Obama

While I've never paid much attention to Garrison Keillor, whenever I heard of him in the past, I always assumed that he was sort of your traditional Lutheran type. Most likely this is because what I heard of him was always coming off the lips of old Lutherans expressing their love for a man who makes even the staunchest of old Lutheran, our traditions, our singing, and all the other cliches sound fun.

Then I was given one of Keillor's columns (by an old Lutheran) a couple of weeks ago. The old Lutheran in question decided to share after a Bible study discussion about my tech side. He'd read it the day before and was reminded of it during the conversation. When he gave it to me, I wasn't sure what to expect. When he pointed out the bit that made him think of me, I was even more uncertain of where this was going. It read:

Everybody in my coffee shop seemed to be in their 20s, locked into laptops, clicking and dragging, jumping to new links, sending IMs while text-messaging with the left hand, and the sheer volume of communication was impressive to behold ... I imagine them walking around with GPS chips that notify them when a friend is in the vicinity, and their GPSes guide them to each other in clipped electronic lady voices and they sit down side by side in a coffee shop and text-message each other while clicking their e-mail and hopping and skipping around Facebook to see who has posted pictures of their weekend.

With that limited information I wasn't really sure where to go with the article, after all, many of the people I encounter in the church world are fearful and therefore hostile to this emerging culture that is obviously disconnected from real people because they spend so much time online. Given my old Lutheran stereotype of Keillor, I couldn't help but think that this was just another version of the rant I'd heard so many times before. Then I read the whole article and found these words:

The young are towing a barnful of credit-card debt and they mumble and talk that weird stuttery talk of y'know like so anyway like awesome or whatever, and they don't know how to do arithmetic by hand or use a dictionary, but they have a great attitude. They're OK about themselves. They're really into their friends. Wassup? That's wassup. They're totally connected. Like a colony of ants. I sat in their vicinity for a few days and tapped at my novel and got into a halcyon mood and then duty called and I came back to the miasma. I am good and depressed again, but hey, I'm OK with it.

I have to say, it was impressive to hear somebody speak of a generation that they don't totally understand and, rather than ripping into them for not being "like us", taking a moment to say, "There's plenty I don't get, but here's something good."

Of course, the excitement was somewhat dampened when I looked up more info on Keillor and discovered that he's an ex-Lutheran and a democrat who's endorsed Obama, but that doesn't change the generation gap, only the stereotype.

As I've mentioned before, every Wednesday, I hang out with Robbie all day. It's nice for me because I, for the most part, get to forget about work for a day, and he and I get to do something fun (any advice on how I should handle this Wednesday where Writings from the Wilderness launches?).

Anyway, last Monday, Saint mentioned that Obama was going to be at DU on Wednesday and I thought it would be memorable to go and see him and, while I'm not registered with either party and, as a pastor, I believe it's unethical for me to endorse a candidate, I appreciate listening to anyone who's a good speaker (much like pagan Augustine listening to sermons from Ambrose because it was good rhetoric). As for Robbie, surely he won't remember being there, but I can show him pictures later in life and, at least on Wednesday, being in the midst of a crowd would be great fun for him.

In the end, I was impressed. The arena where Obama was speaking holds around 10,000 people, and they had a huge overflow space. On two days notice, Obama filled both on a weekday morning and had a couple thousand people standing outside on the lacrosse field (which is where we were). It was wild to watch the "organizers" try and figure out what to do with the crowd and Obama's desire to make sure we all saw him. To make this happen, he came out to the field and addressed those of us there before giving his main speech in the arena, which was piped out to the field over the loudspeakers (and a huge chunk of the field crowd hung out on a cold January morning to listen). Given the sense of excitement and hope, I can see why JFK's daughter Caroline compares Obama to her dad ... like him or not, the guy knows how to inspire the masses.

By the time we made it home, Robbie was so tire that he stayed asleep in his backpack carrier for a couple hours. You can see this and other pictures over on my flickr page.