Words Reconsidered

“We encounter each other in words,” she spoke “into the winter air.” Barack Obama’s inaugural poet, Elizabeth Alexander, described the range of ways we speak to one another: “words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.”

Words to reconsider were spoken at another inauguration on 14 January 1963 (the day I was born, actually) when the Alabama governor, George Wallace, promised, with spiny words, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

Less than fifty years later, less than one week after my 46th birthday, an American with a Kenyan father and a Kansan mother, was inaugurated president of the United States. I pray for this new president and I personally praise God for the racial integration he represents, like me and millions, blatant genealogical diversity, reconciled in a single person.

Reconsidering these two inaugurations rouses us to thoughts of national redemption and a deeper awareness of the ways we encounter one another and the future with our words.