Living in Iowa I feel a special involvement, since our caucus process got him started on the way back on January 3. We went over to Pleasant View School, where Nancy works as a speech therapist and where both out daughters attended. There was the largest crowd I have seen for a caucus since we moved to Iowa, and Barack won. Our college-student daughter, Becca went along with a little dis-ease, since this was her first caucus. She immediately saw some of her friends and got right into the process. It was all pretty exciting.
I have heard a lot of analysis of Barack Obama's victory and I am sure some of it is right. Here are a few observations that I haven't heard, and are personal to me, that may be interesting.
*The word BARAK means "blessing" in Hebrew. I dug up my old text book to make sure. Once again this points up the similarities between Hebrew and Arabic. I pray that our next president will indeed be a blessing. The country has lots of challenges/problems and he has his work cut out for him. When the campaign began Barak Obama was a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. My church is part of the United Church of Christ and we need to keep our president in our prayers.
*The older of the two Obama daughters is named MALIA. Her name means "Mary" in the Hawaiian language. Since Polynesian alphabets have fewer letters than those of European languages there is some letter substitution when European names are rendered in Polynesian. Robert becomes "Lopeti." (L substitutes for R; P substitutes for B) Richard becomes "Lisiate." You can see the drift. "Malia" for a name reminds us that this will be our first president with such connection to Hawaii. Here in the Midwest there is great interest that he will be the third president from Illinois - along with Lincoln and Grant. How exciting this must be for folks in Hawaii.
*Being a "community organizer" is not looking so bad this morning. Back in the 1970s our church took on a new direction in ministry and got involved with church based community organizing as a way of approaching ministry. We were instrumental in putting together, with other churches, a group called the Community Caring Conference (CCC), which shares office space with us to this day. Since Chicago is the center of the universe for community organizing we approached the Gamaliel Foundation for training, and many on our church staff have been trained by Gamaliel over the years. When vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was poking fun at community organizer as a job title there was a level of discontent with the community organizers at the CCC, and with me, as I too have organizer training. Well, face-to-face, feet-on-the-ground community organizing is looking effective this November morning, and community organizer can be counted among honorable work possibilities.
*Barack Obama represents a new generation. If you will, the United States has had two Baby Boomer presidents - Bill Clinton and George W Bush. And now we have gone to the next younger generation. I am a Boomer. I was in Junior High when Obama was born. Some of my issues are simply not Barack Obama's issues, and that may be a blessing. As I was looking at the hundreds of thousands of people having a good time in Grant Park in Chicago last night, a beautiful, warm, fall night in the midwest, my mind travelled back to 1968. And at the Democratic Convention that year in Chicago there was violence against people of my generation in that same Grant Park. There was a lot of conflict around the world in 1968. I wrote about the violence at Talatelolco in October 1968. It was in 1968 that Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated, and also Bobby Kennedy. Maybe it is a good thing that with a younger president he can look to the future more than to the past. While experience can sometimes be an asset, certain kinds of experiences can give a person a negative attitude.
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