Thursday, August 28, 2008

Climbing mountains

The first time I thought about it, it was so scary I pushed it out of my mind.
When the thought returned, I decided to hold it and turn it around like a glowing orb of promise.
Let me back up for a minute: I've often been accused of thinking too deep, of picking stuff apart for deeper meaning to understand its source and my own enlightenment. Still, it drove some people crazy although my family and close friends appreciate me being the one who performs the thought autopsies on the events of the day.
That being said, the original thought was this: Sen. Obama's acceptance speech tonight coincides with another milestone speech given in what could be his future city of residence. But the real connection for me is not that speech, but the speech given the night before Martin Luther King Jr. died. The one where he talked about the mountaintop and looking over into the promised land.
"I may not get there with you," he said. "He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land," he said. "But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."
Is Denver the mountaintop King looked over? Did he see this before any of us could dream of it?
The first time the word "mountaintop" rang in my ear before the convention, it sent a chill through me so I went and read the end of King's speech and there it was, to me a clear foretelling of tonight's momentous occasion.
If I'm right, if I grasped the significance of where we are and what will happen, maybe I feel the same sense of urgency Muhammad Ali felt when he got his wife to pull strings to get him a seat at the convention. This is something not to miss, to be present for not for the pageantry, not for the politics, but for the inhalation of the scent of liberty, of closing your eyes and just being in the moment and where you are at that moment and what it says about the time in which you're living. The life you're living, for that matter, and whether you're deserving of a chance to change your life and step in a new direction on your own mountaintop.
Barack Obama and Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali all stepped away from the conveyor belt of normalcy and created their own "new way of walking" into their future. When will you begin your new walk, create your new history? I'm plotting my new map now although I don't know where I want to go or where He wants me to be but I know my mountaintop's out there waiting for my conquering flag....

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