Set Free

When Are My Words Not My Own?

It's Tuesday morning, and in a little while I'll take off to a weekly appointment, my preacher group. Every Tuesday morning, we meet to discuss the Revised Common Lectionary passages coming up the following Sunday. The Lectionary is a three year cycle that takes us through most of the Bible, and each week offers up an Old Testament passage, a Psalm, an Epistle reading and a Gospel lesson. In theory they have some thematic connection, though some are more glaringly obvious than others.  Most stories come up every third year (we'll have the woman at the well this Sunday), but because many stories about Jesus appear in 3, if not 4, gospels, we have to find new ways to talk about them fairly often.

So every Tuesday, four or five of us meet to talk about the upcoming passages and to talk about how we might preach them. What is the Good News in them? Where are the challenges? And what do we, and the people we serve, need to hear in our particular time and place in order to be faithful to God?

We brainstorm, and anything we talk about is available to all of us. By Thursday or Saturday, I may not remember if that was my idea or L's or G's, and if they are building on an idea of mine, I'm not sending a spy to their churches to check on it. We inspire each other, by the grace of God.

Years ago, two members of the group met later in the week to work out sermon ideas in greater depth, and I'm told they often preached if not the same sermon than nearly the same. They collaborated.

Preachers, like politicians, talk about the same ideas over and over again. Preachers, like politicians, seek new ways to say something everyone has heard before.

This morning I'm thinking about Deval Patrick and his assistance to his friend, Barack Obama.

I have given a whole sermon away, with permission to use it, without attribution. It was a gift, and it felt appropriate to the circumstances.

Talking about ideas with someone you know personally and agreeing that a certain way of expressing them is very effective and appropriate is not plagiarism. Plagiarism is stealing, unawares, the ideas of others and passing them off as your own. Plagiarism is finding the obscure book in the college library and "quoting" from it without quoting. Plagiarism is looking up a topic on the Internet and cutting and pasting into your Word Document, then turning it in as your own.

Please don't think I take it lightly. When I'm writing a sermon, I won't read other people's, because I don't want to unconsciously walk off with their ideas. In my young days, that was plagiarism, too, and I remain sensitive.

In college, I testified at the honor trial of a friend who plagiarized on two term papers after the distress of an unplanned pregnancy and the shock of an abortion. She really did it, and the Honor Court really did punish her, but they also took the context into account and did not expel her.

Now, this is too bad for Barack Obama. I've been watching the video of Deval Patrick saying the same words, and I prefer Patrick's delivery. I would have advised Obama to use the idea but massage the catch phrase, make it his own. But there are some ideas so deeply embedded in the culture that they are impossible to plagiarize, really. That the same people who snicker about the current President's lack of articulation, and believe me, they do, would say that using words well does not matter is ludicrous. Of course it matters.

Subtle barbs are being traded by Camp Clinton and Camp Obama, and that is perhaps the way of the political world and unavoidable. I could do without the allusions to Sen. Clinton being "periodically down." (She's no doubt past that anyway, boys.) But to accuse the other of an offense against honor is to damage the party's chances, and I find that intolerable. Call him unoriginal, if you like. Call him glib. But don't call him a cheater, especially when your candidate is married to one of the most notorious cheaters of all time, a man who has been forgiven for offenses much worse than talking to a friend about how to respond to the accusation that you won't be able to get anything done if you're elected.

Don't call him a cheater.

Caucus? Caucus? Who's got the caucus?

This afternoon we went to the Democratic Caucus.

While Pure Luck, The Princess and I waited outside in line, fat flakes of snow soaking into our coats and scarves, The Father of My Children walked up and joined us for an hour's wait on the sidewalk and another long wait inside. The four of us went through the whole process together, and we saw a lot of people we have known over the years as the line snaked through the high school. I must say that the expressions on the faces of people who have known our family for many years were priceless! Yes, there is Songbird, with both her husbands...

City By the Sea had an unbelievable number of new voters (either new registrants or new Democrats), the place was packed, there was no way the party was prepared to handle the numbers. It was sadly shortsighted of the City Democratic Committee not to expect a large turnout when they have been so common in this election cycle. I've been reading the comments from readers on the brief item and the longer statewide story posted tonight on the local paper's website. I'll be interested to see if newspaper and TV accounts reflect what people experienced there.

