Active Particpation

As I was sitting in church yesterday, listening to the priest's Homily, I was struck by something. No, not a bolt of lightning or a rock. And it certainly wasn't the kid behind me kicking my chair. What struck me was while we all have different callings when it comes to how best to serve our communities, the answer is the same - we need to be active participants. This may not what he was saying exactly, but it's what I got out of it.


Being an American is hard work. It's advanced citizenship. It requires us to be aware of our community and do our part to help make it better. It means understanding the issues that face our community and ensuring we elect those we feel will do the best job addressing these issues. If they aren't, it means voting them out of office, but we should not ever judge them solely on their soundbites during the 6 or 11 o'clock news, what the candidates say in advertisements, what they or their surrogates spread as rumor or innuendo or what scare tactics are used. We need to do the research and decide for ourselves.

However, community participation goes beyond voting smartly. It requires us to be engaged in our community. We should not be content to sit back and let other people worry about our communities. We need to be out there doing what we can. We also need to be active particpants in our family life. Too often in today's society we are relying on our teachers to raise our children. This is not fair to the kids nor is it fair to our teachers. Teachers have at least 30 kids per class, and if you are looking at middle and high school teachers, that number gets closer to 150.

It is by getting involved and being active participants in our society that we can start to turn back some of the ills that we face. Don't expect someone else to do it - get off your sofa and do it yourself.

PS - Sorry if this sounded like a lecture, but this is something that's been stewing for awhile. Yesterday's homily just gave me the impetus to bring it all together.