Years ago I read Tillich's collection of homilies titled, "The Eternal Now."  Influenced by Nitzche/Heidegger, as many were, Tillich's "kairos" time is to be compared and contrasted with ordinary, everyday "clock-time," the time of Chronos.  Tomorrow at Noon will be a certain "fulness of time."  Not THE Fulness of Time--that was the Incarnation.  Nonetheless, the Inauguration stands forever as a turning-point. An Eternal Now of the positive, healthy, hopeful and joyful variety.  Eternal Nows, however, if I recall my Tillich, can be downers as well.  No doubt there will be tragedy in the Obama Time just as surely as this moment-since-November Fourth has been Shakespearean Comedy.  In the Endtime, though, Dante's Divine Comedy wins out--if you believe it will.

The exaltation that we are feeling now could and will, eventually, turn to dust. 

 

But out of the ashes there will be yet a new birth of freedom and joy and bliss and glory.  So, enjoy the current feelings of exaltation.  They are real, not deceptive.  They promise an answer to the utlimate question of life, what is our purpose? 

 

Today, Barack was right and I was wrong.  I'd blogged, "No, We Won't."  That is, no, I won't serve in any soup kitchen.  But you know what?  I will serve.  I agree with Obama that there can now be "no idle hands."  We all have to rise to the occasion.  Some just by showing up at work; some by getting out of themselves enough to greet another human being; some by saying, "I owe you an apology..."; some by indeed going to the soup kitchens and the AA meetings and the habitats for bird watchers.  Service does not have to be "public service" which really doesn't count because you get a nice check and a nice retirement--no matter what the quality of your work or your concern, on the job, for others. 

 

The word, Service, boils down to the encounter with the Master.  This personal encounter, if it is real, eventuates in more or less Imitation of Christ.   Tillich, the womanizer that he was, understood this point only in part.  But who am I to judge?

 

This time of the Kairos of which Tillich allegedly spoke, this glorious or tragic Noon, awaits us all at death.  In the meantime, I suppose, we get glimpses of it.  Am I wrong or is not the time of Kairos, the time of a "special grace" or gift nothing more and nothing less than the "rumor of angels" that Peter Berger talked about?  Elvis on the radio.  Mozart.  A re-run of Bishop Sheen.  Mass and Communion after Confession/Reconciliation.  The Inauguration and all it means. 

 

Kairos as turning-point can also mean a nation's 9/11.  A country's civil war.  A tribe's genocide or holocaust.  The State of Israel happened after the horrible itself occurred.  And that story continues to go on and on.  Is Gaza some kind of turning point or potentially a Kairos for all parties involved?  There have been shadows there galore.  But also a kind of clarity seems to be in the offing.  And this clarity or noontime will obtain regardless of who "wins." 

 

Of course, Tillich meant much, much more than this by his concept of Eternal Now.  In the Christian context, leaving all secondary literature aside for a moment, the eternal stands for "the new heaven and the new earth."  Somehow, some way, eternity obtains in the here and now.  It brings a certain "newness."  It brings Change.  That cliche of this moment--change.  And yet I think Barack sees as few statesmen have the penetrating depths and breadth and heighth of this moment in time "that we have been waiting for."  His behavior, his public character, his words and deeds thus far--including perhaps his writings--all this seems to testify to Truth (notwithstanding some evidence to the contrary).  Some have called it deceit.  Then they were invited to dinner.  There was beauty in that invitation to conviviality.  And where there is Beauty, there is the prospect of Goodness and Truth.  Not to mention the Sublime.  These noble things are part and parcel, or ought to be part and parcel, of Tillich's insight into the Eternal Now--the meaning of the New Dispensation...for our time. 

