Stewart Nelson

For the first time in a long while I feel proud to be an American again!  There are many daunting challenges that face our new president but I really believe that with his wisdom and energy, Americans are more than up to the challenge.  Our country has been so divided on so many issues and now we have a leader that can seemingly pull us together and help us find ways to live peacefully with our differences.  It is not going to be easy.  We dug a huge financial hole that we must climb out of now as we lost our way and succumbed to the idea that we could all get rich quickly.  Our parents and grandparents knew better, but these are lessons than we seem destined to have learn the hard way.

Whether Barack Obama is a successful leader will depend in part on how each of us does our part to help.  He cannot do it by himself.  In his Inaugural Address in 1961 John F.  Kennedy implored us all “To ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” President Kennedy then want on to say “My fellow cirtizens of the world, ask not what America can do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”  Unfortunately, this is even more true today than it was in 1961.

The world is indeed a much “smaller” place than it was in 1961!  We are clearly more dependent on each other than ever before.  The Buddhist concept of “Karma” and the interconnectedness of everything is becoming more and more apparent even to us rugged individualist Westerners.  Tomorrow morning when they are still cleaning up the confetti  in Washington DC, when we wake up and look in the mirror you will see the only person that can really make a lasting difference.  Please help Barack Obama as the leader of the greatest country in the world, show the rest of the world that from now on it is not about “I ” but “We”.  What a wonderful world it will be.  God Bless America!