AGENDA 21 RADIO

BY PAUL PRESTON

By Daniel Webster

CHAPTER 1 — I don’t simply just walk in

It’s not easy averting a war, especially when you have an entire army lined up against you. I’m not sure if we’re being asked to be a “David” with his slingshot or a “Daniel” in his lion’s den.

Either way, I’m up for the challenge and believe our community is as well. That’s what God has been preparing me for over the course of my lifetime.

In these parts I can’t simply walk in to a meeting and sit down unnoticed. I come with baggage and a history, which arrives with me whether I want it to or not. It affects most public aspects of my life. Those who do not agree with my views or are being exposed by those views use that baggage against what may indeed be the truth.

When it comes to the subject of water and Daniel Webster, no one straddles the fence. Folks love me or hate me. Those who love me, love me wholeheartedly and unabashedly. Those who hate me, despise me at the core of their being — their gut turns when they see me. I know. I live with the intimate reactions. I have disdain for fence-sitters, I knock them off to one side or the other.

These reactions are nothing new. I’ve lived with it since childhood. God took a fragile boy and through life experiences created a thick-skinned soldier.

My pen is my sword. My ink is my shield.

In my final gasps as publisher of our small-town newspaper, after many battles and wars, the paper became a casualty. I and the weekly newspaper didn’t make it through to see the final battle together. I went down wounded, bleeding and bruised — but unlike my newspaper, I’m not dead.

Through my column, Words From Webster, in the final weeks, I shared a piece of my true heart and vision with the community, as we looked into the future imminent water war in Scott Valley.

I challenged our spiritual leaders to step up and lead our community through this ultimate battle. I put forward several small scenarios, which if worked through correctly, as the Bible instructs, we could avoid a water war in the future, by dealing with smaller, more trivial matters properly.

I was staring at the end of my newspaper as I prepared to set it aside and focus every ounce of energy into being the literal arms and legs of my mother before she died from ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

If I had one last thought for the community, it was that we needed to live as neighbors according to Biblical principles, in order to deal with the days to come.

The columns I wrote were the most gut wrenching pieces I’ve ever penned.
At night, after I got my mother to bed and settled for the night, I would print out my column and drive over the mountain to my best buddy Jake Linville’s house. In the course of our nighttime conversation, I read to Jake my column and we talked through the parties involved and what was transpiring. I was able to tell Jake what I couldn’t put in print, the pieces the public wouldn’t know, as I shared with him the web involved in our impending water war.

In my column I named names, which rattled the developing water relationships of a whole bunch of folks that went to church with me. Including those rattled and angry the most was my pastor. So upset was my pastor and conflicted by secrets and relationships with valley power brokers he abandoned me and my mother. Losing my pastor at that point in my life as well as my ailing mother was more difficult and painful than words may describe.

Oddly, when all of my Christian support network was viciously removed from my life, God sent me Jake.

It was a relief and release to have a friend who could help me think through the emotional response to what I was writing. Jake was my leveler, the man who leveled me out after a day of war and death, to prepare me for the next day of battle to come.

God had sent me the right friend, at the right time, to meet the right need.

It was a most appropriate public, spiritual challenge. I laid out the parties who would be on the frontlines in the future water war. They are our community leaders. They lead our most influential community organizations — the Farm Bureau, churches, water organizations, the resource conservation district and a list going on for days.

We go to church together — most of us for a lifetime.

We all are neighbors — most of us for a lifetime.
We are professed brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ — God knows who for eternity.

Disclosing the water power broker relationships opened me up to the most despicable, satanic public relations campaign of destruction and hate I have ever seen in my lifetime.

It happened right here, in my little valley, my hometown, my church, my community, my family. It was gross.

When enough was enough and the wicked public relations campaign had to end, I sat down for a week and a half and wrote a 100 page letter to the leaders of my church.

I placed a folding table in my mother’s death room — a room not used since she choked to death from the despicable disease. I put my laptop on the table and for 10 straight days wrote every waking moment. With each key stroke I took back the death, hurt, hatred and evil. I wrote myself and our small community back to life.

The letter sought to set out for my community’s spiritual leaders the biblical process of grace and forgiveness, as there was no other way for us to get to the other side.

I knew through grace and forgiveness we would reach unity, and through unity we would find the spiritual power to face a water war together, rather than facing a water war against each other.

I correctly identified the parties at the forefront of our local water war, I nailed them perfectly. They have all seemed to act according to a script, written out in advance.

They thought their deception would be pulled off. They thought me dead and buried along with my mother and the weekly newspaper. They were so sure I was dead, they danced on my grave.

Their public relations campaign became more intense and more nauseating to a moral being.

The grave dance turned into ritual.

Oh, but I wasn’t dead, just silent. Healing the wounds out of public view led many to surmise they had successfully buried me and their plan could move forward unabated by the light of day.

By sitting quietly by, the folks began moving forward boldly with their water project. Folks began banking on it for their retirement. Community leaders began pushing their covert agendas more openly, with no one calling them out on their wrongdoing.

The deceivers stopped being careful. They thought lurking in the shadows was no longer required for the water plan to become a success.

I knew I had stumbled onto something big — bigger than big — but, I knew not what I had stepped into.