"What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly."

—President Barack Obama, Jan. 20, 2009

How did you take in these words from Tuesday's Inauguration? They were almost a tag line to three days of unusually connected energy: the celebrations of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy in Medford and Ashland (hundreds of us who were turned away from an over-stuffed Armory felt an odd mix of disappointment and satisfaction that so many people come together this way) and Monday's National Day of Service, with opportunities scattered all over the Rogue Valley. What draws all of this together is the invitation to commit ourselves to purposes bigger than ourselves and our 401(k) balances. That means more than warmly honoring the memory of a brave leader who died 40 years ago, or stirring to the remarkable language of the new one taking center stage. This commitment means a new way of living. What we have heard this week is at its core a call to permanent service.

How did you hear the call? Maybe you were as thrilled as the throngs of people the media kept showing us, filled to the brim with passionate hope for a whole new world. Maybe none of the sound and spectacle moved you much, and, if you're old enough, you kept hearing old lyrics from the Who:

"Meet the New Boss...same as the Old Boss/

We won't get fooled again!"

Maybe you think that the call to service is a new version of blaming the victim. You've been quieter than the blissed-out people, maybe because open cynicism could get you stoned in the public square this week.

Many of us found ourselves somewhere between these poles. The relief at seeing the Old Boss limp away from power (literally, in Cheney's case) was such a sweet release, and we were genuinely stirred at hearing the call to a deeper place in us than our retail shopping gland. The break from cynicism and dread was invigorating, and we did feel something faintly familiar flow through us, some kind of collective American pride bursting to get out. And "¦ we have been fooled before. What we're remembering is not so much old Who lyrics as Lucy inviting us once more to kick the football, promising that this time she really will hold in place. Really. We so want to recharge ourselves with hope and a sense of possibility, but that ground feels harder and colder every time we slam down on it.

Hope, personal responsibility, service to something greater than ourselves, they're all fine — more than that, we can't have the world most of us want without them — but as abstractions they're not enough. By themselves they do nothing to counter the still-enormous power of the pharmaceutical, health insurance, weapons, banking, coal and oil industries to fight off actual changes needed to heal what's ailing. And alongside our admiration of the new president, and our belief in his fine intentions, is our doubt that he'll use his mountain of political capital boldly enough to turn hope into effective change.

If the new president read these words, he might tell us, gently no doubt, that we're missing the point that he's tried to make a thousand times in the last two years: What happens now, the limits of what's possible, isn't up to him. It's up to us. The ease with which we forget that doesn't make it any less true. If we're unhappy about our country's course — who do you know that isn't? — that doesn't mean, as cynics seem to say, that we're unable to affect it. It doesn't mean that we can't have a government of, by and for the people. It only means that we haven't done what it takes for that to happen. We haven't harnessed what we want — what hundreds of millions of us want — into the most compelling force in Washington. That we haven't done it doesn't mean we can't.

And if we can "¦ how? I want to mull that over with you over the course of a few columns. Here's the foundational assumption: government leaders best represent whoever comes at them with the biggest stick. For as long as the oldest of us can remember, that's been well-organized lobbies, permanently embedded in the White House and Capitol. If We the People want the biggest and most effective stick, we have to do three things. I'll spell each one out in a separate column.

In the meantime — this historic week's not yet over. It doesn't cost a thing to enjoy it.

Jeff Golden is the author of "As If We Were Grownups," "Forest Blood" and the new novel "Unafraid" (with excerpts at www.unafraidthebook.com).