So let’s add one more reason to the pile: his stunning speech on race in America. I couldn’t see it live, and spent most of yesterday trying to find a site that hadn’t crashed from all the traffic. But I finally got to see it last night; what a brave, brilliant moment. It was a speech of such courage and compassion, such honesty and respect. I felt he articulated on my behalf the wound of slavery in a way no contemporary public person has in a generation. And in articulating it so clearly, and in its full context, he invited me and other African-Americans, to risk putting aside its memory for the sake of something more important: the future of my country. The brilliance of his speech was that he did not simply do the same old thing and ask black people to get over it. He asked us to own the truth of our experiences, to acknowledge the truth of the experiences of whites, and to recognize that some of what troubles us is our collective ignorance about race , about history and about one another. I know that he will have disappointed some Latino/Latina and Asian people by seeming to focus on the black/white aspect of the racial divide. But I believe that such focus is entirely appropriate, because I believe slavery and its legacy in the United States is our country’s primary, deepest festering wound.

To me, the least interesting thing about the speech was the ostensible reason for giving it: an opportunity for Obama to reject/denounce/decry the words of his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Watching the news coverage of Rev. Wright over the past several days has been a textbook example of religious illiteracy in the American media. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. It’s perfectly obvious that most reporters and commentators don’t go to church/synagogue/mosque, so they don’t have any idea of what a relationship with your pastor/rabbi/iman can be like. It’s just as obvious that none of them have a clue about the black church in general or black theology in particular. Mad props to Chris Walton for his brilliant Philocrites post of a few days ago on this very subject; you go, Chris!

Most telling of all, for me anyway, is the complete lack of cultural understanding about this “rejecting/denouncing” business that seems to have such currency in the public arena. At the risk of making too broad a statement about African-American values, and with the full knowledge that I don’t speak for all black people, let me say that we don’t do the “rejecting/denouncing” things with family. We just don’t do it. Nearly every black person I know has family members and close friends who have said and done all kinds of uncool things, even criminal things. Every one of us that I know of have been clear about disapproving of the offending party’s behavior. But all those folks are still part of our respective circles, even amid all their imperfections and failures.

When I was growing up, I was taught that you don’t turn your back on family, no matter what they’ve done. (Sociologists have long documented the incorporation of good friends and mentors into the structures of black family life. In studies, such people are referred to as “fictive kin.” When I was growing up, we just called such people our “play sisters/brothers/cousins/uncles/aunts.”) So when Obama talked about Wright being like an uncle to him, it made complete sense to me, especially considering that Wright performed the Obamas’ wedding and baptized their children. You don’t stop going to your family’s house for Thanksgiving because your family members start acting out, do you? (In my house, the only question on Thanksgiving is: who’s turn is it to act out this year?) Your people are your people. Period. You can hate what they say and do, but at their core, you belong to them and they belong to you. This posture is, among other things, Universalist theology 101.

As always, nobody wanted to talk about anything else but that speech today. The only trouble is, today is the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, and so many of us seemed resigned to it. I like to think it’s because we are waiting for November to remedy this tragedy. It would be nice to think that Americans could carry on more than one serious national debate at a time, wouldn’t it?

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As both minister and mother, I can sympathize with the multiple demands on our children, as well as the state of exhaustion in which they live/move/have their being. After all, I live with two world-class whiners on the subject of church, ages 11 and 14. There are weeks when I get nothing but static from our sons, who complain that Sunday ought to be the one day they can sleep in peace. I’m also privileged to be the targeted recipient of the “you’re only making me go to church because YOU have to go to church” conversation, reserved for ministers, DREs and other religious professionals.

But I’ve made it clear to A. and D. that they have to go to church anyway, even if I don’t go. (Imagine how appalled they’ve been during my sabbatical, when their birthright UU father herds them out the door while I watch “Meet the Press!”) As I once told them a while back, “you don’t want to go to school either, but you still have to go to school. There are things you have to learn in school, and things you have to learn in church, and it’s our job to make sure you learn in both places.”

Of course, much sighing and eye-rolling ensues (it is so hard not to laugh sometimes!) along with how boring church is and how they aren’t really learning anything. But there are two events I remember when I consider this, one about each of my sons. Recently, Bob and the kids (hereafter known as “the guys”) went to a church-sponsored dinner without me that had been planned before I went on sabbatical. I had something else to do anyway, but I got home before they did. The guys arrived home with a doggie bag for me, and stories of the evening’s fun. At one point, A., my lanky 14-year-old, stretched out on the living room floor looking happy as he relived the night’s events. “I just love all the people at our church,” he said. “They are all so cool.”

The other story concerns my little one, at a church game night. D. is consumed with that old Milton Bradley game, “The Game of Life,” and he’d joined with several congregants in playing it that night. In fact, it was D.’s job to pass out all the little playing pieces. At one point, one of the players landed on a square that demanded they get married, and D., reaching over to get one of the pink and blue pieces that indicate marriage, paused and asked the player: “Are you marrying a boy or a girl?”

These two stories are the reasons we listen to the boys complain about church, and make them come anyway. Even when they think it is boring to be there, they are learning the value of multigenerational community, they are learning to be kind and open and accepting and fair. Our two sons are wonderful human beings, and church is one of the reasons they are that way. It takes a UU congregation to help raise our children–but first, they have to be there.

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