Newton reacts to the inauguration

Newton residents were caught up in the history of the moment, inspired and awestruck by the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation's 44th President.

"We should celebrate today and use this historic occasion to dedicate ourselves to the work it'll take from each and every one of us to make our community, nation and world places where we break the artificial barriers that separate us and continually strive to be better,'' Newton mayoral candidate Setti Warren wrote us.

Rabbi Eric S. Gurvis sent us remarks he made Sunday night to an interfaith gathering sponsored by the Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston. He said he has a photograph in his office of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"I am grateful that President Obama has and will continue to call us out of complacency and indifference. He will call us to feel the agony of others and to respond to their cries. Like Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel before him, I pray we will all have the courage, the fortitude and the will to answer that call . . . that walking, praying, building, working and acting together, we can bring healing and justice . . . not just to the select few, but to all,'' Gurvis said.

A Boston.com compilation of sermons from the region includes one from Karla Jean Miller, associate pastor of the Eliot Church, a United Church of Christ congregation in Newton. ''When change is invited,'' she said, "we must be courageous, even if skeptical, to accept that invitation. We must get our “skin in the game”

In other posts Tuesday, Dan Fahey had this to say: ''Though his being the first African-American is indeed historic, it is his seeming desire for consensus building that is far more important. The country needs to pull together as one as much as is possible, and he seems uniquely qualified to carry that out.''