Thursday, February 14, 2008

"YES WE CAN"

Nobody needs to prove that there is a ton of bad news around these days. There have been times when I have turned off the evening news within two minutes after turning it on. Eight years of very bad stuff, disasters piled on disasters, a national belligerency that has soured most of the world, the attempt to legitimize torture, an approaching ecological catastrophy that is unmet because even to address it will cost a bunch of fat cats--and the rest of us--real money. And who wants to save the world of tomorrow if money is to be made today? I have a great deal of sympathy with the man who said, "All my life they called me a pessimist, but they were wrong. Things are turning far worse than I predicted." There is plenty to lament about.

BUT---BUT---BUT something is happening all over the nation that has been unexpected by those of us who have been around for a few decades. There is a new generation which is not ready to settle for the rot. If this earthquake has coalesced around a new political hero, the dynamic goes far deeper than Senator Obama. It is a shaking far down in the soul of America, a rumbling, a new rhythm which pulses in the heart 0f a new generation. If you have not yet tuned in to U-Tube's bit called "YES WE CAN," do it! Young people are shaking things up, and those of us who want to find a slice of hope can see and hear it.

For years we have heard that that students are interested in nothing more than getting through school so they can cash in on American's riches. They just want to make money, and resist anyone or anything that gets in their way. If that might have been true as short time as three years go, the rumbling is increasingly clear that the well-documented selfishness is being called into question.

My prejudice has convinced me that much of the mature thinking lies with liberals, but there are a number of conservatives I listen to with great appreciation. One of them is David Gergan. I heard him speak the other evening at a nearby college. He described the earthquake that is profoundly moving a new generation of younger people--most in their early 20s. He is convinced that they are willing to give themselves, and a solid chunk of their lives, to fleshing out a new dream. He described hundred of recent college graduates who have taken a year or two to teach in neglected public schools--and some of them have stayed with it. They know that with privilege comes responsibility, and that affirmation, they realize, will cost them dearly.

Anderson Cooper has given significant public attention to the hundreds of young people who instead of wandering drunk on some southern beach, will be spending their Spring breaks building homes in New Orleans.

While they realize there are violent groups out there who would like to hurt us, these new visionaries know that while rogue terrorist can create occasional trouble for us, they cannot bring us down---but the ecological crisis can.

Gergan also maintained that this new generation is profoundly spiritual, not that they are religious--religion has most often let them down--but that they are looking for values other than how much they can consume and who can claw their way to the top.

Now, we who still cling to a liberal religious, church-centered world may want them to see that we have have been right all along, but my guess is we have squandered that opportunity. While we still try to discern whether or not we can fully accept homosexuals--and come to no conclusion lest some of our people be offended, they are no longer ready to baby-sit a church focused on its own survival. While we don't really want to talk about this ungodly war because we must hold together those who hate it and those who support it, they have found an ethic that no longer waits for us finish our prayers. If we do get them into one of our churches for a service or a program, they most often leave believing that we are more part of the problem than we are part of the answer.

When the public hears about Christians who babble about why it might be this and it might be that, these younger adults run in the other direction. We have nothing to say to them--or at least they think so. Much of American Christianity has been seduced by a political right-wing cabal, and the progressive church has been far too busy covering its own backside even to talk about it, let alone to take on the seducers and those who have been seduced.

I'm ready to watch the sunrise of hope and to support from the sidelines those who say "YES WE CAN" and are putting their lives on the line for that dream.

But that's just my opinion. Feel free to share yours. . . .

Charles Bayer
candwbayer@verizon.net