Change comes from sustainable and unchanging values

My husband and I went to the inauguration concert yesterday. Despite the cold -- we were warm and toasty due to the approximately 400,000 bodies surrounding us.

Other than the inauguration tomorrow -- this might be the most historic event Jeff and I will ever go to. Memories of the March on Washington were conjured up and I can't help feeling as though I was part of something just as important -- especially when Barack Obama mentioned that despite the foundational memorials to Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt surrounding us on all sides, that the most crucial to the change we wish to seek now was what filled the spaces in between.  Us. Me and all the people we were snuggled up with on either side of the reflecting pool.

It's times like these that make me sentimental.  I can't help but think of my own grandparents and great grandparents -- people born in poverty -- as farmers, sharecroppers in Alabama.  They certainly were not perfect, born in their time and place, they were embedded in racism.  And now their granddaughter or great granddaughter-- who has never lacked for money -- is celebrating the first black president of the United States. 

Despite all the fundamental differences I have with my ancestors, I am a product of of them as well.  They are the ones that helped shape my deep sense of connectivity with humanity and the earth.  They are the ones that taught my parents to love me and raise me in a way that is open to different ideas and worldviews. 

Yes, much has changed -- but change embedded in the unchanging ideas of love, respect, and as Rod Downing so aptly expresses, openness to possibilities.  I can't think of a better case for sustainable good in our world.