It was first set to begin at 8:00pm Central European Time, and I anxiously awaited John Kerry's speech concerning Syria. I wanted to put myself in the mood of the reporters who were waiting for him to begin giving his speech. At some point the speech was moved up to 8:30pm CET.
I've spent too much time in Korea and the Netherlands, so that half hour of waiting only made me more nervous. No reason was given for the delay, so I asked myself if the delay was an intentional ploy or if it was because the Secretary of State had been held down by some new terrifying information.
8:30pm CET came, and it was not until 8:50 something that my feed started transmitting Kerry's words. I was anxious because of how late he was and because of his firm body language. I'm used to Kerry constantly moving his hands and looking at both sides of the podium, but this time was different.
He looked angrily into the camera, barely moved, and used heavy language. He made emotional appeals to every father, and placed himself in the shoes of the victims. He made it very clear that he was emotionally moved by the videos he had seen in the social media, and he stated that anyone who was not moved needed to check their "moral compass."
John Kerry was telling us to look into Jim Walli's views. Jim Wallis is Barack Obama's spiritual advisor. Wallis, in regards to homosexuality, wants churches: "that disagree on this to have a biblical, theological conversation and to live with their differences and not spend 90 percent of their denominational time arguing about this issue when 30,000 children are dying every single day because of poverty and disease."
He has in the past said, "I think that poverty is the new slavery. Poverty and global inequality are the fundamental moral issues of our time. That's my judgment." If Obama sees himself in the spirit of Lincoln, then we have a very long and bloody war ahead of us.
Behind Wallis we see the Georgetown seal: "The scroll in the eagle's mouth bears the words Utraque Unum, which comes from the epistle to the Ephesians. The passage from which the two words are taken tells of the oneness of Jews and Gentile in Christ.
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have become near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh, abolishing the law with its commandments and legal claims, that he might create in himself one new person in place of the two, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile both with God, in one body, through the cross, putting that enmity to death by it.
As is the way in universities, the two words have taken on a variety of meanings from other contexts: the accommodations of learning and faith; the gathering of the sciences and the arts; and most moving of all, the joining of the blue and gray after the Civil War. "
