I was moved to see the row of lights along the canal leading up to the Washington Monument. President Biden and his wife, and Vice President Harris and her husband stood in solidarity, facing the magnitude of loss that has shaken our country. Surely the "never ending shade" that has spread into every community on earth has brought fear. The bright pillars, whose illumination spread like a flock of seagulls startled by a wave, pushed back the bleakness. No one spoke while a nation pondered, because words are not always the right response. 

 

Later a nurse sang, her shimmering voice having soothed thousands of hurting patients in her hospital wing over the past ten months. She asked God for an extra helping of grace, to bathe our collective brokenness much like the intimate washing she offered to people who were too sick too speak her name. Perhaps some of those patients whose suffering has finished were hovering, having kissed their own farewells to families that still grieve. I wonder if their pain has been annulled by a joy we can only see in reflection.  

 

The bible that the president's hand rested on while being sworn in has been in his family for over a hundred years. I could not peek over his shoulder to check, but many historic texts begin with illumination. Calligraphy in gold and silver ink curls across the paper as if the words themselves itch to fly. My daughters and I cried to see the first woman sworn in on the Capitol steps, Because sometimes tears are the right response. 

 

On the morning of their inauguration those two couples kneeled in prayer. I prayed with them, as did the clergyman giving the inauguration prayer, and numberless others across the continent: "The gold limbed hills of the West,... the windswept northeast,...the lake rimmed midwest... and the sunbaked south".1 It is not to suggest that God is forgetful, and might neglect us without reminders. But the act of falling down before Him expands our capacity to receive. In the excruciating moment of birth, it is the widening of the pelvis that allows a baby to move down the long birth canal and into the light. 

 

Perhaps our cry marks the end of four years of travail.

 

1. paraphrased from The Hill We Climb, by Amanda Gorman