Nov 5, 2009

My Cup of Hope

By · 12 Comments

Light Princess came downstairs this morning as the kitchen counter TV, tuned to the news, blared a commercial with Christmas music.

Offended, she exclaimed, "It's not even Thanksgiving yet!"

I agreed. "I got a Christmas cup at Starbucks yesterday."

I prepared for her disgust, but instead she smiled.

"Well, they sort of put me in a good mood, so I guess it's okay."

And it was true, that on a morning when I felt discouraged, my first response to a Christmas cup was to cry out, "No! It's barely November!!" But then I noticed the words on the cup, which include "Wish" and "Joy."

And the first one I saw was "Hope."

Some of us might be about up to here with the idea of hope. We hoped and hoped all last year, and we rejoiced on Election Night, but on the other side of the country, people felt then the way my friends and I feel now.

It's possible that word got to bound up with a human being, one who doesn't share my position on the issue of marriage. I mean, he really, really doesn't. 

Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. (Psalm 146:3, NRSV) 

I don't like thinking of this verse in reference to a President for whom I voted. It felt like a *great* verse six years ago, when we were going to war and the colleagues in my preaching group were still trying to figure out how to talk about it in a sermon. He even acted like a prince, that President–in my opinion–but I see how inclined we are to make them into princes, all of them, even if only the ones we prefer. Princes or fools or mustachioed villains, however we dress them in our minds, do not put your trust in them. They cannot manifest our hopes single-handed. They may not share them. They may not even care about them.

We've got to find our hope in other places. 

I start with my kids. They are 23 and 19 and 14, and two of them voted, and all of them are angry. They're learning a hard lesson that other Christian people did not hear the gospel the same way they heard it in this house and in the churches that formed them. It makes no sense.

LP will go tonight to the big GSA meeting where LGBT students and their straight allies from many schools will gather to unpack what has happened.

For my No on 1-voting neighbors and the onlookers from away who don't reckon these things from a faith perspective, it's almost easier. They can shut out the religious voices, or try to, and make plans for the next campaign. They don't have to figure out a way to talk to the ecumenical colleagues at the next community event or clergy group meeting.

My friend, RevFun, went to see a priest yesterday. God, he's brave. He's braver than I am. He wanted to tell a priest how this felt and why it was wrong.

I know the priest he went to see, not as well. I've met him once. I wonder if he felt equipped to have the conversation. I wonder if any of them do.

My friend E wrote a beautiful reflection on the power of the widow who gave her mite, and another E wrote he would "watch the sun come up tomorrow, and go back to work repairing the world. Who's in?"and my musical colleague J used Facebook to share his feelings about how this experience led to deeper self-acceptance and my friend B simply said in a status update, "B W is not going away…"

We are all in some way part of the United Church of Christ, and we are motivated by our understanding of the gospel message that we are to love God with all our hearts and all our souls and all our minds and our neighbors as ourselves. Make no mistake about it.

That's my cup of hope this morning. I put no faith in princes, but in the next generation and in the people of God, who are not going away.

Filed Under: Faith, Friendship, Marriage Equality, Politics · Tagged: , ,
Sep 24, 2009

Vote Early

By · 7 Comments

No on 1

We're in the midst of a campaign to preserve our new law allowing same-sex marriage in Maine. Out-of-state money and ads remade from the Prop 8 fight in California claim to represent Maine Values, but our side is fighting back with good ads and strong volunteer efforts.

I volunteered at the Marriage Equality phone bank the other night. I say this not to garner praise; it was a pretty small contribution of time and effort, all things considered.

But here's what I found fascinating.

We were calling identified supporters (mostly true) to ask them to vote early. This is a strategy devised to boost turnout, since many of the supporters of same-sex marriage are not people who have a history of voting regularly. Maine traditionally has good voter turnout, but this is an off-year election, so it's clear the get-out-the-vote effort will matter a lot. Southern Maine organizers of the campaign have devised a script and a philosophy that works for younger, urban voters who, quite honestly, are the most likely to get busy on Election Day and forget to go to the polls.

