Barack Obama on His Secularist Mother and Religious Upbringing

taken from the chapter on faith:

my mother, even with all her professed secularism, was in many ways  the most spiritually awakened person that i’ve ever known.

she had an unswerving instinct for kindness, charity and love.  and spent much of her life acting on that instinct.  sometimes to her detriment.  without the help of religious texts, or outside authorities, she worked mightily to instill in me the values that many americans learn in sunday school.  honesty, empathy, discipline, delayed gratification and hard work.

[…] most of all, she possesed an abiding sense wonder. ar reverence for life and its precious transitory nature that could properly be described as devotional.  she saw mysteries everywhere, and took joy in the sheer strangeness of life.

he continues about how he did not have “a vessel for his beliefs”, nor a community for beleif, and thus he has embraced christianity.

listen to excerpt here:  http://www.fileden.com/files/2006/11/18/392548/Audacity_Faith.mp3