 

It occurs to me just now that Martin Luther King, whose d.o.b. we celebrate today, his 80th, was familiar with Paul Tillich and then some.  I'll say no more tonight.  I want to be ready for tomorrow's Inauguration of our 44th President of the United States of America.  God bless Barack Obama and God Bless America and all Children of God everywhere.  All Citizens everywhere.  A special Thank You--to Reverend King, to Barack and Michelle.  And to the people of this now truly Great Country.  The Act of Aristotle's Potency has come to pass, and another Milestone in Salvation History has arisen for the waiting world to behold.  May the Milestones ahead redound to the spiritual and mental and physical benefit of all human beings and citizens both now and in the future to come.   

Noon is a symbol. 

 

Noon is the time of day when, more or less, you have the most clarity vis-a-vis the sun's relation to where you are.  Thus the philosophers, whom I admire, point up Noon as the "the time."  It is the time of maximum insight, so to speak.  In this sense, trying to learn from the likes of Bill O'Reilly (no spin zone) and Campbell Brown  (no bias, no bull), I aspire to speak truly and with an insight appropriate to a thoughtful person over fifty.  It occurs to me that Barack Obama is only forty-seven.  So much for the "over fifty" idea.  The fact is, Aristotle argues that "experience" is somewhat a function of age.  Philosophy or mature philosophy might well be aspired to after some time spent reading, studying, thinking, making mistakes--and learning from them.  Getting the very most out of those inevitable mistakes. 

 

Both Nietzsche and Rousseau, to mention only two, achieved real thought, written down, prior to age fifty.  Threrese of Lisieux, a Doctor of the Church, not to mention, a saint, achieved with grace transendent wisdom of the very highest order (read her "Story of a Soul" and look at her life and legacy)...in her early twenties, for heaven's sake.

 

