President Obama --- today AMAZING GRACE

[frazzled]

32. Thank you. I was thinking about it again tonight

and discussing it with Mr. Frazzled. We came to the conclusion that this was the speech he might always wanted to have given but couldn't have, or rather shouldn't have. As president of all the people, it would have been unseemly for him to address these issues of race in terms of faith, or to do it so directly and passionately. But in the context of a funeral, in a religious setting, and this particular set of circumstances, it fit perfectly.

It was almost as if he felt these nine people and their families, by their lives and actions, and the events that surrounded them, had bestowed upon him the ability to speak in this way. It was a gift they gave to him, upon which he has felt compelled to act.

I am not a religious person at all, but I have to say I'd been feeling something of the same thing for more than a week, but was unable to name it. The gift of grace. I'm going to try not to forget it.