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24 September 2015  •  No. 39

¶ Bees catch a break. “A federal court has overturned the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of sulfoxaflor, a pesticide linked to the mass die-off of honeybees that pollinate a third of the world’s food supply.”
        “Because the EPA’s decision to unconditionally register sulfoxaflor was based on flawed and limited data, we conclude that the unconditional approval was not supported by substantial evidence,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit panel wrote in its opinion. —Taylor Hill, “Bees Have Their Day in Court—and Win Big.” Photo at right by Shutterstock.

¶ Fast facts about honeybees.
        •Honeybees account for 80% of all insect pollination. Without such pollination, we would see a significant decrease in the yield of fruits and vegetables.
        •Bees collect 66 pounds of pollen per year, per hive.
        •Honey is the only insect-created food eaten by humans, and it is the only food that includes all the substances necessary to sustain life.
        •There is only one “queen” bee in each hive. She lays up to 2000 eggs per day.
        • All worker bees are female, but they are not able to reproduce.
        • A hive of bees will fly 90,000 miles, the equivalent of three orbits around the earth, to collect 1 kg of honey.
         View this fascinating video (3 minute) of the “honeybee dance”  For information on how to create a “bee garden” in your yard, see “Plant a Bee Garden—Create an oasis for bees and other pollinators.”

¶ Invocation. “Prayer is more than something I do. The longer I practice prayer, the more I think it is something that is always happening, like a radio wave that carries music through the air whether I tune in to it or not.” —Barbara Brown Taylor

¶ “[Phyllis Tickle, who died this week] showed me that age is just a number, that it’s possible to be BFFs with someone half your age or twice it. Kindred spirits are generation-agnostic. . . . And in these last months, Phyllis has been teaching me about one final, very important (and yet not so important), matter: death. Mainly, that it is nothing to be afraid of. Death is merely the next step, the next part of the journey toward the heart of God. —See more of Jana Riess’ tribute to Trible

¶ Another of this week’s obituaries is for legendary baseball player Yogi Berra, who is even more widely known for his mind-bending aphorisms (“Yogi-isms”), several of which made their way into common usage in the US. Below are four of my favorites. (See this USA Today article  for more.)
            •”It’s like déjà vu all over again.”
            • “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
            • “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
            • “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”

¶ In memory of one whose absence is still felt. "Absent now the countenance, the familiar / inflection, the identifiable measured / sound of steps, the scent of palm / and cheek. / Lungs, stilled. / But breathless?" —continue reading Ken’s Sehested’s poem, “Breathless”

¶ Call to worship. "I am in Poland every day, on the battlefields. I am with the hungry, with the ill-treated and the dying, every day. But I am also with the jasmine and with that piece of sky beyond my window." —Etty Hillesum, writing from a Nazi concentration camp in World War II

¶ Little Rock Nine anniversary. After weeks of resistance from Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, nine black students successfully enter Little Rock's Central High School on 25 September 1957 with protection from the National Guard and the 101st Airborne Division authorized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
        Here is a 3+ minutes video about the Little Rock Nine; and another 9+ minute video. —for more information see this profile of Daisy Bates, president of the Arkansas NAACP, who was instrumental in the Central High desegregation

¶ Mighty girl. “After 16-year-old Olivia Hallisey from Greenwich, Connecticut saw news reports of the devastation caused by last year's Ebola epidemic in West Africa, she became determined to find a way to help prevent the highly infectious and often fatal virus from spreading. In response, this inventive Mighty Girl has developed a new Ebola Assay Card which can be shipped and stored without refrigeration and detect Ebola in as little as 30 minutes.” —read the complete story

¶ Intercession. “I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic / and she said yes / I asked her if it was okay to be short / and she said it sure is / I asked her if I could wear nail polish / or not wear nail polish / and she said honey / she calls me that sometimes / she said you can do just exactly what you want to. . . .” —Kaylin Haught, “God Says Yes to Me.” Here  is a video rendition of the complete poem (3+ minutes).

¶ Does your liturgy ever allow time for this kind of prayer?