I think it was Nietzsche who pointed out some way or other that noon is the time of day when there are no shadows, that is, the time of day when everything is very "clear."  If I'm not mistaken, Heidegger then takes up this "gateway" moment and calls it the Augenblick or the time of flashpoint, of moment-of-vision--of uncommon Insight, let us say.  The "prophet" Zarathustra speaks at noon his very highest wisdom and also his hardest truth.  His most unpopular truth.  For all we know, Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" is a noon-time prophecy, a work of real insight.  Personally, I think the End will come much sooner by way of nukes in hands of Islamic terrorists.  But I'm getting away from insight now and into the shadows!  Nietzsche's tension between the Eternal Return of the Same and the Will to Power--this tension, this truth, is enacted at noon.  I hope to find out more about what this means in a book I'm reading, "Eros in Plato, Rousseau and Nietzsche:  The Politics of Infinity."  In the meantime, I'm going on memory, memory of Heidegger's interpretation of the essence--as he saw it--of Nietzsche.  At the time, some thirty years ago, I remember while reading all this stuff that what Heidegger/Nietzsche, if you will, were getting at, was something arrived at by another precocious sage, John Keats.  I'm talking about the famous Negative Capability that sprung out at us from the pages of the Norton Anthology of British Lit, Vol 2.  The great poet-thinker, according to Keats, has a certain negative capability, that is, a knack for not "irritably" reaching out and grabbing at "fact and reason."  Ideas or ideology, false ideology, can only take you so far.  One must not be too "dogmatic."  One must be pragmatic.  Above all, one must never settle on a "fixed idea."  The very kind of "positivistic" ideas that were beginning to be current in the early nineteenth century.  Keats opposed them.  Wordsworth opposed them ("getting and spending , we lay waste our power").  Our true power, according to the Romantics including Nietzsche and Heidegger, lies in being in touch with reality.  It is the poets of reality, of experience, who are in touch with what is.  Not the dogmatic scientists, the narrow-minded ones.  Bertrand Russel comes to mind with his "personal" issues.  But Nietzsche had some serious personal issues.  And Heidegger became quite stiff-necked, you might say, about the deeper truths of Roman Catholicism.  Well, here is the bottom line since I have to punch the time-clock early in the morning:  Our Holy Father is utterly in touch with truth, with negative capability, with the Rapture that the late Heidegger points up as normative.  This Rapture, this amor fati or love of fate--indeed this negative capability--is the stance of the Child.  It is the attitude to life and time that Christ saw exemplified best in children, children with their innocence and sense of time-less-ness.  Their Eternal Now.  Our Holy Father read everything, and everything included Bultmann, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Tillich, Balthasar, Jaspers, Dostoevsky, Augustine--especially Saint Augustine, the very first Existentialist.  Indeed, Augustine appears to be one of the unacknowledged teachers of Heidegger, though i really don't know the whole story of this great thinker.  I do know that Augustine in "Confessions" writes deeply about time and time-consciousness.  Of "internal time-consciousness."  Indeed he seems to be doing a phenomenology of internal time consciousness.  And we know that Heidegger was a great student of the outstanding Edmund Husserl.  The phenomenologist par excellence.  But Husserl, if I read Heidegger on him aright, never broke away from the dangerous pit of Western, Socratic rationality.  For Husserl, there remained this dichotomy first begun by Plato or at least Platonism.  On the one hand, subject; on the other hand, "object."  To oversimplify, this Western Dualism, this Western Metaphysics, is what Nietzsche, according to Heidegger, brings to a head.  Rather, Nietzsche puts an end, once and for all, to Western Metaphysics as, according to the Swabian Peasant, it was begun by Socrates.  Heidegger sees himself as the one who retrieves or appropriates the true metaphysics, the pre-Socratic "realism" of Heraclitus, especially him I suppose.  In this light, Heraclitus, not Plato, would be the philosopher for us.  Better said, we should read our pre-Socratics as the indispensable introduction to Plato and Socrates, Socrates with his "resentment" against "life."  (In this, according to Nietzsche, Socrates was like Saint Paul.)  Again, the Bottom Line:  Our current Holy Father, whose master is Saint Augustine, not Bonaventure, talks more and more, recently, about Christian Joy.  About the deep joy, not to say Rapture, of being and living out the story of Jesus Christ.  Indeed the present time, Advent, especially reminds us of the philosophic structure of authentic time.  Advent is the Augenblick, the moment of Vision, at least in theory.  (In putting it this way, I'm retrieving the Nietzsche/Heidegger Rapture using Christian words and Tradition.)  Whereas Nietzsche argues amor fati, love of fate, the true-authentic believer, alla a Balthasar or an Escriva or a Padre Pio or a John Paul or Little Flower or Joseph Ratzinger--the living saint...he or she lives "in Christ" as Saint Paul lived:  he or she is not living; rather, Christ is living inside him or her.  Life itself, not just an Augenblick or a "moment," has become sanctified.  In this way, negative capability alla Keats is the constant human condition.  Put more theologically, the "negative" or "apophatic" Way is normative now.  So-called negative theology is now lived out, day to day, in practice, in constantly Holy Practice.  One is a saint or almost there.  With daily sacramental life, one is, without learning, on a summit-but-not-Zarathustra's.  Rather, one is living out Dante's Paradise.  You have made it. 

 

Tonight, this would be my aspiration, with a little help from my friends, both Christian and pagan.  Tonight, at nine p.m. Central Time, December 21, 2008, this would be my Comment at Noon.  Paul Tillich's Eternal Now, his kairological time--over against that time I have to "punch" early in the morning, clock-time.  It's all one. 

One day, he's defending Barack Obama at least in terms of hoping--in a Friday morning phone conversation with Mike Gallagher--that our next prez succeeds (Gallagher, who ought to be ashamed of himself, actually admitted that he does not hope Obama succeeds).

 

The next, Wallace is courgeously speaking out on behalf of President Bush who is being unfairly calumniated. Go back and look at the transcripts--everything is on tape nowadays.

 

It is a rare man, no matter his occupation, who has this kind of objectivity.  It is even rarer for one to speak out over the airwaves. 

 

I've seen enough.  Plus, my wife has said that Wallace is her favorite TV jounalist.  Chris Wallace is an American Treasure and a true American Hero. 

