I Don't Want To Forget...

It is an understatement to say that 2020 was a hard year. As a matter of fact, if someone were to tell me they didn’t think it was a hard year, I would be interested to listen to them to understand why they would say that.

I didn’t start The Creative Table podcast or blog to be political in nature, and yet I cannot simply ignore what is around us here in America.

The division that our political atmosphere has bred in the last 4 years is mind-boggling. As I have been pondering the events of the last year, and in particular the events of January 6th, 2021, I came to a conclusion…

I want to remember.

And so, I’m writing this blog post because I want to put my thoughts and my feelings at these things that I saw and heard on January 20, 2021.

On January 20, 2021, after one of the most divisive and hate-filled political seasons in the modern history of America, Joseph R. Biden was sworn in as President of the United States, and Kamala D. Harris as the Vice President. It was a day that I will not soon forget – it was the most involved that I have been in an inaugural process since I began voting.

As I sat at my computer screen and watch each of them take their oath of office, I was smiling so big that I had to stop and ask myself why? Why did this feel like I was taking a deep breath after holding air in my lungs for what felt like an eternity? I think the biggest thing was that little girls all over the country will now never know an administration without a woman 2nd in command. I thought of all the suffragettes who went before us and fought for the mere right for women to vote and be heard – and now here was a woman being sworn in as Vice President. And not any woman, a multi-ethnic woman of color. I thought back to my trip to India and seeing what the women there navigate, and now a woman who is part Indian holds the 2nd highest position in our nation. This is what it meant when our parents told us that we could be whatever we wanted when we grew up. And now we can tell the little girls in our lives that as well – and mean it because it has come true.

At the swearing in ceremony, Amanda Gorman, the youngest American Poet Laureate, spoke with power and eloquence the things we are capable up. In her soul-stirring essay, The Hill We Climb, she spoke passion and change. Forgiveness and Repentance. Love and Light. Hope and Purpose. It moved me in a way I cannot ascribe words to.

“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….

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.” 

We watched as former presidents, from both parties, walked in, found one another, and offered fist & elbow bumps. They smiled and laughed with each other. They came in as excited to see each other, and their spouses, as cousins entering the yearly family reunion and running toward all the goodness that holds them together in this high office they once occupied. There was almost a healing sigh of relief in their laughter and smiles.

And the colors. Oh, the colors. The women dressed in all the colors of the rainbow. Even in the frigid D.C. weather – that at one point saw snow flurries drifting to the ground – these colors breathed life into the gray skyline. It truly was like a rainbow had come to life on the dais of the Capitol.

And while I don’t want to forget the beauty in the day – I also don’t want to forget what happen a few short weeks prior. How we saw hatred and vitriol walk in human form and try to tear apart the symbol of our democracy. It was gut-wrenching to watch and reckon with the notion that we were watching an attempted coup. I don’t want to forget – and I’m not ready to fully process that either.

I don’t want to forget the change that has been wrought inside of me over the last several years. The shift in what I see as central to my faith and my politics. I don’t want to forget that I once stood deeply rooted in pride of dogma over people. I don’t want to forget that I have chosen not to listen to understand, but to hear in order to respond – nullifying anything another who believes differently than me has to say. I don’t want to forget the way it feels to have someone say to me that I cannot possibly be a Godly Christian because I don’t vote for this person or that, or stand by this policy or that. I don’t want to forget that I am not yet a Peacemaker and Bridge Builder, but that I am learning and listening and undoing and becoming.

I want to take what I have seen and heard and allow God to use it to shape who I am becoming. I want to acknowledge the times that things make me uncomfortable and understand why they make me uncomfortable. I want to lean in and not shy away.

I don’t want to forget…

Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash