Before Celebrating Barack’s Victory

What is most difficult is to be still. I have dared to take on the challenge of Hope. I have exulted in my strength and forestalled the apathy of irony and the procrastination in cleverness. Now I seek the calmness of this moment’s Grace. Tonight’s celebration not yet  earned - Barack’s victory or defeat will bring a new vista of change - both large and small that much closer. The notion of a valorized victim will be smashed up against this race for 44^th President’s reign. Despite all the claims, no memory of those nagging days of doubt – blackness – temperament – resolve – organization: He has mastered being still.

There are great changes that come about in the darkest hours where there is, despite my claims, no memory of hope and the encircling gloom of Barack’s defeat is terrifying to the heart. It is this tragic possibility where my mind enacts this drama between hope and disappointment. Calmness in the midst of chaos, serenity in the midst of feverish activity is on one side. On the other is my ego that takes pride in climbing high mountains to tempt the tempter, feeding on the acorns and grass of knowledge and for the sake of community, suffering a hunger in my soul with a glint of haughtiness.

All the while I am reassured that Barak knows the secret that all great commanders know, the secret he revealed in financial crisis, that the soul that is calm with controlled emotion is performing an act of faith – the battle continues.

To encounter these forces Barack has shown me that I must remember the way back into the very center of my being, to that eternal fountain of replenishment. For it is only there that my despair of his losing can be comforted. Otherwise we block, frustrate, and delay, giving over to a frantic spirit and a mind gutted with panic – our will can not feed our heart.

It is a hard lesson; perhaps it should be an easy one!

Consider: Barack’s vision, however vague, of your own sense of godhood, community, and collaboration. Defeat or victorious, we need not stay bewildered, tired, or impatient but be willing to be more and go faster. It is not him, but it is us that must carry the fight. He has shown and we must take up to expand our limited glimpses. But what is an hour, week, a month, yea, even 8 years? In the deep, inner quietness of my spirit, time stands still—before and after are lost in NOW. There is no movement, no action, even the outer edges of awareness blend into the surrounding calm.

It is this calmness that now you must carry with you into the maelstrom of your hectic days and hungers. Let it be remembered that Grace is your nourishing companion. It is your innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a sacred YES.