Wednesday, January 12, 2011

If you missed it ...

You can read it here.

Or you can watch it here.



And yes, I cried. The kind of tears your President is supposed to cause you to shed. Here in my chilly Atlanta hotel room "at work in the fields of the Lord" with the SCLM C056 Blessings Bunch. I missed it "live" but caught it on a CPAN replay ... and I'll have more to say tomorrow. Or the next day -- tomorrow's a pretty full planning agenda. But for now, a couple of favorite quotes from an extraordinary speech and an extraordinarily powerful moment of hope and healing.

"Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together."

"We recognize our own mortality, and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame - but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others."

And let the people say, AMEN. And pass the Kleenex.

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