Last Saturday, I arrived home from Wichita where I'd had my Suzuki car repaired at Firestone. It
was approximately 1:46 p.m.
"So what are your plans today?" Maria said to me as I ate leftover meatloaf warmed in the
microwave. "I know you have something up your sleeve."
I told her I planned to vote early. All Longmont County voters could put in advance ballots at
Our Blessed Virgin Catholic Church in nearby Dovedale until 4 p.m. "Wanna come with me?" I
asked.
"Yeah, but I gotta take a shower first."
While Maria was showering, I did last minute research on the internet about the candidates &
issues so I could make informed votes. Of course, where Pastor Sam Brownback and Kris Kobach
were concerned, I didn't need to do any research. It was clear where I stood on Mr. Onward
Christian Soldiers.
But the two Kansas Supreme Court judges who people wanted to remove for the way they ruled on
the Carr Brothers - I had to research them. I wasn't going to be like all those hotheads who
voted solely on being pissed about something they knew little about. Law is an intricately
technical area.
Maria and I took the kids - Max & Gabby - with us when we voted. Two years ago, they "voted"
with their schoolmates for president. Shortly before the school election, Max, who I think knew
I was for Obama, said, "I think I'm voting for the other guy 'cuz I'm sick of portions." Both my
kids had heard that Michelle Obama was behind their school lunches being served in smaller
portions.
When we went to vote, the poll worker made a big deal about my name on the voter list being listed as Jeff, while my driver's license said Jeffrey. Wasn't sure if I'd get to vote, but I made it.
The real star of this experience was Our Blessed Virgin Catholic Church, an Ivory colored cathedral. I was raised Baptist so this is a world I've just been a guest in a few times. I loved the brutal, poignancy of the painting at the head of the sanctuary - a pained, sorrowful Jesus Christ on the cross. Catholics don't mess around. Suburban white bred Protestants, on the other hand, will give the kiddos candy crosses with their chocolate Easter bunnies.
Maria and I completed voting. We had to pee. The lavatories were rough carved stone structures of Romanesque quality. Stall doors encrusted and painted with dark evocations of St. Thomas of Aquinas hues. I could only imagine Vatican City. All of it, the Roman in Roman Catholic.
"This is nice," I said to Max who stood back against the wall as I pissed between the partitions.
"I don't think so," Max responded.
"Come on, this restroom - I can hardly call it that - rivals the restroom at Von Marr," I said as I washed up at the marble sink, referring to Wichita's clothing store with its hand crafted ties and tailored suits.
Back in the Santa Fe, Maria brought out the hand sanitizer she'd acquired. "There was a row of them on the counter of the ladies room," she said. "They were stacked. Free maxi-pads, tampons."
"Let's go to Goodwill," she said and I moved the SUV gently along the spacious and vacant parking lot, just thinking.
Gov. Brownback converted from that liberal Methodist church to join the Baptists, then converted to Catholicism. Like his conservative Catholic buddy, Rick Santorum, (the right-winger who nearly puked at Irish Catholic JFK's speech on the separation of church and state), Brownback crosses the divide, fitting in as much with jokey, sterile white evangelicals as comfortably as he does with pre-Second Vatican Council Catholicism.
He's been linked with the secretive Opus Dei cult as naturally as he's been connected with The Family on Washington D.C.'s C Street - you know the place where the leader has cited Stalin and Hitler in relation to Christian power.
You'd think Pope Francis would be on Brownback's Enemies List. Gay? "Who am I to judge?" Evolution? "God doesn't have a magic wand." The environment? Yes, there is climate change. Next, he'll be playing guitar and singing, "The Times, They Are - a Changin.'
We went to Goodwill where Max and I sauntered to the used book section that unlocked politics, theology, philosophy - somewhere by this rough scuffed tile floor - world.
