Proclamation: Rachel Kringle

Years ago, I founded an organization called Pacific Candlelighters. Its purpose was to use a small steering committee of activists to create projects and draw in participants, who would emerge as the core of a growing community. The aim was to reverse the community disintegration that had been happening incrementally over many years in Pacific.

I abandoned that effort when I was elected to city council, because my direct participation would have represented a conflict of interest. However, there is an individual in the Pacific community who seems to have picked up the baton. Initially, she became involved in the effort of "Taking Back Pacific," which meant recalling Mayor Cy Sun. But she has transcended that lesser objective for a greater and, I hope,  a more lasting one—identifying  the people in the community who are part of a rich resource of human talent, and illuminating them for the rest of the community to discover, or rediscover.

Rachel Kringle regularly produces these reports on her blog's features page, and she must have hit the right nerve, because it is my understanding that people are reading what she has to say and are finding pleasure in it. Based on the numbers of visitors she tracks, she may have become one of the touchstones for many Pacific residents. I'm awaiting her discussion of more of the members of Pacific Partnerships, whose organization is known in the community, but whose actors have gone too long unrecognized. Fortunately she's already started recognizing that group with a profile of Glenda White, Pacific's postmistress and a notary for the community. Contrary to the common wisdom behind commercial media, in some venues, good news does sell.

Rachel is not alone in her effort. My friend, Jeanne Fancher, has been casting about for some time to find a way to create a common communication medium for the community, hoping to obtain grants to facilitate that. What Jeanne probably has figured out by now is that her Pacific City Signal has become a source that people turn to in order to find out what's happening with city government. Both women are doing the community a great service in reconnecting people in the way print media used to.

There is no shortage of blogs in Pacific. A blog to recall the mayor is updated regularly. My blog was created to serve the purpose of community gadfly.

Of all the blogs that have cropped up in Pacific, Rachel’s is my favorite. While I don't wish to diminish Jeanne's contribution, I want to focus on Rachel's, because she is a neophyte, coming to this avocation cautiously, carefully, by fits and starts, and then finally finding her way. There is no pay, just the joy of service. But her blog is truly an expression of her personality, and it serves this community well. She is illustrating that old adage that a fool curses the darkness, but a wise man lights a candle.  I hope she continues to find the time to discover and rediscover the positive  individuals who can shape and reshape the soul of this community.

As Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, 

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal..."

Pacific is caught in that peculiar position for which both are true: it is time to wound and heal at the same moment. Rachel has chosen to be the healer. What she is discovering in this community, and what she expresses in her service, is an idea that 

 in every life, no matter how seemingly insignificant, there are opportunities for endeavor, courage, grace and nobility. And in that, there is majesty.

Therefore, by the power vested in me, as founder of Pacific Candlelighters, an observer of the Pacific community, and a person with a hope that Pacific's people can rise above the rancor that has choked the community for many years, I hereby bestow upon Rachel Kringle, author, blogger, activist and creator of community infrastructure, the Honor of the Order of the Pacific Candlelighters. Accompanying that honor are 19 personalized postage stamps with the legend, Rachel Kringle, A Pacific Candlelighter.*

Shine On, Rachel! Shine On!

*Although anyone in the community could so honor someone with a stamp, I would ask that the prerogative to bestow the Honor of the Order of Pacific Candlelighters be reserved to me, out of courtesy, so that the honor does not become diluted.