It's still Saturday as I start this. . .

Busy day today. We went to a planning meeting for the board of Quad City Interfaith. There was a lot of good material for us to start our process with. One of the things we spent some time on was finding a focus, looking at areas of endeavor that are our core competencies - things that we do better than other organizations do, that we have a passion for. Really, if you don't know what you do best, and if you don't know where your interest lies, you move forward in a blind, stumbling manner, if at all. You may not even know where "forward" is.

We discussed the nature of power, and why it's not a dirty word. The simple fact of life: if you have no power, you have no influence. When we have a collective action, as we did at the Irish Memorial for immigrant justice; or, if we start a letter-writing campaign or meet face-to-face with politicians, we go with power - they know that we will have access to the ballot box. They know that we talk with a lot of other people who go to the ballot box. That's POWER. No power, no influence. Try to get a politician's attention if he knows you can't vote in his elections.

The power we seek must be from the grass roots level.

We will be focusing on 1-on-1 conversations. I will work on recruiting someone to St. Mary's Core Group (yes, I have someone in mind.)

Right now - preparing for my class in Christian Ed. That usually means up late Saturday night, sometimes into the wee hours Sunday - then up early Sunday for more. I come across to the class as being casual - a bit offhand. Trust me, I'm not. (CSAs from MidAmerican that worked with me - see a theme here?)

And then, from Sunday afternoon until I get up for work Monday morning I lay on the couch, semi-comatose, looking for all the world like I'm stoned. (I'm not - I stopped doing that stuff years ago. But it looks like it.) If I were told that I had to give up all of my activities but one, I want to teach those kids. I want to see them learn and grow.

So, back to it. Thanks for keeping me company, thanks for hanging out!