You’ve heard me say it several times already: Mark your calendar for August 30. We have plans that day.
But I’ve said very little about why this day matters. To explain, let me tell you a story.
I once spent more than a year showing up most Wednesdays at noon for a prayer vigil outside the Des Moines police station.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, a handful of clergy and lay folks gathered to pray and to call on our city’s police department to exercise restraint and resist rushing to judgment. We wanted to stand publicly with our BIPOC siblings. We didn’t want Des Moines to become the next place where systemic bias claimed a human life.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure our presence would change anything measurable. We were a small, motley crew!
But I kept going.
Eventually I realized my decision to show up was no longer actually to persuade anyone else. The point was to change something in me.
That season had made me increasingly aware of how easy it is to hold strong convictions about justice, equity, and compassion without ever asking much of myself in return. It’s easy to have good intentions. It’s easy to agree with important ideas. It’s much harder to sacrifice time week after week—through all the vagaries of Iowa weather!–and put my body where my values are.
Showing up became a spiritual practice.
I had some memorable conversations there. I saw the hardened hearts of some passersby. And my own heart was sometimes warmed by the encouragement and gratitude others expressed. They were glad someone was standing there, especially in the freezing cold.
We’re being invited to do something like that on Sunday, August 30. (Not the freezing cold part!)
Through AMOS, dozens of us from Collegiate/Wesley will join a thousand people from member institutions across central Iowa to celebrate 30 years of organized people power and engage local, state, and national candidates around issues that directly affect our communities.
You’ll remember last winter we had a bunch of conversations about “We the People” and what it means to participate in democracy with conversations about our own and others’ safety and happiness. We and forty other AMOS member institutions engaged nearly 1,900 Iowans in such conversations, where people shared their personal stories about what they would change if they could, to improve the safety and happiness of people they loved. Out of those conversations emerged a core of issues that we’ll be presenting to candidates and officials, asking for their support in partnership with our ongoing voices:
- water quality
- emergency medical services (EMS) response times
- Silver Alert for vulnerable seniors
- public education
- immigrant and refugee support
We’ll show up on August 30 as a Collegiate/Wesley contingent, 60 or so of us. We’ll coordinate our shirts or colors. Many of us will travel together by bus or caravan. We’ll sit together and demonstrate the numbers, the voices, the presence behind our concern for these issues. Most importantly, we’ll stand alongside one another as a visible expression of who we are.
This isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about becoming the kind of people whose public actions match our deepest values.
We often say that Collegiate/Wesley is an inclusive community committed to the flourishing of the people around us. August 30 is an opportunity to demonstrate that those aren’t just words we say inside our building. They are values we carry into the world together.
I hope you’ll join us.
Whatever discussions happen or policies get changed, whoever’s safety and happiness is improved—all of that will matter.
But, as I learned standing outside the Des Moines police station all those Wednesdays, showing up matters, all on its own.
Let’s go together on August 30 and practice being the people we claim to be.
In other words, we’ll practice showing up as who we are.
Let us know you’re coming by registering at tinyurl.com/Aug30AMOS. Or contact the church office and Janelle will add you to the list!
