Today's inauguration, like a tsunami, rolled across North America and the rest of world with an emotional impact not lessened by distance.
Three thousand miles away, in my classroom in California, it hit me with unexpected force just after the invocation, when Aretha Franklin was throwing herself into "My Country, 'Tis of Thee."
"...land where my father died," she sang--not "our fathers."
Suddenly the life of a black man born in 1910 or '20 flashed before my eyes, and I felt tears. He could not have imagined this moment, just as we can't really imagine what his life was like.
I looked him up online later: the Reverend C. L. Franklin, a Baptist preacher and civil rights activist, born in Mississippi in 1915, died in 1984.
I wasn't expecting to get emotional today; it seemed pretty straightforward to me, getting the new president sworn in. The hard part was last November 2, getting him elected; that was the mountaintop experience for me.
But actually, because my lifespan matches that of most of the players today, there were many points where I felt touched.
My senator, Dianne Feinstein, was the MC, the same person who announced the deaths of George Moscone and Harvey Milk in November, 1978, when I was living on a hill above San Francisco.
Rick Warren, who gave the opening prayer, preaches an hour south of me at Saddleback Church in Orange County. In 1988 or so I participated in a panel on abortion at his church.
He gave an excellent prayer, during which my main preoccupation was, "How will he close it? 'In Jesus name we pray'?" After all, that's how we evangelicals close our prayers.
Warren came up with a great solution: "I pray in the name of the one who changed my life, Y'shuah, Isa, Jesus (pronounced Hay-SOOS), Jesus, who taught us to pray 'Our Father....' "
He acknowledged his multifaith, multiethnic audience by using the Hebrew, Arabic/Muslim, Spanish, and English names of Jesus--as well as witnessing to Jesus' power in his own life and implying that Jesus' life and death is for everyone. I could hear echoes of "that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven, on earth and under the earth" (Phil. 2:10).
Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring," as reworked by John Williams, sang to all our hearts. Even wordless, the Shaker hymn's words spoke loud for me as an ironic commentary on where the US stands at this moment:
'Tis the gift to be simple,
'Tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down
Where you ought to be...
The oath itself was fumbled by Chief Justice John Roberts--how could he do that? Such a simple line, the heart of the day to be replayed on countless news broadcasts.
President Obama's speech set just the right tone, including his quote from I Corinthians 13:11, "The time has come to 'set aside childish things.' "
I liked his lines, "To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West--know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.... we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."
Again, I heard ironic echoes: the past eight years are judged as a time of more destroying than building. The US must unclench its own fist.
What a lovely "Praise Song for the Day" from Elizabeth Alexander! "
We encounter each other in words...
What if the mightiest word is Love?
... Anything can be made, any sentence begun."
And a ka-pow closing prayer from the Reverend Joseph Lowery, the 87-year-old man who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King fifty years ago.
He started by quoting from the Negro National Anthem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing:"
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray....
In the voice of various prophets, he warned, "...deliver us from the exploitation of the poor or the least of these and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.... [lest] we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president...." (Hosea 8:7 "...for they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.")
Then he spoke of that day "when tanks will be beaten into tractors," updating Micah 4:3-5.
Lowery left no great prophet untapped, certainly not Amos, quoting "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream" (Amos 5:24).
Then he ended to applause with a humorous rap petition:
...We ask you to help us work for that day
when black will not be asked to get back,
when brown can stick around,
when yellow will be mellow,
when the red man can get ahead, man --
and when white will embrace what is right.
Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen.
Yes, it was spectacular. I got my money's worth out of this inauguration, even though I had to be in a classroom calling roll for the first day of the spring semester at California State University in Northridge, just north of Los Angeles, at 9:30 this morning.
The campus tech wizards had sent me an email saying that with a few clicks of a remote, I could activate an overhead projector and get a cable broadcast of whichever television channel I wanted.
I arrived an hour early to make sure I pushed the right buttons on the DVD/VHS player, the amplifier, and the projector. It worked! So from 8:45 am on, I sat in the back row watching the inauguration as students filed into the classroom and sat down.
At 9:30, some turned toward me as if to say, "Aren't you going to turn the projector off and call roll?"
"Not until after the prayer!" I said. After all, the class is RS 304 in the Religious Studies department.
The sad undercurrent: from beginning to end, Warren to Lowery, God was Father. Aretha sang about "my father." Lowery spoke of the red man.
The new president and vice president are men, as usual.
Women's turn will come fifty or a hundred years after the racial issues are tackled, as usual.
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