YES WE CAN

This is re-posted from MySpace from The morning after Election Day...I wanted to post something to get this page up and running.....

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Last night at about 11:00pm, a nation celebrated the election of a new president. As a bartender I sat through the night watching as a bar full of hope-filled Americans sat listening and watching as state after state closed polling stations, and watched as the results flowed in. The majority of the customers at my bar celebrated a victory, as the candidate whom they favored won the seat behind the big desk in the Oval Office.

He mentioned the voter from Alabama, Ann Nixon Cooper, who was 106 years old. Our new President reminded us of the life she has lived. The battles she has witnessed. From her inability to vote due to her gender, and her color, the age of the depression, the passing of the "New Deal", the growth of science, the growth of the space program, and so many more developments which brought her to this day in the voting booth. To quote the President-elect...

"And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can. "

Amazing. A woman who went from barely being acknowledged as a citizen, to stepping into a voting booth, and hitting a touch screen computer to vote for her next President....who in fact is the same color as she, something she never would have dreamed imaginable as she drank from a different water fountain then her classmates almost a century ago.

President-elect Obama's speech last night talked about the growth and realization of the American dream. A dream for all of us, as he put it : "young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America."

Last night's election is a reminder that we have many dreams. We all do. We all carry dreams that sometimes we feel may go un-achieved. Weather it be dreams about love, life, careers, personal growth, happiness, and the list goes on and on. Each one of us lives each day hoping that one of these dreams come true. The energy from last night's events renews our hope that one day those dreams will in fact come to fruition.

Watching Senator McCain give his concession speech last night made me think back to my final days of Seminary. The last time I processed down the isle of Blessed Sacrament Church, I remember approaching the back doors of the Church thinking "Oh my God, what comes now?" The uncertainty of what lay ahead made me so scared, words cannot express it. The mocking jaunts of people at the bar towards McCain and his loss reminded me how critical we can be as people. No one I know will ever have the honor of giving a concession speech to the entire nation. And by the way...it IS an honor, to be able to make it that close to achieving not just a personal dream, but an accomplishment so significant...that it will be recorded in the annals of history. That was the one comfort I took that day of my life at the end of my Seminary career, that although I didn't finish and achieve my goal/dream....I made it damn closer then a whole lot of other people ever do...and all it meant was that it wasn't what the Lord had in store for me, and I just have to be patient until I discover what it is that He does have in the cards for me.

Maybe I will get to be the next Ann Nixon Cooper, who gets to watch a generation of history unfold before my very eyes. A commercial yesterday promoting the Presidential Campaign included various clips of presidential quotes from throughout history. Among these was Reagan's historical words in 1987, "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! "

So many historical quotes from various figures throughout time ring out the sounds of hope. Reagan's speech was delivered to the citizens of West Berlin but was audible to those on the Eastern side as well. That wall today is a historical site, visited by countless people every year, many of whom are my generation and are too young to remember this day, and the historical significance it held. and we certainly are too young to understand the hopes and dreams that were unleashed by the wall's collapse.

Ann Nixon Cooper never thought she would be able to vote, let alone see a black man become her next president. She never thought there would be an end to segregation. The people of Berlin never thought they would see that wall crumble. Americans never dreamed they would set foot on the moon.

The growth we have achieved in all these areas teaches a time honored lesson, that nothing is impossible. We know that sacrifice is part of achieving dreams. Throughout history, no major victory was achieved without sacrifice. We see that in almost any given historical achievement. The same is true in our own lives. The Election, and the President-Elect's zealous speech should encourage all of us in our own personal lives to not give up on our dreams. I think I'm speaking in many ways to myself in this blog....we cannot give up on ourselves.

President Reagan was scheduled to deliver his State of the Union address in 1986, but hours before he was to go on the air the Challenger disaster happened, taking the lives of 7 astronauts. Of these men and women he said; "There's a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete."

No achievement is without sacrifice. Maybe that's what is holding us back from reaching our dreams. Maybe that's why our Berlin Walls haven't fallen, or why we haven't yet set foot on our own personal "moon". We haven't made the necessary sacrifices, or taken the necessary risks.

As a child I had a fascination with President Kennedy, going back to a project I did while in Grammar School. One of my favorite quotes from the late President was from a speech he gave regarding the "Space Race" at Rice University.....

"But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

The strides that we made during this period of history....the fall of segregation, the beginnings of space travel, the further liberation in the women's movement, were all ultimately possible due to the spirit of the individuals that were alive during this time frame.

Plato's Republic was an attempt to show that a society is essentially a machro-casim of a micro-casim...in other words a society is built by individuals. A society will not grow, will not have passion, take risks, make sacrifices, and achieve their goals, if the individuals who comprise it do not have that very same spirit in their own lives. May we take President-elect Obama's words out into our own lives. May we make the changes we need to make to grow, and achieve our goals. "Be not afraid!" as Pope John Paul II asserted in his famous speech in the late 90's to the world's youth. Let us not be afraid of our own shadows, and grow the balls to take the steps towards reaching our personal heights, so that someday....as a nation.....we can do the same thing.

More simply put...yes, President - Elect Obama, yes we can!