It rained all day today, which is good and bad. Good for the ground and not so good for working outside. Being a light-sensitive person I can feel down on rainy, dark days. But today rather than work outside I went grocery shopping, cooked a nice dinner and got some ‘community organizing’ done on the computer about “Peacefest” a peacemakers’ celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Milwaukee 14 and of the resistance to the military and teaching of violence at Marquette University. So the delay at working in the garden has other benefits. Obstacles in life can be like rain delays. They can get us down or give us opportunity to do other things.

Insults also can be like rain delays. They can get us down or motivate us to keep going. Notice that above I called my work being a ‘community organizer’. The term ‘community organizer’ was used in a pejorative way at the Republican National Convention last week and the next day by the Republican candidates in a rally near Milwaukee. Having been in the past a real community organizer, at first I felt hurt. But then I took it as badge of honor. A ‘community organizer’ is someone who brings persons together to work for neighborhood improvements, better conditions and human rights. There have been a lot of great community organizers in life, like Dorothy Day, Gandhi, Saul Alinzky, Martin Luther King, Caesar Chavez and more. Someone reminded me that “Jesus was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor.” Like rainy days, even demeaning remarks can be turned into a badge of honor. At the Olympic games someone asked Michael Phelps’s, the winner of eight Gold metals, coach what is the most important thing he taught Michael. He said that it was to turn adversity into something positive. In one of the races when Phelps’s goggles took in water, this obstacle motivated him to swim harder and, even without seeing, win. So bring on the rain delays.

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