My call list, however, was to small towns on the coast and in more interior sections of Maine. And I'm here to tell you that Maine Values in those small towns include going to the polls to vote. The idea of voting early seemed absurd! Absurd. If I live three doors or three blocks from the polling place, in a town with no traffic, in a town where I see all my neighbors when I go to vote, why would I want to vote absentee?

Now, the advantage to the campaign is clear once it's explained. Every week the Secretary of State will publish a list of those who have voted, and the Marriage Equality campaign will cross-check that list with its list of identified supporters and stop calling those who have voted. It both helps with "turn out" and allows the resources to be turned in other directions, to undecided voters.

So, I got the message I preached, and this morning, I applied online for an absentee ballot.

If you live in Maine, and you are planning to vote No on 1 (yes, I know that's counter-intuitive, but that's the way you need to vote to support same-sex marriage here), please consider clicking here and requesting an absentee ballot. Please think about voting early.

And if you're related to me–Pure Luck and Snowman will both be voting absentee, if they remember to request their ballots–just do it. Thanks.

Because whenever and however you do it, voting is a Maine Value.

Filed Under: Marriage Equality, Politics · Tagged: ,
Sep 17, 2009

Show By Your Good Life

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Jimmycarter460 (Thinking about Proper 20B again.)

Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. (James 3:13)

He's a former President, a Sunday School teacher and a builder of houses for people in need.

He's an old school liberal. 

He failed to win re-election, in large measure because he could not get the hostages out of Iran.

He told us, wisely, to turn down our thermostats and put on a sweater.

(My daughter believes this was brilliant and cannot understand why people derided him.)

He's a prophet. And you know how much people like prophets.

It was the LORD who made it known to me, and I knew; then you showed me their evil deeds.But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter. And I did not know it was against me that they devised schemes, saying, "Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will no longer be remembered!" (Jeremiah 11:18-19)

This morning I turned on that show again, and in the two minutes I watched, I heard President Carter described as "malevolent" and "ignorant" by a person who also accused him of "poisoning the health care debate."

Seriously, Pat Buchanan? After a summer of rowdy demonstrations and guns being carried to public events and posters of the President depicted as a witch doctor, this gentle old man is responsible for "poisoning" the debate?

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers;

but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night.

They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. (from Psalm 1)

We often hear that history will have the last word on Presidents. I'm fairly sure this President's leaves will not wither.

Filed Under: James, Politics, Prophets, Psalms · Tagged: ,
Sep 16, 2009

Over Coffee

By · 11 Comments

I'll confess it. There are a lot of days I have my coffee with Morning Joe (brewed by Star$$$$$).

Some of those days I have to change the channel due to the palpable rise in my blood pressure. This was one of them. On the subject of President Carter's remarks on racism being directed at President Obama, the Morning Joe regulars seem unwilling to accept the notion that racism plays any part in objections to and demonstrations against the current administration.

I think it's very easy for comfortable white people to deny racism. I say this as a person who grew up in the virtual apartheid of otherwise genteel Jane Austen's Village. I say this as a person who realizes that she often *doesn't* realize her own internalized racism.

This morning I would probably be happy to smack the smug faces of the Morning Joe crew. They're describing the vitriolic attacks against President Bush. Why, someone once called him a monkey, too, says Maria Bartiromo. Is it possible someone needs to explain to her the difference between an insult and an epithet?

They're talking about poll numbers and saying "It can't just be racism. He used to have 70% approval and now it's only 50%." But if racism drives the debate through its ugliness, does it matter what the percentage of racists is?

They're asking, if we were so enlightened in November, how is it that we're so backwards now? It seems to me we were always both, in some measure.

They're saying President Carter shouldn't have said it, that he's making trouble for the ever-so-careful Obama administration in its insistence that race has nothing to do with these things. I like their post-racial attitude. But we live in a world that is both modern and post-modern (right, church people?), where some people continue to fight battles that other people want to insist are no longer relevant. Maybe both things are true. And among the "moderns," there is still racism. I'll admit it, even if Joe and Mika would rather I didn't.

Filed Under: Faith, Living in This World, Politics · Tagged: ,
Sep 9, 2009

Can it be done?

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Proper comportment in the Capitol building happens to have been part of my upbringing. I was five years old when my daddy won election to the U.S. Senate. During his one term as a Democratic Senator, he voted his conscience, often to his detriment politically. He did not speak rudely to his opponents because his mama, Miss Emily, raised him not only to be a gentleman but to do unto others as he would have them do unto him. 

