This just in: we're it

The press and the blogs have been going a bit crazy over this Obama theme. We are the ones we've been waiting for. Or This is the moment. Or any variation thereof.

Messiah complex? No. It's a call to collective work, as one would know if one spent time within a place of liberal religion. It speaks to the entwined natures of freedom and responsibility. As Annie Dillard wrote,

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead� as if innocence had ever been�and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak and involved. There is no one but us. There never has been.

Liberal religion, honoring as it does the dignity and worth of each person, of each mind, calls us to do the necessary work, to see our values given life.

The Right likes to remind us that Martin Luther King and most of the abolitionist movement were religious- yes, they were. But merely using labels like "Christian" or "Religious" doesn't explain the grounding of their movements. These and other progressive movements were inspired not by the death of Jesus or the infallibility of the Bible, but by the understanding that in this world, in this time, the only way society will reflect our deeper values is if we are willing to roll up our sleeves and make it happen.

When Obama speaks of the change we seek, and of this being our moment, he isn't talking in messianic terms. He isn't talking about partisan goals, or end moments, no culmination of anything. He's talking to the deeply felt yearning in each of us to see justice, to live our values, so that others may live. He's talking to the parts of us who've felt left out of the process, helpless, while the big cogs of government turn and our leaders give us answers that don't answer for anything.

He's saying, of course you can do this. You have to.

He's talking about personal responsibility. One wonders why that freaks the republicans out so much, as this has been their (empty) mantra for the last 40 years.

Dick Cheney said that conservation is a personal virtue that has no place in public policy. Barack Obama says that policy has got to broaden if we're going to achieve energy independence, and hey, by the way: are you doing everything you can to help out at your house?

Again, I have no idea why this freaks out the "personal responsibility" people.

And while the policies that will be pursued are, rightly, secular; the call reaches from within a liberal religious perspective, and attempts to speak to everyone, of whatever stripe.

It's not messianic. It's responsibility. So dear press corps and right-wing blogs: please get over your juvenile bullshit.