I am a big 'ol nerd.

And I am ok with it.

One of the ways my nerdiness manifests itself is through listening to podcasts. And I listen to a LOT of podcasts. I love it! I've got some British humor (The Bugle and The Ricky Gervais Podcast), some politics (NPR: It's All Politics and Meet the Press), some economics (Freakonomics and NPR: Planet Money), some culture (Relevant Podcast and NPR: All Songs Considered), some religion (Tony Campolo Podcast and On Being with Krista Tippett [Relevant fits here too]), and even some general miscellany (Stuff You Should Know, This American Life, WNYC's Radiolab, and The Moth). I even listen to debates (Intelligence Squared UK and Intelligence Squared US)! And they are all amazing!

(Before you worry that I spend all of my time glued to my iPod, I pick and choose episodes of a few of these. I do have a life. Unfortunately.)

So today I was listening to On Being with Krista Tippett (formerly Speaking of Faith, for all of my fellow NPR nerds out there) and she was conducting an interview with Civil Rights leader Dr. Vincent Harding. The title of the show was "Civility, History, and Hope", which immediately intrigued me because this is something that I have been really concerned about in this current political climate. It is really sad to me to see people who claim to be followers of Christ who are so vitriolic and spew such hatred for our elected leaders. I get not being happy with what is happening. I get wanting someone to not hold an office. I get even passionately opposing someone's views. But what I do not get is the rage and the personal attacks against individuals, specifically the President. I am living at the moment in a bastion of conservatism, so I hear a lot of flat out crazy and mean things. Stuff I would never ever allow a kid in my classroom to say about another kid, so why should we be saying it about the President? Last time I read through the red letters in the Bible, Jesus never bashed the authorities (who he KNEW WERE GOING TO KILL HIM) or compared anyone to Hitler. If you are so mad about it, pray pray pray for him, not just at him. It is amazing how God softens your heart when you pray for someone.

Wow, did not mean to go on a rant there. Sorry!

Anyway, this episode was great. If you have some free time, or need something to listen to while you drive, this is a worthy download. Dr. Harding talks a lot about the importance of story and encouraging youth to seek out the wisdom of elders, all in the goal of creating the "beloved community" that Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke so often of. You can get it on iTunes, or at http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2011/civility-history-hope/ . There were a couple of specific things that really stood out to me:

:: We are absolutely amateurs at this matter of building a democratic nation made up of many, many peoples, of many kinds, from many connections and convictions and from many experiences. And to know how, after all the pain that we have caused each other, to carry on democratic conversation that in a sense invites us to hear each other's best arguments and best contributions so that we can then figure out how do we put these things together to create a more perfect union.

:: [On comparing the political climate of the 1960's and today] My sense is that, in the '60s, there was probably a larger kind of canopy of hope that we could see and we could identify and that people could name and focus on. Now we are in particular spots, locations, sometimes seemingly isolated, but I feel that there are points, focal situations, where that is still available and where people are operating from that.

So I think that it is not simply the matter of hope or no hope. I have a feeling that one of the deeper transformations that's going on now is that for the white community of America, there is this uncertainty growing about its own role, its own control, its own capacity to name the realities, that it has moved into a realm of uncertainty that it did not allow itself to face before.

And I think that that's the place that we are in and that's even more the reason why we've got to figure out what was King talking about when he was seeing the possibility of a beloved community and recognized that maybe for some of us that cannot come until some of us realize that we must give up what we thought was only ours in the building of a beloved nation. Can there be a beloved nation? Why don't we try and see?

Mmmm. Especially that last paragraph. "We must give up what we thought was only ours in the building of a beloved nation."

This struck me as being about so much more than race, and so much more than just a renewing of civility in America. This is Kingdom work. I am encouraged to know many Christians who are doing this with their lives, and hope and pray pray pray that more will join.

(This post serves both as a pondering point and as a recommendation for several new podcasts. Happy listening!)