I'm not sure what the Mom of Congress will
have to say about it, but where I grew up, we knew better than to call
the President a liar in the middle of a joint session of Congress, whether we agreed with him or not.

Reading the comments of my friends on Twitter after the speech I saw some who were pleased and others who wondered why the President continued to encourage the Republicans to work with the Democrats on health care reform. They remain convinced that the President will never win over the other side.

But I am encouraged that he still wants to try. I want to think there is hope, and it seems to me that such a public statement cannot be refuted.

"Is bipartisanship feasible," asks my TV boyfriend Keith Olbermann, "when there's this kind of almost blind reaction from the other side?"

The President's advisor Valerie Jarrett says, "Yes."

What do you think? Can it be done?

Filed Under: A-Croc-Alypse Now, Health Care, Politics · Tagged:
Aug 27, 2009

Glamoured

By · 13 Comments

He glamoured me, a little girl quiet as she could be at the top of the stairs, waiting for the moment to creep down and peek around the corner to see him. Maybe he wasn't the best Kennedy, but he was the one at my house that night, the one we had left, come to ask my daddy to vote for him in the race to be Majority Whip in the U.S. Senate.

He couldn't have been larger in my imagination. I didn't know anything about him except that he was one of them, the uncle of the children on the Christmas card we got from Hickory Hill, the ones pictured hanging onto a funny car, the children whose daddy had been killed that summer. I watched the film clips of their family over and over again. My mother and daddy rode on the train the day of their daddy's funeral.

But in the moment of being glamoured, I did not think of all those children whose names I had memorized from the Christmas card. 

Some people just shine.

As a little Washingtonian girl, I could not help hearing about Chappaquiddick, and over the years I read the stories about his life, so unseemly. The world began to revel in dirty stories about the famous. The world changed, old ways blown apart.

Fifteen years after the Senator came to my house, he was still in the Senate, while my daddy had moved on to other things. I went to a job in the Senate Library, a little hole in the wall of the Capitol, just down the hall from Senator Kennedy's hideaway office. We knew when he had someone to lunch, and every now and then you might be in the hall when his door opened.

In a world where everyone owns every connection possible, I could not speak to him. The glamour overwhelmed me.

Of course it didn't protect him from suffering. He did things, not nice things, perhaps in an attempt to ease his pain. Who wouldn't have things to forget after so much loss and
trauma? How many people survive such things unmarked?

I don't know when I stopped thinking of the Senator as a tabloid headline and started regarding him as a leader who cared about people and did good things for them. Fifteen years ago? Ten? Glamour, a charm that is nearly magical, covers sins and mistakes, and
for Senator Kennedy, it surely did. Last year he loaned his glamour to another Senator, hopeful that the country could move into a new era.

He knew a person could.

Filed Under: Funerals, Grief, Politics · Tagged: , ,
Nov 5, 2008

Lift Every Voice

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(For the church's weekly email)

You may have heard me speak about growing up in Portsmouth, Virginia, and the brick sidewalks and old houses and the church of my childhood. But in my first year of seminary, I met a classmate who also grew up in Portsmouth and realized I quite literally did not know the half of my hometown.

While I skipped around Olde Towne, Gordon grew up in the neighborhood of Effingham Street, where our maid, Catherine, lived. His dad pastored a church, and when he told me the name, I realized there must be a whole world of churches in Portsmouth that I never knew. In a class called "Hymns and Worship," we compared our backgrounds while singing music from lots of traditions and working on a group project together.

One day the instructor had us turn to a hymn I did not know, and as was our practice, we stood to sing it together. Gordon said to me, "This is the Black National Anthem." The beautiful words written by the poet, James Weldon Johnson–how did I not know them? I lived, still, in a cocoon of comfort and privilege, without realizing.

Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.

As a nation, we begin a new day today, one in which limited images for who can be President or who might live in the White House will be changed forever. I hope I will continue to have my eyes opened about the differences between my reality and the way other people live, the challenges they may face and the commonalities we share. As the President-Elect said in his speech last night, "Our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared."