The bright notes included seeing a multicultural turnout that included both newly registering voters and volunteers at the registration tables. City By the Sea has a good-sized population of immigrants from African countries, many of them Muslim. To see three young women wearing headscarves with their "City By the Sea Democrats" t-shirts delighted me. And I am grateful to the young woman who made me a new "ballot" when I nervously filled in Pure Luck's name instead of mine. D'oh!

The reason I was thinking of his name instead of mine? After all that waiting we discovered that he was registered as "Undeclared." I asked him why, as a lifelong Democrat, he hadn't declared a party when he registered in City By the Sea a few years ago?

"Probably a fit of pique," he answered; I am happy to say there was no such fit today, just a tired decision to go home rather than wait in another line of literally hundreds of people waiting to change their registration or register for the first time.

When offered the opportunity to use the caucus registration form as an absentee ballot, I took the offer and departed, because after almost three hours of waiting in line, still damp from the snow, we were just done. I have no idea whether my ballot was actually counted. We walked back to the car in time to see a beautiful sunset in the distance.

I guess those who stuck around finally got to "caucus" this evening, by which time I had tucked up on the couch with knitting and husband to watch our DVDs of Season 3 of "Lost." Now, that's something we can all endorse!

Snow and Rain and Snow?

The snow became rain, though it may become snow again, and I'm headed to church to preach this one.

No matter the weather this afternoon, we are headed to City By the Sea High School for the Caucus. #1 Son sent in his absentee ballot. The laws have changed since four years ago, when he was too young to participate by just a few weeks. He did volunteer at the caucus that year.

Now in Vacationland, if you will be 18 by election day, you can register and participate in the caucus. Snowman is a little far away to be with us, but he will definitely get his absentee ballot in the fall; his birthday if four days before the general election.

And now I will faint at the knowledge that two of my children will be registered voters this year.

Expect a post about the caucus experience tonight!

Yes We Can

In the unlikely story that is America...

Thanks to St. Casserole for pointing the way to the video. Read more about it here.

Watching the Debate

I'm sorry. Did Wolf Blitzer just clarify that Martin Luther King, Jr., is, in fact, dead?

I think this debate is too long.

Polling

The Princess came home with an assignment for Social Studies: poll 20 eligible voters, asking "If the election were held today, who would you vote for?"

All the data will be turned into a bar graph, due Tuesday.

I pointed out that this would be less than scientific, since the people she knows or might see in the next few days are not necessarily a representative sampling of the general population. For instance, the three registered voters in our household are all in the same party and represent no interesting ethnic groups with the possible exception of quasi-Norwegian or Somewhat Swedish Yet Nominally German or Who Really Knows Anyway? We do have one attractive member of the 18-24 (or is it 25?) voting group. Or maybe that's one member of the attractive group. Or both. In any event, we're not particularly diverse.

On the other hand, the way things are going, she's just as likely to get it right as Zogby.

(Last count: 3 for Obama, 17 voters to go.)

Conflict of Interests

I arrived home from a church meeting last night just after 9 p.m. and found #1 Son watching TV. Soon The Princess appeared, wanting to watch something else.

Which did you choose?

Barack, Hilary and John in a remake of "Viva Las Vegas?"

(Which is to say, reasonably adult discussion of the issues facing our nation and world, I suppose.)

Or Simon, Paula and Randy in the City of Brotherly Love?

(Which is to say nothing of the sort.)

I suspect you can guess that at my house the decision broke not on party but on age and gender lines. #1 Son got the boot and went upstairs; The Princess commanded the remote control and employed the DVR, and we caught up with the Philadelphia auditions, the usual assortment of agonies, ecstasies and insults to our ears.

Somewhere out of our range of consciousness the three Democrats took questions from Brian Williams.

I don't feel good about this. But at that moment it was beyond my control.

I hope the next debate is on a different night of the week.

Watching the Returns

Watching TV on election nights frequently brings up the childhood trauma of listening to the returns the night my father lost his bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate. I often wonder if my excitement about a candidate is not directly proportional to the likelihood things will go badly for him or her, as they did for my dad on that night in 1972.

