President Obama Took Me To Church Today
Last edited Fri Jun 26, 2015, 10:17 PM - Edit history (1)
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.............. He addressed me. At one point the president started speaking about Roof directly, and the easily imaginable theft of lives of people who look like me, because they look like me.
“We do not know whether the killer of Reverend Pinckney and eight others knew of all this history. But he surely sensed the meaning of his violent act,” he said. “It was an act that drew on a long history of bombs, and arson, and shots fired at churches. Not random, but as a means of control. A way to terrorize and oppress. An act that he imagined would incite fear, and recrimination. Violence and suspicion. An act that he assumed would deepen divisions that would trace back to our nation’s original sin.
“Oh,” he said, the faint traces of a chuckle bubbling deep in his chest. “But God works in mysterious ways.”
In that moment, I again thought of my blackness. For about 40 minutes, to remember a dead preacher, Obama became one. For about 40 minutes, he spoke, as members of Pinckney’s family and flock urged him on. He spoke about being black, about the pain and the fear and the uncertainty and the heartbreak that floods every black heart, every day, and he spoke about it unflinchingly, with pride, in front of anyone and everyone who was watching. I got chills, and then I started to smile. I was back in church, joyfully reveling in the word of a God I do not know, and in a community I’ve never visited, and in the very blackness that could be my undoing. I wanted to laugh out loud and stand up, but something kept me seated, watching this church service in another room.
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And then he started to sing. It was planned, of course, scripted. Obama spoke the words, “amazing grace.” Then he sat in silence for five seconds or so. Then he said those two words again, in a deep, gravelly voice. He was singing “Amazing Grace,” an old Negro spiritual that blacks in this country have been singing in churches for generations. I still remembered.
Everyone at the ceremony stood and joined him. I got chills again as I mouthed the words, staring through my computer screen. When he named the eight others who lost their lives—Cynthia Hurd, and Susie Jackson, and Ethel Lance, and DePayne Middleton-Doctor, and Tywanza L. Sanders, and Daniel L. Simmons Sr., and Shoranda Coleman Singleton, and Myra Thompson—I panicked, thinking I’d cry. I didn’t. Because for that moment, I felt stronger—actually, physically stronger. I felt my cape, more than ever, but for the first time since I first donned it, over a decade ago, my blackness felt light, and warm. I didn’t feel small. And then I thought about my parents.
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"We do not know whether the killer of Reverend Pinckney and eight others knew of all this history. But he surely sensed the meaning of his violent act,” he said. “It was an act that drew on a long history of bombs, and arson, and shots fired at churches. Not random, but as a means of control. A way to terrorize and oppress. An act that he imagined would incite fear, and recrimination. Violence and suspicion. An act that he assumed would deepen divisions that would trace back to our nation’s original sin.
“Oh,” he said, the faint traces of a chuckle bubbling deep in his chest. “But God works in mysterious ways.”
http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/president-obama-took-me-to-church-today-1714260805?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_twitter&utm_source=deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
Thank you, Greg Howard.
