It's A New Day

We did something good the other week.

As a country, we did something good.

Together.

Not often you can say that these days...

Check out the video I stole from my friend Kate's blog--the link's in the title of this post.

I tear up when I watch all the American flags waving in Grant Park--that's my home city. Those are my people. That is our flag. It's okay to be patriotic again. We have something to believe in.

I don't have any illusions that our president-elect will change things overnight--*poof!* Quite the opposite, in fact--since the beginning, I've had my share of reservations about just how progressive the man for change would be. I'd done my homework back in 2004 when I was organizing a social justice issues forum for the Illinois senatorial candidates, and I knew his voting record, his habit of waiting for others to go out on a limb before stretching his neck out there himself.

So throughout election season, I watched, I waited--but I didn't get my hopes up. I didn't get swept up in the fever; I didn't fall in love (with everyone's favorite candidate, at least, ahem). But watching election returns with a house-full of Americorps volunteers giving a year of their lives to serve their country and their community--including 30-something 20-somethings who actually cared about politics, three middle-aged black women community activists, and a Vietnamese-American friend of mine wearing an "Asians for Obama" sticker

--watching Jesse Jackson tear up because after a brutal, corrosive history of slavery, racism, and oppression, we had elected our first black president--talking to my friend Rachael as she cheered and reveled in the instant community that sprang up in our home city's beautiful common space--I felt some of that cynicism die.

I know--Leah, a cynic, you say?? Impossible! But it's true. In this most-hopeful-of-all election seasons, I, the eternal optimist, played devil's advocate to my liberal friends' overflowing O-thusiasm, listened thoughtfully to what my conservative friends had to say, and put any and all thoughts about a bright and shiny new future for our country on the back-burner.

But the day after the election, when I asked my coworker and friend Mary, a solid Republican, what she thought about the previous day's events, she said she was alright with our new president-to-be. She felt like he would listen to the country, like he would build some bridges, even if she didn't agree with everything he did. He said as much in his acceptance speech: "As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, 'We are not enemies, but friends ... though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.' And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn — I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too."

And so for the first time in a long time--because, as my friend Kate points out, my generation has come of age amidst 8 years of misleadership, political opacity, and war--I feel hopeful about politics. I feel hopeful about the ability of our country's leader to lead. To challenge this very capable country, this innovative, hard-working, creative people, capable of sacrifice, with a new vision, and to marshal us toward it. For as Proverbs 29:18 says, "Without a vision, the people perish."

I've been reading Jim Wallis' God's Politics, from which I borrowed the above verse, and it has confirmed my belief that we as a country need that challenge--the kind that Lincoln, FDR, and Kennedy called us toward--and that when we crawl out of partisan trenches and come into that scary, barren, possibility-filled no-man's-land in between party lines, we are much more likely to accomplish good; we are much more likely to align ourselves with God's vision, as opposed to claiming, as Lincoln prayed we might not, that God endorses our side over our enemy's.

This doesn't mean that I will let go of my strongly-held values or that I will stop struggling for justice or praying for the guidance and courage to change the world we live in--I'm not going to be happy, for example, that Obama is for civil unions but does not consider it politically expedient to voice support for our gay brothers and sisters to unite in holy matrimony in the same way as our straight fellow citizens--but it does mean that I have come to see the value of unity over division--of post-partisan politics, if you will. That might sound a bit naïve--but then, I always was an optimist at heart.


(Sidenote: when I googled "text of Obama's acceptance speech" in order to find the words for the quotation used above, the first two websites to pop up were The Zimbabwe Independent and The Hindustan Times (India), a fact which highlights how riveting, how truly life-or-death, this election has been for people all over the world. Foreign Policy is one area in which I have experienced an unabashed renewal of hope since this election--our new president will have a concrete, profound, renewing effect on our global relationships, in a way that a simple change of head-of-state would not have accomplished. I am excited, really EXCITED, about the possibilities for rectification, restoration, and--dare I hope it, pray it--peace.)

photo credit--my buddy Vince