"Even as We Hurt, We Hoped"

Some fragmented thoughts on President Biden's inaugural address, Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb," bagels, and books

The 232nd Day after Coronatide*
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Dear reader,

The memories of yesterday’s presidential inauguration are still ricocheting around my heart and mind. There were so many powerful images, so many hope-infused words—and I didn’t know how much I needed the opportunity simply to exhale.

The day was full of surprises. I didn’t know that a photographer would capture such an accurate portrait of my soul. I felt exposed.

I know this looks like Bernie Sanders, but this is actually a picture of my spirit and my soul.

The day was full of bittersweetness. Not 24 hours after the U.S. officially passed a devastating milestone—more than 400,000 lives lost in this country alone from COVID-19—the 46th president, a man painfully acquainted with grief and loss, took his oath. Hours after the outgoing president used his final speech to refer once again to “the China virus,” the first Asian and Black Vice President—and the first woman!—was sworn in. The obstacles, the difficulties, and the divides did not disappear with the end of an administration. If anything, yesterday cast them in even sharper relief.

The day was full of beauty, from Michelle Obama’s outfit to Kamala Harris’s evident delight to Amanda Gorman’s poetry and presence. I especially loved the tenderness in President Biden’s inaugural address. He’s the grandpa who just knows you’ve got something better in you, the one who carries stories of suffering, tells corny jokes, and seems to be on a solo mission to promote the use of the word “malarkey.” He’s a man who isn’t afraid to cry in public and who finds strength in vulnerability.

I know that some critics found the President’s calls to unity shallow and unrealistic, and perhaps my bar has been drastically lowered over the past four years. Still, I don’t think he was calling for a false unity that papers over pain, looks away from inequity, or pretends there is no iniquity. But as Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church said in a recent interview, “You start from the common ground. You don’t start from the differences.” You start from the things we can agree on, few as they might be; from mutual longings and griefs; from the truth that everybody wants security and stability and possibility for their children and for their children’s children. You start from shared humanity.

Note that the President didn’t shy from specifying what divides us. While other American presidents mentioned racism in their inaugural addresses, Biden became the first to name “white supremacy” and “systemic racism” explicitly. To give voice boldly and clearly to what divides this country—and to listen patiently and empathetically to those who cry out—is crucial to building a foundation for deeper unity, which can’t come without justice.

Anyway, Biden will not rescue this country. He’s one human, fallible and imperfect. He can set a healing tone, but he can’t do the healing, especially given the deep wounds of this country’s collective sins. He might offer words that urge us toward our better selves, but we have to embody those better selves. He can issue executive orders and he can sign bills that Congress sends to him, and undoubtedly, we need laws that codify fairness and equity, but we have to live out justice in ways that are beyond the law’s reach. We have to learn to love, and there is no way to legislate love.

This is the work we have to do—and I say “we” intentionally. I confess I have nursed my own prejudices and held my own grudges. I have sat waiting in the most passive-aggressive way possible, arms crossed, saying, “Let them change first, then me.” (See photo of my soul above.) I have even turned others’ hatred into my own chains, their ill will festering and replicating in me.

The repeated use of “we” stood out to me in “The Hill We Climb,” Amanda Gorman’s powerful, convicting poem. It is in the first line, it is in the last line, and it appears 56 times in between.

Gorman’s use of the first-person plural was pastoral. She came alongside us, naming our differences and our divisions, not pretending that we are better off than we are and not glossing over injustice. She articulated what ails this country and simultaneously embodied the possibility of finding healing and possibility in it; America, she said, is “a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished... where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.” She drew us in not only with her deft allusion to the common language of modern culture—did you catch the references to Hamilton?—but also with the dance of her slender and elegant hands, as if she were a conductor attempting to summon a symphony out of the cacophonous, ragtag band that is this nation.

Gorman’s “we” was also prophetic. She nudged us on, speaking with the clarity of one who is not yet jaded and the urgency of one who wants us to hear a more beautiful song than our ears have been able to discern amidst the noise. She cited Micah 4:4—“Scripture tells us to envision that ‘everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid’”—a vision of life on God’s mountaintop that she nestled into her own vision of this American hill. (Side note: I wondered why this didn’t bother me, allergic as I tend to be to the interweaving of Christianity and American civil religion, and I suspect it’s because she made no claims to American exceptionalism. She didn’t say anything about living up to our destiny, just “to our own time.” And there was no triumphalism; in calling us to be our best, there was no hint that we might somehow be better than any other country. But I’m still pondering this.)

Gorman’s poetry doubled down on Biden’s prose:

We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried.

As I’ve said before, I’m not optimistic, but I am hopeful. I believe hope is something that each of us can cultivate. “We need to realize that hope isn’t something we ask of others,” Amanda Gorman told Anderson Cooper on CNN last night. “It’s something we have to demand from ourselves.” She’s right.

What I’m Cooking: Okay, this is more about assembly than cooking, but it’s been a week, so thank you in advance for your grace. A couple of months ago, Tristan went to the bakery down the street to get rolls for sandwiches. He came back with something that the bakery called a “bagel.” It was pillowy and soft, a fine roll and a ridiculous bagel. I’m told that there are fine bagels to be had in Grand Rapids, and I’m sure we’ll seek them out at some point. Food is meaningful, though, not just because it is technically correct but also because it carries stories and memories. Call me overly sentimental, but restaurant fried rice or my fried rice will never have that extra something that my mom’s fried rice does, and while I’ll always enjoy a good bowl of wonton soup, an excellent bowl of wonton soup can only be had in a Hong Kong noodle shop where the walls sweat and the waiter barks at you. A Grand Rapids bagel, even an excellent one, even covered with the proper “everything” spice mix, will never have the emotional significance that an authentic New York bagel does. On Tuesday, a box showed up at our door: half a dozen H&H everything bagels, salmon, and cream cheese, sent by our friends Adam and Jessica in Brooklyn. On Wednesday, we toasted a couple of bagels (this is the correct way), slathered them with cream cheese, and layered in some salmon. So good.

What I’m Reading: I just finished Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom, which is the story of Gifty, the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants to the United States. I’m leading a group at my church through the book right now—so many religious themes and wonderfully big questions. This book had so many gorgeously evocative passages, so many lines that resonated. One moment I’ve been turning over and over, because it spoke to me so powerfully as a child of immigrants and a person of color myself, is her realization as a young girl that her belonging is predicated on achievement: “The memory lingered, the lesson I have never quite been able to shake: that I would always have something to prove and that nothing but blazing brilliance would be enough to prove it.” 

Now I need some reading recommendations, especially fiction. Over the coming year, I’m committing more to my writing, which has languished in the thickets of my insecurity and the thorns of my busyness with other things. That means committing more to my reading as well, because every good writer has to be a good reader. What have you read, old or new, that you’ve loved recently? Or, better yet, what’s your favorite novel of all time?

---

I’m feeling extra all over the place this week, so thanks for bearing with me. As ever, I’m so glad we can stumble through all this together, and I’ll try to write again soon.

In hope and gratitude,
Jeff

*I’m still counting my days from June 1, when my governor, Gretchen Whitmer, ended Michigan’s stay-at-home order. Yet here we are. More than 400,000 Americans dead. Lord, have mercy. People, wear your masks.