Collective Renewal

Today is Martin Luther King Day. 

What hardest of hearts could resist the voice of justice
calling down the corridors of conscience in the satin tremolo of our American Dr.
Martin Luther King?

My indelible moment was underneath the Lincoln memorial with
my now-deceased parents, my sister-in-law and eldest brother.  It was a thin crowd that day. In
stillness we stood together, watching the video footage…listening…ten
tear-filled eyes.  King's call for
forgiveness on the larger scale seemed to fortify the waters of familial pardon
for which we had been striving, imperfectly, for quite some time. Our family
has been one of fierce love, with divergent views fiercely held.

Today's holiday is a remarkable coincidence, coming just one
day before the inauguration of our first African-American president.  No mistaking here the mysterious order
of being, moving in the wings and revealing itself-at times conspicuously--from
behind the chaotic curtains of life. 
A coincidence, yes, but no historical accident.  The confluence of these two events is at once a harbinger of
civil rights fulfilled, and a clarion call for action on dreams unfulfilled.

Soon-to-be
President Obama has rallied our optimism. 
A highly talented and bi-partisan team is coalescing to help us recover
from a staggering heap of grave and complex problems: from a broken economy and
confidence, to a broken healthcare system, a broken energy policy, a broken
educational system, broken infrastructure and a breaking middle class. You name
it.  The collective sense of relief
in the air can be slashed with a proverbial knife.  It's unlike anything my generation has witnessed, including
the 60s, 70s and Viet Nam.  New
stewardship is a blessing. We ache for renewal.  We long for escape from maddening witness to mind blowing
ideological blindness, secret channels, censorship, paramilitary shadows, and
Orwellian mischief--with its word play--passing for laws: "torture" redefined
to legalize torture, rendition of innocents renamed "productive," bad
intelligence from enemies tortured renamed "actionable."  Not to mention the loss of life on all
sides, and the growing morass of radical Islamists and End of Days
proponents.  Ask us why we are
heartsick, and we will tell you more. 
We are badly wounded, but deeply grateful for a renewing worthiness in
the eyes of our founders.  We feel
it. We are heading inward toward our constitutional soul, to regain a foothold
on the genuine path lined with our fathers' yet-unrealized dream.

Barack
Obama's presidency represents a victory for racial equality. He embodies Martin
Luther King's vision for racial healing in America.  Obama also leads us further, to focus on our common
heritage, our unalienable freedoms, our values that transcend the civil rights
movement.  His language reveals a
preference for non-violent means. He understands that these, in fact, are the most
powerful weapons at his disposal in dealing with the rest of the world, even in
striving to defeat terrorism. Tomorrow is not only America's day. People the
world over, who long for justice and the guidance of a peace-loving America,
will be listening to his speech, shedding tears.

Obama
manages to fulfill a wider context of King's timeless words, which include and
reach beyond race: 

"I
have a dream. That one day this great nation will rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed.  We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…again and again we
must rise to the majestic height, meeting physical force with soul force…they
have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone…This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or
to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the
promises of democracy...It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the
urgency of the moment...Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of
God's children…From every mountainside, let freedom ring!" 

Some
of us remember "The Nightingale," by the Danish author Hans Christian
Anderson.  In this fairy tale, the
Emperor of China has favored a mechanical nightingale covered with jewels over
the real bird, known to communicate its beauty to humans through song. The
mechanical bird breaks down and the emperor
is taken deathly ill. When the real nightingale returns, its song so moves
Death
that he turns away, and the emperor lives on.

The
last eight years was, perhaps, a prescription in disguise. Our democracy was
taken so deathly ill that the Nightingale was compelled to return. May we
choose to keep
listening to its authentic song, and come to realize that our own renewal is
inextricably linked with renewal of unalienable freedom beyond our borders. May
the song so moving Martin Luther King, and now Barack Obama, be passed through us,
and live on.