The Day After…
After noting that America is a “young nation,” and thereby suggesting that adolescents—having stolen the car keys to culture, civilization, and compassion along with fake ids to “legally” by beers at the “Seven-Eleven” before taking the world on a “joy ride”—have been running this country for the last eight years, President Barack Obama offers this scripture: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (—1 Corinthians 13:11)
And so it begins: the Bushes in timeout, Cheney in a wheelchair, and a nation no longer waiting to exhale. Playtime is over. But what a mess these aging “Chuckies” have left. You’ve seen or lived the story: foreclosures bubbling over the edge of boiling caldrons fired by an economic crisis; legions of workers queuing up for jobs, or quietly attaching resumes to emails aimed at potential employers; affordable healthcare a distant memory of the good old days; and a government that has heretofore looked on suffering as a morality play wherein the least of these have, after all, brought it on themselves.
But what a remarkable response the parents (the unsung and hardworking women and men who are this country) have made by first “choosing hope over fear” by electing President Obama, and then, yesterday, that remarkable expression of possibility as upward of 2 million people—most Americans, but many from foreign countries—sought to affirm a future and exorcise an almost demonic past.
Break away shots to Kenyans looking through tears at their namesake, Barack Hussein Obama; Tuskegee Airmen looking on in dignified disbelief; lions of the Civil Rights, perhaps feeling as if they had been literally transported to the “Promised Land” that Dr. King spoke about; celebrities meaningfully humbled by the moment; and “regular” folk who had to be there. And billions more watched…
These are times to live the value systems of all the world’s wisdom traditions—from the 42 Laws of Maat to the Hopi Medicine Wheel and more. To be sure, nothing is promised and nothing is assured. But the door is open, and the suffocating air has lifted.
Did you hear that?
The alarm just went off.
Time for work!
I was one of many streaming onto the streets of D.C. by 6:55 a.m. after a 2:00 a.m. alarm and determination to be on the first Metro train leaving Virginia's Vienna station. My mother, Ursula and I were the few among our small band of travelers who'd insisted that we sacrifice our tickets to the 4:00 a.m. complimentary breakfast at the hotel and leave at 2:30. "We need to stop at Walmart and stock up on dry goods, so we can get to the station." The owner of the transportation company and the other passengers reluctantly agreed with passive aggressive murmurings about "people with control issues, beauty sleep and takeover spirits."
The upstarts--my son (11) included--didn't care. This is how much it meant to us. In the face of what appeared to us to be laziness, apathy and/or cluelessness, we were stood firm. Ursula and her daughter were strangers who became family within minutes after we boarded the van that was supposed to have been a bus (another story). They moved and battled the cold and traveling companions as we did--with careful, calm tones and plenty of restraint.
So, when we emerged from the Metro Center station on that new and perfect day, I was grateful to be present, alive and even more certain that individuals and small bands of "travelers" on life's many roads are the catalysts and carriers of change at the most fundamental level.
During a brief stop for food, we heard "19 degrees with a wind chill of 7 degrees." Even at those temperatures, there was so much divinity, ancestry and promise (all uncontested) in the air that our southern suppositions about cold weather subsided and allowed us to be nourished by what it-THE AIR-had to share, offer--bestow. Amen.
We are changed and changing.
SkyF
Posted by: Sharon Jackson | January 29, 2009 at 09:17 PM