It seems kind of anticlimactic to write about Moses Lake's Walk for Life, which we held yesterday. This is about as far from San Francisco's or Washington DC's experience as we're likely to get. No pro-abort protesters itching for a brawl, no shouting, no sign-waving. In these parts, pro-lifers are just preaching to the choir.
A little background for the non-northwesterners who read this (probably most of y'all): Moses Lake is a small-to-medium-sized town, about 16,000 people. Still, it's the biggest city for several good-sized counties around. It's mostly tater farms around here, with cattle ranching to the west and wheat to the east, but not a whole lot that doesn't depend on agriculture. Lots of Mormons, Catholics and Fundamentalists, a few Muslims (the kind who don't burn cars or model explosive accessories); pretty much everybody here belongs to some morally-structured religion, even if they miss services sometimes when the walleye are biting. So this isn't exactly moon-bat country. We have a 1st Way CPC, but the nearest abortuary is in Kennewick, which is 70 miles away.
So yesterday's march was a fairly small one, because it's a small town. The Catholics were the biggest contingent (spearheaded by the Knights of Columbus), but I saw quite a few folks I used to worship with at the First Baptist and representatives of just about every church in town. My friend Doug Sherman was there, as were several other local pastors. Our Lady of Fatima's venerable Msgr. Skehan was there with his cane, his arthritic gait and his shy smile. He's so slight and frail-looking that he looks like a good wind would blow him over (and we get some dillies in eastern Washington), but looks are deceiving. Monsignor (in this parish, he doesn't even need to use a last name) is in his late eighties, and he came over from Ireland during World War Two, on a ship that had to dodge U-boats the whole way. At an age when most people are sitting home watching TV, he helps pastor two parishes, working as hard as he did at 40. If anybody had the right to sit out the Walk, it's Monsignor. But there he was, putting us young 'uns to shame.
The march was a short one, and unlike the big urban marches, we had to stick to the sidewalk because our location was on the busiest street in three counties, and nobody wanted to tie up traffic. The only police officer present was off-duty; I only know he was a cop because he's a member of my parish. I didn't see any reporters there either; I wonder who was in charge of getting the word out to the paper. (I hope it wasn't me.) We didn't sing or chant; we mostly walked along holding our signs up in the bitter-cold wind and visited among ourselves. Virtually every reaction was positive; honks and waves from passing drivers. One guy said he saw a one-finger salute, but I missed it. I think it was when we weren't fast enough getting through a crosswalk.
Moses Lake gets an average of 330 days of sunshine a year. As fate would have it, yesterday wasn't one of them. The temperature was somewhere in the high 30s, and as we walked, it started to rain. Those of us not smart enough to wear gloves had fingers the color of a fire engine by the end of the half-mile or so walk.
One thing that really struck home was how the various churches stood together. (Sectarian hostilities tend to be muted in a small town, because the fellow whose church you eviscerate on Sunday morning may be the guy who sells you a car or fixes your plumbing on Monday.) The opening prayer was led by an Evangelical minister (I've met him but his name escapes me), and during the prayer I heard a number of people murmuring "Yes, Lord. Yes, Jesus." in the Pentecostal fashion. When it ended, the Catholics crossed themselves. Nobody blinked at either gesture.
It's kind of disappointing that the solidarity we had at our Walk for Life is sort of wasted here. Don't get me wrong; it's good when brethren can stand together for what's right, and the word "shall not return void". But conservative Christians aren't really a force in Washington; we're a blue state by virtue (if that's the word) of the huge left-leaning population in the Seattle area. Our votes count for nothing in this state; our march was witnessed only be a few passing motorists. It was a lot like punching a marshmallow. We made our convictions known, but there was no opposition there to resist us. "Bring me men to match my mountains," says the poem, but ours was the opposite problem. We had the men, but no mountains.
Nevertheless, the one thing small towns do have is a major export of young people. I saw lots of teenagers and young adults at the Walk, some of whom I know are about to finish school. Better than half of Moses Lake's kids will leave town when they graduate, and if they have a strong pro-life conviction before they do, each one will be one more voice for the unborn in places like Seattle or Spokane, where such voices are rarer. we may not be a bulldozer, but at least we're an incubator.
Still, maybe next year we can arrange to have some counter-protesters come over from Seattle. It would be a lot more fun with a little opposition. And it would make some great photo ops for the Greatest Newspaper in the Northwest™.
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