Through prayer and praise, Obama calls for unity, civility

January, locals agree, is the best month in Tucson. The days are incandescent, the nights desert cold and the air always crisp.
No Tucsonan or Arizonan, whether native born or drawn from Minnesota or Moscow, will ever look at January quite the same now.
"Wounded," is how the editorial cartoonist of the Arizona Daily Star depicted the state of the state, drawing a map riddled with bullet holes. I have come here as an American, who like all Americans, kneels to pray with you today, and will stand by you tomorrow," Barack Obama told more than 13,000 gathered for a memorial service for the victims of Saturday's shooting at a political meeting in Tucson.

But while he came to mourn, Mr. Obama also came to implore Tucsonans and Americans to be more civil in their politics.

"At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it is important to … make sure that we are talking to each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds," he said.

"What we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. Let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together."

Mr. Obama honoured, individually, each of the six civic-minded [...]