GA, Ware Day!

The Ware lecture is always good. In St. Louis it was poet Mary Oliver. In Ft Worth it was Elaine Pagels, my seat mate on the flight on my way out here told me she would no longer speak to me since I’d actually seen Elaine Pagels speak in person! We’ve had Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Marion Wright Edelman for the Ware lecture. This is a big deal. http://www.uua.org/events/generalassembly/2008/commonthreads/115749.shtml

2008, I think, was even more prophetic.

We got kinda excited in the hall. There we were, some thousands of UUs being told, “watch out, get ready, something is gonna happen that you are probably not ready for”

What?

“You’ve been fighting this good fight and you know what? You’re about to win!”

Van Jones thinks that we have to get ready, that in fact the future of our planet depends on us. We UUs simply must get ready to lead. To govern. To guide the coming of the new way of being in the world.

He’s got this phenomenally just and right idea about social justice and greening of the planet and how they are related.

The danger is, he says “Stagflation” which happens when energy prices rise, and everything else has to kind of fall, then energy rises, jobs go, everything gets more expensive—a nasty cycle. And in the scariest moment of the night he points out that the last time the Democrats and the house, senate and presidency and stagflation, was when Jimmy Carter was our president. An amazing man, but a horribly failed presidency.

Ahh! Now he’s got my attention, not that he didn’t from moment one with his big double wave as he came out, his jumping at the podium. This man has presence. And, he knows his audience. As he’s telling us we have to give up the David-role because Goliath is about to fall and we need to take up the Noah role of gathering the things on the planet to save he refers to us as Mr. and Mrs. Noah, or Mr. and Mr. Noah or Ms and Ms Noah.

The man has done his homework.

And he’s amazing. Put people to work by having a whole industry that weather proofs the country. Jobs, industry and saved energy. Put people to work creating wind farms and wave farms and turning Detroit into the hotbed of industry for solar panel creation. Intervene in the lives of troubled folks with training and education to keep them out of institutions of incarceration. Just do it.

Then when the lecture was over, during a huge long standing ovation he went down to the total love and adoration of the youth caucus. We could see him on the jumbo-tron totally firing them up. And you know, when our youth get fired up things happen. Like the Unitarians and the Universalists actually merge. And wild amazing things like that.

So here we go. Step up. Something big is right around the corner. Are you ready!?