Ice floes on the starboard side, Captain

Interesting beginning. We were expecting the new president to evoke Kennedy or his mentor Lincoln. Instead he gives us Washington crossing the Delaware. As he begins a presidency faced with peril and fraught with uncertainty, I can well appreciate how President Obama could relate to the Commander-in-chief of an army defending a nation yet unborn. Had General Washington and the Continental Army failed to reach the other side of the Delaware, and failed to slip past the British Army that Christmas morning, today might have celebrated the installation of Sir Barack Obama, as the first black Prime Minister of the American Parliament, instead of the blue-coat festival of freedom that it is.

Invoking the founding fathers was significant for another reason as well. When the nation's founding documents were drafted, ratified and signed, it became the law of a new land that "all men are created equal." Some asked if that included black people, slave or free, women or native Americans. The answer was in effect, well...not quite...not yet...we'll have to get around to it. But for two hundred years, we did not. A Civil War was fought; the longest and bloodiest war of our history, and still we did not get around to it. A non-violent war for civil rights was waged and won but at a price paid in martyrdom by Reverend King and his champions President and Senator Kennedy. So we got closer to it, and gradually, year by year we got closer still. But until now, we had not as a nation gotten around to it.

Today, President Obama got around to it. The birth date of the truly United States of America is not July 4, 1776 despite what is stamped on the coins, but today, January 20, 2009.

The size of the crowd says it all. The Mall from the capital to the Washington Monument, all along Pennsylvania Avenue, and every side street along the parade route all the way down to the White House, lined with humanity united in celebration,as far as the eye can see.

Today Barack Obama means a lot of things to a lot of people. That he is the first man of black skin to be president is one of the things that means a lot to a lot of people. Tomorrow other things will take their place for our attention. And we will continue to thank God that we have leadership we can trust to help us face the cold light of day.

DHL