Year: 2009

This prayer has weighed on my heart for several weeks now. My words will be the first heard by the crowds who will have been standing, waiting, for six hours to witness this event. I figure they’ll be ready to listen, and grateful that the event has finally begun, or maybe they’ll start chanting “Springsteen” or “Bono” … Either way, I will attempt to get the crowd to pause for a moment before the fun begins, and join me in a prayer that we can all pray together.

The inauguration is a ritual, akin to Muslims touching the walls of the Ka’bah in Mecca. It renders tangible the ethereal. It is a reminder that the government is like an idol, a fact that was well known to those who introduced the modern nation-state – the French even raised a new goddess after the revolution – but which goes entirely forgotten by us.