Christmas Has Arrived Early This Year

Globe & Mail November 5, 2008: Obama overcomes

Are you like me? Do you feel that Christmas has arrived early this year? Yet this is not a commercial Christmas that I’m writing about.

This feeling I have that Christmas has arrived early has nothing to do with tinsel and toys or holiday displays.

I’m talking about the sense that the spirit which awakens our feelings of connection, awe and gratitude each holiday season – feelings which are so hoped for in our preparations for Christmas – is close to us now, along with the elevated feelings it brings.

I’m suggesting that, just in time for us to give profound thanks during our Thanksgiving meals, this spirit which allows us to feel love, hope and belief in our own inherent goodness, has swept the nation.

It has swept the nation because we have invited it in. We have chosen a different path. And we are about to begin an uncharted journey paved with higher ideals.

I wept when it was clear that we, as a people, had elected Barack Obama our president - and not by a hair’s breath, but by a clear majority.

I wept in relief that sixty-six million Americans rose up and said: “The America the world has known in the last eight years is not who we want to be.”

I wept in gratitude to see that sixty-six million Americans are still capable of optimism despite the uber-spin, swift-boating, selfishness and cynicism that has been injected into our national consciousness.

I wept in joy for this loud rejection of the racism I have witnessed in my life and which was first inflicted into my consciousness by a mocking uncle fifty years ago.

The majority of us have, with our votes, said that we are sick to death of the old and ugly lies. We want to move beyond the twisted ways of thinking that have divided us and squandered the potential of so many of our people.

I praise God that I have have lived to see this day. And I must confess that I am again in love with my country and my people.

I give thanks for this improbable man who captured our hearts and minds with his brilliance, oratory, humanity, love, and unshaking faith.

I am devoted to our new President-elect, a man who has united us by calling upon the best in us.

Barack Obama is, in this moment, a perfect representative of who we are as a nation.

He is, as he says, “a mutt.” He has known poverty and affluence. He has known loneliness and loved. He has worked in the trenches with the forgotten poor and been peer to the rich and powerful. Symbolically, he comes closer to containing our totality than any other president before him.

A man who is capable of both impeccable reasoning abilities and a deep and unwaivering faith in God, his is the wisdom we need to ignite our own.

Barack is all things to all people. No matter who we are, we see the best of ourselves in him. We see the pettiness of the old arguments dissolve and we see the greatness to which we might aspire as individuals and as a nation.

In this way, he reflects our secret dreams.

May God bless us and unite us for the good of all, in service of our higher angels.

Christmas arrived early this year.

God bless us every one!

Be Sociable, Share!

•