From Stone Cold Hearts to Hope Bearing Feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

— Emily Dickinson  1830-1886

 

This post is about the Presidential Inauguration. I had not planned on writing about it. I didn’t even watch it. But something/Someone compelled me to listen to the program podcast then move to my desk where I finished composing this at the stroke of midnight, January— my psychoimposed deadline for Facebook posts.

You might wonder what a blog about faith and mental illness has to do with politics. politics. Hope, for one. The sign above Dante’s Inferno read, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” Those who lose hope can forfeit their will to live. And one of the essential roles of public servants is to engender hope into the people such that we can become better angels rather than floundering flummoxes.

For the past four years and more there has been much hateful speech coming out of our nation’s capitol. I say more because Donald Trump did not invent vitriolic political rhetoric. For the most part, history is selectively kind to those who have served in public office. It is in the now that the fisticuffs have come off and hard blows are landing that does harm not just to our nation, but to our world. The patterns of the present that lead us to project a dystopian future that fuels fear gleaned for personal gain.

What hope do we have? Yesterday afternoon, I did not watch the Inauguration pageantry because I am at heart a skeptic and patriotism in its current form does not move me. So I took a nap. Sure, I felt a tinge of guilt particularly when I passed through Susan’s study and caught part of the Benediction where Rev. Silvester Beaman spoke of slaves building the White House on land indigenous Americans once inhabited and now people from generational European families to those just making vows would be one nation. I was touched, but not moved to take much interest or shed any tears.

I went about my day as usual. Writing. Reading. Eating. The usual. It was only as I was browsing for a podcast that I found the full inauguration address recorded. I could listen to it before midnight and join my faithful compatriots who who have liveD and died for their nation, who care what happens not just in Washington, D.C., but in Wilmington, Delaware, Atlanta, Georgia, and yes, even Columbus, Indiana. My frozen heart of disinterest was not thawed by the pomp and circumstance but by the glimmer of hope in mind’s eye of those gathered, above the faces masked to protect from this invasive virus. This was no ordinary political event, it was a matter of life and death.

This hour was amazing, but let’s keep things in perspective. The challenge ahead is daunting. Over 400,000 people have died in the United States due to the Coronavirus. My own mother is one. More jobs have been lost since the Great Depression. We are destroying our planet at such a rapid rate our own children may not be able to inhabit it through their lifetimes.

But, there is hope. There was hope yesterday; there is hope today; and there will be hope tomorrow.

Our nation’s first-ever youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman lays out this vision of hope, one we can carry for generations to come:

 

Yes, Amanda, there is hope for those of use brave enough to crawl through the dark ditches of despair towards the light of faith.