ‘Come as a Surprise’—if You Get Your News From Corporate Media”

¶ Speaking of the disconnect between public perception and actual fact, stories of shark attacks on the US east coast have everyone talking. But did you know you’re 20 times more likely to be killed by a cow than a shark? 52 times more, by deer and other mammals? 58 times more, by bees and wasps? And when was the last time you paused, before driving to the market, to ask yourself “Maybe it’s too great a risk (since 33,000 people die in auto accidents each year)?” —Christopher Ingraham, “Chart: The animals that are most likely to kill you this summer”

¶ This just in. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley signed legislation authorizing the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state capitol grounds. Last week the SC Senate easily approved the measure. Following 13 hours of debate that ended shortly after midnight Wednesday, the House followed suit. The flag is scheduled to be lowered at 10 a.m. tomorrow.

¶ “We long for our churches to be safe places to doubt, to ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable.”
        These words, from a popular young author in progressive Christian circles, have a certain sophisticated cachet. But I wonder if the import indicates more than a kissing-cousin kinship with the me-and-Jesus piety of evangelical culture—substituting the unfettered mind for the redeemed soul, retaining the elevated self as the center of Redemption’s story.
        So, I asked, what different rendering would I give? Here’s my attempt—which, admittedly, isn’t quite as concise:
        “We long for churches that incubate Spirit-inspired risks, that permit joyful exuberance alongside full-throated grief, that embrace the world’s agony in anticipation of its coming revelry.”
        What about you? How would you express your similar longing? —Ken Sehested

¶ Distracted walking. A 17 June report issued by the National Safety Council (NSC) claims there were an estimated 11,101 injuries reported between 2001 and 2011 as a result of “distracted walking.” The NSC also reports that 1.6 million car crashes occur annually as a result of cell phone use, and one out of every four car accidents in the US is caused by texting while driving. View the short video, “When Texting While Walking Goes Wrong—Funny Accidents and Falls.”

¶ Call to the table. “Mexican-American theologian Virgilio Elizondo highlights the importance of fiestas” for people in Latina/o cultures. (‘Elements for a Mexican American Mestizo Christology’ in Jesus in the Hispanic Community). “After recounting the oppression that these people have faced due to unjust systems. . . he describes that fiestas provide an opportunity to celebrate the most valuable elements in their present lives. . . .
        “But fiestas, Elizondo affirms, have also eschatological elements that are prophetic and represent a call to action. While these fiestas may be used in some settings as a sort of drug to pacify the people, a true fiesta is a celebration of a new future in God. ‘In these fiestas, we rise above our daily living experiences of death to experience life beyond death. . . .  Fiesta is a foretaste and experience, even if for a brief moment, of the ultimate accomplishment (eschatological banquet).’”  —Nora O. Lozano, “A Summer of Baptist Fiestas, Baptist News Global

Art (at right) ©Julie Lonneman

¶ Altar call. “There is no one to send, / not a clean hand nor a pure heart / on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, / a generation comforting ourselves with the notion / that we have come at an awkward time, / that our innocent fathers are all dead as if innocence had ever been / and our children busy and troubled, / and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready / having each of us chosen wrongly, / made a false start, failed, / yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, / and grown exhausted unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved. / But there is no one but us. / There never has been. —Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

¶ Benediction. “For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn’t know we needed and take us to places where we didn’t want to go.” —Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

• “Stranger & Aliens: A collection of biblical texts regarding the fate of immigrants”

• “Strangers we were,” a litany for worship inspired by Ephesians 2:11-12

• “You shall also love the stranger,” a litany for worship

• “Out of the House of Slavery: A Bible study on immigration”

• “Reflections on changes in US-Cuba Relations” by Stan Hastey

©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.