Vancouver United Church Of Christ

Dear Church Family and Friends,

For our current newsletter, I thought I would share with you a speech I delivered at a rally in Olympia on February 27^th.  People from throughout the state had gathered to deliver to Governor Gregoire’s office thousands of postcards calling for a coal free Washington as we transition away from our state’s only remaining coal plant in Centralia.  I was the first speaker of the day, and here is what I said:

Hello, I am Brooks Berndt, and I am the pastor of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Vancouver, Washington.  To get all of you in the spirit of this event, I thought we would begin with a guided visualization.  I first want you to imagine that you are riding on top of a coal train going to Centralia.  As the train gets closer and closer to Centralia, you see people pouring out of their houses and trailers to come and greet us at the tracks as we pass.  They are all waving their arms, but they’re not waving their arms to say, “Hi.”  They’re waving their arms to say, “Stop.”  You see little boys and girls with tears in their eyes saying, “Stop, we need clean air.”  People all along the tracks are shouting and yelling at us to stop the train, to keep it from pulling into Centralia.  You then look up in the sky and you see birds circling above.  They want us to stop the train too.  They are tired of flying into white clouds of smoke thinking that they’re rain clouds.  They are tired of choking on all that dirty air.

Now, I want you to fast-forward a month.  I want you to imagine that you are riding a train to Centralia, but this time you’re not on a coal train.  You are on a state of the art, environmentally friendly train that was paid for with stimulus money.  All along the tracks people are coming out of their houses and trailers to come and greet us.  They run to the tracks cheering us onward.  Little boys and little girls are holding up signs that say, “Thanks!  We love you!”  You then notice that birds of all kinds are flying next to the train as they sing the most beautiful songs.  Finally, the train rolls into the train station at Centralia.  You look out and see a huge crowd of people.  In the crowd, you see men and women with signs saying, “We love our green jobs!”  But the love fest doesn’t stop there.  The crowd roars with delight when Governor Gregoire steps forward to announce that today is the first day of a bright future for the state of Washington.  “Today,” she says, “we say yes to clean air and no to dirty coal.”  The crowd roars in celebration.

Now, because I am a pastor, I want to share with you how we would end this story in a church.  In church, we often say, “Amen.”  “Amen” is a Hebrew word that can be translated “So be it.”  I don’t think you have to be Christian or Jewish to say, “Amen,” and I think this would be an appropriate response to our vision of a coal free Washington.  Therefore, brothers and sisters, let all of the people here say, “Amen.”  Let all of the people from the North and the South, the East and the West join with the birds and the clouds to say a resounding, “Amen, Amen, Amen.”

Your brother in Christ,

Pastor Brooks