Tag: Ken Sehested

Shoah

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Cloud of WitnessesLeave a comment

shoahFrom Ken Sehested of Prayer & Politiks:

Yom HaShoah (aka “Holocaust Remembrance Day,” more formally “Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day”) is observed one week after the end of Passover, this year beginning at sundown on Wednesday 15 April, the date linked to the anniversary of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Increasingly, the word Shoah (“calamity”) is preferred because holocaust has historical roots in the Hebrew word olah, meaning “completely burnt offering to God,” with the implication that Jews and other “undesirables” murdered by the Nazis during World War II were a sacrifice to God…

Sehested included this powerful quote from Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jew, Hillesum who died at age 29 in Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp, in 1943:

I have looked our destruction, our miserable end, straight in the eye and accepted it into my life, and my love of life has not been diminished. I am not bitter or rebellious, or in any way discouraged. . . . My life has been extended by death, by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death or refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich it.

The Real St. Valentine

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Cloud of Witnesses2 Comments

ValentineFrom Ken Sehested on his wonderfully illuminating Prayer & Politiks site. Subscribe to his weekly e-newsletter here.
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Every year, prior to Valentine’s Day (celebrated in a surprising number of countries), children in our church create homemade Valentine’s cards to send to inmates, observing St. Valentine’s Day as the occasion to remember those in prison. Here is a little background.

While the existence of St. Valentine is not in doubt—archeologists have unearthed a chapel built in his honor—reliable accounts of his life are scarce. Which is why, in 1969, the Vatican removed St. Valentine from its official list of feasts.
Continue reading “The Real St. Valentine” →

Advent Longing

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

light-in-the-darknessFrom author and activist Ken Sehested, a resident of the French Broad watershed of the Southern Appalachian Mountains in Asheville, NC. Ken just launched a subversively informative site called Prayer & Politiks:

Oh Wondrous One, Who rides the skies and consorts with the earth— haunting the heavens, hounding mere mortals with the expectation of ecstasy—come and rouse hungry hearts with the aroma of your Presence.

Let the song of angels sound again, announcing glory to God and peace for the earth.

Give your people wombs of welcome to the news of reversal: the annulment of enmity and the Advent of promise.

Let every lip echo the jubilant manifesto of creation’s destiny with justice and with joy.

Set our hearts on the edge of our seats, shivering in hope, longing, longing for the age when bitter memory dissolves into Magnificat.

Holy One of heaven, mark these dark nights with the brilliance of your star to guide emissaries of exclaiming grace.

The grace of contradiction and scandal to the insolent innkeepers of this age.

The grace of blessing and bounty to the indigent, and to all who find no lasting home save in the age to come.