I caught the end of Obama’s eulogy of Senator Ted Kennedy this afternoon; the TV was muted as my wife and daughter were concentrating on their laptops. The speech turned out to be a bell ringer (you can see it here). Even though the president and the senator did not know each other well, Kennedy’s endorsement was crucial to Obama’s election and when Ted rallied for the convention, and then the inauguration, to see the torch passed (as he put it) everyone thought it might be his final act. 

But more than a work horse — “a man whose name graces nearly 1,000 laws, and who penned more than 300 laws himself,” as the president reminded us — he eulogized him as a sort of empath, the kind of person who learns from loss. “Through his own suffering,” Obama said, “Ted Kennedy became more alive to the plight and suffering of others — the sick child who could not see a doctor; the young soldier sent to battle without armor; the citizen denied her rights because of what she looks like or who she loves or where she comes from.”

When he was finished and the final rites were given, the family fell in behind the pall bearers and the chorus began to sing “America the Beautiful,” joined by the whole congregation. It’s the best of our national anthems, in part because it’s the easiest to sing and understand but it also sounds great in a church. I remember going to the First Presbyterian Church the first Sunday after 9.11; the reverend had given the church over to the assembly (perhaps he felt there was nothing he could say) and we spent an hour choosing songs from the hymnal. “America the Beautiful” was one of them and I remember us all singing through our tears. 

Those were, perversely, great days to be in New York. It was as if the whole city, grievously wounded, was reconsidering the meaning of everything, the importance of each living person, the stranger on the street. The blow that was supposed to kill capitalism, not to mention our country, just got people back to work. We had more concern for those who had lost more than we had, or had started with less. “As more exposed to suffering and distress,” as the poet said, “thence, also, more alive to tenderness.”