The inauguration of Barack Obama
This morning, on a hard-cold day in Washington, we Americans behold, as witnesses, history unfolding before us.
Barack Obama, child of a broken home, son of a mixed marriage, native of the Hawaiian Islands, progeny of Illinois. African-American, rock star, dreamer, orator, conciliator. Forty-fourth president of the United States.
What an amazing time we live in.
It is hard not to shake the sleep from our heads in quiet disbelief.
As the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote centuries ago, "From a certain point onward, there is no longer any turning back."
This is what America celebrates this morning, not so much the politics of it or, for some, the glory of it, but for all of us, the turning point of it - the suggestion that despite the divisiveness of our ideologies, despite the bigotry of our ancestors, we truly can be one America.
That's the turning point. Not that we are one America, but that we can be, that we as a nation move inevitably toward that ideal of our founders, that in fact we are closer to it than even the optimists among us had imagined.
This is what America celebrates on this Inauguration Day.
It truly is an amazing time.
But it also is an unsettling time of great danger. That is the great contradiction of this day.
As the turnout for the Inauguration in Washington shows, much of the nation is gripped by a boisterous rock-crowd enthusiasm for Obama, a sort of Obamamania that's charming but not quite real.
And at the same time, there is widespread pessimism over huge, foreboding challenges - an economy that seems to be in deadly nose dive and a terrorism threat that seems unending and in quest of nuclear arms.
How Obama responds to those two overriding problems will mark the success or failure of his embryonic presidency.
To this point, we are encouraged by the inclusiveness of his transition team. He has assembled a balanced Cabinet that appears designed to reach across both aisles. And he seems bent on involving the citizenry at a level never before tried in the White House.
Those are hopeful signs. Perhaps they should have been expected. This is, after all, a presidency built by "The Audacity of Hope."
Obama's appeal to hope was much maligned during his campaign, but in these troubled times, it provides his greatest strength.
Which brings us to one more bit of inspiration, this quotation from writer Anne Lamott: "Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work; you don't give up."
Not a bad message for a new president. Not a bad message for the rest of us either.