WASHINGTON — Urging unification as a nation and reciting a prayer of United Farm Workers Founder Cesar Chavez, U.S. Senator Ken Salazar gave a brief farewell address to the senate on Friday.

The San Luis Valley native has been selected to move from the senate into Obama’s cabinet as Secretary of the Department of Interior,

“We can solve our problems no matter how difficult they are,” Salazar said. “We can reach the horizon of human possibilities no matter how difficult it might seem but in order to do that we must all work together.”

Salazar referred to George Washington’s farewell address in 1796 when Washington warned his countrymen of the dangers of “partisanship, of geographic sectionalism and the politics of division.” Salazar said that as Barack Obama takes office, Washington’s message is reborn.

“There is a new hope when with a growing sense that we are all in this together we are again becoming the one nation that the first president of the United States of America imagined,” Salazar said. “Our next president Barack Obama embodies this historic change.”

He added, “It is in this spirit of collaboration, of nation before party, of compromise, of results-driven government, that Americans believe that we can get it done this time.”

In closing, Salazar shared a prayer that his brother Leandro, the oldest in the Salazar family, learned when he worked with Cesar Chavez:

“Show me the suffering of the most miserable so I will know my people’s plight. Free me to pray for others for you are present in every person. Help me take responsibility for my own life so that I can be free at last. Grant me courage to serve others for in service there is true life.

"Give me honesty and patience so that the spirit will be alive among us. Let the spirit flourish and grow so that we will never tire of the struggle. Let us remember those who have died for justice for they have given us life.

"Help us love even those who hate us so we can change the world.”