Today on this day we will always remember

At my church on Sunday we heard excerpts from A Letter from a Birmingham Jail, The Strength to Love, one the speeches written about Vietnam and several of Martin Luther King's sermons. It was much more moving (and as a history geek, more entertaining) than a sermon might have been. The timing Obama's inauguration and MLK's birthday lends itself to the sense of history, the solemnity, as my mom says, the historicicity of it all. King's speech on Vietnam reminded me of how not only did he speak out with regard to the domestic policy but also what he said about how the United States engages with the world, and how much it speaks to where we have been over the last six years in Iraq. We sang Lift Every Voice and Sing, also sometimes called the Black National Anthem, which often chokes me up. We also sung it on the Sunday following the election, when my minister prefaced it by saying, "Let's think about all the people who gave their lives to come to 'a place for which our fathers sighed.'" And that was when I wept, wept about the election.

And so today, when Obama made a speech which I believe has the capacity to get control of the frame of domestic and foreign policy at least for the outset of his presidency and the benediction began with a recitation of Lift Every Voice and Sing, I feel like we are in a very good place, and that it is a very important day.