Barack Obama – "I of my own knowledge…"

I got this message from a particularly close friend, and pass it on for those who find that it resonates. It resonates with me, particularly in light of what I know of the terrible troubles Abraham Lincoln went through, and what I know of the power of spiritual intervention in world affairs.

Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 6:48 PM

To: Frank DeMarco
Subject: for our President

A message came in last night that Obama needs our prayers, not our worries and disappointments. And that through your network this word can get spread. And that I’m not the only one getting this message. (So I shouldn’t feel that I’m trying to “make a hole in the ocean” as the Greeks expression for fruitless activity goes.) We need not judge his capabilities by apparent results, which are anyway better than he gets credit for. His intentions and abilities are good, the times are terrible, and the opposition intractable and cunning.

I don’t usually insert anything even vaguely political in this blog, though I have plenty of comments in my newsnet email list that I send around to long-suffering friends. But President Obama’s speech to the Nobel Peace Prize committee transcends politics and statecraft, and makes points that too many people prefer to forget.

Peace, after all, is not merely the absence of war, and it doesn’t come about merely by people wishing for it. Peace is necessarily borne on the back of soldiers, for otherwise it would be at the mercy of the first person taking control of a country and insisting on it being either his (or her) way or else. One would think that Hitler and Stalin would have taught the world that lesson, or good old revered Comrade Chairman Mao, who taught that “power comes from the barrel of a gun.” But it’s hard for some people to give up their dreams of living in a perfect world among perfect people.

Continue reading Obama’s Peace Prize speech