Meanwhile, back at the Mall...

Not the Maine Mall or any other shopping mall, I mean THE MALL in Washington, DC. The "people's mall" where millions are packing themselves in like sardines this morning to hear (and probably not see) Obama's inauguration. Bekah and her friends headed out around 4 am and stood in line to get through a security gate until at least 7:30. 

As of 9:30 she called to say that somehow--and she truly does not know how--they ended up on the Mall at 4th Street, which is the point nearest the Capitol that any "ordinary people" are allowed to be! I encouraged her to notice as much as she can, to remember everything, and to write it all down as soon as she gets home so that she will have it forever. Her own slice of this amazing piece of history.

What a hopeful, wide-open kind of day, full of the energy of newness and possibility.

Still Reverberating

Six days later, and the event that was last week's election still reverberates and works on my imagination. Right now, for instance, Barack and Michelle are being greeted and shown around the White House by W and Laura. What will Michelle and Laura talk about while Barack and George get down to work? There's so much to look forward to with Barack and Michelle in the White House. Among all sorts of possibilities, I delight in what Nicholas Kristof pointed out in yesterday's New York Times: that Americans have just picked a president who is "an open, out of the closet, practicing intellectual." And the future first lady, too! A return to brain power at the White House--imagine that!

I, like so many others, find myself still savoring election night and the day after--the rich tumble of images from home and around the world, the faces radiating joy, relief, near disbelief; the interior realization that this election was and is about so much more than I might have dared to think, so much bigger than one guy (the Democrat for a change) beating the other guy. It is a story worth savoring and remembering and retelling, in part because it reminds us how often we spin and believe and give power to stories that aren't necessarily true in the present, even if they were once true in the past. Stories like the "Bradley effect." Stories like "this country isn't ready for an African-American president." So part of this election story is about the power to rewrite the stories we believe in and invest with power to shape us. It's about taking back some of that power when we dare to hope differently and to stake some part of ourselves on trusting a different story.

The painting doesn't really have anything specific to do with any of this! It was painted in September in response to (what else?) trees in the backyard. Maybe it feels right for today because it's an image that's a reverberating-in-the-imagination kind of thing, or maybe just because I like it.

Exhausted Elation

Kind of tired, today...can't imagine why. Up past midnight for the best of reasons. Yet elation and exhaustion are not a bad mix. A light, joyful, grateful, relieved heart gives strength to a weary body. One of Anna's friends said this morning: "It was as if the air seemed cleaner this morning!" Lighter, too.

Bekah reports that the District of Columbia was whooping it up, singing it up, dancing it up, honking it up all through the night. Serenading the White House, and Lincoln, who sits calmly as always, smiling wisely, from his lofty seat looking toward the Capitol. Thinking of Lincoln there's a deep sense of the circling of time, the mantle passed from one Illinois senator to another, by and through so many along the way. Emancipation!

We (that would be millions of us) did it! And now there's lots to be done and lots to look forward to.