Pat Fleagle

This past week, Pat Fleagle was one of the Pennsylvania legislators routed from office by het up voter anger about last summer's ill-conceived pay raise vote. Well, voter turnout was barely over 20%, and Pat lost by 122 votes - so "rout" is an over-statement. He had represented our small town and its surrounding district for eighteen years. The loss was surely a blow.

Many summers ago, Pat Fleagle was my first night-time date. It was in late August just before the seventh grade. We walked downtown to see a Jerry Lewis movie, sat high in the balcony, which would not have been my first choice, but hey, this was date world and I was open to new things. But not so open that I knew what to do when Pat asked, "Can I put my arm around you?" Such an unexpected question. "No," I blurted firmly, and then sat there confused by my answer.

I remember really enjoying the walk along Main Street to and from the theatre - the conversation, and the ambiance - warm summer night + fireflies. He was a nice boy, a smart one...earnest, but funny, too...in a crisp short-sleeved shirt with its top button done up tight.

In one of those perfectly pre-adolescent girl stupidities, I said something like, "Well, I know you won't still like me by the end of the school year."

"I bet I will."

"Bet not."

"I bet you a nickel I will."

"OK."

Pat didn't call or follow up in the week or so before we started seventh grade, and by the time we got settled into the newness and bigness of it, I never really figured out how I should act around this boy who took me to the movies and asked me...you know.

The next June - it must have been one of the very last days of school because I ran into Pat in an empty hallway as he was cleaning out his locker - he looked me dead in the eye and said, "You owe me a nickel."

Still a sweet memory.

I never voted for Pat. Never could have. I moved to the far coast after grad school. I had moved in farther directions - democrat, liberal, meditator, believer in reincarnation, creative spirit, vegetarian there for a while - long before that. But after re-connecting at our 25th class reunion and through the ease of the internet, we exchanged infrequent, brief communiques. Like the time my mother sent me a newspaper clipping in which Pat was quoted as saying he thought creationism should be included in the science curriculum. As it happened, I had just read Darwin's Origin of the Species for a college seminar I was teaching. So we had a little email conversation about that. "Are you nuts, Pat?!" - I think I might have introduced the topic something like that.

At the reunion itself, Pat had been called forward to offer a prayer...which he did "in the name of Jesus Christ" as my eyes flew open to make contact with those of my dear friend, Marna, the class Jew. She smiled wanly and sighed. Fly 2000 miles back home for "re-union" and be reminded that you have no place in the local "sacred"...Lovely. Later that night, I approached Pat - "Pat, you represent everyone. Can't you come up with a prayer that includes all of them?"

"Oh, you and Sauder (class PETA activist)!" he said light-heartedly. "He's already been all over me about it. My church  tells me that that the only way a prayer reaches God is through Jesus Christ. I tell people that if they want me to do a prayer, that's how it's going to be."

"Well then, maybe Sauder needs to do the prayer next time. I hope he shows up with a smudge stick and a rattle."

No surprise then in noting last week that Pat supports a "Marriage Protection Amendment." Meanwhile, some of my closest friends are gay. I don't think their homosexuality is a sin - I think that whole hubbub is based on fear, ignorance, and gross Biblical mistranslation. Here's my bet: People in the not-too-distant future will look back at this ugly tempest in the same way we now view the church's condemnation of Galileo.

Psalms 93 and 104 , and Ecclesiastes 1:5 speak of the motion of celestial bodies and the suspended position of the earth. Galileo defended heliocentrism , and claimed it was not contrary to those Scripture passages. He took Augustine's position on Scripture: not to take every passage too literally, (as) scripture... is a book of poetry... not a book of instructions or history. 

Galileo was right. Homosexuality is no sin. So no, I don't feel the least need to be protected from gay humans having the legal, civil benefits of a committed, caring relationship.

And yet...and yet...I felt for Pat last Tuesday night. And Wednesday. And Thursday. And now.

Because Pat Fleagle is a good man -  "as honest as the day is long," says my mother, who still lives in that town and also disagrees with him on virtually everything. She's especially steamed about his vote to cut funds for mercury clean-up and deny money to sex education.

Another friend from PA sent an email celebrating Pat's loss..."He earned that loss, greedy bastard, with that vote for more pay in the dark of night."

Hmmmm. Well, okay. But he said it was a mistake. He apologized. Repeatedly. He wrote a check to repay anything he'd gotten from it. So is the anger really about the pay vote? Or is it what we see so much of all over the country - a kind of generalized anger that is always happy to find a place to land?

. . .

Marna - Remember her?  The Jew? - is a blue voter in a red state, and over these last few years, we've had a number of email exchanges about the need to build a bridge of communication between red and blue...to break through what seems to be a toxic political polarity...to find more productive ways to work through the anger and distrust so rampant today.

I've been thinking we need a new kind of Chautauqua - genuine round-table dialogues among people of all persuasions - policy wonks and poets, scientists and preachers, health care workers, artists...to model a better, more inspiring kind of conversation...to prove what I believe to be true: that our mass media polarity show does not reflect the complexity of thought and consideration in America today. Surely, we are better and wiser than we appear on TV.

Of course, there is also the argument that this is no time for building bridges; rather, the left must simply concentrate on slugging hard to beat back the destructive polarizing tactics of the Religious Right power brokers and cynical Rovian manipulations.

For me, it needs to be a combination of both - counter punch in the political arena, while encouraging deep dialogue across differences on the ground.

In my own personal life, some of my biggest, transformative breakthroughs have come when I've managed to contain a paradox; that is, held seeming opposites equally in my being.

Surely, in this genuine heart feeling I have for an old school friend, many of whose positions make me want to cry, there is similar potential.