January 20, 2009 - Inauguration Day
Waking around 3AM… Today is Inauguration Day for Barack Obama, and I may as well get up and write my joy.
All the months of yearning, hoping, reaching for a better concept for my country and my life – me and millions of others – is finally, today, bearing fruit. We’ve felt it coming for months, years, from that first nomination speech for John Kerry, back in the summer of 2004. We listened to it, gathered around an ‘illegal’ portable radio with a coat hanger for an antenna, in our tiny Edgewater 3 cabin, and felt ….We can be better…We can be whole…We can at last fulfill the promise of America.
One of the beautiful things about Obama is his use of the word ‘we’. We the people. It’s not all about him, one man, one leader. It’s about us, what we can become, with a clear enough vision, and with hearts united.
This summer I listened to Barack read his Audacity of Hope book on my MP3 player. I learned his life, his worldview, the depth and breadth of his thought. I have been companioning with him in my heart. I felt compassion when his beloved grandmother, ‘Toot’, passed from this life on the day before the election.
Now we are become like “the first fruits of them that slept” …the long nightmare of suppression of human vitality is coming to an end… as the audacity of hope wakes to the confidence of what men and women can truly become.
How thankful I am to be living in this time.
All the months of yearning, hoping, reaching for a better concept for my country and my life – me and millions of others – is finally, today, bearing fruit. We’ve felt it coming for months, years, from that first nomination speech for John Kerry, back in the summer of 2004. We listened to it, gathered around an ‘illegal’ portable radio with a coat hanger for an antenna, in our tiny Edgewater 3 cabin, and felt ….We can be better…We can be whole…We can at last fulfill the promise of America.
One of the beautiful things about Obama is his use of the word ‘we’. We the people. It’s not all about him, one man, one leader. It’s about us, what we can become, with a clear enough vision, and with hearts united.
This summer I listened to Barack read his Audacity of Hope book on my MP3 player. I learned his life, his worldview, the depth and breadth of his thought. I have been companioning with him in my heart. I felt compassion when his beloved grandmother, ‘Toot’, passed from this life on the day before the election.
Now we are become like “the first fruits of them that slept” …the long nightmare of suppression of human vitality is coming to an end… as the audacity of hope wakes to the confidence of what men and women can truly become.
How thankful I am to be living in this time.
Labels: Inauguration Day
posted by Gail Murray at 4:29 AM
