Healing A Nation
Stan Grimes
January 18, 2009
After five days of suffering a life threatening fever carrying with it alternating bouts of chills and hot night sweats, it was refreshing finally to be chilled in a different way. The chills of truth broke through my body as I watched Barack Obama taking the whistle-stop train ride from Philadelphia to Washington D.C. It felt good to get choked up as crowds came out from nowhere to get a glimpse of the future president. I needed those tears. They were chicken soup for me, healing and comforting.
I guess those are the operative words of the entire Obama phenomena, healing and comfort. Those are the cornerstone words for the possibility that our nation will once again unite and become the American we used to read about in our history books, the America, which reached from within to make herself whole. Nationalism is not a bad thing if used for good. Only people like Stalin, Hitler, Chevez, Castro, and others have attempted nationalism to keep their people under the thumb of totalitarianism guised as nationalism. Their futures were tenuous at best and continue to be in peril of destruction.
If we have learned nothing in the past two years, we have at least learned that we are one step higher on the staircase to social and moral perfection. We as a nation have elected a person of color to lead us. It is unfortunate that he was chosen on the back of over two hundred years of slavery, discrimination, mockery, fear, and bigotry. But, the page has been turned and the book is now half-written, with many pages yet to be created. Now these thoughts and promises must be carved into the mindset of Americans, "all men are created equal..."
Can Barack comfort and heal us? Yes but only if we "all" make ourselves accessible to serve. If a once deeply divided Congress can lay down their weapons and turn them into plowshares we have a chance. If the lions of lawmaking can lie down with their constituent sheep, it can be done. "Yes it can."
The comfort will begin on Inauguration Day. Obama´s administration will hit the ground running to begin creating a brighter future, which personally gives me great comfort. Healing? Healing is a personal thing. The seeds of cancer planted two hundred years ago will not be cured in a day or a year. We must heal ourselves and is a much nobler task.
Can it be done? Yes it can.
I guess those are the operative words of the entire Obama phenomena, healing and comfort. Those are the cornerstone words for the possibility that our nation will once again unite and become the American we used to read about in our history books, the America, which reached from within to make herself whole. Nationalism is not a bad thing if used for good. Only people like Stalin, Hitler, Chevez, Castro, and others have attempted nationalism to keep their people under the thumb of totalitarianism guised as nationalism. Their futures were tenuous at best and continue to be in peril of destruction.
If we have learned nothing in the past two years, we have at least learned that we are one step higher on the staircase to social and moral perfection. We as a nation have elected a person of color to lead us. It is unfortunate that he was chosen on the back of over two hundred years of slavery, discrimination, mockery, fear, and bigotry. But, the page has been turned and the book is now half-written, with many pages yet to be created. Now these thoughts and promises must be carved into the mindset of Americans, "all men are created equal..."
Can Barack comfort and heal us? Yes but only if we "all" make ourselves accessible to serve. If a once deeply divided Congress can lay down their weapons and turn them into plowshares we have a chance. If the lions of lawmaking can lie down with their constituent sheep, it can be done. "Yes it can."
The comfort will begin on Inauguration Day. Obama´s administration will hit the ground running to begin creating a brighter future, which personally gives me great comfort. Healing? Healing is a personal thing. The seeds of cancer planted two hundred years ago will not be cured in a day or a year. We must heal ourselves and is a much nobler task.
Can it be done? Yes it can.