friends,

even here, in chile, as we found also in argentina, everywhere we go — people wonder and ask us about obama.

natives of these andean countries we are visiting, as well as other travelers…from all around the world: australia, japan, england, russia…they all want to know—

what do we think about obama? will his administration be as open to the needs of the common people, as he says? will he be able to fix the world financial crisis? is he as great as everyone says, as he appears to be?

to all this we nod our heads and give everyone the thumbs up.

“obama,” i say to anyone who asks, “is just like the web program called wysiwyg, wissie-wig, ‘what you see is what you get.'”

he will do everything he says he will, i assure them. just give him time. he has all the tools. all he needs is…time.

“this I must earn”:  the meaning behind the acronym T.I.M.E.

obama has earned the privilege of us giving him time.

“but i worry,” one chilean waitor who worked in mendoza, argentina, said to us, one of many who migrated to where the possibility of work is, to places more free than where they originated from. “it seems all the good ones get killed, assassinated.” and then he mentioned Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Benazir Bhutto, even the imprisonment of nobel peace prize winner Aung San Su Chi in Burma.

well, i say, we don’t concentrate on that. it’s counterproductive to project negativity. let’s focus instead on the positive possibilities! just like we try to teach our children, who expressed these fears of danger, as many have from the beginning of obama’s campaign. i told our kids, who rattled off the dangers, to not join up with the wave of fear, but focus on being positive. “let’s put the protecting rays of Light around Obama and his family, and not aid and abet the fears, the anger, and whatever negativity might prompt someone to do this unspeakable thing.”

the chilean waitor agreed when i mentioned this tactic of maintaining the protective force of our mental energies surrounding obama, keeping him safe from any unknown dangers. “yes,” he said, “we will stay positive.”

and watch the man do his thing, i added.

here i am in santiago, chile, reading obama’s first book, “Dreams from my Father.”

I don’t think a book has brought such upheavals of emotion, such tears, such sighs of despair and deep breaths of potentiality out of me since i read “Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee”–the story of Native American Indians being cruelly massacred in the Dakotas, which i read so many years ago.

in obama’s book, for those of you who haven’t read his autobiography, he clearly reveals not only his unusual origins, but so honestly opens up his personal struggles for all to see. never before has a public figure shown us that he is just like all of us–he’s made mistakes, he’s had doubts, too. it took him years to determine what his life course actually was. here is the life story of a man whose enlightened vision of governance can be unequivocably trusted…as real.

after reading his story, there can be no doubt in anyone’s mind about obama’s sincerity. his election claims not only the unheralded heights of racial equality, when he became the ultra-cool prez, the multi-racial leader of the US, but this book will put any other fears of his motives, and aspirations to rest. the man’s personal evolution is so clearly the result of so many others’. his life is a perfect storm of goodness, a cumulative effect of what a modern person can, and ought, to be. he is clearly the son of both parents: comprising the unresolved life-goals of his highly intelligent, yet frustrated Kenyan black father, combined with the most extraordinarily raised, by the specially all-embracing inclusiveness of his Kansas-roots, white mother’s parents–obama is the eptiome of what you’d think a human could be if the best qualities of one’s parentage was deposited into your genome bank account–and you chose to eliminated, or disregard the unacceptable hereditary traits. read this book and you won’t ever doubt the sincerity of America’s new leader afterward.

everywhere  we go…people ask about obama.

he has become the Light to ward off all people’s desperation; the pinpoint of hope in the many dark stories people carry in their hearts, no matter where they hail from.

here in south america, where dictatorship and oppression has coincided with the various countries’ development, ever since the spaniards came and decimated the indigenous population–people look to america, and now, especially, to obama as the way life should be.  filled with hope.  unfortunately, as we travel there are still too many cries of “war criminal” regarding bush, demands for retribution; but i, like obama has publicly stated, prefer to concentrate on what can be instead of what has already occurred.

we cannot change what has happened. what we can change–in our own lives, and in the ways the world works–is to look at today. what can we do today? what can i do to make my own life better today? i’m sure obama wakes up everyday and asks himself something similar: what can i, as the leader, not as the first black prez, but as an ordinary man who has earned and fought and cultivated his vision to assume the role of america’s leadership–what can i do to help the world become a better place today?

here we are traveling to so many places–yet i’m listening to a german man speaking through his video hookup to germany, and across from me is a woman from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, asking her husband how to work the email here at our hotel, and another couple is on a world cruise from Perth in Australia–no matter where one goes, people are becoming more similar with each day, each year, each generation.

