First Vote...and more

Early voting opened today and I got the privilege of accompanying my youngest daughter Calla as she cast her first vote in a presidential election. We discussed the local races and who we might vote for, and then traveled down to the Shriner's Hall down the street to stand in line with a bevy of folks most of whom were 20+ years my senior. The dear lady monitoring the election told me that she had worked the polls faithfully for the last 40 years and she had never seen this kind of turnout on the first day of early voting. She said that they had over 600 early voters at that location in the morning hours alone. Reports tonight were that over 32,000 folks voted early today in Austin alone. I remembered the day I cast my first vote in the 1972 election...and I voted for...gosh I hate admitting this...Richard Nixon. Oh well...

These days are full of firsts... If Obama wins we'll have our first African-American President. If McCain wins we'll have our first female Vice-President. If the Tampa Bay Rays defeat the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series we'll have the first team in major league baseball history go from being the worst team in baseball to the best in one year. If the Baylor Bears football team defeats the #1 ranked Texas Longhorns in three weeks it will be the end of the world as we know it.

But these are also exciting days for many more reasons than those obvious ones. Our economic woes, while they have been the cause of many financial and employment pains, may have forced us as a western society to think twice about the value of unchecked materialism. The unprecedented acceleration in the melting of the polar icecaps and the seeming constant barrage of hurricanes and tsunamis are forcing us to rethink man's abuse and neglect of the land and water that God has entrusted us to caretake. The institutional church has become ineffective and irrelevant as agents of transformation and change, and in the wake of its failure there has arisen an oft-criticized, but organically refreshing model of faith communities focusing on being loving expressions of the life and teaching of Jesus in the world. (This is not to say that there are not still many loving Catholic, Evangelical, and Mainline churches that are ministering faithfully) The Obama campaign has re-energized the involvement and passion of a young generation to the political issues of our world that is reminiscent of my generation's engagement in the 60's and 70's. I believe it is an exciting time to be alive!

Certainly there are problems... very serious problems in these days, but I believe that God is at work in ways that many of us have talked about for decades but probably honestly never thought we'd live to see. I'm glad Calla and I got to participate in a part of that together today. I believe in the Audacity of Hope...and that hope is bigger than Obama or any party. I believe.

Pling...Pling...

dg