I want to congratulate, before heading off to punch the time-clock, Tony Blair.  One, you became a Roman Catholic, joining your wife and children in this perennial "mystical body" of Jesus Christ--I know, an affront to many, often a question to me.  But look at recent resutlts:  Popes Paul, John Paul and Benedict!  My personal favorite, Ratzinger--it's the German blood in me.

 

To the apparently churchless Obama:  consider the Catholic Faith.  In so many ways, Barack, it fits your personality much better than anything else, unless maybe the Bahai Faith.  Think about it. 

 

Again, I compliment Mr. Blair--and also for his recent piece in Time.  Barack should call Sarkozy and consult with him about his (their) remarkable harmony-building governments.  I had no idea the French prez was this enlightened.  But I should have known.  The French are one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, civilization on earth.  An unabashed Francophile am I, with twelve college credits (all As) to prove it. 

 

Speaking of consultation, Obama should consult regularly, as should Hillary and Company (Bill, of course)--with Mr. Blair, a World Treasure of a Man. 

 

In this Season of Harmony I also want to compliment William Hague for his magnificent book on William Wilberforce, recently reviewed in The Weekly Standard. That movie about Wilberforce still gives me chills of joy and aspiration every time I think about it.  President-elect Obama, true human being and true citizen of our land and this troubled world:  I heartily recommend this book I've not even read yet, this book by a British conservative, Mr. Hague.  The thought of this book, like the thought of the friendship between Hannity and Colmes, gives a body warmth and real hope in this troubled world, waiting, waiting, for a Saviour. 

Christ Matthews, who may be a senator someday, voted for W.  I forget which time--maybe both times.  This is apropos of everything.  Our decisions in life tell who we are.  This country is still divided--in terms of the pundit and pundit-wannabe class:  Bush was right to go into Iraq, one hand; the prez was dead wrong to go into Iraq, the other.  He was wrong, according to Mr. Simon, tonight w/ Hardball, because Iraq posed no threat to us.  (Yes, but....)  He was right (for Cheney, O'Reilly, the so-called neocons like Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer and Rudy) because eventually Saddam would use terror and worse to seriously harm us.  Plus, plus the fact that if we could win in Iraq, making it an ally, this reality would mean a new, positive reality--eventually--in the Middle East as a whole.  There would be a "domino effect."  First Iraq a republic of sorts; then maybe some others as well. In any case, we'd be forever a thorn in the side of the likes of Ahmadinejad, and Israel would have a major ally closer to home.  (And yet more U.S. military bases stationed in the Middle East--the more to antagonize the one point five billion Muslims around the world--if UBL gets his way.) 

 

Well, as Pat Buchanan wisely pointed out tonight on MSLSD ( I love Mark Levin for this expression), it all depends.  The legacy of Bush, that is.  It all depends on what happens in Afghanistan over the next ten years or so.  Pat points out that Karzai is really in effect only the "mayor" of Kabul--he's not running the show in Afghanistan.  According to Pat and the thought of Daniel Pipes, Bush's efforts to create this "domino effect" of Western-inspired states in the Mideast has failed or is likely to fail.  Buchanan argues that the Taliban is not likely to be defeated.  Not even by the biggest and best of military machines.  The Taliban is an empire destroyer.  It is like a "David" to the "Goliath" of our Western Imperialism.  (My metaphor, not Mr. Buchanan's.)  The Taliban and al-Qaida are not going anywhere.  If anything, as the shoe-throwing humiliation proves, they appear to be stronger than ever in terms of the street support in the Arab world, the world of Islam. 

