Broken Corset

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

– From Maya Angelou’s “On the Pulse of Morning” – Inaugural Poem at Clinton’s inauguration, 20 January, 1993.

Yesterday, as millions of Americans stood in line to cast their vote – the dream was born anew.  Votes, cast one by one, and the long lines preceding them, were a testament of rebirth.

Yesterday night, as I watched the later Senate races and state ballot initiatives come in, I heard tales of car horns honking, and hands reaching out to give high fives to the strangers passing in the darkened streets of Washington D.C.  This morning, my facebook newsfeed erupted with virtual cheers for the United States – my computer screen bursting with the pride of my friends scattered across the nation – from coast to coast, from sea to newly shining sea.  Today, as I drove my children home from school, I saw helium balloons and flowers attached to Obama campaign signs still adorning front lawns. 

The evidence of enthusiasm was reported on every news station, in every newspaper. 

Barack Obama is the living embodiment of Martin Luther King, Jr’s dream from 1963.  And while no one would suggest that the ugly clouds of racism have completely cleared… it is obvious that the sun shines through brighter today than ever before in our history.

And yet this morning, as I contemplated the results of the election – I was unable to hold the sweet breath of victory in my lungs.  I tasted instead the bitterness of Proposition 8′s passage in California.  I have struggled with what to write here all day long about this example of bigotry and discrimination…  

Should I pridefully proclaim that I struggle to keep faith with God?  Should today be the day where I happily turn my back on faith - and the prejudice and bigotry a few of its members have promulgated in my state? 

Should I denounce my marriage, sue my state, and allow the cynicism I feel towards my fellow man to go unchecked… raging through my blood and overtaking my rational thought?  Should I give each car I pass with a “Yes on 8″ sticker a gesture that clearly conveys my feelings?  (Believe me, it was a struggle not to this morning).

These thoughts and feelings are what sucked that sweet breath of victory from my system this morning.  Which is why I didn’t write.  Instead, I read.  I read Maya Angelou and Abraham Lincoln.  And I read and read and read again, Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

And I began to breath in.  Because the dream is what Obama is all about.  Inspiration, passion, record participation, joyous celebration, the swelling of pride in America is our gift today.  And tomorrow.  And the day after.  If we can take even a small portion of what we feel right now as a nation forward with us, we will be a better nation.  That hope is what Obama offers us.

Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled down a road of faith to give his exalted speech in 1963.  The America of King’s time offered him plenty  more reason for bitterness than we see today.  And yet, instead, he had a dream.  He inspired thousands of people to share it.  And today millions more celebrate it.

So I will take my cue from him.  I will not drink from the cup of bitterness.  I will not lose faith.  Not today, not in this  America where there is now so much evidence to the contrary.  I will look upon today  as the catalyst for tomorrow.  As the beginning.  Which is what giving birth is anyway… simply a start, but also a miraculous beginning.

I will give birth again to the dream.  Thank you Barack Obama.  Thank you Maya Angelou.  Thank you Martin Luther King, Jr.  Yes we can.  Yes we did.  And Yes,  we will.