Watching President-Elect Obama speaking in Philadelphia before his train trip to Washington, D.C., on Saturday, I was reminded of three personal experiences.

 

The first memory was of my wife, Kathryn, and I attending the annual convention of the Association of Unity Churches in Philadelphia in the summer of 1976, the year of the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

 

When making our reservation at the hotel I had requested a king-size bed, but when we arrived to check in the desk clerk informed us that the only king-size bed available was in the Presidential Suite. He said they would go ahead and put us in the room but that we may have to move to another room after two or three nights because they were expecting a VIP who would be occupying the room upon arrival.

 

We readily agreed to the arrangement and proceeded up to the room on the top floor of the hotel. It was an enormous room with windows on three sides of the hotel overlooking the historic city. There was a full open kitchen in the middle of the room and the bedroom containing the promised king-size bed was off to one side. Throughout the suite were scattered seven television sets in addition to several sofas and other furniture. We later found out that President Gerald Ford had occupied the suite the weekend previous.

 

Kathryn and I felt we should take advantage of our accommodations to invite some of our friends up for refreshments. So I went out and shopped for various drinks and mixers, iced tea, cokes and snacks, while Kathryn called up some of our arriving minister friends.

 

The room began to fill up rapidly and soon was abuzz with happy people enjoying connecting with each other. One of the early arrivals in the suite was Rev. Ernest Wilson, a beloved longtime Unity minister from the Unity Temple on the Plaza in Kansas City; he found a corner seat on a comfortable sofa and settled there with drink in hand.

 

A few of our friends jumped up to help prepare drinks and snacks in the kitchen as more and more people arrived, including a contingent from Trinidad who, led by Rev. Violet Assam, sashayed down the corridor to the room chanting, “We don’t care what you do; we behold the Christ in you.”

 

We discovered that, unbeknown to us, the people manning the desk in the lobby were sending people up to the room as being a reception for arriving ministers and teachers. It got pretty lively in there and we got a call from the desk saying that there were some complaints about the noise we were making and could we tone it down a bit.

 

It all provided a happy memory of our visit to the “City of Brotherly Love” and the convention in that 200th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence.

 

As a postscript to the above story, we were indeed moved to another room after a couple of nights or so because we were told that the VIP was going to arrive. We never did find out the identity of the VIP, but we were delighted to be moved to what was called the Queen Suite which was much more comfortable and cozy than the Presidential Suite. In fact, Bill Fischer, the director of education for the Association, had the room opposite ours and he asked us how we rated such a nice room; he said his was the size of a shoebox with just a view of a brick wall through the window. We were truly blessed.

 

The second memory that was triggered was when I saw the televised broadcast of President-Elect Obama giving his speech on Sunday to thousands of people from the steps on the Lincoln Memorial which caused me to reflect on the occasion in that same location in 1963 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I have a dream” speech.

 

Since I didn’t relocate to the United States until November, 1967, I was not present for that powerful moment. But in 1968, when Dr. King was assassinated, I was working in downtown Chicago on West Monroe which was quite near the area where angry and grieving people were turning cars over, burning and looting. That tragic event was forever seared in my memory.

 

Seeing all those people gathered in the National Mall on Sunday also brought back to mind the 1994 convention of the Association of Unity Churches in Washington, D.C. That was the year I was president of the Association; in February of that year Kathryn and I had left our ministry in Roanoke, Virginia, to go to St. Petersburg, Florida, where I became senior minister at First Unity Church. We had friends from both churches attending the convention. What a wonderful experience that was! We had enough free time that we were able to visit the Lincoln and Washington memorials and walk the Mall beside the reflecting pool, stopping to pay our respects at the awe-inspiring Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall along the way.

 

The third memory is the association I can’t help but make between this historic inauguration of President Barack Obama and the pride I felt when I became a naturalized citizen of this great country on the Fourth of July in 1985 at Monticello, the former home of President Thomas Jefferson, in Virginia.

 

There were people from 96 countries becoming citizens on that special day, and Senator John Warner along with two judges was there to welcome us into our citizenship. Also attending the festivities were forty-two members of our Unity church in Roanoke, Virginia, who had travelled up to Monticello on a charter bus. It was an occasion I will never forget.

 

In the same way, we who are witnesses to the Inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America at such a critical time in the history of this country, is an occasion none of us will ever forget.

 

God is Blessing You, Right Now!

 

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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Rev. Alan Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-seven years, invites you to enjoy more articles and/or subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, “Spiritual Solutions,” at www.spiritualsolutionsblog.com

 

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