On Friday’s I like to share a poem or a quote. I try to listen for the right one, if there is such a thing. What I think I choose is one that happens to move me in relation to the week just lived and sometimes simply to the moment when I set out to find it, in hopes that it will find me.
This week has been extraordinary as our country elected Barack Obama our first African American president, judging him in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. “…not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character”.
I cried Tuesday night, along with the men and women who brought us the election results through our television screens, whose emotions exploded with such unexpected power it blew off their journalistic masks. My tears joined those of the 250,000 people gathered in Grant Park to celebrate and listen to President Elect Barack Obama’s acceptance speech.
What we did Tuesday as Americans, as human beings, is beyond the limits of my vocabulary. In the tears of Tuesday, in the profound silence, in the ecstatic shouts and dancing, I wonder if we came to know, whether consciously or sub-consciously, that though it might take centuries, unfathomable heroics and unimaginable suffering, we can get There. There, where the best of us blooms and the worst of us shrivels.
I have not walked in African American shoes, yet their arrival filled me with a certainty, filled me with faith that the small slow steps I take in my own little life matter. The tiny steps that I have judged countless times to be insignificant are not so. The steps we each take, bring us closer to the justice we seek and lessens the distance those who follow us must travel.
There are many Theres to arrive at, many whose just treatment as human beings has not been reached. Tuesday, it felt to me as though the American soul was touched with the truth, that good can overcome evil, that justice is worth fighting for no matter how long or hard the fight.
All of us who see our Theres dauntingly far off in the distance…if we keep stepping, no matter how small our feet…we too will get There.
I started writing this piece about how on Fridays, I look for a poem or quote and hope it will find me. I think one has…
This week was poetry.
I can’t get enough of watching what happened at Grant Park, it was the most jubilant gathering ever, I felt like we were all There. It’s going to be a great ride with our new president, who I think will inspire the very best in all of us.
That was beautiful!!! I think you touched on what every other person who has supported Obama from the start was feeling on Tuesday! I to wanted to cry and im sure a tear or to snuck by in between my jumping up and down and hugging my Fiance close! This has been a very exciting week!
It was awesome to see Grant Park and to be a part of history with the election of Obama. What a beautiful description of this week, Kerry. I am so thankful you are sharing your gift of writing with us. It always gives me pause and strengthens, teaches, challenges, and changes me.
Bless you
Renee
One way to study history is by reading the personal letters of those involved in it, a Civil War solder, a Depression-era stock broker, even just the first folks to see Wizard of Oz.
As I read your post, I imagined that a historian in 2108 will be reading it and appreciate it just as much as I have.