By Ken Sehested Written in response to a friend’s agonizing note reporting on theharrowing violence unfolding in Ukraine We, from this distance and in our negligent comfort anddelinquent affluence, lack the ability to stretch our hands toyours to feel your shivers; to enlarge our hearts so that theybeat in rhythm with your sobs; to train …
By Ken Sehested Under the sway of Easter bunnies, chocolate binges, and spring fashion sales, Holy Week and Resurrection Morning observances have shed almost all connections to the volatile political events in Jerusalem leading up to Jesus’ “triumphal entry” into the city. The season of Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem was the fevered occasion of …
Continue reading Memory and Mandate: A Meditation on Maundy Thursday
By Ken Sehested Lent is when the ecstasy and the agony of life collide. Monday, 28 February, was the next-to-last-day of Mardi Gras, celebrated in the US along the Gulf Coast, New Orleans being its epicenter. As the sun was going down in New Orleans, the eve of “Fat Tuesday,” the party hardying prior to …
By Ken Sehested Recently I forwarded the social media link to an article detailing the ways religious piety was intertwined with the violent uprising at our nation’s capitol on 6 January 2021. My ever-thoughtful friend Susan responded with this question: “Scary. How is the best way to counter this descent into the same horrors as …
Continue reading Opportunities to Apply the Slight Weight of our Convictions
By Ken Sehested, the curator of Prayer & Politiks Given the quivering state of our body politic, assailed from every side, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to sustain hope by way of persevering toil. As Daniel Berrigan once noted, the struggle for justice, the pursuit of peace, the advocacy of human rights …
By Ken Sehested As I pulled out of our driveway, the NPR radio host said that the jury in the Derek Chauvin murder trial had reached a verdict and would be announced shortly. I immediately felt my stomach tighten and swallowed an inhaled “oh no.” Like most, I thought the evidence against him in the …
By Ken Sehested This past Sunday one of our members, Stan Wilson, offered the “call to the table” in our congregation’s zoom worship screen-gathering. He led with a suggestion that was equivalent, in my hearing, to a thunderclap. “How about for Lent this year we give up Donald Trump?” It was a table invitation (we …
By Ken Sehested “If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.” —Psalm 139:8 Blessed One, whose name we dare not speak, but of whosePresence we dare not remain silent, we stand before youwith hearts in shreds and hands frozen. We know that we creatures were made for praise andthanksgiving. We recognize that gratitude …
Continue reading Lamentation to Adulation: Every Psalmist’s Perilous Journey
By Ken Sehested Admiring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream is not the same as being captured by it. Too many find it possible to respect the man but relinquish the mission. It has become too easy to revere the dreamer but renege on the dream. So let us now recall the deep roots of that …
By Ken Sehested Kindred, the news is bleak. For we live in the valley of the shadow, when: the stock market reaches record-breaking levels in the midst of near-record-breaking rates of unemployment; when 1% of US citizens control $30 trillion of assets while the bottom half is saddled with more debts than assets; when the …
Radical Discipleship 