Hope: the joy of awakening to possibility

I awoke abruptly this morning from a dream: we were in an auditorium – me, Mama and Bea. Mama held Bea on her lap while sitting up a row a half dozen seats from me. I stood smiling at them. Maybe it was a church. Or opening night at a theater. There could've been a large cross that hung somewhere beyond the stage or a backdrop of a city or a countryside. I don't remember now. Well-dressed but nondescript folk milled around, some sitting and talking, some in confident reverence. We were waiting. Waiting for something. What, I don't know. What I felt, and what I knew, was hope.

Hope and responsibility. That's really what I felt as I lay there in my bed, my wife next to me, my child in the bassinet next to her. It was a powerful feeling, as if everything was going to be all right, as if everything always worked out, no matter how long it took to get there, overcoming personal obstacles and global ones.

There was also a secure feeling of community, a sense of being bound to the other like blood. But there was also foreboding; hecklers hissed from balcony, just audible enough to hear like ruptured gas line. Something burned.

I woke and slid from bed, Mama feeding Bea in the bed. I went downstairs. They went back to sleep.

The sun rose. The world awoke in the west. It was an inspirational day today. I watched some of the inauguration with Beatrice this morning while Mama got ready for work. We enjoyed the pomp and circumstance – Bea the pomp, me the circumstance. Then when she went down for her morning nap, I watched President Obama's inaugural address online with the CNN/Facebook live interface, updating status and tweeting away about the speech.

It was moving, but there's a lot of work to be done and skeptics abound. The new president may be a great writer and orator, but can he lead us out of this new millennium oblivion? I believe he and his administration can, although it remains to be seen how much true change we'll see in this great nation in the near term.

However, the joy of awakening to possibility, to connect with millions we've never met in common cause, to believe in the dream of responsibility and service to each other and country, is why I'm proud to be an American.

I read MLK's dream speech yesterday for the first time since high school, and was moved to tears. Someday I'll read it to Bea, along with Lincoln's inaugural address, FDR's, Kennedy's, even Reagan's and Clinton's, and Barack Obama's as well.

God bless you, Mr. President. My family is ready for service.

(Here's a great post on 7 Online Things To Do To Help Obama Restore America.)