Sun-day

The sun is out and it's hot already. I've had an ok weekend so far. Good sangha yesterday, lunch with our Lama and fellow sangha members. A quiet day at home which included a nap. It's always a good day if you can have a nap.

I was surprised that Obama won the Noble Peace Prize. I hoped that one day he would win it, that he would accomplish enough to earn consideration for the prize. But he won it after 9 months in office, chosen for it after 1 month in office. Aside from a few speeches, his "actions" were that of a campaigner with a gift for inspirational rhetoric.

My initial reaction to the announcement of the award was, "whoa, way too soon--makes a mockery of it--and where does he go if he actually accomplishes something besides getting elected!" Then a friend sent a you-tube of Rachel Maddow's commentary on the award to Obama. She focused on how many recipients were awarded the award prior to having achieved what they hoped and verbalized they would work to accomplish. These are remarkably respectable, and accomplished people, who were not necessaarily so accomplished at the time of the award: Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1984)and
Aung San Suu Kyi (1991) to name two in recent history.

Maddow points out that encouraging global hope is reason enough for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in that sense, Barak Obama has earned the title Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

I believe that at least part of the hope that Barak Obama has given birth to is partially (or wholly) attributable to the depth of despair that Bush/Chaney fostered. And while that may be true it doesn't change the fact that Barak Obama said the right things at the right time, so much so that the almost unthinkable occured: a black man was elected President of the United States. I think the world's hope lies not only in a new positive leader of the free world, but in the renewed hope that Americans are all that the world hopes they are.