The man who looks out for Obama’s soul

Just in time for Advent, that season of preparation, of getting ready, of making sure we are in the right mind to weather the excitements of Christmas, the World Service gave us a short programme designed to get us in the mood. In Heart and Soul on Sunday, Jane Little talked to Joshua Dubois who since 2008 has been sending daily ‘devotional’ messages to President Obama.

Dubois began writing his emails during that first toughly fought election campaign. He was working for the Obama team in an outreach office, not close to the then senator but close enough to realise how tense and difficult the process of getting elected had become. He wondered whether in the midst of the crowd surrounding and supporting Obama there was anyone ‘thinking about his soul’, anyone helping him to cope with the pressure of the political attacks, the personal attacks, the full-on exposure to the media. He came up with the idea of sending him, first thing, before the business of the day got going, what he describes as an ‘encouraging email’ — a combination of Bible reading, poem or reflection and a short prayer. Dubois was not expecting to receive a response, but almost immediately his inbox pinged. ‘That’s exactly what I needed,’ the future president told him. ‘Would you do them every day?’

What was in that first message? A passage from the 23rd Psalm, and the words of a poem by Wendell Berry, ‘The peace of wild things’, which ends, ‘… For a time/ I rest in the grace of the world, and am free’. Why did it have such an impact on Obama? Dubois reckons it’s because he writes about things that are completely separate from the politics of the day and do not address ‘whatever conflict is at the top of the news cycle’.