Monday, September 29, Hays, KS

Took a break near Vail to enjoy the view of the headwaters of the Colorado River. It's actually blue and clear.(Actually this picture should be after the one at Grand Junction, but I haven't mastered Blogspot yet)

This is one of the wonders I saw after a few miles down the highway. No wonder people love living in the wonderful State of Colorado. This was near Grand Junction.

I wasn't quite prepared for the smog I encountered when I came in to Denver.

During the midst of all this beautiful scenery I listened as congress argued and the stock market dove to a loss of 800 at one point.

I began to wonder if we should contact Queen Elizabeth and confess our inability to govern ourselves. Maybe she might be willing to take us back if we are contrite.

Can we survive as a nation until Obama can take over? Or will we be a cadaver country by then? I can only think that Barack's calm demenor will provide the reassurance that people are yearning for. Fortunately my TV gets the Rachael Maddow show and she and her commentators helped it all seem better - that and some readings from William Sloan Coffin. More tomorrow.

Sunday, September 28 - On the Road

Today I got out of the house around 10:00 a.m. Drove 750 miles. On the way found what must be the only Starbucks in Utah at St. George. I took a state highway, 89, for part of the trip through Utah and saw some some of the most beautiful country in America. It's amazing what one misses at 30,000 feet. At McDonalds (yeah, I know.....) the owner saw my Veterans for Obama button and insisted that the meal was on the house -- in Utah no less. Got the same response at the Holiday in Grand Junction, CO -- but no free room. It's off to bed.

Saturday, Sunday, Sept. 20-21 Camp Obama

I had received my acceptance for Camp Obama and looked forward to meeting a whole bunch of "fired-up-ready-to-go" people, and that is just what I found early Saturday morning at Camp Obama -- 352 of us in a Long Beach Teamsters union hall all shouting, "Yes we can, Yes we can, Yes we can."

Camp Obama is the training provided for Deputy Field Organizers who are sent out into the 16 or so battleground states. Most of my cohort were headed to Nevada, but some of us were going to be heading to Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio; I have been assigned to Akron, OH. Lately that number of battleground states has been slowly increasing.

We began Saturday morning by sharing our stories of what in our life led us to be involved in service. Just as an individual's story involves a plot line with challenges that confront him/her with choices for which there is no preparation, that is how we face life. We were asked to look at those times where there was an urgent need to pay attention to the unexpected challenges we had faced and the choices we made.

I found something strangely theological about this. By looking at those choice points in my life, I found myself looking at times of brokenness (sin?) wherein I was forced to make a decision where there were no certain answers. I was taken back to a time in my life as a young boy when I was confronted with racism in our neighborhood. I grew up in a community of privilege. My father was a dentist and we lived in a very nice neighborhood.

When I was in the fourth or fifth grade an African American family moved in down the street from us. Many of the boys in our block assembled around the moving van that morning eager to see who the new family might be, and better yet, if they had any boys old enough to fit in. I suspect that most of us had absolutely no idea of what it meant for this family to be black. This was just not in our social repertoire. But there were boys, and we did understand that. Especially if they could play ball. Toward the middle of the day the mother brought out cookies and milk and we slowly began to make friends.

Later the next week the family was gone, on vacation so we thought. What had really happened was that while they had been absent from their new home, someone had taken the garden hose and put it inside the upstairs window and turned on the water. I heard that it had run for two days before any one came by and noticed it. The family moved away. Not much was said directly around the dinner table, but I knew that something was really wrong. As we kids pieced together the real story from what our various families had shared, we came face to face the evil of race hatred.

It would come to bother me greatly that in our little neighborhood church ABSOLUTELY NOTHING was said about this injustice. Nobody there wanted to talk about it. I slowly began to spiritually and emotionally withdraw until I dropped out.

It would only be on a college group trip by campus church group to Nebraska where Dr. Martin Luther King was the main presenter that I began to have my conscience quickened. Three things happened that semester break. I met the woman on our bus trip out there who would be my wife of 43 years. I began to realize that the church is meant to be more than a social club -- that Christianity could actually be dangerous as well as transforming. And I knew that my calling in life was to be inextricably caught up in the lives of what Jesus called "the least of these." It would take me quite a few years to figure out what all this meant. And I'm still trying to get it right.

Politically, I came from a Republican household. My mother was the founding president of the Signal Hill Women's Republican Club. My dad touted the Republicans as the champions of small business. Early on, when Nixon ran against Kennedy, though I began as a Nixon campaign worker, I harbored a secret doubt that Kennedy might in fact be the better man. When Goldwater ran against Johnson, I as the editor of our campus faith group wrote an editorial blasting Goldwater as a warmonger and urging my fellow students as a faith decision to support Johnson. Later I found out that the poor campus minister took an awful lot of heat from some very conservative supporters of the ministry.

Later I have come see that many of the values I affirm as a person of faith are enshrined in the platform of the Democratic Party. As I studied history, FDR stood out as one who embodied the values of community, economic justice, and a government that supports the highest aspirations of its citizens.

In Camp Obama the telling of story is important as it enables others to know the wellsprings of our individual commitments. As we share our stories, we discover the story of us and the values underlying our commitment to this movement. We begin do discern how our stories also mesh with the values in Obama's story and the challenge of the "urgent now" confronting our nation in this election.

This idea of story encapsulates the method behind the slogan of our organizing work: "People centered, numbers driven."

The numbers reflect the reality of our commitment to this work. It is the tangible results of what we are doing. If you can't measure it or the effect of it, it probably isn't there, or it didn't happen. As an Episcopalian, the numbers represent a reality that is sacramental. In the reality I discern a grace beyond my understanding. For me that grace points to the actual presence of what Dr. King called the "Beloved Community." It is the truth that we do matter to each other. In my organizing work for Progressive Christians Uniting, I say that when Jesus said that all were invited to the table, he meant ALL. In a political way, I find that I need to be working to see that this ALL is fully embodied in our nation's promise. ALL! Without exception.

Tomorrow I crank over my Buick and head out to Akron.

More later on the road.

John

P.S. If any are interested in where I hang my hat go to: www.progressivechristiansuniting.org and http://www.allsaints-pas.org