Our better history?

In the weeks after 9/11, when America was terrified and girding for war, I traveled on assignment to New York City.

I found that a couple of the major museums there were mounting exhibitions of Persian and Islamic art. I remember the surge of hope that I felt.

We have the capacity, I thought, deep within our culture, to think in complex and hopeful ways about the difficult and morally ambiguous times ahead.

In the short term, it didn’t turn out that way.

America detoured into a voluntary war which most Americans — and most foreign policy experts — now see as a horrendous blunder.

But seven years later, voters have decisively elected a man named Barack Hussein Obama, our first African-American president.

It’s a remarkable act of courage and imagination. Perhaps even an act of healing.

I remember marveling at those amazing sculptures of glass and clay in New York’s museums.

I remember thinking, How fragile they look — but how tough they must be to have survived all these hard centuries.

That’s America all over again. A fragile, diverse and beautiful community. And tough enough, I think, for whatever lies ahead.