It is really quite pathetic how few posts I've had since I've been in DC. I was reflecting on my poor attentiveness to the blog compared to my time in Athens and I began to feel a bit embarrassed. Let me assure you, I am processing just as much here as I was during my summer in Greece, but the difference this time around is that there are 40 people (who speak English) who are all processing the same things.

But let me give you insight into what I'm thinking about lately.

It's quite easy to go through this time in DC and get a little irritated with politics, naturally. There is a constant stream of bad news (what with the economy and all) that it's difficult to figure why exactly I care about politics at all. It's all quite depressing most of the time.

Since the beginning of my experience in political academia, politics has been defined as the "struggle for power". For some, the emphasis will be on who has the most power and how does that person most effectively display said power. For others, the emphasis is on the struggle; who is struggling for power, how do we relax the oppression of the struggle, etc. My time here has proven that I am certainly an "emphasis on the struggle" type of person. This will likely not come as a shock to many of you.

While I'm in this city however, and even though I'm taking classes that focus on the demands of biblical justice, how that lies with specifically with the widow, orphan and alien (read: people) and I'm interning at a place where I can directly engage with, in many times, orphaned aliens, I still become discouraged that more often than not, politics in the United States is almost solely concerned with the emphasis of power. I can't help but feel that my passion for people exists only for the purpose of having those to which power can be exerted over.

At this point I can't help but feel that any work, while entirely good and certainly gospel-oriented, in the "sphere of people" (call it service work, call it non-profit, call it whatever you'd like) is basically like enlisting yourself in mortuary school. It's not all daisies and there are very few instances of victory.

But then, this is exactly why I'm interested in politics.

Often times at work I listen to Pandora, but today I switched things up. After getting some inspiration from President Christy's Chapel message, I realized that some of the best ways to understand this world we're living in is to hear it from the minds of those who are experiencing it at the same time, but are, perhaps, and especially in my case, a few steps ahead of the game.

So after PGC's reminder to keep running for others, I decided I was going to listen to others who have seen such injustice, love people and have successfully entered into the world of politics with this in mind. www.americanrhetoric.com Check it out. Check it out now.

I started with the Top 100 Speeches of all time. I listened to JFK's inaugural address, then Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ann Richards, Jesse Jackson, Barbara Jordan...perhaps there was a theme here, but I didn't want to waste my time, I wanted to feel inspired, right? I ended with a message from Elie Wiesel. Perfection. Obviously his experience is nothing like my own, but despite all the serious hopelessness he endured in his lifetime, he was still able to stand and share with the top political leaders because there was still affirmation in doing so. He explained that FDR was certainly a great leader, but the flaws that came with the nonacceptance of the St. Louis, a ship carrying Jewish refugees, into the United States was not okay. (Ironically, I noted in a reflection of our visit to the Holocaust Museum that the St. Louis story was what stirred the most anger inside me.) Wiesel went on to say that while there is no explanation for the indifference or carelessness among humanity towards other humans, indifference towards the belief that change is possible will only fester such evil. We must, he asserts, be seekers towards something better and be sure to point out the faults when it does not exist. We must ask the hard questions: "Does it mean that we have learned from the past? Does it mean that society has changed? Has the human being become less indifferent and more human? Have we really learned from our experiences? Are we less insensitive to the plight of victims of ethnic cleansing and other forms of injustices in places near and far?" We must be like the few Christians, those "righteous Gentiles" that intervened and welcomed their Jewish neighbors, but they were too few then, and remain too few now. If I can take a lesson from my Dutch Reformed ancestors is is that I must encourage all people to be in constant search of extraordinary hope for all through the genuine love of humanity.

And that, that is why I still do politics. That is why I still have passion. And I think it's okay to have the likes of Ann Richards and Hillary Clinton and Elie Wiesel remind me why. Progress is possible.