Yesterday more than 200 people were on hand for the Engaged Spirituality Forum at Iliff School of Theology. We will be posting copies of remarks and a video of the proceedings on the website in the near future. However, I want to provide some highlights from the day on this site.

After a wonderful opening mediation with George Tinker, David Trickett, President of Iliff gave his welcome. To follow are his remarks:

“Welcome to our second collaboration with the Colorado Democratic Party. Thank you for your continued interest in and support of this undertaking. It is my goal that we will collaborate effectively with all contenders for public service, no matter one’s affiliation, for we are called to be a community asset for reconciliation and healing of deep division. In truth, we know that the fratricidal tendencies apparent in some highly visible public arenas are adding toxins to the body politic–and such conditions are not sustainable.

I will share with you why I believe this kind of event is worth continuing, and not just before election cycles but also throughout the less hectic periods of our life together: public service is to be a calling, a vocation. Certainly privilege accrues to those who serve and lead us, but at the heart of it all is properly to be a sense that a public leader is actually working not for small interests but in truth for the common good. And far too many of us have allowed this inconvenient realization to slip from the center of our focus.

I grew up in a context–the Deep South–where hardball politics has been part of the culture since before the end of the War Between the States. My hometown was the last spot on the North American continent where the flags of the Confederacy were furled (some two months after Appomattox, since my ancestors refused to believe that General Lee had made a good decision by surrendering). I have seen the good and the bad, the smarmy and the exciting: LBJ used to visit my father’s business; we lived around the corner from Huey Long’s widow, and Russell Long was a family acquaintance; I dated the daughter of a governor of our state, and he (John McKeithen) used to spend hours in the late nights when I was at the mansion talking to me about the “human” side of being a public servant; and the very first burning cross I saw was up the street at the home of our local member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He stood for something that incurred the wrath–actually, the deep fear–of those who refused to see that civility and equity were truly for all and not merely for some. And then I lived and worked in Washington, DC for almost exactly twenty years before coming here. So I, like many of you perhaps, have seen a lot.

I’ve spoken several times with one of our distinguished speakers today, Leah Daughtry, about a dream for a certain big political event that will take place here in Denver this August. Rather than merely view the event as an occasion to rally forces for the election of a very good leader of this nation, what if it was a platform for a clarion call to this whole nation for renewal? For the renewal of pride in citizenship, for the renewal of hope that we can navigate the whitewaters of societal uncertainty together, for the renewal of the change that all can have a voice at the table?

It is in this spirit that I welcome you to this place and encourage you to discern afresh the bigger-picture value of what we’re all about today. Thank you for being part of this vital conversation. We here at Iliff very much want it to continue, and aim to be a partner with you.”

With this welcome, much of the discussion centered around a call to public service. I have asked Leah Daughtry, CEO of the 2008 Democratic National Convention Committee, to povide a copy of her remarks so we can post them as well–here and on the website.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 4:46 pm and is filed under CDP, Democratic Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.