Waxing Poetically: Addressing Culture with a Twist of Poetry

In the past two months few people have gained greater infamy in the press and in the public than Jeremiah Wright. He is the pastor who has shouted such curses at our ears such as “God damn America” and accused the U.S. Government of “giving” AIDS and drugs to her people. He has called 9/11 God’s retribution on a nation who has practiced terrorism on Native Americans during the expansion, Japanese during World War II and African Americans during a lifetime. There are in my opinion many Americans, of which I am one, who very probably doubt the likelihood that AIDS and illegal drugs are inventions of Washington and that 9/11 is a fair retaliation for the grave mistakes we as a nation have made in our short history. And yet, there are those I have have talked to that do sympathize with Wright’s mistrust of Uncle Sam. Those people see a world in which our nation endured all of the above mentioned in addition to the more current plights of the Iraq War, the Abu Ghraib prison, the Jena 6 and the Sean Bell shooting and thus see our country as guilty of forms of terrorism. So hearing such contemptuous words from a man such as Wright who came of age during the civil rights era is of absolutely no surprise to me.

So when I saw the reverend in April talking with Bill Moyers on PBS and watched his two following appearances that week at the NAACP and the National Press Club, I listened intently. In each interview Wright talked about lifting up beaten down people, being unashamed of who we are as people and that “different does not mean deficient.” He has since been accused of being racist for saying in the NAACP speech that black people have different learning methods than whites or vice versa? But what I as a white man took that to mean was that we, however we may try, must not ignore the cultural differences that our diverse traditions have created. It is a message of inclusion and realization rather than one of disallowance and ignorance that those who are truly racist perpetuate.

So, now I ask you to listen to this sermon which inspired the title of Senator Barack Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope. Its theme is derived from the Biblical story of Hannah and a painting entitled “Hope” by George Fredrick Watts. In the former, Hannah’s womb is barren and she wants desperately to conceive and has great hope that her prayers for a child will be answered when no one else does. In the latter, a woman is portrayed as sitting literally on top of the world while she plays a harp. She has a very painful and despairing expression of a secret torment on her face. Her hope is in her musical notes floating to Heaven. Please listen with open ears and waxing minds.

“The Audacity to Hope”

Part 1

Part 2

The Painting (click picture for full size version)