My parents had gone to some sort of election night party--stop me if I've told you this story before. I probably have, but like a victim of a crime or a person with PTSD, I seem to have a need to go over it again and again.

So it was 1972, and I was 11 and my brother was 9, and we were in our hometown of Jane Austen's Village, and my parents had gone to the ballroom or some such place at the Governor Dinwiddie Hotel. I am not kidding, that was its real name. I'm from a place where they're only one step past naming things after Lord Cornwallis. After all, he was British. And "British goods were ever the best," as the snobby grandmother in the "The Story of a Patriot" taught all good little boys and girls who visited Historic Billsburg. Because even though we were supposed to sniff and think she was a snooty Tory, we still knew she spoke the truth.

This kind of frantic stream of consciousness is a symptom of my election night weirdness. I believe my analyst might have called this the activation of a complex.

Anyway, my brother and I were at the house we had lived in when we were really little, at that time mostly occupied by our grandmother. We were upstairs with a small black-and-white TV. I kid you not. Neither of our homes, the one in Jane Austen's Village or the one in the Northern Virginia suburb where we lived for six years, had a color TV at that time. Feel free to marvel at that fact.

So there we were, watching the election returns, without my grandmother.

My grandmother preferred to listen to the returns on her transistor radio.

A brief interruption, while we all do The Time Warp.

Okay, that felt good.

So, downstairs, at the end of a long, darkened hallway, my poor grandmother reclined stiffly on a small couch, legs covered by one of those black crocheted afghans with the brightly colored flowers in each square, the transistor radio pressed against her ear.

This was back in the day, you understand, when precinct returns could be heard on the radio. Because there was still such a thing as local radio. Believe me, children, it did exist.

Again, upstairs, two kids watched the returns alone.

As an 11 year old girl who worshiped her father, I had no doubt he would win. When the numbers suggested a negative outcome, I didn't believe them. When predictions were made after only 52% of the precincts were in, I did not understand how that made a difference. How could this be happening?

How, indeed. I understand tracking polls and all the rest. I understand sampling. I understand!!!

But on election night, I feel the panic. I feel the panic. And I feel it especially when I like a candidate and see him or her losing.

Tonight I'm wondering, are they telling me it's "too close to  call" just to keep me watching? Or are they truly surprised, these all-knowing journalists, to see Obama running behind Clinton?

Anyway, I feel sort of badly. If I had remained neutral, I expect he would have run it going away.

Maybe I ought to start pulling for someone I *don't* like?

For tonight, it's too late. So I will sit here somewhat manically, watching , and hoping to fall asleep and wake up to a different result. And I will think sympathetically of the politician's children, whatever their ages.

The Democrats

I'm watching the eight Democratic candidates having their first debate on MSNBC.

*Senator Biden, asks Brian Williams, what could the government have done to protect those students at Virginia Tech.

Biden: "Shotgun, not pistol."

Oy.

(Really, he's elaborating on a question about which they all raised their hands a few minutes before, have you ever lived with a gun in the house, but seriously.)

*Did you know that former Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska was running for President? I didn't. I have also learned that he's mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore. (Also that I probably agree with him about a number of things.)

*I want to love Barack Obama, but he's not winning me tonight.

*Why do members of the press hate John Edwards when they love his wife so much?

*It's not that I don't like Hilary. I have a problem with dynasties. Let's spread the Presidency around, okay?

*I have a lot of friends who love Dennis Kucinich. As with Gravel, I probably agree with him in lots of areas, but as with Obama, not feeling the love tonight.

*Chris Dodd? He's running, too? I had no idea.

*Bill Richardson talks too long. They have to cut him off every time he speaks.

*When Dave Stanton, some South Carolina TV guy, was introduced, did you have a moment and think he was Stephen Colbert?

*Any chance we could have a debate moderated *by* Stephen Colbert? It would be my litmus test for a sense of humor.

*Finally, my TV boyfriend, Keith Olbermann, who was on the air before the debate, has beautiful grey hair, so it must be okay about mine.

What are you up to this evening?