¶ Another student initiative. “Columbia University has become the first college in the US to divest from private prison companies, following a student activist campaign. The Ivy League school—with boasts a roughly $9 billion endowment—will sell its shares in G4S, the world's largest private security firm, as well its shares in the Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison company in the United states.” —“Columbia Becomes First US University to Divest From Prisons” (Thanks, Rick.)

¶ Grateful praise. “When there was no ear to hear /  You sang to me. . . / When there were no strings to play / You played to me. . . / When I had no wings to fly / You flew to me. . . / When there was no dream of mine / You dreamed of me.” —“Attics of My Life,” Grateful Dead

¶ Confession. "To the Blessed One of Heaven does my heart heave its burden. / For release from my shame, I wait all the day long. / Silence accusers; still every sharp tongue. / For pardon amid failure, I wait all the day long." —continue reading Ken Sehested’s “All the day long” litany inspired by Psalm 25

¶ Hymn of assurance. “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go,” an cappella jazz arranged and sung by Sam Robson

¶ Emmy Award history. “In my mind I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me over that line. But I can’t seem to get there no how. I can’t seem to get over that line.” —Viola Davis, first black woman to win the best actress in a drama category, in her award acceptance speech, quoting Harriet Tubman, the 19th century abolitionist who rescued dozens of slaves, then struggled for women’s voting rights after the Civil War. In her acceptance speech, Davis went on to say that “The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity.”

¶ Hymn of praise. “Nearer My God to Thee,” beautiful arrangement by James L. Stevens, sung by Brigham Young University Men’s Chorus

¶ Today, one in five amputees in the world lives in Sierra Leone, the tragic consequence of the 1991-2002 civil war. “Amputee football is one of the few ways those affected can bond and transcend the war’s trauma. Watch this 47-second clip from “The Flying Stars,” an inspiring documentary from Al Jazeerz that brings world issues into focus through compelling human stories.

¶ “Free” enterprise, aka, the depths to which the language of freedom has sunk. “This isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients, it is us trying to stay in business,” Martin Shkreli, former hedge fund manager turned pharmaceutical mogul, after buying the rights to a 62-year-old drug used for treating life-threatening parasitic infections and increasing the price overnight from $13.50 to $750. Several years ago, prior to being bought by different pharmaceutical companies several times, the drug cost $1.00 per tablet. —Tom Boggioni

¶ In San Francisco, a billboard for an e-trading firm proclaimed, “Make love not war,” and then—down at the bottom—“Screw it, just make money.” —Barbara Enrenreich

¶ The Bible uses a variety of words to denote the reality of “sin.” Maybe the best English synonym is “cluelessness”—as when Martin Shkreli (see above) responds to complaints with “It really doesn’t make sense to get any criticism for this.”

¶ Can Iran be trusted? The better question is: Can we be trusted, given our national insecurities? How else to explain the case of Ahmed Mohamed (handcuffed, at left), the 14-year-old smart brown kid in Irving, Texas arrested when he created an ingenious homemade clock that school officials and police figured must be a bomb?

¶ The axial moment in the Jewish Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) confessional liturgy are the dozens of lines that begin with Al cheit (“for the sins of. . . .”). The range of sins, from minor to mortal, is significant.
            But one in particular is “Al cheit shechatanu lefanekha betimhon levav,” which is best translated as, “For the sin that we have committed before you through confusion of heart and mind.” (Levav is Hebrew for heart, but in traditional Jewish culture the heart was considered the seat of reason as well as emotion.) —Mark Silk, “Why Yom Kippur calls us to repent for confusion,” where he challenges the opposition to the nuclear arms agreement with Iran by major Jewish leadership organizations in the US

¶ Last week’s prayer&politiks post featured “Days of awe and Meccan pilgrimage: Reflections on the confluence of Jewish and Islamic holy days.” Here’s another reflection—“A rabbi and an imam: The story of Isaac and Ishmael can be a source of hope”—on the same subject.

¶ “The World’s in a Bad Condition” (when politicians, bankers and preachers are on the make), by bluesmen Dave Alvin and Phil Alvin. Here is the original 1939 version of the song by the Golden Gate Jubilee Quarter.

