Dissonance and the Hope of Harmony

A “dissonant day.” That’s what the Reverend Barbara Kay Lunblad, a Lutheran pastor who’s taught at Yale, Princeton and Union Theological Seminary, calls today – a “dissonant” day of clashing images, one “big and powerful, the other small and poor.”

This is a day like the chord you just heard, made up of notes that aren’t in harmony with one another. Christ the King Sunday tells part of the violent end-and-not-end of Christ’s story, just before we begin to tell the beginning of it, this Sunday before Advent.

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Vote for the Human Family

For the past two years, I’ve watched, with many others, the normalization of hate, fear, gun violence, dishonesty, racism, sexism; attacks on citizens voicing their conscience, attacks on the free press, on good journalists who make it their job to be sure truth is known.

I’ve watched this country step away from our stewardship of the world – our fellow humanity, and the environment that sustains us – rolling back environmental protections, demonizing refugees and admiring leaders who do not value the human rights and equality our country names as its values.

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