PAGE NINETY
On p. 90 of GR, Sarah is discussing her campaigning for Frank Murkowski during his successful bid for the Alaska governorship in 2002. She writes, "It was refreshing and comfortable to stump for someone else, to speak highly of someone else's record and vision, and to know I wasn't the aim of the spotlight--the other guy was."
These are deceptively simple lines, and yet I think they can provide us with powerful insight. Is it not the natural bent and intention of both the natural world and also of most men and women to always covet the spotlight; to boast about our own merits and achievements; to desire that the world revolve around us?
Our egos and our presumption and our pride drive us to imagine ourselves as "suns," each in his or her own "solar system." How often and how readily can we yield to another person; can we allow our neighbor to inhabit and hold the center stage; can we grant to another the glow and the glory of the pedestal and the limelight??
Even in the natural orbit and order of things, do not bodies, through the force of gravity, tend to draw other bodies to themselves, and compel them to "march" to their own patterns and "principles"? On the natural plane of existence, this force simply "is what it is."
However, on the moral plane there seems to be a divine law at work that generates a force that is opposed to the grasping and egocentric "gravity" and pull of our selfish wills. On the one hand, we often witness that people will flee from and shun someone who selfishly tries to dominate other human beings, and to constrain and compel them to do his or her will and bidding.
On the other hand, one who is self-effacing; one who thrusts away attention and adulation; one who seeks and pursues the genuine good of the "other"; one who is truly humble, not in outward utterances, but in the trusty truth of a golden heart, becomes all the more attractive and beautiful the more he or she says, "No, no, not me; look the other way: Those people are the good and virtuous ones!!"
Hence we witness the ironic power and attraction and attractiveness (which literally means "drawing-to-ness"), we witness the ironic power of a being who tries to decline and abdicate and shun and thrust away the center stage, the "throne," the pedestal, the place of privilege and of power. The more such a one flees, the more we follow and pursue. Such a person, IMHO, is Sarah Palin.
She genuinely loves her neighbor; she truly seeks the good of the "other"; she is the RELUCTANT CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY, as was George Washington. We loathe the thin-skinned and ego-dominated barack obama, for many reasons to be sure, but this, I think, is one of them. We do not care a bit or a whit for Mitt Romney, who seems to want to be President just to be President. Then there is Sarah, a lady with a servant's heart.
It is up to US, I think, to pray to the Lord that He may speak to her and draw her towards the Presidency of the United States. WE are certain that NO ONE in America today is better qualified than Governor Palin to raise up the fallen "eagle" battle standards of the Res Publica Americana, and to restore our faith in and pride in American Exceptionalism.
However, I believe that Sarah supposes that there are MANY who are more qualified than she is. It is this very belief of hers, combined with other golden and steel and stellar qualities and glories of mind and of heart and of soul, that makes her THE one to assume the majestic mantle of the most powerful secular office in the world.
Let us earnestly, daily, even hourly beg the Lord to give to us as our President the lady who loves her God, who loves her family, who loves her State, who loves her country, who loves her countrymen and women more than she loves herself. DEO VOLENTE SARAH 2012!!!!
