Lincoln Memorial Opening Prayer

I got this email from my friend Don today, and I think it's important. I wanted to post it here because the words of both these men - the Rev. Gene Robinson and my friend Don - are moving and relevant, and we should hear them.

As many of you know, the Right Rev. Gene Robinson, the openly Gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire , gave the opening prayer at the Lincoln Memorial event on the Sunday the 18th. It was the first event in the inaugural festivities. HBO, which had paid for exclusive rights to the event chose not to broadcast Bishop Robinson's prayer. So if you watched there you wouldn't have caught it or even known that it occurred. NPR didn't air it either. There's no record of it in images placed on the sites of Getty Images, New York Times and the Washington Post.

It's a complete erasure of his ever having delivered the prayer.

Such is the continuing policy of silence and erasure we have to live with from people who should know better. We are used to this. If you know your Gay history this has happened again and again. In fact this little list-serve is really about recovering the truth in our history and celebrating it.

This is the text of Bishop Robinson's prayer. I suggest you forward this around so that everyone has a chance to enjoy it.

Opening Inaugural Event
Lincoln Memorial, Washington , DC
January 18, 2009

Delivered by the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson:

"Welcome to Washington ! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God's blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln 's reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King's dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters' childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we're asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN."

Sights and sounds of the last few days

MLK & Inauguration from Errin M on Vimeo.

Half black is the new black (bitch)

Some months ago, Tina Fey, while commentating on then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, made this declaration: "Bitch is the new black!" And I laughed.

A few weeks later Tracy Morgan responded with a declaration of his own: "Bitch may be the new black, but black is the new president, bitch." And I roared.

But then yesterday, while surfing the internet, I came across this statement: Half black is the new black. And I thought: Whoa.

It was a genuine C&C Music Factory moment, truly one of those things that made me go "Hmm".

Yesterday I attended the Martin Luther King festivities down at the Civic Center. The Glide Ensemble sang. After the program was over I hung around outside for a while, taking pictures and soaking in the atmosphere of the city one day before our new president took office.

Most people were wearing Obama t-shirts, but there was one small girl whose shirt caught my eye. It said: little mixed girl.

She was a beautiful child: biracial with light eyes and a cloud of dark hair. I bent down towards her and smiled. "I like your shirt!" I said, but she just stared at me, hiding behind her mother's legs.

When I got home I went online, looking for that t-shirt. To my surprise I found a range of clothing dedicated to multi-ethnic people. "Are we a market?" I wondered aloud, knowing even as I spoke the words that the answer was yes, that I was foolish not to have realized this. It was while I was searching for t-shirts that I stumbled on the words half black is the new black. Referring, of course, to the president.

Well, that made me think. Black people all over the nation are rejoicing that today, a man who looks like them took up the highest office in the land. We are calling him our first black president.

I feel that joy. I feel that relief, I feel that justice, I feel that hope. I feel it for my dad, a black man, for my grandmother, from whom Alzheimer's has likely robbed the meaning of this day. I feel it for those members of my family who never thought they'd live to see this, and for those who didn't live to see it. That's my responsibility, you know? That's my place in history: I am a witness to this day, to what it means.

But all along I've been looking at this through the lens of my black history. And you know what? I am not a black woman.

I am a biracial woman, both black and white. I have always looked at life from one side or the other, trying to see both sides of every issue. Interestingly, I am also a Libra, constantly striving for balance. I took turns seeing things from each point of view.

I don't think I ever fully realized, until this day, that as a multi-ethnic person, I am a race unto myself. I am more than half my father and half my mother. I suppose most people don't take so long to self-identify, but when your folks look so different and come from such different backgrounds, it's easy to spend your life quantifying which parts of you come from which parent. And I don't think it ever occurred to me that there is something about me that stands alone. I know something about what it means to be white, because my mom taught me that. And I know something about what it means to be black, because my dad taught me that. But they couldn't teach me what it means to be mixed, and I guess I'm still learning it for myself.

A couple of years ago Monte and I were browsing at a street market and I spotted a t-shirt that made me gasp. The design on the shirt was from a page of an old standardized test, the part where you had to fill in the bubble that described your racial identity. Choose one of the following, the shirt said: Black / White / Other. The Other bubble was filled in.

I grabbed Monte by the arm. "Look at this," I whispered.

"Cool," he said.

I shook my head. "That's me," I told him.

"Yeah, it's cool," he said.

And I couldn't explain why there were tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. I couldn't explain why I kept touching the shirt, why I was so reluctant to walk on. I still wish I'd bought it.

I used to fill in the Other bubble on standardized tests. When I took my SATs, I remember my dad asking which bubble I'd chosen. When I told him, he got upset.

"Next time, I want you to choose Black, OK?"

"I'm not going to do that!" I declared. "I'm not going to deny my white side!" My dad closed his eyes in a gesture of frustration. He and I were having trouble communicating in my 17th year.

"It's not about that," he said stiffly.

"But I'm not just black!" I insisted. I looked to my mother for help, hopeful that she would understand. She smiled a little.

"It's about tuition assistance, Errin," she said.

I crossed my arms in a huff. I could understand that, but I was still upset.

It's not as though I've spent my life stewing about this Other bubble. But last night I remembered it. And as I sat there thinking about it I realized that Barack Obama probably filled in that Other bubble too.

You see, we're calling him our nation's first black president. But Barack Obama is a biracial man, raised by a white mother and white grandparents. It's ironic, really: his ancestors weren't even slaves here, and yet we're looking at him as a symbol of racial freedom. How many grandmothers have proclaimed this year that they never thought they'd see this day? And yet President Obama's own grandmother, who died just a short while ago, likely never dwelled on dreams such as those.

When we look to the leaders, we all want to see someone who looks like us, don't we?

Yesterday my father wrote about how the optimism of his children renewed his own sense of hope. "They were well protected and provided for so why wouldn't they assume anything is possible?" And I probably have always believed that I would live to see a black person become president.

But it never occurred to me that one of my own would take the office.

Watching him take the oath today, I felt a new sense of definition. I have a race. It's not just the sum of others' parts, it's my own identity.

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness."

My president spoke those words today.

Of course, I am joking when I say that half black is the new black (bitch). I think we can all see a part of ourselves in our new president, and that's what makes it such a sweet victory. We no longer have to Choose (only) one of the following. We no longer have to fill in the Other bubble when nothing else fits. There's room for everybody on this page, in this age, and if you need reminding, just look at our president.

He looks a little like us, doesn't he?