Election Day

I'm spending twelve or more hours today working at a polling place for Elections Canada as a registration officer.  It's a one day gig, that pays decently.

I'm also voting in the election today.

Per usual, in my riding, I'll be voting for a losing candidate.

I live in the Prime Minister's riding.  The riding that never elects anyone but conservatives.  A riding in a city that the Conservative Party is so confident they'll win, that the Prime Minister hasn't even bothered to campaign here.  He won't even make an appearance in this riding until election day.  (This fact, by the way, drives me crazy.  I'm fully of the opinion that those who have the Prime Minister as their MP lose out, because he never has to pay the same attention to his own riding that other MP's do.  Someone justified this to me by telling me that he has staff for that.  My problem with that is that his staff were not elected to represent me.)

In any case, I'll be away from my computer and phone all day today.  I can have my phone at the polling place, but it can't be turned on.

I'll see you all tonight, when I will almost certainly watch with disappointment as a candidate I didn't vote for gets elected as my MP, and quite likely as our Prime Minister.

Headlines - Saturday morning

I had another rough night. Just at the moment I'm not up to writing properly. So here are some headlines that are catching my attention, and drawing my heart to pray a little.

LRA Rebels Commit New Atrocities

Obama Begins Historic Rail Trip

Chinese Women Want More Babies

Iran Executes Two Men by Stoning

Threatened Pakistan Schools Close

The Deeper things...

There are things floating around me lately that defy words...

Lyrics from an as yet unrecorded song by Jacob and Lily that I heard at a couple of their shows a few months back... "...I heard that if I sold it all and bought a field I'd find myself a treasure..."

Lyrics from Jason Upton's song "You Decide What's Beautiful": "...You live in the tension, live in the tension, live in the tension of creation... you decide what's beautiful, you decide what's glorious... you're funny like that, you will not be controlled... way beyond men, way beyond our ideas... you live in the tension... you come to the broken, you live with the broken..."

Thoughts from an invitation I received this week, and from posts on Kirk's blog this last week or two...

A growing sense of expectation, coupled with a growing desire to spend time in quiet waiting.

A growing need to engage in the world - to engage in issues of justice, to care for the environment, to love on those in the "gutters" of the world.

A desire to make pilgrimage. To walk and pray and listen at various places around the globe.

A need to spend time with those people who make me most myself, most free to walk in the things of depth that God has placed in me.

A need to be in the mountains. I have tentative plans for two separate weekends over the course of this month. One on my own, staying with some friends, time for retreating, hiking, reading, and refocusing. One as a part of a gathering of people who pray.

A fascination with engagement with culture and politics, but from a place of separation. Engagement and separation...hmmm.... (see this post and particularly the article it links to, from earlier this week.)

I find myself very glad for a week away from the concerns of the office, the politics, the tension. A week to allow myself to once again rest and breathe. To spend time with family, and time at a conference for leadership development. To celebrate my birthday, and the birthdays of some others. To think and pray, and wait and wonder... That's where I'm at on this Friday morning.

Young People, and Politics in China

I read this article in TIME magazine online this morning. It both fascinated and discouraged me. A huge and growing demographic of young people, and very little concern for the politics that govern their country, as long as their affluent lifestyle is maintained.

Check it out - definitely an interesting read.

More Thinking!

I've been following the American presidential campaigns with a great deal of interest lately. I'm fascinated to see who eventually wins the nomination for each party, and who the "religious right" will ultimately vote for, affecting the outcome of the election.

I mean, from what I understand, two of the leading republican candidates are pro-choice, and both have had multiple marriages. The third leading candidate is pro-life, has strong family values, and has been married only once, but is a Mormon. So, the party that the religious right would normally vote for has a choice between two candidates with views that directly contradict their own, or someone who is a member of a cult. I think I'm going to take a somewhat perverse and cyncial pleasure in watching this one play out!

On the other side, two leading candidates would be historic - a black man, or a woman.

I hold dual citizenship - Canadian and American - and American politics have always fascinated me.

So, the election is over a year away, but I'm watching with baited breath to see what the outcome is.

(My grandma just called - returning a message I left. I'm taking her out for dinner, so I'll have to do the rest of my thinking later!)