Stand Up, Keep Fighting

I can't believe it's already been five years. That day is still so vivid in my mind.

But it's been five years since a neighboring pastor called to tell me he had just heard a news bulletin on NPR: Senator Wellstone's plane had gone down in northern Minnesota. Rescue crews were on their way, but there was little hope that anyone had survived the crash. "I noticed your bumper sticker when you moved here," he said. "I. . .I just thought. . .that. . .you'd want to know. . ."

I hung up with him and immediately called my mother. "Please tell me it isn't true" I blurted out as soon as she answered. I heard her start to cry, which unleashed the tears that I was barely holding back myself. She clung to the thinnest veil of hope: "They haven't officially declared anyone dead yet. They might have made it." But within the hour, it was confirmed - all six passengers had died.

That was one of the loneliest days of my life. It was a Friday, both Jeff and Barbara's day off, so I was alone all day to stew in my grief. I was devastated, but the rest of Washington was oblivious to the great tragedy that had occurred. It was just another Friday to them - as well it should have been - he wasn't their Senator, the plane didn't go down in their state. The news was just another blip "up on the TV, between a rerun and another war."

But that only added to my sorrow, to be grieving alone. I wanted nothing more than to race down to Sea-Tac and hop on the next plane to Minneapolis, but I couldn't. I couldn't have afforded the last minute airfare, and I couldn't have just taken off like that. But, however irrational it may have been, I certainly wanted to. I wanted the comfort of sitting with others who were just as heartbroken as I was. It was a harsh lesson in the cost of this discipleship, a lesson I have continued to live out in my call here: people you love will die while you tend to the ill, the dying, and the bereaved thousands of miles away.

The next day offered some relief, some sense of being part of the community of the grieving. First, there was a knock on the door, and the postman handed me a box. It was a VCR tape full of non-stop coverage of the crash and its aftermath by Twin Cities media. My friend Melissa had gone home, thrown a tape in the VCR and just hit record. When the tape stopped, she took it out, boxed it up, and overnighted it to me. Later that night, Garrison Keillor paid a beautiful tribute to Senator Wellstone on A Prarie Home Companion. That Sunday after worship, several members of the congregation, having finally figured out what the bumper sticker on my car meant (apparently many thought I was advertising some kind of product!), offered their condolences.

Life went on, as it always does. Mason Jennings wrote a song, I finished my internship in WA, moved back to MN to finish seminary, then on to PA. Along the way, I have paid the price of this discipleship several times over, losing more and more people I love, including two grandparents, while I tend to the souls I am charged with hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away.

And today it's five years later, and I see a country that needs Paul Wellstone now more than ever. Who is standing up for justice, even when it's not a politically popular point of view? Who is speaking up for those who have no voice, who broker no power in our society? Who is looking out for those who so easily fall through the cracks in our communities? Who is keeping kitchen table issues on the front burner of our national agenda?

If we would be true to his legacy, true to his vision, WE should be the ones standing up and speaking out. It's what Senator Wellstone would want, what he would be working for if he were still alive today.

I am ashamed to admit how often I fail at this. I conveniently argue that my job is too taxing, that I simply don't have the time. But the truth is, often I don't MAKE the time.

I'm gonna try to do better at that. Because this is certainly no time to be sitting down and checking out.

This is a time to stand up, and keep fighting.

Shalom,
Catrina

PS - I can't get the Mason Jennings link to go right to the lyrics, but from the main page, click on "Music," then "Use Your Voice," then "Ballad of Paul and Sheila."