Reflections on the Year

I can't believe that 2009 is only three days away. 2008 was my first full year of blogging; it was also the year I discovered facebook, something I am ambivalent about. The year held its share of ambivalent moments, as well as memorable times and disappointments. Here are a few:

Memorable:
1. We'll always have Paris. Even though we were there only three days, the trip was worth every moment, from the first-class seating on the trip over, to the little Parisian hotel 5 minutes from the Louvre, to Notre Dame Cathedral, sidewalk cafes and the Seine.
2. This year I embarked on a journey to organize people in my congregation around the issue of education. We organized a community forum in September; we're still working on our next steps. It's challenging, but I believe that we are on the threshold of some good possibilities for becoming a church that really lives the gospel.
3. The Festival of Homiletics in my town in May. I got to meet a lot of Revgals and hear a lot of good preaching. I don't think I can go next year, but I'm sure I'll put it on my regular agenda to go from now on.
4. I took some risks in posts about community organizing, immigration and racism.
5. I started therapy.

Disappointing:
1. I did not read as much as I would have liked to.
2. I haven't gotten anything published yet. Clearly, I need some sort of writing group, and to develop goals.
3. Scout "flunked" agility.
4. I didn't get and implement a creative and/or brilliant new ministry idea this year. I still think I need to take more risks.
5. Two dog-friends died this year. I was very attached to them.
6. I have been having trouble keeping up with the blogs lately.

Ambivalent:
1. facebook. On the one hand, I have gotten in touch with people I haven't seen in years. On the other hand, it is a huge black hole and waste of time sometimes.
2. The financial situation at the church. On the one hand, it's a scary budget deficit. On the other hand, the situation contains possibilities for our congregation to begin to be honest about what it means to be a faithful community of disciples of Jesus at this time and in this place.
3. Though I took risks in my writing, I still think I need to be bolder in what I write -- without compromising others' privacy or anonymity, of course.
4. I have not posted so much about the "big events", whether tragedy or success: Mumbai, flooding in Iowa, the election, housing and economic crisis. I'm not sure what I think about that.

So: what are your high and low points of the year? What are you ambivalent about?

I'm considering linking to what I consider to me my top ten posts of the year....

It's been a quiet week in Minneapolis....

.... even though right next door there have been speeches, celebrations and protests. You wouldn't know it at our house, where we have barely turned the TV dial from the baseball station, watching the Twins lose every night. Pick your poison.

It's a far cry from 1968, when I stayed with my grandparents down in Jackson, Minnesota, and watched the whole Republican convention on television, with my grandfather's running commentary about how Nixon was a good guy because he did not grow up rich, like those Kennedys. (My grandfather also said that "Voting for Roosevelt was the worst mistake I ever made." He would say that and then, a little later, tell us that he was going "down to the co-op for a while." When I got older, that confused me.)

It's not that I don't care about politics. Although there are many political viewpoints (and now, even religious viewpoints) in my family, and we have learned to love each other, mostly, anyway.

And it's not that I don't care who becomes President.

But I worry that, for many people, voting has become their only act of civic participation. And of course, a lot of people don't even vote.

So, I was saddened and disturbed by what I heard about the derogatory comments about community organizers last night. One of the things that community organizers do is teach people how to participate effectively in their community, for social change -- for themselves.

I know a little about organizing, as I have received some training from The Gamaliel Foundation. One thing I find refreshing is that organizing challenges both liberal and conservative orthodoxies. It's not about hand-outs, or about rescuing poor people, but about empowering people to act for their own good. And it's not about "rugged individualism" or bootstraps, but about acting together for a common cause.

I found this article by a real live organizer ting inspiring and enlightening.

I'd also like to recommend (at least to Minnesotans) the book The Citizen Solution, by Harry Boyte. It's published by Minnesota Historical Society Press. I may post more about it later.

Finally, as all of the Conventions and all of the speeches fade from our view, and we get back into the pre-election groove of hearing all of the negative advertising, I would like to direct you to this helpful non-partisan truth-o-meter. (yep, they all do it...)

Now, I think I'll head down to the co-op for a little while....

Turnout

My evening began with the voice of one young man, rapping about his identity as a child of God and his experience of racism, and calling out periodically, "If not us, THEN WHO?" He walked up and down the center aisle of an inner city church, filled with Lutherans and Catholics and Baptists and Episcopalians and Methodists, Hispanics, African Americans, Asians and Anglo Christians. "If not us," he repeated, "THEN WHO?"

The question sticks with me. If not us, then who?

