I was moved by President Obama's speech at Notre Dame today. He has tremendous power to redirect negative energy. He showed humility in his self-deprecating jokes. He didn't fight the protesters at all; he almost seemed to welcome them.
Most significantly, he made it clear that he was part of the community in the hall.
He said he had come to the Christian church when he was a community organizer in part thanks to the inspiring model of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin; and he said he had been fed by the Roman Catholic parishes he worked with on the South Side. Obama intertwined his own story with that of former Notre Dame president Theodore Hesburgh's when he told of Hesburgh's leadership of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, which Eisenhower had set up after Brown v Board of Education, so that "all God's children" could share in our country's promise. He referred openly to himself as African-American, something he doesn't often do.
While Obama made no pretense to being able to bridge the divide between his views on abortion/stem cells and the views of many in the hall, his statement that the country will be divided on this issue for years to come was honest, and his call for continuing dialogue seemed sincere. I felt he took his listeners to a higher ground: the struggles against global warming and economic injustice and intolerance that has fostered wars. His conclusion, in which he described all people as "fishermen," touching on an anecdote in the Hesburgh story, was religious and quietly stirring.
I liked the way he uses religious language without being exclusive. He spoke again of non-believers, as he did in his Inaugural, and mentioned "humanism" as a faith. He urged people to step outside their "parochial" ideas of community and accept the golden rule as a guide in all their dealings. While he referred to Christ, I sense that Obama's idea of Christian faith, and God, is pretty loosey-goosey.
Of course I apply Obama's lessons to Israel/Palestine. Parochialism has wrecked American foreign policy there, and Israeli's brutal understanding of civil rights treatment has hurt our country's image everywhere.
And the golden rule? Today Adam Horowitz mentions the importance of addressing the Nakba and the refugee issue at the root of the unfairness in I/P. he Palestinian refugees have been in camps for 61 years; and I reflected that an American president was moved by the situation of Jewish refugees in DP camps in Europe, two and three years after the end of World War II, to recognize the state of Israel. It's about time there was some fair play; and if anyone has the ability to calm the Israel lobby and lead us forward, it's Obama.
