Dear Ones,
What an amazing and auspicious day has dawned.
Yet into this new day I still carry the image of 400 pillars of light lining the Reflecting Pool between the Washington and Lincoln Memorials at dusk last night.
Each light representing 1,000 lives lost. These times we are living through continue to ask us to have ‘supple hearts.’ Hearts that can somehow hold inspiration and heartbreak; fear and hope; relief, resilience and resolve all at the same time.
My own first response was of relief, which began the night before at the memorial. The relief was that we were as a nation acknowledge these losses together, and that those about to lead us were naming and holding our collective grief. The ceremony was simple and beautiful. As someone named it today, a beauty that has been missing in our public life.
I hadn’t realized that I had been missing it. At the inaugural my sense of relief grew, as I saw a small but diverse crowd gathered on the Capitol steps and the beaming smile of Vice President Kamala Harris after taking her oath of office. Her hand lay on two Bibles as she took the oath from Sonja Sotomayor, the first Latina Justice of the Supreme Court. One was a family Bible and the other had belonged to the first Black Justice, Thurgood Marshall.
As the inaugural continued, my relief grew resolve. As the 46th President of the United States Joe Biden said, ‘This is a time of testing. We face an attack on our democracy and on truth, a raging virus, growing inequity, the sting of systemic racism, a climate in crisis, America’s role in the world. Any one of these will be enough to challenge us in profound ways. But … we face them all at once, presenting this nation with one of the gravest responsibilities we’ve had. Now we’re going to be tested. Are we going to step up? All of us? It’s time for boldness, for there is so much to do. And this is certain … we will be judged, you and I, by how we resolve these cascading crises of our era.’
Yet when Amanda Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet ever, stood at the podium my relief and resolve grew into gratitude, inspiration, and some combination of awe, hope, and possibility.
She began,
‘When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry, a sea we must wade
We’ve braved the belly of the beast
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished…’
And she closed,
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it
May we rebuild and reconcile and recover.
May we be so resolved and inspired and brave.
There is yet a very long road ahead for us as a nation and as individuals to realize the promise of this day. Yet let us take some time to release some of the weight we’ve been carrying though we may not have realized it. Let us release clenched shoulders, make room for deeper breaths.
Take in the beauty and sorrow and possibility.
Let us never forget the lives we have lost to the coronavirus aided by a government that did not live up to its duty and promise.
May that lights that reflected last night, and the ones lit and relit in our supple and brave hearts carry us through the harshest dangers and into the promise of this day.
May it be so.
With love,
Rev. Dana