¶ Preach it. "As believers we have parallel callings, distinct in their performance but woven together in their origins and growth. There is the call to sacrificial engagement with the world’s pain; and there is the call to relax into the confident quiet and stillness of the abiding presence of God. Their rhythm has its own ecology, its own alternating impulses, its own distinctive and mutually-reinforcing requirements and disciplines." —from Ken Sehested’s “Remembering the Future: Bright with Eden’s dawn,” a sermon for World Communion Sunday

¶ Just for fun. Comedic lip syncing of Patsy Cline’s classic, “She’s Got You.”

¶ Altar call. "We learn some things to know them; others, to do them.” —St. Augustine

¶ Lection for Sunday next. “Remembering the Future: Bright with Eden’s dawn," a sermon for World Communion Sunday.

¶ Benediction. “God be in my head,  / And in my understanding;  / God be in mine eyes,  / And in my looking;  / God be in my mouth,  / And in my speaking;  / God be in my heart,  / And in my thinking;  / God be at mine end,  / And at my departing." —Henry Walford Davies, from the “Sarum Primer, 1558,” sung by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

• “All the day long,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 25

• “Remembering the Future: Bright with Eden’s dawn,” a sermon for World Communion Sunday

• “Breathless: In memory of one whose absence is still felt,” a poem on the anniversary of a friend’s passing

©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

17 September 2015  •  No. 38

¶ Amazing grace. A Turkish bride and groom decided to share their joy on their wedding day by inviting 4,000 Syrian refugees to eat with them and celebrate in the southern Turkish city of Kilis. Fethullah Üzümcüoğlu and Esra Polat (at right), who got married in the province which is near the Syrian border last week, invited some of those refugees who have fled the country since the civil war which began four years ago. "We thought that on such a happy day, we would share the wedding party with our Syrian brothers and sisters.” —Raziye Akkoc, “Meet the Turkish couple who spent their wedding day feeding 4,000 Syrian refugees”

¶ Invocation. “Early in the morning we rise to greet You, O Gun Almighty. With all due reverence we bow before You. You alone are great. Mighty are Your deeds. Awesome is Your power. There is no one like You. In You do we place our trust.” —Read the entire “Let us all now pray to the Almighty Gun” prayer by David Gushee

¶ Call to worship. “Rosh Hashanah Rock Anthem,” (not your granddaddy's Rosh Hashanah)

¶ Intercession. “As For Me, My Prayer is for You” —Afro-Semitic jazz, by David Chevan with Frank London and the Afro-Semitic Experience, from “The Days of Awe: Meditations for Selichot, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur

¶ My lectionary imagination jumped the rails, enamored by this month’s confluence of Jewish and Islamic holy days. For Jews the ten “Days of Awe” began with Rosh Hashanah this past Sunday at dusk, stretching through next Wednesday’s Yom Kippur observance. For Muslims the annual pilgrimage to Mecca—“Hajj,” one of the five “pillars” of Islam, taking place this year from 21-26 September (calculated, as with Jewish holidays, by distinctive lunar calendars)—is expected to draw well over 2 million people from 188 countries. (Continue reading Ken Sehested’s essay, “Days of awe and Meccan pilgrimage.”)

¶ Interfaith collaboration. “Advocates for Syrian refugee resettlement found unexpected allies as major Jewish groups have called on President Obama to open America’s gates to 100,000 asylum seekers from the war-torn Arab nation. The American Jewish resettlement agency HIAS has launched a petition drive calling on Obama to resettle 100,000 Syrians in the U.S., and Reform rabbis pledged to make refugee assistance a key theme for High Holiday sermons and congregational activism.”
        Thus far the US has admitted 1,500 Syrian refugees since the start of that country’s civil war in 2011. Last week President Obama pledged to up that number of 10,000. —Jacob Wirtschafter, “US advocates for Syrian resettlement find unexpected allies"

¶ Hymn of praise. Islamic “Call to prayer” —Adhaan by Ahmad Al-Nafees

“The Knotted Gun” sculpture (right), in front of the United Nations building in New York. The artist, Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, created the sculpture as a response to the killing of his friend John Lennon. It was donated to the UN in 1988 by the government of Luxembourg.

