Inauguration Response

While watching the Inauguration, I realized that God was mentioned many times. A priest was invited to the Inauguration to say a prayer to bless America and Obama’s new position as President. I personally felt that Obama’s talk of God was acceptable because that’s what he believes in and he is “sharing” his God with us and asking “his” God to bless America. Yet to have a priest come to the Inauguration and pray to God for EVERYONE in America seems to me, in a way, unfair. It’s almost as if the priest was pushing Christianity and Catechism onto everyone in America at that moment. He was telling everyone about God and how he is watching over everyone and a lot of other things. He said the “Our Father,” which is of course a Jewish prayer, but is also said by people of both Catholic and Christian religious backgrounds. This in some ways excludes other religions and makes me wonder how many people see this. I wonder how many people actually think about the fact that a religion is taking control of an event which is meant to celebrate the induction of a person who will give “peace and order” to our country into The White House.

Obama stated in his speech that America is going through a rough time right now with recessions and wars and all. He went on to say that while all these things were bad, he promise he would bring change to the country. While promising that he would bring change, he also said that the change would not come overnight and it would not come easily, but it will come. I felt that this was a good idea to add into his speech because many people expect Obama to come into The White House and change things right away for the better, but I don’t think anyone seems to realize that just because Obama is a new President and of a different race, he will change the world. Although I feel it was important to put this in his speech, I don’t think anyone really caught what he was trying to say.

Both of these things prove that a big part of the American way of life is having faith in one man to change their entire life. They place all of their trust and hope in things when they are new and then when change doesn’t come, Americans blame the 1st person in power they come across. Another big part of AWOL is being ignorant and missing hidden sayings, signs and occurrences. Many things happen every day in our lives that we disregard or misinterpret which then leads to our ignorance and possible downfall.