Wow, there are lots of headlines and lots of spin these days.

It seems as though the peeling back of veneer in Wisconsin has touched us all.  It has been a wake up call of sorts, calling us each to consider what it means to vote, to thrive, to be.

Never have I seen the number of Facebook posts dealing with the union scrap.  Commentators from around the nation are weighing in on the happenings in Madison and in many of the states in our nation.

We’re broken.  Somewhere along the way, we got lulled into the sense that we could happily borrow our way into middle class life.  For many, the wake-up call has been piercing:  foreclosed homes, college educations tenuous, jobs for entering youngins not forthcoming, and no clear sense of how long this readjustment time will last.

And who and what will be standing when we are on the other side?

For years we have believed that we didn’t have to really pay attention to what was going on around us.  We handed over power to those only too happy to take it up.  We mortgaged our future to banks and corporations only too happy to accept our allegiance.

And now?  Now we are coming to understand that money and power vested in faceless entities eventuates in abetting what faceless entities do:  they protect their power and their ability to wield it.

The facts are clear.  The divide between the wealthy and the poor is growing by alarming rates.  Is it government’s job to correct that?  If not the government of the people by the people, then whom?

In my fantasy world, followers of Jesus would “use the power that God gives us to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves” (from our UM vows of membership) in order that we might right the growing fractures in our nation.

So how are we called to respond?

Lobbing opinions and playing pile-on serves us not at all.

What we are called to consider is this:  what will we do with the one wild and precious thing that is our life, our liberty, our happiness?  What will we do to insure that in this land of plenty our teachers and public servants are allowed to join voice?  What will we do to stand our convictions in such a way that they participate in building up rather than ripping apart?

Who are we in these days?  And how are we called to be?