the world, this spinning blue globe in space, is actually much smaller than we think. as time turns, we are becoming more homogenous in our humanity, more in tune with the common goal of humanity: to achieve happiness, to experience a good life.  our once separateness is dissolving. just as from space, from the photo taken by the astronauts on the Apollo mission proved–Earth has no boundaries when viewed from afar. and our humanness has, in the same way, no clear cut definition of separation, making us all just plain folk living on the same planet, instead of this race, or that religion, or from that particular group of people.

we are all being One, in other words.

obama, for instance, is what i call a true “hybrid vigour.”

a hybrid vigour is the term given when a new species has been created, made up of cross-breeding the most beneficial aspects of different types within a specific form of living organism.

in tomatoes, for instance, a hybrid vigour would be like the new species created by horticulturists, from genes isolated from special characteristics found in specific, individually superior tomatoes, that represent the best that tomato offers. characteristics such as shape or flavor, withstanding harsh conditions, such as drought, or disease, or packing and shipping demands. the new species retains the best qualities of its ancestors: great taste, magnificent color, incredible sustainability–yet it is sturdier, and more apt to survive the increasing demands of an over-populated world that loves to eat its tomatoes, have its salsa, pizza, and ketchup-laden hamburgers. in short, a hybrid vigour is an entirely new species of a genera; as a new tomato would be a new species in the tomato genera, which happens to be in the Solancea family, etc. etc.

this new species, whether created by Nature or by astute biologists, horticulturalists, or zoologists…hopefully results in a species that won’t succumb to the frailities of its forebears.

such as obama’s father succumbed to his. obama senior, as barack tells us about his father, apparently had a lifelong struggle with addiction, and couldn’t put his highly-held dreams for improving the lot of his fellow man into effect because of the side-effects such addictions cause. obama junior talks honestly about his own years of experimenting, using drugs and alcohol to excess. his openness made my heart shine, letting all know, so forthrightly, about his experimentation, a common step in many people’s lives, including my own. the difference was, with barack obama jr, as opposed to his father, barack obama sr, was he didn’t let the crutch of addiction deter him from facing life’s challenges. instead, he learned how addiction is so common for us all to get hung up on, instead them to alter our consciousness instead of as a stepping stone to achieving a higher perception. because, as barack learned, as i have also, when we put down our addictions we truly can become that which we were born to be.

obama is a true hybrid vigour.

i applaud our collective consciousness, also, for having had the courage, the vision, the guts to elect this new breed of human as president of our great country. it’s a whole new day, for we americans and for the entire world–to have such a man in charge of government of the most powerful country in the world.

here in chile, where a woman named michelle is president, people enjoy a democracy unlike the still-perceived-corrupt government of its close neighbor, argentina. both countries have undergone generations of corruption to get to this point, today. it looks like argentina still has a way to go for its people to feel secure in the rights of their humanity. chile is perhaps setting a better example for its neighbors to follow. bolivia, another neighbor of chile’s to the north, has the extreme socialism of its first indigenous president, having the auspicious name of morales. the extreme socialism, aligned with chavez’s of venezuela and castro’s of cuba, is making waves of extreme change, in many perceived ways, about as many as that little, and pcountry can handle, for now. they’re even trying to organize a navy, for goodness sakes!

step by step…an entire country or a single individual, each person…we all have just today, to become better, to see the world as filled with potential, and to let go of previously-held negative beliefs. those of us who believe that each person does make a difference, will help, leap-frog fashion, all the other people who still suffer from paralysis of fear, insecurity, or just plain laziness.

if a person thinks there is no way things can get better–they should read “Dreams from my Father.”

this book reveals the core of a person who embraces hope, and has learned, by personal experience, to not let anger, fear, or intimidation take the place of possibilities of becoming better. one day at a time. one person at a time.

obama’s early days as a community worker in chicago were fraught with one experience after another that failed. yet–he never gave up. never.

i know some of you must think it odd i’m writing about obama as i travel here in south america. but…i’m a hybrid vigour kind of person myself. you never know what you’re going to be inspired by…wherever you are…however many new interesting people and cultures that you meet.

yesterday we hiked a canyon outside santiago. today i’m walking the streets of the city, absorbing the energy, listening to the people, the music of another culture.

tomorrow we drive to the pacific coast to a small beach town, navidad, where we’ll get to see how it is in the rural areas.

i’m traveling with my consort, carter, who is doing business here in south america. this is an official business trip, yet i hitched a ride, grabbing any opportunity that i can to see the world, to glance another piece of the window of what this glorious world is all about.

i hope you are all thinking about how you can make your own life a wee bit better today, as mr. o’bama, that famous black irishman (no, just joking!) must be thinking today also.

in the Light, lordflea