President Obama

For some crazy reason [despite setting the vcr to record some hours of cnn coverage] I decided to respond to my speculative 3.25am alarm and got up to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama.
The same 'empire' that so dominates the world of business, politics, military action and culture also reflects the reality of it's huge 'footprint' and celebrates the election of an impressive and hopeful figure who is also an African American. Obama and those he invited to participate, made some amazing links with US and world history.
Empty rhetoric? Inflated sense of self importance? Wallpapering over a world of pain and injustice? Well, time as ever will tell!
As I listened to Obama and to Rev Lowery in the Benediction I had a mix of memories of David Letterman's 'Great Moments in American Presidential History' highlighting the bumbling stupidity of George W and a poignant sense of the connections with the civil rights movement, the struggle of African Americans for justice and equality and the significance of a moment in time when the US stands able to change, to be different and to strike a chord for the future.
At the same time the values of God [who loomed large in the phsyche, words and philosophy of the ceremony] as I perceive them, are independent of the system represented in Washington today. God's call to all people is to embody the kinds of values that were alluded to and listed today. There were some impressive and inspiring words spoken!
As ever, the true test of those will be in the choices, the living out and the reality of there delivery. In other words are they any chance of living up to the rhetoric?
God calls us to the very values espoused but that call is less tied to the identity or story of any given nation and more fundamental to who we are and how we will be. We heard the best of what's possible with an appropriate note of what's been lost in America's mistakes and what's been exposed in the financial disasters unfolding around us at this time.

"and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a nearby restaurant, can stand here and take this oath of Office..."

The connections with Lincoln, the naming of various faiths, the invitation to the Tuskedee [?] Airmen [the African American airmen group described as an experiment, in seeing whether they had the bravery, determination and skill to participate as soldiers] and the artists and contributors chosen all gave the ceremony an air of possibility. Geez it looked cold though at sub zero. How poignant that Dick Cheney strained his back shifting boxes and ended up participating in a wheelchair and the Chief Justice stuffed up the Oath so Obama had to verbally stumble.

Anyhow, I suppose we can go back to sleep, back to not knowing what the US is doing and has done in Central America, we can watch the movies, see the President on the news, hear the justifications for not lowering greenhouse or raising the aid budget and head to the Westfield to ease our pain and salve our consumerist needs with a new hat, donut or DVD!!

So why did I get up? Why do I feel despite all my usual 'love/hate' feelings about the US that this will rank up there with staying up to see Mandela freed? Who gives a cr#p? Well I do, with equal measure of scepticism, uncomfortableness and yet hope that what I've watched live via amazing satellite might actually make the world a genuinely better place and definitely asks me what I am willing and able to do about the things that are wrong!
It certainly reminded me of how I felt and what I hoped, listening to/watching the opening of Federal Parliament with the new Aussie Rudd labour Government, delivering an apology to our country's indigenous people so movingly and appropriately not so long ago!!

Will they [in the words of the movie 'Springtime'] "pick [themselves] up, dust [themselves] off, and get to work..."

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