Every August, something remarkable happens over Seattle.
The shores of Lake Washington fill with families. Boats gather in anticipation. Conversations pause. Children cover their ears while simultaneously looking skyward. Then, with a deafening roar, six blue-and-gold fighter jets streak overhead, carving impossible arcs through the summer sky.
For many, it is the sound of childhood. For many, it is Seafair. For many, it is home.
I understand that.
After thirty years of living in Cascadia, I have come to love Seattle deeply. I love the ferries crossing the Salish Sea, the snow-covered Olympics and Cascades standing watch over our city, the neighborhoods that each carry their own character, the coffee shops where ideas are born, the farmers markets, the music, the creativity, and the stubborn conviction that another world is possible.
I also understand that Seattle’s story cannot be told apart from aviation.
Boeing helped shape this city. Thousands of families—including many dear friends—have devoted their lives to aerospace engineering, manufacturing, research, and innovation. Their work deserves our gratitude. It deserves celebration.
But honoring our history is not the same as preserving every tradition forever.
Sometimes the deepest form of gratitude is asking whether a tradition is still forming us into the people we hope to become. That is the question I find myself asking whenever the Blue Angels return. Not because I dislike airplanes. Not because I fail to appreciate extraordinary skill. But because I have become increasingly convinced that the most important question any community can ask is this:
What practices form a people into the kind of community that participates in G-d’s Shalom?
That question has become the center of my work as a practical theologian. It is also, I believe, the question every city is wise to consider.
We become what we repeatedly celebrate
Communities are not formed primarily by their ideals. They are formed by their practices. By what they celebrate. By what they commemorate. By what they applaud. By what fills them with awe.
Every festival is, in this sense, a civic liturgy.
It teaches us, often beneath conscious awareness, what is worthy of admiration and what kind of future deserves our desire.
Long before I ever stood in front of a classroom, I learned this from the Jesus traditions. We become what we repeatedly practice. Communion forms us. Hospitality forms us. Confession forms us. Shared meals form us. Pilgrimage forms us. Sabbath rest forms us.
The question, then, is not whether Seattle has civic liturgies. The question is what those liturgies are forming within us.
Empire has always understood liturgy
Empires have always known that arguments rarely change civilizations. Practices do. Rome understood this. Military parades. Triumphal processions. Public spectacles. Displays of technological supremacy. Empire did not simply govern people. It formed imagination. It taught citizens what greatness looked like. What security looked like. What power deserved admiration.
Spectacle has always been one of empire’s most effective teachers.
The Blue Angels are not the Roman Empire. Nor are those who delight in them somehow endorsing war. Many simply marvel at astonishing pilots displaying extraordinary skill. Many remember parents or grandparents who served. Many associate the air show with cherished family memories. I honor those memories. But public rituals always communicate more than we consciously intend.
The Blue Angels are military fighter aircraft.
Their breathtaking precision cannot be separated from the purpose for which they were designed. When military power becomes civic entertainment, something deeper is happening than an afternoon of aerial acrobatics. A story is being rehearsed. A story in which power inspires awe. A story in which technological dominance becomes beautiful. A story in which our highest public spectacle is built around machines created for war. Whether we intend it or not, we are practicing an imagination. The question is whether it is the imagination we most want to cultivate.
The imagination of empire or the imagination of Shalom
One reason I continue following Jesus is because the Jesus Way persistently interrupts the imagination of empire.
Again and again, Jesus refuses the spectacles of domination. Jesus enters Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey rather than a warhorse. Jesus washes feet instead of demanding loyalty. Jesus blesses peacemakers instead of conquerors. Jesus refuses the sword. Jesus reveals that the deepest power in the universe is not coercion but love. The Kingdom of G-d is not a kinder empire. It is another imagination altogether.
Over the years, I have come to call this Shalomic Imagination. G-d’s Shalom is far more than peace. It is the flourishing of all and everything. It is an ecology of relationships where neighbors, watersheds, economies, cultures, creatures, and generations discover that their well-being is inseparable from one another.
Shalom asks not, “Who wins?” It asks, “Who belongs?”
Shalom asks not, “How powerful are we?” but, “What practices help all of creation flourish?”
We have already rehearsed another story
One of the most hopeful moments I’ve experienced as a Seattleite came not during Seafair but during the FIFA World Cup.
For several remarkable weeks our city became a place of extraordinary welcome. Visitors arrived from every corner of the globe. Dozens of languages echoed through our neighborhoods. Flags from many nations flew together—not as competing claims of superiority but as joyful signs of shared celebration. Restaurants overflowed. Transit hummed. Public spaces became places of encounter. For a brief season, Seattle rehearsed belonging. Our civic pride emerged not from displaying power but from extending hospitality. Not from military precision. From human connection.
Watching the city come alive, I found myself wondering: What if this is the kind of practice that forms a people for flourishing?
What if welcoming the stranger does more to shape our common life than thrilling ourselves with military spectacle? What if hospitality is a greater civic achievement than dominance?
Imagine another Seafair
This is not an argument against celebration. It is an argument for a deeper celebration. Imagine a Seafair that still honors Boeing’s extraordinary legacy while celebrating aerospace innovation oriented toward healing rather than warfare.
Imagine Coast Salish canoe families at the heart of our civic story. Imagine artists, engineers, musicians, ecologists, students, neighborhoods, and innovators creating together.
Imagine sustainable aviation. Ecological restoration. The Salish Sea. The Cascades. Shared meals. Public art. Children imagining futures devoted not simply to technological mastery but to the flourishing of all and everything. Would such practices form a different people? I believe they could, they would.
Becoming the city we practice
Cities become what they repeatedly rehearse. That may be the deepest lesson of practical theology.
Not only individuals. Communities. Cultures. Nations. Our public rituals are never merely entertainment. They are acts of formation. They are rehearsals for the future. Every civilization has its liturgies.
The question is not whether Seattle will have civic rituals. The question is whether those rituals will rehearse the imagination of empire or the imagination of G-d’s Shalom.
I know which city I hope we become.
Not because I love Seattle less than those who cherish the Blue Angels. But because I love Seattle enough to believe our greatest spectacle has yet to be imagined. One that teaches our children not merely how to marvel at power— but how to practice belonging. Because in the end, that may be the most important question any city can ask:
What practices form a people into the kind of community that participates in G-d’s Shalom for all and everything?
Peace, dwight
