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This is what I’ve learned to love about my hometown. Coming out of the Little Caesar’s Pizzeria with my hot & ready, and there in the parking lot is a lady–soccer mom kind of look–stepping into her Volvo with a bumper sticker, just one, carefully placed, black background, white letters: i’m already against the next war. I could drive through other cities, maybe even states and never find a bumper sticker like that. And I could drive through yet other cities and yet other states and find ‘em pretty easily. Places are particular. And if you happen to be a pastor in a particular place–which I personally think is the best kind of pastor to be rather than a roving one–it’s good, I think, to learn to love the particularities of your city. Even if maybe there are things about those particularities that rankle, I think it’s a good discipline to talk yourself into seeing the best in those things.
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Latest Ann Arbor bumper sticker sighting on the back of a red Honda Insight-Hybrid: My car sips gas; your car sucks. Great! I thought. Just what we need to convince more people to buy cars that get better fuel economy. Nothing motivates the unmoved like a little self-righteousness from the newly moved. I couldn’t help myself, and drove next to the bumper sticker displayer. Doing a little profiling, expecting to see a middle age white guy, thin, with glasses and a beard. Sure enough, stereotype held. Middle age white guy, thin, with glasses and a beard. Sigh. We’re literally in this hurting environment together. We’re hurting it together and we’ll only be able to be kinder to it together. Could we please drop the self-righteousness? Unseemly in matters religious and environmental. And worse, ineffective, which we can’t afford to be right now.

I love Ann Arbor, my hometown. I keep telling myself to make a list of the most out there bumper stickers. Like the one that said simply F*** Bush, only without the euphemism symbols. Just like that. I drove up close to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me, but no, there it was: live and in livid color. Being a boomer, I remember the visceral hatred that many felt for the President during the Vietnam war. LBJ, remember, decided not to run for a second term. And Nixon was not a beloved figure. But never the likes of that bumper sticker with the two four letter words stacked on top of each other. Whoah.