Who's Who in America?
A letter sits on the pile of papers on my desk, and it has rested under
the notes to myself and the project pages and my half-finished articles
for a couple of months. It’s from Who’s Who in America, the annual
volume that compiles information about people the editors consider
should be included in this publication. Someone in that crowd thinks I
should be included—and by the way, there is no fee for inclusion with
this publishing team.
As
I say, the letter has sat on my desk for two months. I find that this
invitation raises some problematic issues with me. Essentially,
although I recognize the role of nationally known leaders, I am deeply
convinced, radically so, that the great works of goodness and
compassion and intellect and systems-challenge are carried out not so
much by the unusual individuals who rise to the top, receive press
attention, use controversy and public attention and press reportage to
great advantage. Indeed, I believe these folk—the mostly unnoticed but always diligent folk—are necessary in the
ongoing, unending need for renewal of our national vigor.
In fact, I’m pretty convinced that it is these very people who tend to curing and solving much of the world’s woes!
Even
on private levels of organization—the not-for-profits dedicated to healing the world's ills—many aren’t even given the thanks
they deserve for their good work, not to mention the commensurate pay.
In fact, the great majority of these people are volunteers.
So
my question is this: Who really are the “Who’s Who” in America?
Certainly not Karen Mains! And at 78 years of age, I have been sated in
former years with national attention from the religious evangelical
community, to be sure. This attention was mostly positive (“You mean
you are THE Karen Mains?!”), but in later years, some
ultra-conservative brothers in Christendom took after me, casting doubt
upon my credibility, which caused our ministry to lose much of its
donor base, catapulting us into a debt-load of millions of dollars for mounting radio
and television airtime fees. Needless to say, I have great compassion
for those public figures who face similar disapprobation, particularly
in this wild west of our new social-media environment where anyone can
write anything about someone else without fear of penalty. WOW!
Due
to all this, I am enjoying the consequences of being unknown. Indeed,
an anonymous identity offers much attraction to those who have lived in
any kind of public spotlight. So, the letter on my desk sits
unanswered—particularly since an answer requires writing my own commendation! Something is amiss in all this.
What about a
Who’s Who in America that focuses on all the people who do good work
but are unsung, unnoticed and really deserving of being applauded.
Perhaps that kind of volume and enterprise does exist somewhere,
somehow, and I am just not aware of it.
So, here’s my “Who’s
Who.” Thank you to those who just do the work of goodness in the world
because it needs to be done. Thank you to that family that has adopted
an elderly neighbor who has no one to care for him. Thank you to the
women who organize dinners-at the-door for the friends who have lost
loved ones. Thank you to the community development team who decides
together that their neighborhood needs improvement. Or, thanks to those
who design a block-safety-watch system. Thanks to the youth pastor who
organizes tutoring for low-income teens. Thanks to the grandparents who
include their grandkids’ friends in family outings. Thanks to the
couple who provide a bed and home for the community-college kid who is
homeless and forced to sleep in her car.
Obviously,
I could go on and on. But for now, in my book, these kinds of folk
are the ones who should make up volumes and volumes of Who’s Who in America. In my book, all of you—myriads and myriads of you—are the true “Who’s Who in America.”
Karen Mains
NOTICES
DAVID & KAREN'S PODCAST
David and Karen Mains are podcasting. Their show is
called Before
We Go. You can find more info about the podcast, and where
to listen to it, at www.BeforeWeGo.show (but in all lowercase letters). Some of the recent podcast visits include A World Beyond Our Own, Asking Good Questions and Proper Expectations. New episodes come out weekly. A Note From the Soulish Food Team
The entirety of the Soulish Food
team is made up of just two people—Karen, who founded the Hungry Souls
ministry and writes all its content, and her assistant, George, who handles the
layout, editing and emailing of each newsletter. Both of us are
cognizant of the fact that of late, new editions of Soulish Food
have not been published as consistently or often as we would like
(ideally, our aim is to have this be a biweekly production). To that
end, we apologize—we never want to lose connection with you, our
readers! We treasure our readership and want to reassure that we
have not forgotten you—recent months have simply been a complex time of
disorganization, reordering, streamlining, and now, re-establishing
some systems. Our hope is that moving forward, we will once again be
connecting, via Soulish Food,
on a smoother, more-consistent basis. Thank you for having been patient
with us during a busy season of disruptions—hopefully it is behind us! — Karen Mains and George
Reminder!
The Soulish Food e-mails are
being
posted biweekly on the Hungry Souls Web
site. Newcomers can look that over and decide if they want to
register on the Web site to receive the biweekly newsletter. You might
want to recommend this to friends also. They can go to www.HungrySouls.org.
|
|
Karen
Mains
"What about a Who’s Who in America that focuses on all the people who do good work but are unsung, unnoticed and really deserving of being applauded."
BOOK CORNER
The End of White Christian America
by Robert P. Jones
Just finished reading The End of White Christian America
by Robert P. Jones. I recommend it for everyone who is trying to puzzle
out what is happening in the public forums of our national life. Jones
is the CEO of the Public Religion Research Institution. This is not a
diatribe in any way, but a data-driven, scholarly look at the
demographic shifts in our national population and how that is
influencing our thinking and behaviors.
The back-cover copy reads:
“For
most of the country’s history, White Christian America—a
cultural and political identity built primarily by white Protestant
Christians—set the tone for your national policy and shaped
American ideals. But in recent decades this has changed. Drawing on
findings from one of the largest troves of survey data on contemporary
politics and religion, Robert Jones shows how today’s most heated
political controversies can be fully understood only in the context of
the anxieties that white Christians feel as the racial, religious, and
cultural landscape has changed around them.
“Looking
ahead, Jones forecasts the ways that white Christians might adjust to
their new reality—and the consequences for the country if they
don’t.”
|