[Oe List ...] [Dialogue] FW: America has had a non-violent revolution. Praise God. By Marianne Williamson
Jeanette Stanfield
rbstanfi at bigpond.net.au
Sun Nov 9 20:22:00 EST 2008
I recommend the website change.gov- Obama¹s website for keeping us informed
about the
Transition process, events, people etc.
Sunny Walker
> An amazing analysis one we are not likely to ever hear from the media
> pundits famed for THEIR analysis.
>
>
> Sunny
> Sunny Walker
> 303-671-0704
> Cell: 303-587-3017
> sunwalker at comcast.net <mailto:sunwalker at comcast.net>
>
> Opening windows that fresh ideas may revive us and our lives have meaning
>
>
> By Marianne Williamson
>
>>>> America has had a non-violent revolution.
>>>>
>>>> As long as there are historians writing about the United States,
>>>> this moment of fundamental re-alignment of our national purpose will be
>>>> remembered, pored over and analyzed. It will be seen as one of the shining
>>>> points along the evolutionary arc of the American story. Yet it will never
>>>> submit itself to being summed up in a nice little package that reason alone
>>>> can understand.
>>>>
>>>> It's been noted before that Americans get excited about politics
>>>> every forty years. Then, in the words of comedian Will Rogers, "We have to
>>>> go sleep it off."
>>>> We were certainly excited in the l960's. And this is 2008;
>>>> exactly forty years since the most dramatic and violent year of the Sixties
>>>> decade: the year when both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were
>>>> literally killed before our eyes.
>>>> At that point, a generation of young people -- looking much
>>>> like the youthful army so out in full force today, only grungier -- marched
>>>> in the streets to repudiate an oppressive system and to try to stop an
>>>> unjust war. And then bullets stopped us. The shots that killed the
>>>> Kennedy's and King carried a loud, unspoken message for all of us: that we
>>>> were to go home now, that we were to do whatever we wanted within the
>>>> private sector, yet leave the public sector to whomever wanted it so much
>>>> that they were willing to kill for it. And for all intents and purposes, we
>>>> did as we were told.
>>>> According to ancient Asian philosophers, history moves not in
>>>> a circle but in a spiral. Whether as an individual or as a nation, whatever
>>>> lessons we were presented once and failed to learn will come back again but
>>>> in a different form. For the generation of the Sixties and for our
>>>> children, the lessons of that time -- as well as its hopes and dreams and
>>>> idealism -- came back in 2008.
>>>> During our forty years in the desert, we learned many things.
>>>> Then, we marched in the streets; this time, we marched to the polls. Then,
>>>> we shouted, "Hell no, we won't go!" This time, we shouted, "Yes, we can."
>>>> Then, we were so angry that our anger consumed us. This time, we made a
>>>> more compassionate humanity the means by which we sought our goal as well
>>>> as the goal itself.
>>>> In the words of Gloria Steinem, "I feel like our future has
>>>> come back." And indeed it has. For in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
>>>> "No lie can last forever." What Bobby Kennedy tried to do, and was killed
>>>> for trying; what Martin Luther King tried to do, and was killed for trying;
>>>> what the students at Kent state were trying to protest, and were killed for
>>>> daring to; Barack Obama and his army of millions of idealists with the
>>>> audacity to hope have now succeeded at doing.
>>>> Praise God. Praise God.
>>>> And that praise to God didn't just go out last night, when
>>>> Obama's election to the Presidency was finally achieved. That praise was
>>>> part of what allowed the waters to part here in the first place. Millions
>>>> of Americans have been deeply aware that this kind of historic and
>>>> fundamentally positive effort has not gone well in the recent past, and the
>>>> spiritual understanding of this generation of Americans -- an understanding
>>>> not yet fully formed forty years ago -- created an invisible light around
>>>> the Obama campaign. How many people over the last twenty-one months have
>>>> posted, in their own way, angels to Obama's left and angels to his right,
>>>> angels in front of him and angels behind him, angels above him and angels
>>>> below him? I know I have, and so has everyone I know. Hopefully we will
>>>> continue to do so.
>>>> The Obama phenomenon did not come out of nowhere. It emerged
>>>> as much from our story as from his -- as much from our yearning for meaning
>>>> as from his ambition to be President; as much from our determination to
>>>> achieve collective redemption as from his determination to achieve an
>>>> individual accomplishment. And those who fail to recognize the invisible
>>>> powers at work here -- who see the external drama of politics yet fail to
>>>> discern the profound forces that moved mountains by moving the American
>>>> heart -- well, they're just like Bob Dylan's Thin Man to whom he sang, "You
>>>> don't know what's going on here, do you, Mr. Jones?"
>>>> Back then, Mr. Jones didn't know what was going on, but many
>>>> of us did. We knew what was going on then and we knew what needed to
>>>> happen; we simply weren't mature enough and we were too wounded then, as
>>>> people and as a culture, to pull it off.
>>>> This time, we both knew and we did. We knew who we had to
>>>> become and we knew what we had to do. The violent American revolution of
>>>> 1776 entailed separating from another country. The non-violent revolution
>>>> of 2008 -- a non-violent revolution that did not quite fail, yet also did
>>>> not quite succeed in the l960's -- has entailed separating from who we used
>>>> to be.
>>>> In the l960's, we wanted peace but we ourselves were angry.
>>>> This time, after hearing Gandhi's call that we must be the change we want
>>>> to see happen in the world, we came to our political efforts with an
>>>> understanding that we must cast violence from our hearts and minds if we
>>>> are to cast it from our world; that we must try to love our enemies as well
>>>> as our friends; and that when a genius of world-historic proportions
>>>> emerges among us, we cannot and we must not fail to do everything humanly
>>>> and spiritually possible to support him. For his sakeŠand for ours.
>>>> Having gone to a higher place within ourselves, a higher level
>>>> of leadership began to emerge among us. A higher level of leader now having
>>>> emerged among us, he calls us to an even higher place within ourselves. And
>>>> from this spiraling dance, these two forces together can and will, as Obama
>>>> has told us, truly change the world. Having moved one mountain, we will now
>>>> go about the work of removing the ones that remain.
>>>> With God's help, yes we can. Yes we did. And yes we will.
>>>> -- by Marianne Williamson, author of Healing the Soul of America
>>>> Visit www.marianne.com <http://www.marianne.com/>
>>>> <http://mariannewilliamson.c.topica.com/maamr8MabLIxGchSPPBcafpOmF/>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> Copyright © 2008 Marianne Williamson. All Rights Reserved.
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