Why? Good Government is made by those who show up!

Every once in awhile, one meets a person who inspires by both act and deed. A person, who even in retirement from being minister, still has that ability, to inspire and to guide even in the new paths and new situations of today. So I reprint with permission, Larry Hickle's call to attend caucus meetings:

Everybody is welcome at your caucus meeting. Everyone has a voice at your caucus meeting. Most of the caucus gatherings are small enough that you can get your oar in the water without feeling intimidated by the crowd.

The Network of Spiritual Progressives message is critical for the health of our democracy. Each of us able to carry the urgent message that we want our politics not to serve the old bottom line of maximizing wealth and power, but to pursue a new bottom line of love, kindness and generosity, and the cherishing of each person. Each of us can be the presence in our caucus meetings that represents a challenge to the pace at which Americans are living in pursuit of materialist values.

The Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) is a spiritual gathering of diverse people, dedicated to bringing spiritual progressive values into the world of politics, dedicated to igniting a culture of love, peace and justice.

Many of us have had the opportunity to engage political leaders with the values represented in the Spiritual Covenant with America, and we have sometimes seen amazing responsiveness to our concerns. Please study the Spiritual Covenant in preparation for your precinct caucus on February 5, so that you can ask questions of candidates inspired by the Spiritual Covenant. WE want to cast our caucus votes for candidates not on their “electability” but on the authenticity of their commitment to changing the bottom line in American society.

The precinct caucus is a far better forum for selecting candidates than a primary election, because we have some opportunity to interact with candidates and with our neighbors as we are making our selections. Those conversations offer an opportunity to express our spiritually progressive values in ways that we cannot do simply by marking a ballot in the privacy of a poling station.

What could happen, for example, if candidates throughout the communities we represent were to get peppered with questions like: “How would you challenge the selfishness, materialism and ‘looking out for number one’ in our economy and in our society that undermine loving family relationships?” Or, “Would you support legislation aimed at requiring schools to teach students to be socially, ethically, and ecologically responsible, and to develop students’ capacity to care for others as well as to teach academic skills?”

We further have the opportunity to offer resolutions that can be included in the state platforms of the political parties. The political impact of what we do is heightened if people who go to 50 different caucuses offer the same resolutions endorsed by Minnesota NSP. Resolutions presented and adopted in precinct caucuses can make an enormous contribution toward framing the positions on which political parties field our candidates for election.

We are due for a major change in thinking in America about politics and the values that guide our public decision-making. Too much of the promotion of values in the public arena has been from a narrow perspective; What’s come to be known as “values voters” has come to mean people who try to legislate against human experience they regard as offensive.

We are ready, and I believe America would welcome, an approach to values that emphasizes love, kindness and generosity in our relations throughout the community. Promotion of positive values will make a difference. America moved through the Great Depression of the 1930s partly on the strength of Franklin Roosevelt’s positive values that transcended the negative value of fear. And over the course of a generation the feminist movement transformed our consciousness about the potential for women’s leadership.

Today we are on the verge of a generosity transformation of values. Your precinct caucus and my precinct caucus on February 5 offer us each an opportunity to be part of that transformation. Let’s all prepare and show up.

This was presented at Network for Spiritual Progressives Chapter Meeting on November 12, 2007. If you are interesting to learning more, please feel welcome to join the holiday potluck party, December 10, at Plymouth Church. (1900 Nicollet Ave., just south ofdowntown Minneapolis. Enter the door under the canopy off the rear parking lot and go downstairs to the Jackman Room.) Bring a potluck contribution, if you like. Do bring your own silverware and dishes, because we are all trying to be more environmentally friendly.

If you feel inspired and want to learn the easy steps for being politically active at precinct caucuses, click here.