Today, hope has come to the White House. Hope has come to my house, too. I think hope is in a lot of places you couldn't see it yesterday. But, I've been thinking about it and I actually think hope has been here the whole time. It's just been buried underneath a lot of disappointment and gobble-D-guck. That man from Hope left eight years ago and he took a lot of other people's hope with him. This new guy isn't from Hope, but he's filled us with more hope than anyone could ever have imagined one person could do. I certainly didn't imagine it before. Did you?
I hosted a play group with a bunch of moms and one-year-olds for the inauguration today, so I haven't watched all the proceedings uninterrupted yet. So far, this is my favorite clip, part of the benediction given by The Rev. Joseph Lowery, a leader during the civil rights movement and former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference:
"We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right."
This quote and the sentiment behind it are simple. Like hope. Humans are born hopeful. You have to beat us down repeatedly to make us give up hope, and even then, we just need a glimmer to get it back again. It's the other stuff that's hard. The follow through, the work to make statements like those of Rev. Lowery more than just sentiment that rhymes. So, let's hope. And for the next few days, let's be sustained by that hope, but after that, let's get to work. Let's make it real. Let's make it life.
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