On the Sunday, July 11^th edition of ABC’s “This Week”, the moderator, Jake Tapper, asked a panel of pundits their opinion of Sarah Palin’s online advertisement for her political action committee where she speaks about “mama grizzlies.” The female grizzly bear is noted for her fierce protection of her cubs. Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post called the ad “vapid “and “platitudinous”. George Will countered by saying that on the “vapid meter” it did not compare with a sentence in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

I respectfully beg to differ. Will’s judgment regarding the sentence served only to betray his own stunning supercilious ignorance. The sentence: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” derives from both Hopi wisdom and from a poem by the late Blackwoman activist, professor and poet June Jordan -”Poem for South African Women.” The poem has been set to music by the a cappella singing group Sweet Honey in the Rock. Writer Alice Walker used the last line in the poem: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” as the title for a book.

Hopi wisdom says: “You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour. Now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour.” It goes on to tell us to consider our living, doing, relationships, relations, water and our gardens. Hopi wisdom tells us to speak our Truth. It cautions us not to look outside ourselves for a leader. The Hopi elders call us to swim within a great swift river of events with courage. Others will be with us: “All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” It is a call to a sacred duty, to contributive justice, the iteration of justice that does not make a demand on some Other individual or entity, but that makes a demand upon us. Contributive justice compels an ethics of participation. It is an obligation to work with others to contribute to the manifestation of justice in the present moment.

In “Poem for South African Women,” June Jordan also writes of an ethics of participation with Others. She writes:

Our own shadows disappear as the feet of
thousands by the tens of thousands pound
the fallow land into new dust that rising
like a marvelous pollen will be fertile even
as the first woman whispering imagination
to trees around her made for righteous fruit

The poem goes on to reference a “deliberate defense of life,” and a “ferocious affirmation of all peaceable and loving amplitude.” It tells of an irreversible spiritual and material force that reverberates from earth dust to distant stars when women stand up together. The poem ends saying:

And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea
we are the ones we have been waiting for

The same idea of the necessity and the power of an ethics of participation, of contributive justice, is a post millennial eschatological vision that says it is a human responsibility to establish justice and peace on the earth BEFORE Jesus returns. The work of re-creation, the work of repair, the work of stitching together the torn relationships between humanity and nature, and humanity with itself is our work to do. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

This recognition was the beating heart of progressive evangelicalism in the 19^th century, of the social gospels, the civil rights movement, liberation theologies and womanist/feminist theologies and philosophy of religion in the 20^th century and now in the early years of the 21^st. This was the moral power of the Obama campaign.

The sentence is not intended to flatter people, but rather to remind them that while Barack Obama could eloquently articulate a vision of national unity and a hope that such unity could be the motive power behind an effort to solve our nation’s problems, that no one person could make this happen. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” means that we each are responsible for doing our part to make the nation into the place we want it to be.

There is nothing “vapid” about this declaration. It is at once a challenge, promise, vision and hope. In the face of multiple and colossal difficulties -a great recession, two stubborn wars, the biggest oil leak and environmental catastrophe in the nation’s history – we are a weary nation. We want a savior. We want a pastor/priest/king/chairman-of-the-board/chief-executive-officer/president to force a recalcitrant and obstructionist opposition party to cooperate to solve all our problems with no pain, sacrifice, or lifestyle change on our part. This is an opportune moment to remember that we are the ones we have been waiting for. It is our work to change the common sense of the nation to understand that the dreaded “government” is us, that in a democratic republic, we get the government we deserve, and that our government ought to work for the majority of us, not only for a rich and powerful few.

Further, the “deliberate defense of life” that June Jordan writes about includes the mama grizzly. Our obligation to the sacred work of participation, of contributive justice means we ought to work to provide and to protect a habitat for grizzly bears. Today their living space is getting smaller and smaller. It is divided in such a way that does not allow unrelated males and females to mate. Inbreeding causes subsequent generations to be genetically weaker.

The difference between “mama grizzlies” and human females in particular and humanity in general is the capacity for rational thought. It is the moral responsibility that comes with that capacity. Unlike the mama grizzly, we are not only responsible to and for our own personal offspring. We are responsible to defend all the children of all the communities, towns, cities, nations and world. We are responsible for both human and nonhuman offspring.

To do this will require “the feet of thousand by the tens of thousands” marching with a will to places on earth that need our loving attention. It will require a politics of cooperation and a feminist ethics of care. It will require womanist virtues, among them are: responsibility, commitment, complexity and love. It will require us to take a deep breath roll up our sleeves and do the work of re/creation because we are the ones we have been waiting for.