PhilTeach Blog

As Barak Obama takes the oath to serve our Nation, and to uphold and defend the Constitution, I pray that the message that he so clearly and inspirationally articulated in the campaign comes to be accomplished. His words inspired many, and provided us with optimism about the future.  Hope was his rallying call, and many, including myself responded. This was against the backdrop of a campaign that also demonstrated how easily our nation can be polarized around issues dealing with life, war, economics, immigration, religion and race.  Polarization, defining reality as either black or while, is the opposite of hope. Today our nation defines reality as either right/left; Democrat/Republican; Pro-life/Pro-choice; Conservative/ Progressive; Legal/Illegal.  Such ideological categories paint the complexity of life in simplistic language which often leads us into a type of dualistic blindness. This blindness is governed by the mottos, “If you are not with us, you are against us” and “If you do not agree with me, then you hate me.”  It is this blindness which often prevents us from seeing that God’s creation is filled with possibilities, and that we have been given the power to be co-creators and care keepers of it.   It is a blindness-of-possibilities that induces the fear to move beyond ourselves, makes us deft to one another, and impedes us from seeking the truth. 

Hope is the virtue that helps us to see future possibilities. It is the habit of seeing what we can be while still being grounded in the reality and difficulties of the present. To be hopeful is to know that the truth can only be discovered when we are open to each other’s ideas, gifts, talents and energies. It is only in hope that we can seek new solutions to social, political, and moral challenges. It is this sense of possibilities that leads Obama to say that change is possible and that all of us can contribute to a new future.  Two thousand years ago, St. Paul wrote that in the end only three things will last: faith, hope and love. At the end of eight years of the Bush Administration, and at the beginning of a new era in U.S. history, we must also acknowledge that hope alone is not enough. Faith demands that we act to achieve that which we hope for. Love elicits recognition that what we hope for is only valuable when we achieve it for the sake of another. 

But hope is a beginning, a first step.  So, on this occasion, I hope that the illusion that destroying life is the way we can assure our personal liberty, achieve personal fulfillment, or maintain a good quality of life, be replaced with the vision that all human life be seen as a gift, as a moment of celebration and as an opportunity for each of us to move beyond ourselves.I hope that the practice of determining human value and integrity be not grounded on political, fashionable or economic convenience, but instead on the conviction that each person has been lovingly created with an intrinsic dignity.  I hope that instead of living by the fallacy that the human family is divisible into “us and them,” we live by the truth that all human beings belong to one family and thus share in a common life and destiny.

On the occasion of the inauguration of Barak Obama, we recall his message of hope. But as he takes the oath of office, let us chose to hope by our action.  Failure to lovingly act diminishes hope into a mere delusion.  As we move to form ‘A More Perfect Union’ may we recognize that no authentic community can exist if it is not grounded on the belief that all human life has intrinsic value.   Obama’s swearing-in ceremony is not a magic-laden ritual that will transform the nation, but a call, a challenge for each of us to actively move beyond the polarizing conversations of the past, and into an open creative exchange about who we are, how we belong to each other, and that a “perfect union”, can only be measured by the way we acknowledge the dignity of those who are vulnerable, poor and marginalized in our society.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 18th, 2009 at 10:51 pm and is filed under life, politics, presidency. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.