AND NOW FOR A GESTURE FROM WOMEN.(A SECTION)(Editorial)

Byline: BARBARA PETERS SMITH / Promise Keepers

You had to be there, said The New York Times' Walter Goodman of last week's Promise Keepers rally in Washington, which played out so pallidly on television but managed to move people who were actually present at the real-life event in unusual and magical ways - even, if you can believe it, reporters.

But I wasn't there, being a woman and all. So I can only watch and wait, in a womanly fashion, and see whether this megapep rally was the beginning of something bigger than Monday Night Football, or just the high point of another little seven-year blip in the marvelous continuing sideshow of our very endearing American zeal for oddball religious tangents. And while I'm …