Has this been the longest five weeks of your life or what. Looking at my first post here, I can't believe the tests—test after test after test—faith has been through. Least my shreds of. I don't know about you, but I wobbled, I withdrew, I detached—I did all the things people do when they fear. When they care about something so deeply, have allowed themselves to dream—and watch that dream get shoved around. Dragged real low. Sullied, even, by some of the shabbiest human behaviors, when that is not where a dream is supposed to go.
Dreams are genuinely precious. Dreams are pure hope—pure child. And who, really, can bear to carry anything so vulnerable into this world. I don't suppose anyone can, or does … without some kind of faith.
And what if the dream remains unanswered? Hopes go unfulfilled?
I begin to see, I would have made a terrible black person, like around the time of the Civil Rights marches. I begin to see the ways in which, as a white woman, I get to stay home.
Maybe this is what happens when someone inspired grabs hold of your heart and your hopes, especially after such a long time of national despair—I mean, torture, can America sink any lower—and says, “I'm asking you to believe in you.”
Someone like Barack, who—despite all the crap politicians go through, despite the crap Black Americans go through—somehow both Obamas manage to exemplify faith. Somehow Barack has managed to stay on-path through some truly cringe-worthy trashings—times that make me wonder if the Republicans can possibly do worse—without giving up, without trashing back. Okay, he tried trashing back a time or two, but his heart wasn't in it, it was pretty damn feeble, as trash-backs go.
Here's the hard thing: he may lose. And of course, that's what it looked like, during this agonizing … has it really only been a month?
I still don't have any answers. I can see what the Obamas have that I do not, and that is a working faith. One that carries hopes and dreams past the idea of wins and losses—and apparently, at the same time sustains your ability to go for it, in the present, as if it's a done deal.
Why, as a white woman, am I so invested. Why do I want to see a black President in the White House so much it scares me. Why is this the most exciting thing to come down the road since the Sixties …
In April, I had pure Obama-bliss. Looking back, boy, was that easy. Now we get down to it. To the ugliness. Racism, in all its profound discouragement. The swift-boat thinking that has so gripped the American mind. To hope anyway. To find one's way of working for Obama, towards the dream. Perhaps that's the key. Perhaps faith is the working-towards.
And of course, working-towards never stops.
