Closing the day...

After a full Sunday ~ rehearsal, worship, budget hearing, repairing the TV and confirmation group ~ we're going to head out to our kid's farm for dinner with both daughters and their loved ones.  I can't believe that President Obama will celebrate his second inauguration tomorrow!  I wept like a baby when he was elected - and shed tears of gratitude four years ago at his first swearing in - and now I simply give thanks to God.  The alternative would have been so bad on so many levels...

At the close of this day, I am grateful for wise, tender and creative daughters who still sometimes want to hang out with their dad.  I am blessed that they live so close, too.  And we will all return a prayer of thanksgiving tomorrow when Barrack Hussein Obama begins his second term as President of the United States of America. This will be a tough time - it will also be a time for the Prez to live into his best instincts and dreams - and it does my heart good to know that he'll accept the oath of office using both Lincoln's and MLK's bibles.  Two quotes from Dr. King fill my head tonight:

+ Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.  There are a lot of conscientiously stupid things being said these days born of a sincere ignorance not only about the President but also about race relations, gun control, the rights of women and caring for the common good.  Perhaps this has always been the case but I sense a more shrill and mean-spirited tone than every before.  One of my goals for 2013 is to advance tenderness carefully and creatively as this year unfolds.

+ Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.  Beyond the limits of the exclusive language that was still ok at the time, Dr. King speaks to the challenge of this moment clearly. There is a calling beyond the bottom-line constraints of market place ideology.  There is a vision greater than the limits of self-interest.  And God knows there is a life worth sharing with others in pursuit of the common good that is filled with joy, hope and humility.

Lord, through the darkness and confusion, I still believe in love.