And however we feel about specific issues, may we have the grace and the graciousness to support our new President and his family with our prayers.

Lift every voice!

Obama family

Filed Under: Living in This World, Politics · Tagged:
Nov 4, 2008

Live-Blogging the Election

By · 52 Comments

We're live-blogging the Election, complete with Chuck Todd's Widget!!! Look below the map for bloggage.

http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/48ff995c49a30ff2/4910927e9b16f2d0/490532f277debe70/82ddf236/-cpid/ffbd76980a525a

1:07 p.m. My Internet works again, praise the Lord! I just received a text from #1 Son, as follows:
"Just saw Chuck Todd at Rockefeller Plaza."
My reply:
"Squeee!!!"
It's official. I am a fangirl of the World's Master Map Geek.

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Chuck Todd
1:14 p.m. For those who are uninformed, Chuck Todd is the Political Director for NBC and a sometime host on MSNBC. Pure Luck need not worry that I have lost my head over Chuck Todd's reddish goatee. It's all about his steel-trap mind. And the way he moves the states around on his nifty toss-up tool.

Also, if he has a bias, I can't figure it out, and I like that.

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1:38 p.m. My neighbor invited me to an Election Night party, but I promise I won't disappear from blogging for the whole evening. Meanwhile, I'm making brownies to take with me, in part because Phantom Scribbler recommended making brownies as a hedge against Election Anxiety Disorder. She has an awesome post up today; if you don't know her blog, I hope you'll go read it.

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2:17 p.m. Brownies are out of the oven and cooling. I'm wearing my Obama necklace, a gift from the multi-talented St. Casserole. Soon I will leave to pick up Light Princess and head to the polls! More later.

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Election Day 017 3:02 p.m. I voted!!! The polling booths at our precinct were full, but the line was fairly short. Light Princess squeezed into the booth with me and straightened me out on the referendum language when I had a sudden moment of confusion about sin taxes and casinos (two separate items, as it happens).

I grew up in a very segregated place and time. Casting a vote for an African-American, with cautious optimism that many others have done and will do the same today, feels historic to me. I left Temple Beth El somewhat giddy.

LP has a voice lesson, so I'll be back later.

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Obama Domino4:52 p.m. From the comments: For Mags, here is a close-up of the Obama Domino
Necklace. Light Princess has the side-to-side pin version, which has
been a hit at school.We're back from the voice lesson. I filled my gas tank for under $40 for the first time in memory, amazing. And I stopped at Starbucks for my free cup of coffee (decaf at this hour).

Rehema Ellis on MSNBC tells me that in Chesapeake, VA, some voters waited 6 HOURS to vote. Wow. I remember waiting close to an hour to vote on the anti-discrimination issue a few years ago, but that's the longest I've seen it here. We use the optical scan machines that had trouble dealing with damp/wet ballots in Virginia today.

What kind of machine/ballot did you use?

I could see Pure Luck's name on the list above mine with the notation "AV" for Absentee Voter. I felt relieved to know his vote counted. Wish I could have asked them to look up the boys!

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4:58 p.m. Lauralew mentioned working as a poll-sitter. My precinct has changed polling places a number of times over the years, but I've never seen an election day that didn't include Now-Retired Reference Librarian. When I voted at 2:45 p.m., the other poll workers looked a bit frayed, though they were pleasant. N-RRL looked fresh and excited! It must be a big day for her.

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5:16 p.m. A precious Obama volunteer named Ashley just came to our door to Get Out the Vote and told me that MSNBC is calling our Vacationland Senate Race a "flip flop," by which I feel sure she meant a toss-up. I am seeking independent verification. From Chuck Todd, of course.

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6:22 p.m. If you are one of the people wondering what Barack Obama meant when he said his faith in America had been vindicated, you might want to read this column in the Washington Post by Eugene Robinson. Just because Obama did not focus on race in the campaign doesn't mean this day doesn't have significant impact on our understanding of how people of all races interact in our country.

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6:47 p.m. This waiting? Could make a person crazy…

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7:02 p.m. Vermont blue, Kentucky red. These are not surprises. I want to know about my home state of Virginia. Come on, results!

What state are you most eager to hear about tonight?

