The Icon, Granny D

Brother Dave's clipping service sent this speech by Granny D, speaking in Hood River, Oregon on August 16, 2003. It's a pretty good — though sometimes rambling — populist history of what has happened in America.

In case you don't remember, Granny D first gained prominence by walking across America in 1998, in support of campaign finance reform. As the linked speech makes clear, she has not stopped walking, and she has not stopped believing the best of America's ordinary people, since.

During Rev. Newell's presentation this past weekend (see my notes posted Sat. Aug 23 and Sun. Aug 24), someone asked what Celtic Christianity might look like if plopped in the middle of Wall Street. Well, it was too big a question for Philip to answer in the time remaining, but he did repeat some social justice themes he had alluded to throughout his presentation.

Well, I think Granny D has the answer to that question. It's in the second paragraph of the linked speech:

You know, there are two kinds of politics in the world: the politics of love and the politics of fear. Love is about cooperation, sharing and inclusion. It is about the elevation of each individual to a life neither supressed nor exploited, but instead nourished to rise to its full potential--a life for its own sake and so that we may all benefit by the gift of that life. Fear and the politics of fear is about narrow ideologies that separate us, militarize us, imprison us, exploit us, control us, overcharge us, demean us, bury us alive in debt and anxiety and then bury us dead in cancers and wars. The politics of love and the politics of fear are now pitted against each other in a naked struggle that will define not only the 21st Century but centuries to come. We are the Sons and Daughters of Liberty in that struggle, indeed we are. Let us not shirk from the mission that fate has bestowed upon us, for it has done so as a blessing.

In the words of that great saint, John Lennon, imagine all the people sharing life in peace. That's what the world would look like if all the people and all the leaders of all the nations could listen to the heartbeat of the divine. Doesn't matter what name they chose to label the divine; doesn't matter if they refuse to name or label the divine. Listening for the universal holy heartbeat will be sufficient.

“You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one”