It’s so easy to fall into the partisan trap. To assume that your party or religion, or whatever, is the sole repository of truth, or integrity, or wisdom, or even just “the facts.”  But that’s a fool’s errand. We’re all struggling out here, we all have our chosen mechanisms, we all experiment with different strategies, we all adopt those vehicles that seat us best. Doesn’t mean the others are of no value. And just because you don’t care for the driver or the way the other car is headed doesn’t mean its a bad vehicle. Sometimes, you just need someone different in the driver’s seat.

I bring this up because I honestly believe that there’s a rare opportunity for Greens to support a (*gasp*) Democrat without holding their noses.  A Democratic candidate for an incredibly important seat: Scott Brown’s. I’ve posted on the brand new “Half-Term Senator” web site my own reasons for unseating Brown-if you’ve been studying his votes, you already have your own. The candidate I have in mind supports single-payer health insurance. He supports an immediate drawdown of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s promised that his first act as Senator will be to introduce legislation overturning the Supreme Court’s decision in re Citizens United. He has Bill McKibben’s unique endorsement. And unlike Senators Kerry and Brown he would have voted against the debt ceiling “deal” (insisting instead that the President invoke the 14th). (Oh-and he testified against predatory gambling here in MA, too).

More than that-he has a lifetime of experience fighting oppression, from facing ostracism in college for demonstrating against exclusive dining halls to living in South Africa writing a book on apartheid. He’s an ordained minister who writes what would be terrific sermons (check this one out). He has an MBA in Business from Harvard and put it to good use in creating a very successful company that monitors corporate adherence to environmental standards. He’s warm; he listens; he’s open to criticism. He’s freaking rare. And if anything, he’s greener than I am.

His name is Bob Massie-and I genuinely hope that you’ll each take an opportunity to meet him. You can start Wednesday, August 10, at his birthday party. Bring your questions. Introduce yourself as a Green–you will be received graciously (after all, you’ll meet other Green activists there).

If you can’t make it (I know this is short notice), you can sign up for event notices on his web site.

And if you like what you’re hearing, there is no time like the present to donate what you can to his campaign. I know it’s painful-I went into serious debt during the GRP 2010 campaigns myself. But if you want a grassroots candidate, you gotta feed the soil. Got compost? Contribute what you can via my own ActBlue page. Every little bit helps. And you’ll be turning blue a little more green.

Let me conclude with the concluding passage from Masssie’s writing about The Book of Jonah. If you like as much as I did–hit the ActBlue link above.

…Over the last three or four decades I have seen people resist the prophetic word. I have done so myself.

I observed the blind eye which conservatives turned toward human rights violations in Central America because such authoritarian regimes suited America’s need for allies against Communism. I have also witnessed the left’s refusal to listen to or speak of the brutalities of Castro’s Cuba or Soviet tyranny.

I remember how hard it was to get anyone to care about a distant country in which whites who made up only 10% of the population exercised absolute political and economic control over the 90% black majority.

I recall how bored and impatient or angry people became when early advocates raised the possibility of planetary damage because carbon dioxide emissions might lead to something called “climate change.” And how resistant Wall Street was to thinking about sustainability, because they were certain that if something were truly important they would already have taken it into account.

Today I am battling the skepticism and fatigue – all understandable – of people who are so busy with the problems of today that they have little room for concern about tomorrow. So I am constantly pondering my own sometimes unattractive prophetic choices: should I become a coward, doomsayer, or fool? Often I plunge ahead anyway, hoping that if I am headed in the wrong direction, a whale will redirect me.

Right this minute I am sounding the alarm about how intensive neurological research is being used to entrap and fleece the poor through gambling addiction. Companies that design and build slot machines are like 21st century cigarette companies, exploring the profit potential of technological heroin and selling it to state legislatures – and poor people – as a solution to their financial problems. But the awareness of such abuses – and the necessary public outrage to stop them – is not yet common.

Even as I pursue something like this, I know that there are many topics – too many – that I shamefully ignore, unconsciously mimicking the priest on the road to Jericho who is too busy and self-important to notice all those who are lying beaten by the side of road.

I can tell sometimes, as I launch into another litany of concerns – blurting out a statistic in the middle of a dinner party or depositing some stark fact among the chirpy exclamations on Facebook – that I am at risk of running down my own Jonah-like pathway of coward, doomsayer, or fool. I would just as soon not bring this up. And I would, on balance, prefer people to like me. And I have no desire to be shown as having sounded a false alarm. The intensity of the prophetic life is such that I recognize – even as I describe it here that – I might also be tempted to want to be proven right rather than be laughed at as a person who worries and cares just a bit too much.

The story of Jonah, as powerful as it is for the person tempted to the arduous path of prophecy, also contains a caution for others who, in stating their views with self-confidence, might be looking for recognition of their superiority.

It asks of the harsh fundamentalist: are you so sure that you understand the inner nature of God that you can state with complete certainty that two people of the same gender cannot be married?

It asks of the smug economist: are you so convinced of the universality of self-interest that you feel it necessary to make light of the transformative power of self-sacrificial love and forgiveness?

It asks of the confident rationalist: are you so well informed about the nature of a universe stocked with billions upon billions of yet-to-be revealed secrets that you can affirm with absolute conviction that we are the highest form of consciousness ever to have existed or currently existing in the entire cosmos?

It asks of the romantic idealist: are you so persuaded that the studious avoidance of unhappy thoughts, the awkward denial of discomfort, the breezy superficiality of modern culture are a credible match for the ancient and ever-present realities of grief, evil, and death?

The story of Jonah is one of the great literary accomplishments of the human race, for in four short chapters in teaches us both the necessity and the dangers of prophetic courage, it laughs at our foibles, even as it unlocks our hearts.

In short, it gives us more than enough to ponder if we ever find ourselves with a little extra time in the belly of a dark whale.