Clear Contrasts

I've not posted for quite awhile. Not sure why. I feel a bout of ambivalence and malaise setting in. Perhaps it's just the fall weather and I'm headed into hibernation season...anyway my apologies to readers that we have been silent at liberalpastor in burnsville blog.

As you know we live in Minnesota which we can now affectionately refer to as "the police state". A number of us from Liberalchurch in Burnsville went to Harriet Island in St. Paul on Thursday for the Peace Island Picnic. Harriet Island is across the Mississippi River from where the Republican National Convention was being held. It was a music-filled and friend-filled protest-without-a-march-event that was organized by a former U.S Senate candidate from MN and others. I will post separately a photo of the giant peace sign that was formed by those attending in the late afternoon along with a photo of some of us at Liberalchurch who had a table with information from the COB peace task force and the Mennonite Committee on war and conscience objection.

Well, the U.S. Presidential campaigns are now set in character and tone. The characters couldn't be more diverse and polarized from my prospective. In tone, both parties seem to be using the same message -- "change".

Yes, we need a change. Now, if only the U.S. voters will look past the rhetoric and get into what kinds of POLICIES these candidates are proposing to create change from our status quo.

I think perhaps the most disheartening moment for me this past week was when my 4th grader told me that several girls were asking her who her parents were going to vote for for President this year. When she gave her reply one little girl said to her, "Well if he's elected then the war will end and terrorists will return to the United States and we will have lock downs at our school all the time. "Just when you think that there is hope for the next generation you realize that by age 10 they have already been indoctrinated by their parents.

When I was 10 it was 1968. H.H.H. was running against R.M.N. There were 3 of us girls who were "gradeschool dems". One of us took the nickname Hubert, another Horatio, and I was Humphrey. We spent the last month of the election referring to each other by our nicknames.

As a parent, I try to do my best to impart my moral and ethical values to my children without taking away their own decision-making powers. However, upon hearing this story from my 9 year old (who turns 10 next month) I told her that she needs to find 2 other "gradeschool dems" in her 4th grade class and one of them can be nicknamed Barak, she should proudly take the middle name Hussein, and another little girl can be Obama. I know that there might be several girls who would be ready for this--not sure my daughter is however!