It's so easy to keep separate. I have many things on my mind, all the time: work, family, health, friends, the different pains others have confided, the little enrichments I have indulged in. All these take time, and are important. It's so easy to keep separate. But the question remains, If not us, then who?

I don't know how many people filled the church, people of faith, people of hope. Some people confessed their times of hopelessness, until they banded together to work for justice: in health care, in education, in living wage jobs, in housing. A Lutheran pastor cast a vision of a banquet table with room enough for all; an integrated Baptist choir sang Feast of the Lord and invited us to sing along, to come along, to eat at the banquet where there is room for all. The Pastor talked about the paralyzed man, and the friends who dared to mess with the roof of the house so that he could have a place at the banquet. "Do we dare to mess with the sytem?" "Yes!" we cried, together, and strong.

But it's so easy to keep separate. There are so many things to do, good things, and not enough people to do them.

The church was filled tonight, but there were many people who didn't come, who were invited. They weren't evil people, just busy people, with many things to do, things to juggle.

But some of us were there, and we know (or at least some of us know) (or at least we are beginning to know) that there is power, and there is hope in being together.

We are beginning to cast a vision for creating Healthy Communities, to dare to talk about Race and Justice, especially as it affects education among us.

I was in charge of "turnout" tonight. I called all the churches, and took their numbers, and encouraged them to not give up, and to keep calling and inviting their people to come. I didn't know, even at the last minute, whether the church would be full.

The church was full. And it was powerful.

Now we are used to saying that it doensn't matter how many come. "Wherever two or three are gathered" and all that. And that is true: wherever two or three are gathered, Jesus is present, doing his good work, softening hearts, strengthening the feeble knees and hands.

And yet: Turnout is important. Because some of us know, or are beginning to know, that there is power and there is hope in being together.

The hard work is still ahead. And of course, there are many ways through which we serve.

But "if not us, THEN WHO?"

Overheard...

In a conversation about people from rural South Dakota, where I used to serve:

Woman #1: They aren't ready for a woman president there.
Woman #2: They aren't ready for a black president either.
Woman #1: I hear he's Muslim, but he's not active in his faith.
Me: (Interjecting) He's not Muslim. His father is Kenyan, but he's not Muslim.
Woman #1: Well, he's not active.
Me: (Interjecting) Actually, he goes to the same church as Oprah Winfrey. He's a Christian.

Conversation with Brilliant Stepson #1, over birthday dinner:

Me: Let's ask Stepson. He's a young person.
Husband: What?
Me: We've been talking about Barack Obama. What do you think of him?
Stepson #1: I think he's going to be the next president of the United States.

***********

There's a lot of information, misinformation and general conversation going on out there about Barack Obama. (also, there are websites devoted to conversations about whether or not he is the Antichrist. I kid you not.) He has a fascinating story, which I think many people know: mother from Kansas and father from Kenya, he lived for a few years as a child in Indonesia. He was born and grew up mostly in Hawaii. He was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

For me, the most interesting part of his biography is the fact that he spent several years in Chicago as a community organizer. He trained with Gamaliel, a church-based community organizing group headquartered in Chicago, and worked under its founder Greg Galluzzo, a former Jesuit priest.

An interesting article in a book published by The Nation magazine calls him "The Agitator", and names Saul Alinsky (author of Rules for Radicals) as one of his "mentors", although they never met. (Alinsky would have been dead by then.) Church-based community organizing is called "church-based" because organizers recognize that in many poor communities, the church is one of the only places left where people gather. Community organizing is devoted to empowering communities of people for social change.

I was trained by Gamaliel organizers back in the fall of 2000. Even eight years later, I'm processing and learning from the experience. This is part of why I'm fascinated by Obama's story. Community organizing is deeply democratic. Listening is one of the valued skills. Developing people as leaders is also valued. (So is something called "agitation", which can be as scarey as it sounds. But, as organizers say and I have to keep reminding myself, nothing moves without friction.) I wonder if this is part of why he says, "We are the change we are waiting for." In community organizing, that is true. No one does it alone.

So, what do you think? I have to admit, that when I first heard about Saul Alinsky, I felt a little uneasy. He said things like "we should work within the system", and called himself a radical. It's hard to figure out what his final goal for society was. What kind of a system was he aiming for? (According to the essay above, he is was a "nonsocialist.") On the other hand, a fascinating article by Walter Wink called Jesus and Saul Alinsky, got me thinking about Jesus himself as a radical. And I heard that in 1969, Alinsky was awarded the Pacem in Terra Award, for his social justice work. (I wonder what he thought of that?)