Last week, we passed the 1-year anniversary of the horrific day in Tucson, Arizona. On January 8, 2011, a lone shooter shot U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and eighteen other people. Six died, including 9-year-old Christiana-Taylor Green.

Recently I read the book As Good As She Imagined by Roaxanna Green and Jerry B. Jenkins. It’s a wonderful book that portrays the life of this 9-year-old, Christina-Taylor. My heart mourned for the victims and their families but especially for the Green family. No one wants to lose his or her child.

Green and Jenkins share stories from Christina-Taylor’s short life and I couldn’t help but fall in love with her and her family. It’s reminded me of the importance of community, love of family and how enduring challenges develops the perseverance needed to survive later trials.

Let me just put it out there and take the wacks for being intolerant; I would be very uneasy having a devout Mormon in the Oval office.

Watching the political wrangling of the pachyderm party and the various missteps of those hopefuls for nomination to lead the nation, it is quite obvious that the “religious affiliation” question is a minefield not to be crossed.

So let me attempt to bravely venture out where one is forbidden to go and explain my queasiness.

Some religions are nutty.

Scientology comes to mind as a loopy scam. 

Some religions are deceptive, cloaking their real ideas and agenda in the guise and language of an already accepted faith.

The Gnostics were pretty good at this as I recall. 

Can I be honest for a moment?  I hate election years. There I said it.  I hate coming home from work to a mailbox full of paper screaming at me in BOLD TYPE: VOTE YES/VOTE NO. Vote for me; Screw them; Everyone else is evil; I am right, no wait I'm left, but I'm correct and you're wrong.  If elected I will save us... from what?

Can I get a "maybe" box on the ballot?  Like a "let's try this and if it doesn't work, we'll rethink it. We'll be mature adults and have your best interest at heart." (I'm sorry I meant special interests...) Nope, we throw millions upon millions of dollars at mailers and shady commercials made by an intern to make people think they can and will fix everything. Millions of dollars that could be invested in, I don't know, ANYTHING else.  What if two people ran for governor -wait for it- together! (shock, gasp).  What if we thought outside of a box with two legitimate parties? In a land that believes in dreaming big, two parties seems really small (and divisive).  When we approach life as so right and wrong, black and white, either/or, I begin to wonder if we can just vote all of that down.

An unknown guy from South Carolina won the Democratic Primary there.  He basically paid the filing fee, and ran an almost unknown campaign, and by some freakish chance won.  You can read the whole story on Yahoo.

I personally love stories like this.  There is something deep within me that loves when a dude like Alvin Greene wins an election, or upsets the societal expectation.  There is probably a lot that goes into my feeling, but I think a big part of it my slight tendency towards being anti-establishment.  For some reason, I just love when someone who seems to be otherwise an underdog goes up against the big time player and comes out on top.

A bit about Greene:  Unemployed, Military Veteran, Lives with Parents, Ran almost no campaign.  Oh, I almost forgot to mention he has a pending felony charge.  

Yesterday's Inauguration of President Obama was the most-watched inauguration ceremony ever. I have email from friends all over the world who stayed up into the wee hours to watch a live stream from Washington DC online. At work, we have a standing weekly staff meeting on Tuesdays, but this week everything "IAM" halted at 11 a.m. and we lowered the screen and streamed Hulu's live feed (while listening to a radio broadcast - the stream was very, very delayed! As my friend Alissa twittered, "At one point, Rick Warren was singing the National Anthem and sounded a lot like Aretha Franklin!") Everyone in the world, it seemed, was watching.

On my way in to Manhattan yesterday morning, I was sitting on the Staten Island ferry reading a pre-release of Mako Fujimura's forthcoming book from NavPress, Refractions, (it's excellent, by the way) when I was approached by a band of youths, one of whom was carrying a small video camera. They explained that they were doing a project for school, and asked permission to interview me. I agreed to it, and the interview began.

Today, God willing, the highest ranking office in our government will pass peacefully from one man to another - and not just from man to man, but from political party to political party, and under circumstances that would have been unfathomable just fifty years ago.

In 2000, when the election results were decided after a wearying month-long court battle, the results thrilled some and infuriated others. Those results are still disputed. But I recall feeling very proud of my country, because although emotions were running high, there were no riots or flag-burnings, and nobody burned the Supreme Court down. A peaceful transfer of power in the midst ofheated disagreement is something that not many around the world get to experience.