Trust, but not in princes

I had a very interesting conversation yesterday, full of hope and amazement and inspiration on my side, and doom and gloom and predictions of disaster on the other side. I had all night to think about this conversation. (As I do with most conversations ... Apparently, I'm like soup. I add interesting ingredients into the mix, but I need lots of broth to float things in or else the solids get stuck to the bottom of my pot. Metaphor occurring currently due to the pot with the stuck-on solids soaking in my kitchen sink.)

Anyway, there is a verse in Holy Writ that admonishes us not to put our trust in princes. It isn't mortal men who ultimately hold our fates, in other words. Princes come and go. Good times and bad times, plenty and dearth, opportunists and the resounding crash that happens when someone knocks into their subprime house of cards and it all falls down. Stuff happens. Life is not all good or all bad or all anything. It's just life.

So ... in this conversation there were two positions. There was the other one -- summed up something like this: "This will turn out badly -- we're headed into communism." (Communism? Really? Does a sunrise make you think of people scorched to death in the heat and does the tide make you think of lethal undertows?)

And there was my position -- in short, "This is good news. These are good times. The market needed a serious jerk on its chain so that it would come to heel, and the country is young and sometimes gets ahead of itself, but we're fine. This is a time for hope and optimism, and even the tragedy wrought on women and their families through abortion's common use can be addressed in a climate like this."

I do not think this is glass-half-full optimistic Pollyanna Glad Game-playing. I think this is realism. Reality. I take the position that Reality Is Good.

Right now, reality is a jar of native flowers on the table. They aren't going to last forever, but they're pretty right now. I have observed that reality is good, and that is not altered by the fact that eventually flowers fade and if you don't deal with reality at that point, water stagnates and rots. So? Does the eventuality of a future mean this is not good? The flowers aren't pretty because they fade? And ... couldn't ya just replace them with other flowers when that happens? Does the fading of one beauty mean no other beauty will ever happen again? (Sheesh!)

The horrible, insidious, hateful national guilt of racism overcome in such a hopeful and peaceful and open way. That's just good news, dammit. It is. There were people riding the metro to the inauguration, singing Amazing Grace together, for cryin' out loud! Strangers on the metro in D.C., singing hymns. Exuberant America, watching history being made and aware of the fact -- and so happy about it they couldn't hold back the song. Wow. Only a fool looks at that and says it is not good.

Today, I am overbrimming with gratitude for the amazing time and place into which I was born. The highest Oath of Office in this great land was taken by a black man, whilst his stunningly stylish wife held the Bible on which he swore. There is a lot of promise in a faithful husband (wearing that ring), who's been a faithful dad, taking an oath he means to keep. (And he did a do-over just to get it right.)

I'm not looking for perfect. This man does not usher in the Millenium because he is not the Messiah. But where else could this happen? Like this. As this was. Where else do that many people gather for that sort of reason but here, now, for this? In what land in what time in history has such a thing been possible? In this moment, America decided to take on the future by discarding the burdens of the past and embracing what she is best at. Hope. The pure inventiveness and ingenuity born of hope. "Not whether it is large or small, but whether or not it works."

There is a scene in the movie Apollo 13 where the Lovells are in their back yard looking up at the moon. Jim Lovell tells his wife, "It wasn't a miracle, Marilyn. We just decided to go." God bless America. We've decided to go.