 

At a U.S. Naturalization Ceremony in Texas a few brief years ago, I noted that the largest contingent, or second only to Mexico, was new citizens from Pakistan.  It is worth remembering that Steven Emerson, shortly after 9/11, stated a concern about "sleeper cells" of al-Qaida in, of all places, Arlington, TX.  Presumably, this heads-up mentioned on national TV was nothing new to the authorities.  No doubt the FBI was then, and is now, on the case--whatever the case may be.  There is a very strong school of engineering in Arlington, TX., a place where Arab faces are quite noticeable.  Of course, most Arabs and most Muslims are "moderates."  That is, unless you believe the teachings of Mr. Robert Spencer, who argues that the Koran teaches the killing of all infidels, and that the only reason more Muslims are not on board with this yet is similar to the reasons why Christians are not yet on board with Christian Virtue--it's very costly to be a true believer.  If Spencer is correct, and if Pipes is wrong--he has high hopes for the "moderates"--then we might well pray that Christians convert themselves to true Christianity, and that, on the other side, Muslims continue not to convert to true Islam, a religion of death as far as all infidels are concerned, that is, we are all to be eventually put to the sword. 

Barack continues to impress and astonish with his picks for various services, be it Rick Warren for inaugural prayer duties or Ray LaHood for Transportation.  God bless Barack Obama!  Again I want to thank God and all the people whether in the limelight or not--who have made this special time, this time of kairos or special grace possible:  Bill and Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Valarie Jarrett, Reveren Wright, Jesse Jackson (yes, Jesse), MLK (RIP), James Baldwin (RIP), Frederick Douglass (RIP), Colin Powell, Sammy Davis Jr, Tiger Woods, the Kennedy Family, especially Senator Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy, countless and here unfortunately nameless volunteers and prayer people, my friend Rick C. who sent me an Obama bumper sticker, Christopher Buckley, Doug Kmiec, Kathleen Parker, Clarence Page, Bruce Springsteen, Barbara Streishand, Spike Lee, the jihadists (who could have struck, but did not), Malcolm X (RIP), Muhammed Ali (a longtime hero of mine, going back to 1961), Jim Brown, James Brown (RIP), Bob Hope (RIP), Johnny Carson (RIP), Judge Mathis, Judge Karen, Divorce Court, The People's Court, Judge Judy, Bill Cosby, Bullet Bob Hayes (RIP) who called on me at an AA meeting, Michael Dell (a good man), Warren Buffet (a great man), Bill Gates and Melinda (generosity par excellence), George W. Bush (who means what he says about compassion), Bob Novak (I just like him--don't know why), Pat Buchanan and Chris Matthews (both helped, in their own ways), MSLSD (that luny station), Senator John McCain (who must be pleased, deep down, even in his pain), Michael Gerson (a conservative hero), Charles Krauthammer (an American Hero), Dixie Chicks (sing about Wide Open Spaces, the kind Barack talked about today!), my beautiful bride (who brought me back to the riches of the Catholic Faith under John Paul the Great and Benedict, our Holy Father--she could not vote for Barack, but I know she was pleased about this moment in time, this incredible giant leap for mankind), Sam Walton (RIP) and that Giant Retail Store that employs two million people worldwide while unashamedly promoting the virtues of respect, service and excellence, even in the midst of failures; Duke Somebody or other, the new CEO of Wal-Mart; professors who encourage civil dissent and who do not mark you down for it; Larry Sabato, the Real Virginian, David Axelrod and David Plouffe (I repeat their names, their singular contribution, their exceptional faith, matched only by Barack's and a few others); the parents of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who brought these public servants into the world; Dr. Furman, Summers, Dennis Ross, President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn; Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson; the decent right-wing talk show people who model respect for those who disagree; Chris Wallace, TV Journalist Par Excellence; Brit Hume, TV News Man and Commentator Par Excellence; Keith Ubermensche; Jay Leno; tens of millions of hopeful voters in this great country; Michelle Obama and the entire Obama Family; gratitude and more gratitude to God Almighty; Sarah Palin--who wisely expressed confidence in the Wisdom of the American People; Allan Colmes and Sean Hannity (it was hard to include Hannity); Bill O'Reilly!; public education (about which not enough bad can be said); Will Smith; Reverend Sharpton; Reverend Caldwell; TD Jakes (about whom not enough good can be said and whose Church I've been to several times); writers of great books, the truly great educators in this country, one in particular I'm reading now--a book about Eros in Plato, Rousseau and Nietzsche:  The Politics of Infinity; all those who deserve mention, fame even, but who eschew it or have been denied it under Providence; countless scholars and readers who've been influenced by the great philosopher Leo Strauss, e.g., William Galston; Woody Guthrie and Mark Twain and Will Rogers (RIP); the American Treasure Garrison