¶ Call to confession. “Lord Have Mercy” —North Mississippi Allstars

¶ Words of assurance. “The terror of God is the Risen One’s threat / to every merchant of death, every marketer’s breath, / every peddler of gun-wielding promise of power.” (Read Ken Sehested’s litany for worship, “The payback of Heaven.”)

 ¶ Muhammad, the Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “He who unfairly treats a non-Muslim who keeps a peace treaty with Muslims, or undermines his rights or burdens him beyond his capacity, or takes something from him without his consent; then I am his opponent on the Day of Judgment.” (Abu Dawud)

¶ Can’t make this sh*t up. A company in Florida is selling a “Christian” AR-15 assault rifle with a Crusader’s cross etched on one side and Psalm 144:1 on the other: "Blessed be the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle." Named “The Crusader,” the gun also features a three setting trigger control labeled Peace, War, and God Wills It. —Henry Pierson Curtis, “Assault rifle with Bible verse to repel Muslim terrorists unveiled in Apopka”

¶ “We’re now averaging more than one mass shooting per day in 2015 (in the US).”  In the first 238 days of 2015, there were 247 mass shootings in the US—a “mass” shooting defined as 4+ victims. —Christopher Ingraham

¶ Stunning stat. US military deaths since 1999: 5,273. Veteran suicides since 1999: 128,480.

¶ “In retrospect [the massacre of school children and teachers at] Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.” —Dan Hodges, news commentator, in a 19 June 2015 tweet

¶ “Problem is, gun owners’ interests are represented . . . by the National Rifle Association, an extremist gang. . . . So long as the NRA has such an outsized voice in this debate, so long as politicians, unencumbered by conscience or vertebrae, tremble to its call, and so long as many of us are silent and supine in the face of that obscenity, Hodges is right.” —Leonard Pitts, “Even the murder of children is ‘bearable’”
 
 ¶ “The untold story of mass shootings in America is one of domestic violence. It is one of men (yes, mostly men) targeting and killing their wives or ex-girlfriends or families. The victims are intimately familiar to the shooters, not random strangers.” —Melissa Jeltsen, “We’re Missing the Big Picture On Mass Shootings: Most take place inside the home”

¶ Exceptional. “The United States, according to [University of Alabama criminal justice professor Adam] Lankford’s analysis, is home to just 5% of the world’s people but 31% of its public mass shooters. Even more stunning, between 1966 and 2012, 62% of all school and workplace shooters were American.” —Sarah Kaplan, “American exceptionalism and the ‘exceptionallly American’ problem of mass shootings”

¶ “Last week a police officer in London shot and killed a man. It was the first fatal shooting by British police since 2011. Police officers in the US have killed 776 people thus far this year.” —Lauren McCauley, “UK Killing by Police Underscores Depth of Crisis in US”

¶ A new study from researchers at Harvard University obliterates nearly every single National Rifle Association talking point about guns. Not only do more guns not equal less crime, but the study shows that more guns equals more crime, including more firearm robberies, firearm assaults, and homicides by firearm. —Randa Morris, “New Harvard Study Obliterates Every Single NRA Lie About Guns”

¶ The US has 4.4 of the world’s population but almost half of the privately-owned guns. Developed countries with more privately-owned guns have more gun homicides; states in the US with more guns have more gun homicides and more gun suicides. These and a host of other facts, along with visual maps and charts, can be found at “Gun violence in America, in 17 maps and charts.” —German Lopez, Vox

¶ Preach it. “Take Up Your Glock and Follow Me: Whatever Happened to Martyrdom?”  —Rev. Mark Reynolds, Shepherd’s Community United Methodist Church, Lakeland, Florida

¶ ”In the immediate aftermath of the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, the US House of Representatives 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.” —National Public Radio

¶ News you probably didn’t hear. Following this summer’s protests against police brutality, Congress approved legislation requiring local law enforcement agencies to report every police shooting and other death at their hands. —Matt Connolly, “While No One Was Looking”

¶ A few quotes on guns.
        •"If in the first act you introduce a gun, by the third act you have to use it." —Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright
        •“There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.” —then-California Governor Ronald Reagan, 1967
        •“I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.” —National Rifle Association President Karl Frederick, 1934
        •"More Americans have died from guns in the United States since 1968 than on battlefields of all the wars in American history." —Nicholas Kristof, Thursday 27 August 2015, New York Times
        •”More people in this country kill themselves with guns than with all other intentional means combined.” —“Guns and Suicide: The Hidden Toll,” Harvard School of Health report

