Glass half-Full and Glass Chimera

North star for middle America, Chicago. . . the first time I visited there was on a road trip back in summer of ’71, between Ohio and Wisconsin, parking my old ’63 Olds Skylark in a parking lot at the Circle campus of University of Illinois. I had taken a break from selling dictionaries door to door, for the Southwestern Company of Nashville. down in Oak Hill, Ohio, for the Southwestern Company of Nashville. I parked the car and left it there for a few days so I could visit friends who were working in a summer ccamp in Wisconsin. Metropolitan Chicago represents the great middle of our nation. In my lifetime, I can remember the 1968 Democratic convention, where young people, college students from all over, gathered to protest against the draft, and against racial discrimination. The mayor of Chicago didn’t like what the protesters were doing.

But that was a long time ago. Today I’m in Evanston, just up the lakeshore from Chicago, traipsing on the campus of Northwestern University, founded in the early 1800’s, a fascinating place… founded as the first great university in the middle of our country. Wandering around now on campus, I see there is no shortage of the liberal perspective in the middle of the country. Here’s a flyer I found on a bulletin board.

Now I’m no leftie. I am a Christian, centrist. I notice that my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, taught, in His sermon on the mount, that we should be peacemakers, we should feed people who are hungry, provide shelter for those who are homeless, and welcome strangers. And just now, I notice that our former president, Barack Obama, has made some comments that serve well to gravitate our attention back to that Christian message, and away from the magamania that has captured the oval office and its current occupant. Here’s a church sign in Chicago that gets it right, or left or whatever you call helping people instead of rejecting them.

King of Soul