WHEN MIGHT BECAME CAN

Written the morning after the election- November 2008

Some say that words are meaningless, that words are empty. The opposite is true. Perhaps it might seem today that words are meaning LESS, but words are everything, and mean everything, depending on who says them, how they are said, and how they are heard. I woke up this morning and I heard words sing. I heard words sing FREEDOM. Freedom is not freedumb. It is not free, nor is it dumb. Free COSTS. The cost is paid EVERY DAY. Dumb is not ignorant. Ignorant is knowing without thinking, and speaking without knowing. To be dumb is NOT to speak, to remain silent even if you know. Last night no one was dumb. I heard words sing RIGHT. America has stopped doing the "right" thing, and has done the RIGHT thing. It has traded the closed fist of self-RIGHTEOUS intolerance for the open hand of HOPE. It has traded the smugness of class thinking for an open-minded class on thinking. It has swapped stubbornly doing things for reasons shown to be wrong to reasoning what it should be doing. I heard words sing TRUTH. The world has become a place where nothing is but what is not. You see it everywhere. Truth lies, and only stands up if someone stands up for it. Last night a nation stood up. I heard words sing MIGHT. Not the might of the high and mighty, not the might which sneers that it is always right. The MIGHT which says: maybe....just maybe...together we CAN.