Saturday, May 24, 2008

Wallflower Stay-in-the-Corner Kris Breaks Out!

I'm laughing at myself, suddenly realizing that over the course of the past year "Kris, the former mouse-in-the-corner" has boldly gone where few mice have gone before, proclaiming an inordinate interest in two of the most-controversial (and least-discussed-in-polite-company) topics: religion and politics!

This, from a person whose ethos is "Live and let live," "Don't make waves," "Do to others what you would have them do to you."

Eegads! Is it possible that I'm a peacemaker with a peacekeeper's agenda? hee hee hee (Not really.) Perhaps I'd better have my head examined! What'cha think?

I'm not a public, drop-of-the-hat "street evangelist" -- too frightening. While I love discussing the saving knowledge and power of Jesus Christ with the already-aware (sisters and brothers in Christ), I can be a real wuss when it comes to introducing the topic while out in the secular world. I think, "I'd hate it if someone came up to me and started yapping about their God." I still feel that way sometimes (depending on the denomination doing the yapping, since I know scripture well enough by now to know of so-called Christian denominations so "out there" as to be totally unbiblical). So I generally steer clear -- except when blogging (because people elect to come to blogs to read, ponder, and consider the topics in them).

And only recently have I become a political activist again (for the first time since 1972, which was the first time I could actually vote in an election). I was so bummed by the drubbing McGovern got against Richard Nixon in the '72 election, despite Nixon's obvious culpability in the Watergate scandal, that I slowly backed away from going out and campaigning hard for future candidates. McGovern won only one state (Massachusetts) -- and a parish in Louisiana where my fellow co-laborers in politics that year and I worked our hearts out to make sure he won. And I campaigned for him primarily because Bobby Kennedy (who had been assassinated four years earlier) had sincerely introduced McGovern once as, "the most decent man in the Senate --" and then had added, joking, "in fact, the only one!"

So it should come as no surprise that this year I've gone all out for Barack Obama. I'm a left-leaning conservative (as was RFK, contrary to public perception), feeling that we need to be sure that even the concerns of "the least of these" (in Christ's words -- the underrepresented poor, ill, lost, and multiply-challenged) are addressed and that ways are found to lift them up and make sure they are not left behind to suffer in our land and abroad. Only when every family can find work that sustains them and that blesses them and others can we say we are on the road Christ trod and wants us to be treading right along with him these days. While we "liberals" may sometimes lean over so far as to lose our balance in fighting for the rights and well-being of those less fortunate, it has been our efforts over the past forty years that has brought us to a time in our history when a black man can run for the highest office in the land and have some chance of actually getting it. While there is residual, deep-seated resentment of this fact in some folks more elderly and their impressionable progeny, I see great hope in knowing that the old way of thinking is definitely on its way out and that America's future will now rest in every hue and both genders of capable hands, hearts and minds.

A lot of folks are under the impression that if someone is religious, that automatically means ultra-conservative and Republican. A reading of God's Politics by Jim Wallis will quickly prove otherwise. I have SPIRIT 105.3 (a Christian radio station in the Seattle-Tacoma area) and Obama bumper stickers on my car. I'm sure more than a few people do a double-take when they see the two co-existing in peace and harmony on the fender! That's good, as long as they don't drive off the road and hit a tree or a pedestrian.

Christians come in all shapes, colors, sizes and political parties. And we talk to each other and disagree without coming to blows! Imagine that! ("By this shall they know you are My people -- by your love one for another.") (That might not be an exact quote of the scripture; I'm writing this off the top of my noggin.)

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Hot off the press! I just received an offer on my condo! It'll soon go into PENDING mode. WAHOO!

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