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 in all their varied shape and kind, is sometimes “like pulling a piano through a plowed field.”

Thinking on these things, I remembered an older poem written from my years as a stone mason, “Blistering hope.”

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Blistering Hope

A stonemason’s meditation on perseverance

When cutting capstone, carefully measured, from a larger block with nothing but hammer and chisel, you come to know the necessity of blister-raising toil to achieve envisioned result.

Continue reading “Blistering Hope” →

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 death of George Floyd was irreproachable. But history said otherwise, particularly given the massive loophole provided by the Supreme Court’s ruling granting “limited immunity” to law enforcement, for “breathing room to make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions.” https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/the-supreme-courts-message-on-police-misconduct-is-changing/618193/

Each Tuesday I perform taxi service, getting my granddaughter to and from her gymnastics team workout. I was grateful the news didn’t break until after dropping her off. That came as I pulled into the grocery store parking lot on the way home, to pick up an item for dinner.

Entering the store, it seemed I was the only one who knew that a rare moment in US history had been announced. If I were more of an extrovert, I might have shouted out a few exclamation points.

Continue reading “Breathing room” →

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 vision as spoken in ages past:

We remember when Hannah praised God by saying: The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength.

We dream of the day when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb. For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord.

We long for the day when all shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord.

Continue reading “Dr. King and the Constellating Light” →

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 median wealth of Black households is a tenth of that of whites;
• when yet another unarmed Black man is shot—in the back, seven times, while getting in his car where his children are sitting—by police;
• when polls show 57% of Republicans (along with 33% of Independents and 10% of Democrats) believe our nation’s COVID-19 death toll (many times greater than any other nation) is “acceptable”—despite ours being the wealthiest nation in recorded history, purportedly with the world’s most advanced health care system;
• when wildfires in California set yet another record in size and destructive infernos, and similar flames in the Amazon are on track to eclipse 2019’s record;
• when 30 million families lacked sufficient nutrition last week, yet the suicide rate among farmers—who provide our food—is five times greater than the national average;
• when the federal hourly minimum wage is $7.25 (lowest it’s been since the 1960s when adjusted for inflation), yet Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos earns approximately $8,961,187 per hour;
• not to mention a monarch aspirant in high office; and our oldest living president, Jimmy Carter, having
  described our political economy as “moving toward an oligarchy.”

Continue reading “Kindred, The News is Bleak” →

By Ken Sehested

I will likely be considered antiquated, maybe maniacal, even apoplectic when I say we in the US (with derivative outbreaks elsewhere) are under the spell of the demonic, of those who worship death’s malicious craving, specifically the sacrificial scalp of dissenters, of those who do not genuflect in its presence, of any and all who stand in the way of imperial designs, who claim authority to divide the world into makers and takers, to shape all reality in service to the ruthless pursuit of power’s conceit, arrogance being the elixir of indefinite, everlasting rule of the strong over the weak, the privileged over the disdained, the worthy over the maimed. Continue reading “You Corrupted Wisdom for the Sake of Splendor” →