Light On Dark Water

I said a couple of weeks ago that I thought Sarah Palin's acceptance speech at the 2008 convention "served as a sort of test of whether one likes or dislikes middle-class evangelical Christians." (The post is here.) Interestingly, a writer at Vanity Fair has had a somewhat similar reaction to something discovered in that recent email dump which was searched so assiduously, but fruitlessly, for something that could be used to damage her. 

This email was sent to various relatives and friends to let them know that the baby Palin was carrying had Down's syndrome. Here's what Vanity Fair says:

But the one e-mail that we cannot stop considering is the one she wrote to family members shortly before Trig’s birth. It struck us as the Sarah Palin Rorschach test. You might see it as a brave, optimistic way of telling everyone in her family that the new baby will have Down syndrome. Or you might get stuck on the fact that she wrote it in the voice of God. Or you might have a completely different reaction

Read it for yourself here. Me, I'm in the "brave, optimistic" camp. Yes, it's very sentimental. Yes, it's a bit strange that she tried to write from God's point of view.  No, I don't think God would use that many exclamation marks.  But underneath all that stuff, which would be easy to make fun of, there is steel. There is a great deal of compassion and courage and determination to do what is best for this baby, and to trust God completely. One may not care for the style, but the substance is wholly admirable.