Nine months in his new job as President of the United States, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize...
...or was he awarded the Nobel on behalf of us all?
And either which way - why?
I have an idea, based not so much on current events but on a universal concept of love, of reconciliation, of repentance and a return to mending oneself and one's world to better ways.
When I first heard the news yesterday about Peace Prize award, my reactions was – Huh? What war stopped? What peace broke out? What did I miss?
I texted friends. I checked the news. I perused the blogs.
He wasn’t Bush, was one answer
It was a thin field this year, was another one.
Who else, if not our President?
I didn’t have an answer to that last question right away, and I had to board a plane.
So there I was flying over the cloud deck covering much of the eastern United States, when over a sunnier, clearer portion of the trip I saw who the Nobel Peace Prize was really for.
Us. All of us. For the entire country.
In this context, the award makes perfect sense.
Heavy Rewrite of The Parable of the Prodigal Son
From the Christian New Testament, is the story of the prodigal son. He was impatient and brash, and rather determined to have his inheritance, right now, with which to go off and have adventures (which he did). He eventually ran out of money and in dire straits, took work feeding slop to the pigs in return for getting to eat what the hogs did not...which wasn’t much. In fact, he was starving.
Well, Mr. Prodigal didn’t like this so much, and eventually his pride broke, and he went back to his father, begging for a place as the least of his servants, in order to at least survive.
He got a much warmer welcome than he anticipated. His father ordered a celebration started up, and a fatted calf slaughtered, and finest garments brought out.
Not everyone thought Mr. Prodigal’s return was all that. His brother, the dutiful one who had never strayed, for starters. His view on the uncritical welcoming home of his brother was "WTF? He’s been a disturbance all his life, then he goes off on a binge, and now you want him back at the head of the table? What’s up with that?"
To which the father responds, more or less – He was dead to us, now he’s alive. He had lost his way but now he’s found his way home. What’s not to like?
About that Prodigal Superpower...
Let's face it - America wasn't on a noble, responsible civilized trajectory. Perhaps we weren't wholeheartedly pursuing one before the Bush years, but never before had we as a country taken a national tragedy and a vast globe-spanning reservoir of goodwill to take carte blanche to obliterate what truths and fictions of respect for the rest of the world, for our own values and for our own rights and privileges under the Constitution.
We, for a while almost all of us, wanted blood after 9/11. Not much, but some. It was a human reaction to harm.
Within two months, our government - all of it - had committed itself to a prodigal course. In as many words saying - Father, I want my inheritance now. All the power of the world's mightiest country, with none of the scruples and obligations.
To hold such might without a shred of impatience.
Wise minds saw the consequences of staying this horrid course.
Unfortunately, wise minds were not given the least bit of regard as this course was chosen.
And thus the United States government left the estate of its own civilization, to go its own way - and that way was the way of hurrying the destruction of every aspect of its power, privilege, prestige and prosperity.
To the point where we were metaphorically speaking (and for some, in truth) left eating the husks of bean pods left over by the pigs.
Pigs being a functional allegory for a lot of villains in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the Bush years.
And so, we, as a voting country, took stock of where our earlier choices and non-choices had taken us - nowhere worth going.
And, as a people, we yearned to turn home...and in 2008 did so at last.
Wrap
To be blunt – giving the Nobel to Obama at this point, on the merits of his words, his person, his ways and his deeds is a bit much.
Nor is the President allegorical to the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
But giving the Nobel to Obama, as representative of the United States of America in its entirety, as a token of welcome and reconciliation, for its choice in 2008 to begin the hard turn from the ways of wrath and fear toward the course of hope and peace, well, that’s definitely worth taking notice of right away.
President Barack Obama isn’t the Prodigal Son.
We are.
Our choice to take honest stock of our position in the world under the Bush administration, to reject it wholeheartedly, every aspect of it, and to do so openly and proudly, earned the Nobel Peace Prize.
Our choice – to make Senator Obama into President Obama – is both our homecoming and our celebration of it, with all of the world invited to the party.
The Nobel Peace Prize is one part of the wider world’s way of saying – Thank you, and welcome home.
So take a bow, America. This prize is for you.
We should all be proud of President Obama, for accepting this prize on behalf of us all.