Anyway, as I reflect back over my life, 1993-1999 were the formative years when I began to reach a turning point, open up to new ideas, listen to opposing arguments, discard fundamentalist doctrines, yield to new age proclivities, swallow large doses of ‘pop’ psychology, you name it. The confusion led me to an existential ‘crash’ in about, let’s say ‘1999.’

2000-2004 was a rebuilding phase. In 2004, I tuned in to C-Span like I had done in previous years to observe both party conventions. It was the year Barack Obama entered the national political stage as a candidate for the Illinois senate seat and gave the now historic keynote speech. Like many others, I was floored. As a matter of fact, I recall saying to my family he was going to be president one day. My teen-age daughter saw how impressed I was and gave me the book, “The Audacity of Hope” as a Christmas gift in 2005. Even with his announcement to run for president in 2006, I barely touched the book. At some point in 2007, the winds of change blew on the seeds of hope planted in my cynical heart and curious mind. I had read other Democratic authors and thumbed through Obama’s book by then and was positioned for an awakening. It was the Democratic primaries that did it. I even began espousing and articulating Obama positions to my friends and family. Some reminded me that I was a registered Republican. (NOT ANY MORE!!!) In July 2008, I attended an Obama rally in Hays, Kansas, and the rest is history. And so, here I sit on the first day of the New Year. I am enlightened, encouraged, and empowered to do may part to make sure that our newly elected president does well. Some mockingly call President-elect Obama the “Messiah.” All laughing aside, politically, intellectually, and culturally speaking, for many blacks, if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was our 'Moses,' who "seen over the mountain," Barack Hussein Obama is the Joshua who will lead us to the Promised Land.