¶ The Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” —Former US Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Berger, quoted by former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, “The five extra words that can fix the Second Amendment”

¶ The Second Amendment’s provision of “the right to keep and bear arms” is a subordinate (dependent) clause governed by the main (independent) clause about the need to maintain “a well regulated militia.”
        And what did “militia” mean to the framers of the Constitution? Article 6 of the Articles of Confederation had required that: “every state shall always keep up a well regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of field pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage.” —for more information, see Navy Vet Terp, “The Second Amendment Has Nothing to Do with Gun Ownership”

¶ Call to the Table. Wouldn’t you love to come to the communion table singing “La Bamba”?
      English translation: “In order to dance The Bamba / You need a little bit of grace / For me, for you, higher and higher. . . . / By you I will be.”
       —“La Bamba,” a Mexican folk song from Vera Cruz, Mexico (made famous in the US by Ritchie Valens—it’s the only non-English language song on The Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time), is played and sung here by an international cast of musicians. Created by playingforchange.org.

¶ Altar call. “Mama said the pistol is the Devil’s right hand.”  —Johnny Cash performing Steve Earle’s song, “The Devil’s Right Hand.”

¶ “I tried to domesticate the bullet, / To lead her to the truth, / To wash her copper with perfumes / And replace her gun powder with sweets. / But she refused to be unlocked, / And remained dripping pus, / With poison in her breath.” —“The Bullet,” poem by anonymous Iraqi soldier

¶ Benediction. “So what I’m suggesting is that while we forge resilience about the inevitable betrayals ahead of us, try to forget that sinking feeling when you first heard the lies, misrepresentations, or tragedies of 2015. . . . Resist the notion that that’s all the world is—a series of awakenings to harsh truths. Notice instead that for every disappointment or cataclysm, there was an opening for a reaction that surprises.” —Read Abigail Hastings inaugural post on the prayer&politiks site, “The Summer of Betrayal: A roundup of things best forgotten”

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

• “Days of awe and Meccan pilgrimage: Reflections on the confluence of Jewish and Islamic holy days”

• “The Summer of Betrayal: A roundup of things best forgotten,” by Abigail Hastings

• “Speak out clearly, pay up personally: The purpose, promise, and peril of interfaith engagement,” by Ken Sehested, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, and Muslim chaplain Rabia Terri Harris. Excerpted from Peace Primer II: Quotes from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Scripture & Tradition, published by the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America

• “The payback of Heaven,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 103

©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.

10 September 2015  •  No. 37

¶ In praise of a life fully and well lived. Amelia Boynton Robinson, who led voting drives and ran for Congress as a civil rights activist in Alabama, and whose severe beating by police during the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” confrontation at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., shocked the nation, died 26 August at a hospital in Montgomery, Ala. She was 104. This past March she again crossed the Pettus Bridge, in a wheelchair and holding hands with President Obama, on the 50th anniversary of that historic event. —See Andrea Germanos, “Crusader, Warrior, Fighter for Justice, Civil Rights Icon Amelia Boynton Robinson Dead at 104”

¶ Invocation. “So come on darling, feel your spirits rise; come on children, open up your eyes; God is all around, Buddha’s at the gate, Allah hears your prayers, it’s not too late.” —Mary Chapin Carpenter, “Why Shouldn’t We?”

¶ Call to worship. “Oh, a storm is threat'ning / My very life today / If I don't get some shelter / Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away / War, children, it's just a shot away / It's just a shot away / War, children, it's just a shot away / It's just a shot away.” —“Gimme Shelter,” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, performed here by a global cast, arranged by the creative folk at playingforchange.com

