Thoughts....

Where to start?

First my apologies for the light posting of the last week or so. Too much campaigning, too much drinking, too much reveling, and too little sleep are to blame.

Secondly, wow. In the oft repeated line of the week, what a historic event. I have been struggling to put words to what I have witnessed this past week, and I find that I simply have none.

How do you express to your friends, the enormity of an event that has completely altered your perception of the world you inhabit? The only corollaries I can muster would be, it is the moment after Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the lunar surface, it is the instant after the first atomic bomb detonated, the wobbly seconds at Kitty Hawk when the impossible became possible. When improbabilities converged and were given he force of actuality. It simply is Before and After.

Our collective history has now be segmented between events that happened before Tuesday, November 4th 2008 and events that took place after.

Before Tuesday night, I honestly could not imagine an African-American ascending to the White House. This is coming from someone who did his level best to get that person elected. That is how deep the skepticism was. I exhorted people to vote and to register, not because I believed he could win (though I hoped that he would), but because I knew that each new person who felt a part of the system would move us closer to the day when some one like him could win. Or more to the point, someone who is not like him could win. A place where it is not so important that the person running for office is a woman, or Hispanic, or homosexual, they are merely a candidate.

So I am sure you could guess at my surprise when the states started falling in President-Elect Obama's (I smile just saying it, I am sure that will change, I am sure I will become hyper-criticalof him in time, but for now, it just feels good) favor. It was 9:30, and the weight of what was happening was beginning to sink in. The sheer size of the moment put a lump the size of a baseball in my throat. I was having trouble breathing, trying to take all of the moment in at once. Fighting back tears, I didn't know I had. I was never hosed in Birmingham, I did not march for equal representation, nor did I have to suffer under the blatant shadow of Jim Crow. I had not suffered in the ways that so many others had.

Yet there I was struggling to keep it together (though several trips to the bathroom and copious application of Natural Light did help!). All I could muster during those initial moments was the matter of fact statement, a koan if you will, "The world I went to sleep in, was not the world I have woken up in.".

That's it. One of the most historic events in our nations history and all I had was a fortune cookie response. Further away from the moment I am bit disappointed in my performance. It was like being struck dumb and blind. The waves of emotion were intense, immense pride in the Senator from the great state of Illinois, a sense of acceptance that I hadn't even known that I craved, when the American, in African-American, was finally the most important part. How do you put that into words, when you did not know it was even something you craved?

While the election did not change the problems I faced, bills still due, a cratering economy. Nor has it erased the injustices of old, racism is still well and truly alive, bigotry still is quite vibrant. I could look at my nieces and nephews and honestly tell them, that they could be anything their hearts desire. I could look look my parents in the eye and say, "All that you suffered, all that you have sacrificed and endured, was not for naught. Your sacrifices made this moment possible. You belong. This is your country too. You are home. You did overcome.". And to my own children, someday, I can say to them, "Though the world can be cruel, never forget this moment, when a people where finally embraced by their fellow citizens. Where the first shot fired at Fort Sumter was finally joined by a deafening chorus of 'Yes we can!'. Where we as a people took another step closer to the 'perfect union'. You can be anything you wish. The world is strange, and lets keep it that way.".

Though we still have all the problems we had on Monday, by Wednesday something was fundamentally different. I saw hope on people's faces, I heard it in their voices. It was not a magic wand, but people now seemed ready to join the fight. Our country, our world, our lives need fixing and we need to get to work.

So in closing, I am reminded of something once said by another famous Illinoisian:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations." Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865.

At least on this morning, those wounds look better bound, then they have ever looked before.

Anyway, that is all I got for now. I am sure I will edit and re-edit this thing multiple times.

Peace out,

Glenn