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7:22 p.m. Confidentially…

I always expect Virginia to break my heart, because that's what it did on Election Night in 1972. My father had served one term in the U.S. Senate, and I felt certain he would be re-elected. Who wouldn't want my daddy to be Senator?

My brother and I stayed home with our Grandma Spong, watching the results on a little black and white TV, while our parents went to Daddy's election night party at the Governor Dinwiddie Hotel. Maybe he knew how it would turn out, but if so, no one thought of telling the 11-year-old girl and the 9-year-old boy waiting so anxiously.

My grandmother knew, I feel sure of it. She wouldn't watch the TV with us, but stayed on a little chaise lounge downstairs, in a darkened hallway, clutching her transistor radio in its red leatherette case, legs covered with a crocheted afghan you might find at an old-fashioned church fair.

I could not understand the numbers. It was a three way race, but I hadn't heard much about the Independent candidate. I understood Republicans. One had rejected my cheerful campaigning overtures at the polls just that morning. Somehow I concluded that the votes of the people who voted for the Independent really belonged to my father.

I remember bargaining with the numbers, saying it wasn't over until all the votes were counted.

My father conceded fairly early; it must have been early. I remember coming down the stairs and seeing my parents standing just inside the front door, still in their coats on that chilly evening. My father looked resigned, my mother manically cheerful, probably hoping a smile on her face would reassure us that somehow we would all get through this.

I hated her for looking so pleased.

(I got over it, eventually.)

*********************************************************************************

8:10 p.m. Woohoo! Pennsylvania!! Not to mention Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, DC, Maryland and Illinois.

We're going across the street to visit with our new church-planting, blogging Methodist neighbors. Back in a little while.

**********************************************************************************

9:30 p.m. We're back! While we were across the street, lots happened. It was good to be with some like-minded friends.

Can anyone explain why MSNBC would have T.D. Jakes as a commentator? And have you watched public TV at all? Is Judy Woodward okay?

***********************************************************************************

Berner wag
9:32 p.m. Molly says, "Wroo wroo! I knew it would all work out! Bernese Mountain Dogs for Obama!!"

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9:56 p.m. In case you didn't know, there's an election special on Comedy Central at 10 p.m. Eastern. *I'll* be watching.

Grant Park–will that be an amazing scene?

Texas, by the way, went to McCain. It's 200-124 in Electoral Votes at the moment. Keith Olbermann did some pretty simple math a little while ago to explain the obvious path, or one clear path, to 270, but I think we're going further, friends. I think we're going further!

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9:58 p.m. Okay, CNN and CBS give Obama 199 instead. I have no idea how. Trying to figure out which state they haven't declared and which they have…

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10:11 p.m. Rev. Dr. Mom comments: "NPR
is saying that if things hold Obama will be the first Democrat since
Jimmy Carter to take more than 50% (I think of the electoral votes but
I'm not sure)."

Actually, I believe that refers to the popular vote. Carter won 50.1% of the popular vote. Clinton was in three way races (both times? having a lapse of history here).

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10:25 p.m. Colbert: "Anything could happen. Meat could grown on trees."

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10:49 p.m. Coolest thing of the evening thus far: will.i.am appears with Anderson Cooper via hologram. What the heck?

***************************************************************************************

11:00 p.m. Here we go…

BARACK OBAMA IS PROJECTED TO BE THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!!!

Listen to that crowd in Grant Park!!!

So beautiful. I'm crying.

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11:18 p.m. Text from #1 Son: "This is history. Oh my God."

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11:30 p.m. I wish McCain's supporters (an invited crowd, right?) could be as gracious as he is.

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11:42 p.m. I think what #1 Son said bears repeating: "This is history." Will we remember where we were and who we were with, as we do when tragedy strikes? I hope I hold the thoughts of this evening, the anxiety and the anticipation and the relief and the joy, in my heart and mind for the rest of my life.

********************************************************************************************

11:56 p.m. From the comments, The Vicar of Hogsmeade writes:

"I love the symmetry that the same state that gave us Republican Abraham Lincoln is the state that gave us Democrat Barack Obama."

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12:11 a.m. "Our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared." Barack Obama

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Thanks for sharing all this with me, friends. It was a great speech and a great night.


