Congratulations to President Obama for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. This puts him in heady company and I hope that he can live up to the billing. More important than Barack Obama is the fact that Americans went to the polls last November and elected a leader who has put our country back on the track of international diplomacy and away from international lawlessness. We have gone from pariah to promise in just shy of nine months. President Obama gets a prestigious award, which he was quick to say he was unworthy of. Worthy people always say things like that, that’s what makes them worthy. I congratulate the President, but also I congratulate the American people who put a man in office that once again makes most of us proud to be Americans.
I feel sorry for some of his opposition which include virulent members of the right wing of American politics, the Taliban and leaders of Hamas who fail to see anything positive. One of our greatest presidents and a man also hailing from the State of Illinois, once said, “You can please all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot please all the people, all the time.”
Some of my friends have suggested that the Nobel Prize Committee did this as way to shape America’s policy. That might be. Rewarding good behavior with compliments is an accepted practice in the world. Shunning bad behavior is also an acceptable practice. I hope the President lives up to the award and ends both the Iraq and Afghan wars, rids the world of nuclear weapons and also bring healing to the strident racism that affects our own country. The United States of America is a multi-cultural, pluralistic society and we need to foster that at every opportunity. May peace and good fortune continue to bless our leader. Shalom, Peace, Pace, Pax, Amani, Paix, Salaam, Shanti, Mire, Heddwich and on and on.
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Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. — St. Francis of Assisi