From Stephanie Seefeldt

A Shadowed Hope

It can be heard on the wind – in the words that are written,
in the faces of the gathered who watch him ascend.
“Change”, it says.
“New.
Better.
More.
Hope.”
I see the hope. I even sense it some, and want to
grasp this moment in history – to be able to say
“Yes. I saw it. I watched. And I prayed.”

To spend tomorrow with my African American sons,
watching what is just outside their ability to understand,
but is no longer outside their ability to achieve,
that is remarkable joy to me. A future for my sons that wasn’t there
Before.
But when After comes,
this hope has a shadow for me – a shocking
incongruous paradox of “Yes we can”
chanted while marching in a field of white crosses
as far as the eye can see –
cross by cross, marker by marker, one for each voice
that never had the chance to say this “yes”,
that never had the chance to dream this dream,
that might well have marked the voice of those same two sons,
once considered disposable by many.
My hope in this man of so many people’s dreams
bears a very long shadow.
For I cling to an Unseen Hope who knows the end from the beginning,
and hears and holds each discarded voice,
and loves with an everlasting love.
This is the God I believe,
and I can’t keep silent His name.

Stephanie Seefeldt,
inauguration eve 2009