Filed Under: Politics · Tagged:
Nov 4, 2008

Technical Difficulties

By · 6 Comments

I'm posting from the office because my home phone and internet are both down.

This is not good.

I hope I'll be able to get them up and going this afternoon in order to blog tonight.

Meanwhile, go vote!!!

Filed Under: Politics · Tagged:
Nov 3, 2008

The Wright Stuff

By · 14 Comments

In a case of pretty hilarious media buying, a Republican group has been running a Jeremiah Wright-related anti-Obama ad over and over again on MSNBC.

I'm not sure they understand who watches MSNBC. Morning Joe aficionados, lovers of Keith Olbermann, straight women tempted to call Rachel Maddow their TV girlfriend, or just people who wonder when the top of Chris Matthews' head will come off, we are thinking people. We've heard the Wright story before. We have worked through it or set it aside. But since the question has been raised, I'll be happy to talk about it one more time.

Freedom of the pulpit–it's a beloved yet aggravating feature of the Congregational tradition, the polity agreed to in the United Church of Christ. Jeremiah Wright and I hold our standing in the same denomination, and we both preach from an understanding that we have the freedom of the pulpit. We agree when we covenant with a church that there may be times we are called to be prophetic, and we agree it may not always be comfortable, or at least that's how I understand it.

Reverend Wright, unlike most of us, preached in a church that welcomed his prophetic message.

My opportunities have been more limited, but I spoke out against the war as we began ramping up toward it in 2003, and I spoke against a referendum intended to overturn anti-discrimination laws in Maine. Both times I made some people unhappy. Lord knows, the times I referred to God as "she" early on in my ministry led to the departure of a power group in that small church.

I don't know if I would do again now what I did then. In the end the church blossomed after those people left. But we didn't know at the time what the upset would mean.

Reverend Wright preached the sermon excerpted in the ad in 2003, in response to the war. As a pastor of many years standing in a church accustomed to prophetic preaching, any edge he might push against by its very nature extended further than the boundaries I, as a preacher of less than a year, felt. Impassioned, Reverend Wright made his point with words chosen to shock.

And they did.

I don't know if I would ever curse in the pulpit. I know I've stressed the danger of worshiping country instead of God, his point in that sermon. I agree with some of his conclusions about what our government has done in the past, yet I earnestly hope he is wrong about others.

The thing I find sorriest about all this is that the Obama family left their church over it, felt they needed to for political reasons. I hope when they settle in Washington (when the Great Pumpkin comes, right?) they will find a place to worship with their family, and more than that, an extended church family and Sunday School for the girls.

Someone asked me, "How could he go for so many years to a church where the pastor preached hate?" I don't believe that's what happened at all. I believe we've seen a slice of prophetic preaching that white Americans rarely experience. We want our Christianity neat and sweet and tied in a bow. We want our Sunday morning to be vanilla as possible. We want our pastors tame and unobjectionable.

Was Jesus tame? Did he support the imperial regime? Did he parade around and salute a flag?

We confuse our faith and our national pride. It may be true that Wright said things we wouldn't hope to hear at our own churches or even say ourselves if we are preachers. Even Obama may feel his pastor and mentor went too far, may feel uncomfortable with the intensity of this sermon or others. Frankly, he may have been sitting in church thinking his own thoughts while Wright preached, because even that kind of preaching must grow familiar over the decades. I'm disturbed by the idea that anyone sitting in the pews while I preach would be held responsible for what I say, and I'm disturbed by the idea raised over and over again in this campaign that we ought to have a litmus test for anyone with whom we so much as have a conversation, much less a meal.

What a limited way to exist.

I'd much rather be shocked and provoked and have a chance to draw my own conclusions. Living a life of faith includes living with doubts and seeking answers to questions and even disagreeing with other faithful people we may meet along the way.

Finally, if you're reading this and wondering about whether Reverend Wright managed to influence Barack Obama toward hate, I hope you'll listen to his campaign-closing speech and hear the gentle strength in his voice. He may have learned a few things about public speaking by listening to preachers, but the message is his own, one of bringing together diverse groups and forces to make this country a better place. Yes, we can!

Filed Under: Politics · Tagged:
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