Monday, January 19, 2009

Hiatus Over

If Barack Obama can put together a team to govern the Free World in just over two months, I guess I can get my act together enough to continue to write publicly. Sacraments Wholesale is back online as of today, the eve of Inauguration Day. 

A few weeks ago, my friend Doug asked me, "Why did you quit blogging?" 

"Did I really quit?" I thought. Or did I just run out of words? 

It's not that I didn't have anything to say these past few weeks, I just had reached a point of dryness, of writer's block or accedia or--something. There was so much to say and the enormousness of it all overwhelmed me. I was tired.  And I figured that someone else could say it better.

I silenced myself. 

No more. 

Tomorrow starts a New America, the South Carolina Legislature is in session, the rich are devising whole new ways to rob the poor of what little they have, justice still does not roll down like a never-ending stream, and that damned Battle Flag of the Army of Virginia still blows in the Gervais Street wind. 

Even if all of you have gone elsewhere searching for a little spiritual kick, I am still going to retake My Own Private Pulpit. Here I go again.

3 comments:

2612KiawahOwner said...

I was wondering what happened to you. Glad to have you back.

As this inauguration rolls in I am reminded of this :

http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres49.html

The words from FDR's first inauguration address ring eerily appropriate to our times today.

Beside the banking and foreclosure mention in the speech, there is a section dedicated to re-establishing America as a "good neighbor....who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors."

I imagine that we are sitting at time not dissimilar to the Great Depression. Truly there is fear in all of our hearts, at the very least creeping at the edges.

We are at a time when, much like the Great Depression, our excesses in the financial arena have been coupled with a bare betrayal by those in who we trusted to manage our precious financial assets resulting in our own mutual destruction and the destruction of our neighbors around the globe.

We are at a time when our very soul as a nation has been put into peril because of fear for security, fear of difference, intolerance and greed. We as a nation have allowed our leaders to abandon our principals, our moral high ground and our position as trusted leaders on the world stage by engaging in a forceful attempt at nation building, allowing torture of prisoners, and misleading the world into a questionable war.

And here we stand at the turning of the tide. The point I want to make is that no one person can single handedly bring us back from this brink. It will take a nation of thinkers, and doers, of believers and healers, and givers and leaders to get us back on track. We will need to be a nation of heros. We finally have a leader who can embody those traits that are the best of us. The question remains is whether we will follow if he leads.

Anonymous said...

Welcome back!

Doug said...

Glad you're back.