Since those days I've often thought about the healing power of trust. It is a powerful elixir that most of us are too fearful to extend to others - much less ourselves. We are so broken inside from our disappointments that we spend enormous amounts of energy protecting our vulnerability.

I have also come to believe that much of the fearless soul-searching work that Barack Obama did in his young adulthood (as was written about in Dreams From My Father) must have involved a reckoning with this brokenness and vulnerability because he reminds me of Professor Anderson in his willingness to trust people so fearlessly.

SNIP:
Imagine that...going into the most conflict-ridden part of the world today and talking about the fact that Jews and Muslims and Palestinians "hold more hopes in common than fears that drive us apart." Now THAT's audacious! He championed hope in a place that is plagued by fear because he trusts the audience he was speaking to.

I believe that's why they responded so powerfully to what he had to say - because that was my own personal response to a trust so fearlessly extended. That kind of gift from another person wakes up your soul.

And so I was reminded once again that we are privileged to be living in an era with this man as our leader. People like him don't come around very often...I've run into 2 during my 50+ years on this earth. Both of them were human with all of the limitations that ensures. But having wrestled with their own inadequacies, they also had the strength and courage to extend the audacity of trust.