On the way home from work Monday I stopped by the store to pick up a few things for supper. I tossed a copy of the Star-Tribune in the basket before I added the fresh corn on the cob and salad greens and yogurt. I found a checkout line that was open. In fact, the checker, a young Sudanese woman in a headscarf, politely invited me to come to her station. "I’d be glad if you let me help you," she said. Some call this kind of talk South Dakota Nice, full of quiet good manners as it is.

She rang up the few things in my basket, and then pulled out the paper, which I had already purchased at the box outside the store. "Oh, look!" she said, stopping to glance at the paper. The center photograph showed people in New Orleans hugging and weeping on the fifth anniversary of hurricane Katrina. "Oh, what has happened to these people?" she asked of me.

I had not really looked at the paper yet. I didn’t know what the lead story was. "I’ll find out when I read it, I guess," I said to her. Another young woman wearing a headscarf stepped up to bag my groceries. You could tell they knew each other. The checker held the paper up for her to see. "Look! Something bad has happened to these people!" she exclaimed. The bagger stopped her work and looked. "Oh," she murmured. "I hope they will be okay." They both continued to look at the paper, extending a moment of silence between them, savoring the space where the memories thrummed and sang.

I have never – not in all the hundreds of times I have gone through the checkout lane at a store – seen a checker take time to look at a newspaper and respond in empathy.

But then, maybe I have never before had a young checker who has been such a recent immigrant from a war-torn country.

What happens to that empathy as the generations roll on? I can’t get that question out of my mind as I try to sort through all the thrust-and-parry in the responses to Glenn Beck’s honor rally last Saturday. What is the proper thing for us to do as people stand at our borders and look over, longing to come join us in "The Great American experiment." How shall we address the continuing fall-out from years of entrenched slavery and racism on our soil? How shall we treat the First Nation peoples in our midst, given our history of treaty-breaking on our way to the gold rush? Why are we not celebrating more exuberantly the end of the war in Iraq, a country we invaded under false pretenses more than 7 years ago?

One of the thoughts I had watching Beck and crew on Saturday was that people want to be rallied. People love to be thrilled, to be called out of themselves for a higher purpose. People want to be affirmed and challenged to rise to some kind of nobility, to be the ones who change the world or save the world or reclaim some long-lost glory years, or at least the part of that time that once made them feel good.

What we saw Saturday was a good old-fashioned religious rally. Scriptures were intermingled and read aloud, both American scriptures and Christian ones. The choir sang their favorite gospel hymn. Prayers of thanksgiving were offered in the name of Christ for Beck and Palin, although similar prayers for our President were eerily absent. In fact, all the prayers were recognizable as the hallmark of a certain form of piety in some Protestant faith communities: they were full of language telling God who God is, and what God needs to do, as opposed to inviting God to do whatever it is God wants to do - move our hearts, say, or change our minds, or recreate our souls one more time. Testimonies were given, people were called to unite behind the cause of the day and given clear instructions about how to do so. And, true to form, we ended up with a bonafide altar call, a moment of urgency presented as the one great chance to get your life right.

And then there was the appeal for money at the end. Anybody watched Steve Martin in Leap of Faith lately?

I will tell you there were things I liked about the rally, and things that scared me nearly senseless. Many of you have had the same kind of response. The questions won’t stay quiet. Where were the newest immigrants with their empathy and strong work ethic? Why was the language for God and humankind exclusively male? How many Americans have forgotten the beautiful, soaring passages of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address and second inaugural speech? How much time is spent in our schools etching them into our American memories? How did other Christians feel, those whose faith practices are more sacramental or reflective – Roman Catholics, Quakers, Mennonites? How did Jews feel about the way Moses was presented? How did Muslim Americans feel, who also tell the Moses story, but were a non-sequitur at this rally? How did First Nation peoples feel? Why is sacrifice so often couched solely in militaristic tones?

Last Saturday I was a co-celebrant in a wedding service at our church with the First Nation brother of the groom. I offered the Christian part of the service, he conducted his traditional rituals. I was deeply moved by some of the symbolism he used, and the words of encouragement and challenge he offered the couple. It was one of the most sacred wedding ceremonies I have experienced in recent years. I asked him if I could borrow a couple of ideas for further use, and he agreed.

As we were preparing to walk down the aisle at the beginning of the ceremony, he leaned over and whispered to me, "A generation ago, this scene would not have happened. Not for your people, nor for mine." I agreed. We looked at each other and shared a quiet smile.

In 1962, when he was 88 years old, Robert Frost took a goodwill tour of the Soviet Union. He wanted to meet with Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev. He said he could envision "the Russian and the American democracies drawing together." As they sat and talked together, Frost told Khrushchev, "A great nation makes great poetry, and great poetry makes a nation." He died 5 months later.

When President Kennedy delivered a eulogy for him at the Frost library, he said, "Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert Frost. He brought an unsparing instinct for reality to bear on the platitudes and pieties of society. His sense of the human tragedy fortified him against self-deception and easy consolation."

Here is one of my favorite poems of his. He called it Mending Wall. May it open you to wonder and hope.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,  That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,  And spills the upper boulders in the sun,   And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.  The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair  Where they have left not one stone on a stone,  But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,  To please the yelping dogs.  The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made,  But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;  And on a day we meet to walk the line  And set the wall between us once again.  We keep the wall between us as we go.  To each the boulders that have fallen to each.  And some are loaves and some so nearly balls  We have to use a spell to make them balance:  'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'  We wear our fingers rough with handling them.  Oh, just another kind of out-door game,  One on a side. It comes to little more:  There where it is we do not need the wall:  He is all pine and I am apple orchard.  My apple trees will never get across  And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.  He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head:  'Why do they make good neighbors?  Isn't it Where there are cows?  But here there are no cows.  Before I built a wall I'd ask to know  What I was walling in or walling out,  And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,  That wants it down. ' I could say 'Elves' to him, But it's not elves exactly,  and I'd rather He said it for himself.  I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top  In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.  He moves in darkness as it seems to me~ Not of woods only and the shade of trees.  He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."