"say it ain't so, joe."


ugh.

this cute little quip came from sarah palin last night towards the end of the vice-presidential debate. the comment preceded her taking joe biden to task for the second or third time about "looking backwards" instead of to the future and the change that he and his principle were campaigning on. the comment and the sentiment struck me a couple different ways.

the first way was, "she has been sitting on that all night. good for you, finding a way to use it. now, how about answering a question directly for a change instead of asking your own questions and redirecting the conversation to the talking points you are comfortable with." the debate sucked anyway. both candidates were guilty of skirting "difficult" questions from the moderator and refocusing them on what they were there to say. that's how most debates of this type play out, so i won't hold that against either. but the fact that palin took the senator to task for looking back on the failures of the last eight years more than once alarmed me.

look, i am no political expert. far from it. i don't feel comfortable even throwing my hat in the ring to be a pundit. but i do know this. how in the world are you supposed to offer change of any sort if you are hell-bent on refusing to acknowledge what you are changing from? that being said, the most palin would offer were that there were obvious missteps with the bush administration just as there are with any administration. yeah, great. thanks for that bit of wisdom. oh, and also thanks for saying "doggone it." several times too. call me stupid, but i am in line with jon stewart when he's claimed several times, and i am paraphrasing, "i don't want a president that reminds me of me. i don't want a vice-president that says, "doggone it." i want a president that is intelligent and uses words that i don't understand and makes me feel like he is capable of making big decisions because he understands the best way to use that intelligence is to let those around him challenge it." and i don't think you can challenge yourself for a better tomorrow if you are unwilling to take into account what happened yesterday.

i, then, of course, thought about my church. some notes (out of context, admittedly) from the meeting monday night.

"it's time we come together."
"it thrills me...to feel like we are on the same page again."
"we have committed to love one another...to realize this means more than about us."
"i'm hispanic." (is this necessary?)

sorry, dude. i had mexican last night. that does not make me hispanic. my last name is o'kelley. that doesn't make me irish. that just gives me a pretty rockin' last name. i don't understand the plight of being irish. i know where the last name came from. i know my heritage. but i am still not irish. i digress.

as a congregation, it feels like we are being urged forward without taking into account what has brought us to where we are today. without holding accountable the poor decisions that have been made by leaders in our church that are still attempting to lead today. and, in my opinion, doing so feels dangerous.

please know this. i get it. i want our church to get better and move forward and be healthy and relevant and vital and exciting and fun and all of those good things. but i can't imagine any of those things happening without us first acknowledging, as a group, that we are the ones that screwed it up in the first place.

and maybe that's beginning to happen. i hope for it. at some point of the corporate meeting monday night, a task force was nominated to help the congregation define ( or redefine) itself again. there are names included that would have never even been considered back in may of 2007. in may of 2007, sprc drafted a joke of "leadership characteristics" to give to our incoming senior pastor that, even in it's absolute vagueness, forgot to mention children (AT ALL) or the children's place, the only ministry now and then that has any sort of roots placed in the non-spanish speaking part of our local community. now that is forward thinking! not that i should bring that up. that's all in the past, right?

maybe it is. maybe it's not. i don't know. i am conflicted. there's a definite part of sarah palin in me that wants to ignore the crud of the last few years and march blindly toward wherever it is that our church is headed in the next few. but there's a bigger part that feels that, for us to know who we want to be, we need to own the part of our history that suggests who we don't want to be.