Dear friends in Christ,

In today’s Bell and Tower, I share with you a bit of The Rev’d Ken Sehested’s writing from his website titled “Prayer & Politiks, at the intersection of spiritual formation and prophetic action.”

I do not personally know him, but since he lives in Asheville, NC, he can’t be all bad. His website offers another oasis for living and facing “such a time as this.”

Your fellow traveler,

—Richard

Excerpted from “Epiphany’s coup d’état” by Ken Sehested

We, of the majority caste, are largely innocents. By innocent I mean clueless about the way history has privileged some and impoverished others. If we are to move toward a future beyond the fatal consequence of our transgressions, we must lose our innocence. We have hard work to do, patient work, risky work, but worthy, inspiring, hopeful work.

Take a hand. Make your vow. Gird your loins. Declare an allegiance beyond the tip of your nose. Step over your contented threshold and out of your comfort zone. Prepare for turbulence, maybe threat. Make alliances across racial, class, cultural and national boundaries. Cultivate the kind of imagination needed to resist cultural conformity and nationalist fervor.

Nurture a faith rooted deeply enough to withstand inevitable seasons of drought and tempest. Brace yourself for Epiphany’s provocation, confounding the coronation of mammon protected by praetorian guards and backed by courts of infamy. Refuse seating at the tables Jesus flipped.

Be a conscientious objector to the rule of the market. Set your eyes on a horizon beyond every prognosticating fate. Never forget that history belongs to the interceding intercessors. Between the hammer of hope and the anvil of conviction the Spirit’s fire forges impossibility into re-possibility.

These are our disciplines, and sometimes they are arduous. But they are not imposed by a divine taskmaster. They are the overflow of joy, the product of ecstatic vision capable of tracing Creation’s promise, to Resurrection’s assurance, recollecting the Prophet’s assertion that wolf and lamb will lie shorn of threat and the Revelator’s conclusion that, one day, death will be no more.