From The Shooting Star, January 25, 2009. Copyright 2009, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
As I drove home from watching the inauguration with several other First Parishers, I thought about why it was not only an historic moment, but a transcendent one. Our nation was founded upon the ideals of democracy, the rule of law, and individual liberty. At the same time, it was founded upon the legal institution of slavery and the removal of native peoples from their land. The tension of these mutually exclusive practices have haunted our history, our politics, and our culture from the beginning. It has torn us apart and cost many lives, as well as souls, most notably during the Civil War, but all along the past 200 plus years. There is truth in the saying that injustice and oppression impact the oppressor as well as the oppressed, but it is also true that the most vulnerable suffer the most. As President Lincoln said, "A nation divided against itself cannot stand." While we have stood, it has been an uneasy standing, with constant injustice and flares of violence. President Obama’s inauguration does not remove all of this, but it takes us one step closer to being truer to the ideals upon which this nation is founded and has stood.
I realized also that I am in a generation in-between. The generation of my parents bore witness and participated in the Civil Rights Movement. They experienced the protests and strikes, the dogs and fire hoses, the prayers and the singing, the beatings and the lynchings. The generation of my children are removed enough to not quite grasp the significance of the election of the first African American president, to understand what all the tears and fuss are about.
I know that we are diverse enough a congregation that we voted for different candidates for president and that we do not all agree with President Obama’s agenda or politics. But I believe and I hope we can all participate in the history of the moment: a healing in our nation that transcends politics and grounds us more firmly in the ideals and hope our founding fathers (and mothers too) laid down, even if they could not live them out as fully as we would want.
In a letter to his daughters, President Obama wrote: "[My grandmother] helped me understand that America is great not because it is perfect but because it can always be made better—and that the unfinished work of perfecting our union falls to each of us. It's a charge we pass on to our children, coming closer with each new generation to what we know America should be."
For me, these words ring so true, not just for my country, my nation, which I love, but also for whatever communities we participate in which strive, in the words of the Unitarian minister, Rev. Theodore Parker, "to bend the moral arc of universe toward justice," including this one. Whether it is as citizens or people of faith, we are not striving for perfection but for living out better our foundational truths, learning with each generation better what is required of us to seek justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly and attentively with that we each name as Holy.
In faith,
Rev. Ellen