Keillor; Victor Davis Hansen; Governor Moonbeam; Marva Collins; Allan Bloom; Saul Bellow; Toni Morrison; Ralph Ellison; Louis Armstrong; Langston  Hughes; the ongoing restful work of my favorite saints, some canonized, some not yet but-I-believe-should-be:  Bishop Sheen, Therese of Lisieux, Josemaria Escriva, Thomas More, Bruno, Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Benedict, Paul, Peter, John, Thomas, Luke, Mark, Matthew; the great artists who've moved me so:  Tolstoy; Dostoevsky; Rousseau; Nietzsche; the great theologians and writers of Christianity:  Chesterton, Balthasar, Lewis, Niehbur Brothers, Newman, Ratzinger, Belloc; Fr. John Neuhaus of First Things; Christopher Hitchens (has anyone seen him lately?); Governor Huckabee and Mitt Romney and Rudy and Newt; Karl Rove (who has been a voice for moderation, true populism and statesmanship); James Carville and his wife; Dennis Kucinich; John Kerry; Richardson; Vilsack; Emanuel; (even Blagoyevich--to the extent he helped the Obama Cause in any way; countless hundreds or thousands of Catholic priests in America and around the world, especially Father Timothy, Dallas Diocese; the Cistercian Monks; the Carthusian Monks; the Trappist-Benedictine Monks; the Sisters, of course; Oprah!!!; UBL (in a fateful, awful-yet-providential way--he helped the Obama Cause); Obama's mom and grandmother (RIP); my ancestors on both sides (who came from all over the world and travelled all over the world); Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne and Wayne's wonderful son; Bill Buckley (even though he opposed certain legislation); Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy and James Dickey, not to mention Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller!; Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville; Emerson and Thoreau; Emily Dickinson and Billy Collins (featured on Prairie Home Companion); Jack Kerouac; Ken Kesey; Douglas Brinkley, Stephen Ambrose (RIP) and Joseph Ellis; recent, great biographers of Lincoln, Reagan, Truman, Johnson, Kennedy, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, Hoover, Coolidge;  Brian Lamb of C-SPANN!!!!!; H. Stephen Glenn of Developing Capable People; Dr. Phil; the countless, nameless but God-knows-their-names:  the writers of consciousness-raising, funny, witty television; the writers, for example, of NYPD Blue; Woody Allen; Alabama; the Bahai Faith (especially their emphasis on universal literacy and universal education); Arne Duncan, our amazing new Secretary of Education; Dr. Frank Luntz, speaking of things extremely educational; Ben Wattenburg of Open Mind; Bill Moyers, champion of the poor; Mother Theresa, champion of the unborn and all of God's kids, especially the dying in India; champions of college and professional sports--who bring such joy and pleasure to our lifes; Sam Bradford, Heisman and part native-American; Jim Thorpe (RIP); Jim Mattox (RIP), one time, my lawyer; Ron Paul (who told us some inconvenient truths and whom I wrote in); the great prophets of God honored by the Bahai Faith, including its Founder, Baha'u'lah and other great Founders through the millenia, men like Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Mohmmed (I mention him because he is included by the Bahais), Joseph Smith, Moses, Abraham, David, Solomon; Ramakrishna, Vivekenanda, Gandhi; Thomas Merton; Father Basil Penningtion; Father Benedict Groeschel; Father Mark Mary of Mother Angelica and EWTN fame:  Mother Angelica!!!....Billy Graham, a great-souled man, a trail-blazer for human rights; the United Nations (which Barack has chosen to embrace as opposed to kicking in the teeth); John Bolton (who means well, and does well, and is a straight shooter, a straight talker); Nelson Mandella; the strong man in Rwanda who stopped the genocide which would have gone on if not for this strong, enlightened military man and gentleman (read Philip Gourevitch's book on Rwanda); Glenn Beck (a fellow recovering alcoholic); Jerry Garcia (RIP) who brought joy to Reunion Arena on October 21st, 1988; fellow victims and people in recovery everywhere; Chuck Colson and Prison Ministries Fellowship:  Breakpoint; Roger Staubach, Billy Joe Dupree and the Jesuits everywhere; the teachers, students and staff, past and present, of Ursuline Academy, including Mrs. Gates; the zentrists, everywhere--those moderates and Independents, without whom Barack would not have made it; Laurence Welk and Elvis Presley and John Lennon and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin (RIP); the guy who sang "The Duke of Earl"; Bruce Channel and Buddy Holley; Delbert McClinton and Joe Ely; the multi-talented, big-hearted Kinky Friedman (who got and would get again, my vote); the Nobel laureate Al Gore; the great writers, educators and entertainers at:  The Weekly Standard, Commentary, First Things, Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report; Townhall.com; Aretha Franklin; Roy Orbison (RIP); Chet Atkins (RIP); Vince Gill and Mario Cuomo; the writers of The Simpsons and South Park; John Mellankamp; Yanni; Condi Rice, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Handel, Back and Haydn; Dvorjak (especially The New World Symphony).  Beethoven again, with his Pastoral Symphony, Number Six.  Finally, the Everly Brothers, the Doobie Brothers and the Soul Brothers. 