¶ Along with many of you I’ve been haunted of late by a single photograph, of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, from Syria, lying in the surf of a Turkish beach, lifeless, having drowned along with his brother and mother while attempting to reach Greece on a rickety boat that capsized. His body looks serene, very much like those of my own babies and grandbabies when fast asleep. Only Aylan is drenched, face down in the surf, a wave lapping at his head, breathless.
        Not since the 9-year-old Vietnamese girl Phan Thị Kim Phúc was photographed running naked on a road, fleeing a napalm bomb attack, has a single picture so galvanized the attention of the world.
        All week I’ve debated posting Aylan Kurdi’s photo (“Facebook Banned These Photos of Europe’s Refugee Crisis”). I think every emotionally stable person above the age of 12 should be subject to its savage disclosure. But that needs to be your choice, not mine.
        In its place is one (see above) of several artists’ renderings of those tragic deaths. —See Ryan Broderick, “17 Heartbreaking Cartoons From Artists All Over the World Mourning the Drowned Syrian Boy"

¶ “The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ annual “Global Trends Report: World at War,” released on Thursday (June 18), said that worldwide displacement was at the highest level ever recorded. It said the number of people forcibly displaced at the end of 2014 had risen to a staggering 59.5 million compared to 51.2 million a year earlier and 37.5 million a decade ago.

The Yarmouk refugee camp for Palestinians, in Damascus, in 2014. (United Nation Relief and Works Agency/Getty Images)

        “The increase represents the biggest leap ever seen in a single year. Moreover, the report said the situation was likely to worsen still further.
        “Globally, one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum. If this were the population of a country, it would be the world's 24th biggest.” —“Worldwide displacement hits all-time high as war and persecution increase”

¶ “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” —anonymous

¶ Praise be. Beauty in a factorified world: Ballerina Allesandra Ferri accompanied by Sting, from El Sentido de la Musica Community.

¶ Some additional notes about the current refugee crisis:
        •The United National High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 2,500 people have died just this summer while attempting to cross the Mediterranean in rickety boats.
        •This unfolding tragedy is the worst refugee crisis since World War II.
        •Nearly 60% of Syria’s pre-war population of 20 million have been displaced within the country or have fled the country.
        •Many wealthy allies of the US in the Middle East—including Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait Quatar and Bahrain—have taken few if any refugees.
        •Altogether over the past four years the US has spent $4 billion assisting refugees in the Middle East, mostly in humanitarian aid grants to Syria’s neighboring countries struggling to copy with Syrian refugees. The Pentagon has spent about the same amount in the last year bombing ISIS positions in northern Iraq and Syria.
        • See the entire list of nations’ contributions to the UN refugee fund.

¶ Hungary is building a $35 million fence along it’s 175 km (108 miles) border with Serbia to stem the flow of refugees. This week Israel announced it would do the same along its border with Jordan, which has already taken in 1.4 million Syrian refugees in the past four years.

¶ Call to confession. “Why do we build the wall, my children, my children” —Anaïs Mitchell, performed by Greg Grown

“Kein mensch ist illegal” (“no human being is illegal”) by Rafael Swiniarski

¶ “I can't stop thinking about that little boy, dead on a beach in Turkey. Just last week, I was playing with my kids, who are the same ages as Aylan and his brother, Galip, on a beach. No one was scared. Everyone was, very much, very blessedly, alive.
        “My three-year-old looked over my shoulder while I was working on a post about the image of Aylan today. ‘What did they do to that boy?’ she said.
        “And I could hardly answer her. All I could tell her was that she was lucky that she was born in a place where there wasn't a war going on, but that there had been a war in his country for his whole life, and that he died trying to escape it.
        “And then we were all quiet for a while.” —Alisha Huber on FaceBook

¶ Hopeful notes.
        •Sweden was the first EU country to take in Syrian refugees, back in 2012, and ranks highest in the number admitted as a proportion of population.

Vienna, Austria. 1 September 2015 — A banner is held up by a group welcoming refugees arriving from Syria and Afghanistan at Vienna Railway Station where they plan to stay overnight en route to Germany. Photo by Martin Juen. Copyright Demotix.

        •Germany has just announced a $6.6 billion appropriation to care for the 800,000 refugees it has admitted. Watch this 2-minute video of Germany citizens welcoming refugees.
        •”Hundreds of Austrians and Germans Turn Out to Welcome Refugees Arriving From Hungary”
        •In Iceland a 13,000 member Facebook group is calling on its government to increase its Syrian refugee resettlement commitment from 50 to 5,000. The latter number is more than 1.5% of the country’s population of 323,000. If the US admitted that percentage, the total number would be nearly a half million—but the actual number is currently about 1,434. The US has pledged to resettle between 5,000 and 8,000 by the end of 2016.
        • This past Sunday Pope Francis, speaking to pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, called on “every parish, religious community, monastery and sanctuary to take in one refugee family.”

