I Shall Be Released

I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released. -- Bob Dylan

There are people and events in all our lives that hold us prisoner. Sometimes we are fully cognizant of these time-worn shackles and finding the key to our freedom comes with relative ease. But sometimes we just shuffle through life in denial of their existence, silencing the rattle of chains that keep us bound to our history, convincing ourselves we have learned to move beyond the past, that we could walk away from the solitary confinement of our fears anytime we choose. So we wrap ourselves in the disguise of darkness, hiding from the light of exposure, content to walk through the valley of shadows, shunning the light.

But sometimes, despite our own worst intentions, the light finds us. And when it does, the shadows dissipate, the truth is exposed, and memory returns. Tonight Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. And the light came on.

Years from now, will you remember where you were when that victory was announced? Remember what you felt? What you did? What you said?

I was sitting in my living room, emailing my daughter for hours, watching election returns on television AND on my laptop. And when the announcement came at 11:00 pm that Barack Obama was the next president of the United States and television cameras in Chicago, Atlanta, and Harlem allowed me to share in the reactions of thousands of people, I burst into tears and grinned from ear to ear. Hope can do funny things to your heart.

It was late, but I called Janet to tell her the good news. Then I couldn't talk, because my crying turned to sobbing, and the election became personal.

I am a child of the South, a child of the 1950s, a child of fundamentalist origins, a child born color-blind in a color-conscious time and place. It ain't been easy being that particular shade of white. Exposed by the light of change in the making, the dark remnants of a lifetime of racial, philosophical, and religious pain poured out of me, and I cried like a baby.

No, seriously -- like a baby.

Like the young child who wandered to the far end of the local farmer's market to get a drink from the special COLORED water fountain only to be told she had to drink from the WHITE fountain instead - what was so special about white water when they got to drink the colored water? The child who got spanked for wandering away and being found with those people -- again.

Like the child staring horrified out the window of the car as a frame house was consumed by flames, the initial screams of its residents quickly and eerily silenced as white firefighters hosed down surrounding properties, but refused to pour water on the fire consuming a nigger house.

Like the child scooting down into the floorwell of the car to avoid the screaming ghosts dancing wildly around the blazing cross planted in the median of her hometown's main street.

Like the child who spent one of the happiest summers of her life playing in the streets around her grandmother's store, finding a new best friend named Robert just like her little brother, only to have her uncle take her aside one day and inform her that it was okay to play with Robert, but that she could never marry him because he was a nigger. (I was 6 -- and you were worried about me marrying him?)

Like the young teenage idealist moved by the words and deeds of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, devastated by their deaths, and sucker-punched by her father who said their murders were for the best because they were just trouble-makers and the world was better off without them.

Like the new college freshman who strolled to the on-campus church with 4 of her friends, only to be turned away at the door because her 3 black friends weren't welcome in GOD's house. What?!?

Like the young working mother who took an "emergency" call from her daughter's black teacher questioning said daughter's demand to have her school picture made with the BLACK cabbage patch doll instead of the white one.

Like the grandmother proudly wheeling her Hispanic grandsons through the grocery store only to have a most proper Wynnton dowager gush about how cute they were and how Christian it was of me to be a foster parent to one of those poor children. After all, you know how they all turn out...

I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released. -- Bob Dylan

Scanning the sea of faces in the Chicago crowd, I spotted Jesse Jackson, chewing his lower lip in a failed attempt to stem the flow of tears. And there was Oprah, the look on her face that of the little girl in Mississippi she started as, that little girl with no hope who rose above her beginnings, but still somehow felt like "not enough" until tonight, until Obama, until the circle showed itself unbroken by history. I do not share their skin and I cannot share their historical pain. But in that moment, we shared the release of a common sorrow.

At no time during this election process was race an issue for me; however, until recent months, I truly did not think I would see an African American man elected president in my lifetime. But it happened and if this is possible, how many other unrealized utopic dreams might come to fruition in the light of Obama's vision? I am excited about these possibilities and what changes lie ahead. This calming, serene man has led me back to that place of hope "where all things are possible" and, for the first time in a long while, made me believe in the promise of this country that was lost along with the idealism of my youth.

Can he deliver? I believe he already has. I could see it in the faces in the crowd, feel it in my own heart, hear it resonating in his words. He has delivered exactly what he promised: hope. And that hope will fuel the change we are to be.