If I left anyone out, it's only because I have to punch the time clock, on time, in the morning.  The following "trail-blazers" cannot go without mention:  Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Voltaire, Kant, Shelling, Hegel, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Dickens, Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, Schubert (Fifth and Ninth Symphonies), Schopenhauer, Shelley, Lord Byron, Jane Austen, Victor Hugo, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, Hoelderlin and above all the Great Goethe. 

I recall with special fondness Maya Angelou's "The Pulse of Morning,"  a poem written especially for, and recited during, the First Clinton Inaugural.  the Pulse of Morning has Come True.  I thank Barack Obama for remembering the Pulse of All the Living in his fantabulous choice of Pastor Rick Warren for the Invocation on January 20, 2009, the Inauguration of the Forty-fourth President of The United States of America, Mr. Barack Hussein Obama.  And a special thanks to Governor Huckabee who spoke so divinely on behalf of the unborn (remember, people are just waiting to adopt these Children of God). 

1)  Today Barack, who chooses his words carefully, like the wordster he is, referred not to "foreign oil" but to "oil."  Very significant.  Our so-called "energy independence" will not, should not rely on OIL, PERIOD.  He could easily, in the context of our new Interior Secretary, have used the now conventional and much-repeated "foreign oil."  He did not.  He thinks before he writes and speaks, and thinks with strong critical acumen.  Nor is this a show; it is a lifelong habit reinforced by excellent training combined with his natural gifts.  And lots and lots of practice.  We are blessed; the world will be blessed.

 

2) Mr. Salazar chose to wear his Western hat indoors--another sign.  We're going to be natural, not just conventional.  Even the cliches of dress will be scrutinized.  Obama was at his poetic best in describing the job of Secretary of Interior.  That old song by the Dixie Chicks came to my mind:  "Wide Open Spaces."  Barack connected the majesty of our landscape with energy, with security, with jobs and with sensitivity to the needs of the people--including our tribal nations.  Commerce was not discounted, but nor was it given priority.  Government of the people, by the people and for the people was appropriately given its true importance. 

 

3) Keeping it simple.  Mr. Obama is accepting three questions lately, and the reporters' names are known in advance.  This is called "boundaries."  Barack has a profound sense of Boundaries, and this sense will deepen, if possible, as his presidency goes on.  More, much more, about boundaries, in posts to come, both here and in "Freedom and Obedience."