¶ “no one leaves home unless / home is the mouth of a shark. . . / no one puts their children in a boat / unless the water is safer than the land . . . / no one would leave home / unless home chased you to the shore / unless home told you / to quicken your legs / leave your clothes behind / crawl through the desert / wade through the oceans” —“No One Leaves Home,” Warsan Shire, Kenyan-born Somali poet, writer and educator based in London

¶ Serious yogurt. Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of Chobani, the popular Greek-style Yogurt, has pledged $700 million for humanitarian aid  to refugees, especially for fellow Kurds in northern Iraq and Syria.

¶ For more background, see the relief agency MercyCorps’ “Quick facts: What you need to know about the Syrian crisis”

¶ This series of cartoons by Alisha Huber brilliantly summarizes the origins of the 5-year-old war in Syria. (Thanks, Betsy.)

¶ “5 Ways to Stand Up and Be the Church in the World’s Worst Refugee Crisis Since World War II.”

¶ “For years, the European Union kept refugees out of sight and out of mind by paying Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi's government to intercept and turn back migrants that were heading for Europe. Gadhafi was something like Europe's bouncer, helping to bar refugees and other migrants from across Africa. His methods were terrible: Libya imprisoned migrants in camps where rape and torture were widespread. But Europe was happy to have someone else worrying about the problem. When Libya's uprising and Western airstrikes ousted Gadhafi in 2011, Libya collapsed into chaos.” —Max Fisher and Amanda Taub, “The refugee crisis: 9 questions you were too embarrassed to ask”

¶ “Those who died in war were better off than those who died later, who starved slowly to death, with no food to keep them alive.” —Lamentations 4:9

¶ The gospel of our times. “In San Francisco, a billboard for an e-trading firm proclaimed, ‘Make love not war,’ and then—down at the bottom—‘Screw it, just make money.’” —Barbara Enrenreich

¶ Preach it. “There is no respectable Christian argument for fortress Europe, surrounded by a new iron curtain of razor wire to keep poor, dark-skinned people out. Indeed, the moral framework that our prime minister so frequently references . . . is crystal clear about the absolute priority of our obligation to refugees. For the moral imagination of the Hebrew scriptures was determined by a battered refugee people, fleeing political oppression in north Africa, and seeking a new life for themselves safe from violence and poverty.” —Giles Fraser, "Christian politicians won’t say it, but the Bible is clear: let the refugees in, every last one," British priest and contributor to The Guardian

¶ Lection for Sunday next. Ancient economic analysis of the roots of war: “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts.” —James 4:1-2

¶ For the savvy investor, conflict can be profitable. “Let’s paint a picture of the world right now,” Epstein says. “You’ve got the Europeans worried about what the Russians are doing in their backyard; we’ve got our hands full right now in Iraq; you’ve got the Israelis with their hands full in their region; and then you have the Chinese and Japanese in the South China Sea. As an investor [in the defense industry], with this much regional conflict in the world . . . that can’t be bad.” —Bank of America analyst Ronald Epstein in Tory Newmyer, “The war on ISIS already has a winner: The defense industry”

¶ Just for fun. Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash sing “Girl From the North Country”

¶ 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 / When I held my head too high too proud / My Lord did trouble me / When I raised my voice too little too loud / My Lord did trouble me?" —“Did Trouble Me,” Susan Werner

¶ Benediction. “Total Praise” by Richard Smallwood.

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

• “We Shall Not Be Moved,” a litany inspired by Psalm 1

•”Multiply Their Presence,” a litany inspired by Psalm 1

•”Bound to this freedom,” a litany inspired by Psalm 1

•”Reversal of fortunes: What if schools enjoyed pork-barrel largesse and the military depended on corporate charity?”

•”In the valley of the shadow: Reflections on the trauma of 11 September 2001”

•”Our job is not to end war: A collection of texts on war”

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

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