Tony Hinchcliffe 2024One speaks of over coming trouble. Another speaks of blame. One instills confidence. Another elicits fear. One invites reflection and growth. Another imagines a perfection that never was. Which voice have we chosen?
At President Biden's inauguration in 2021 Amanda Gorman recited her poem, The Hill We Climb. After four years I exhaled convinced that dadrkness had been banished and that America had chosen to heed the voice of hope, compassion, unity and healing. I dared to believe that our best selves had emerged from a long slumber, and that we were back on track to perfect the American experiment.
Now it appears that I was wrong. Donald Trump has returned and with him the voice of fear, hatred, insult and scapegoating have returned. Witness the recent rally in Madison Square Garden where comedian Tony Hinchcliffe and others delivered gleeful messages of bigoted racist stereotypes warming up the attendees for Donald Trump's main address.
Is this a temporary setback or have the American people made a profound long term choice? That is the question that steals my sleep. Perhaps we can endure another four years of Trump's insanity and still get back on track once he is gone. But what if the country has decided to permanetly embrace authoritarian fascism? What if we have permanetly lost our capacity for empathy.
What if I have lost my capacity to proclaim hope and resilience? Throughout my ministry I embraced my role as hope bearer for the community. I am not confident I can be that voice any longer.
The first presidential inauguration I remember was the inauguration of President Kennedy in 1961. Sixty years ago I remember my eleven year old self observing a civic process I did not fully understand but which filled me with a sense of awe and hope. Even then I was able to discern a reassuring nobleness in the moment that pointed my awakening social consciousness to the importance of believing in something more grand than policy battles and political squabbles.
My trust in that nobleness has been tested over the years. The assasination of JFK in 1963 shook me deeply. The certitude I embraced growing up in Frankfort, Michigan began to unravel as I watched the nightly news in 1965 and saw civil rights marchers being assaulted on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It took another hit as the Vietnam War caused me to question my easy assumptions about war, peace, and my Christian devotion to Jesus the Christ. My alternative service as a United Methodist Volunteer assigned to The Interfaith Center for Racial Justice opened my eyes to the evil of systemic racism buried in our culture - the unfinished business of four hundred years of slavery.
Other experiences pointed me in a more hopeful direction. Civil rights and voting rights legislation in the later years of the 1960s seemed like progress in the quest for liberty and justice. The election of President Obama convinced me that our progress was real and unstoppable. I told myself in 2016 that there were not enough angry old white men left in America to elect Donald Trump.
I was so wrong. Donald Trump was elected and the four years of his presidency proved to be far worse than I ever imagined they could be. His cruelty, dishonesty, coruption and pettiness exceeded my worse fears. More troubling was the way Republican political leadership lined up to support his behavior abandoning their own oath of office for the sake of political expediency. My despair became unbearable with the assault upon the capital building. I told friends that it seemed like we were living in an old episode of The Twilight Zone.
Today Joe Biden was installed as the 46th President of the United States. Kamela Harris was sworn in as Vice President. Amanda Gorman summarized the restoration of hope with this amazing poem:
“The Hill We Climb” Amanda Gorman
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. We’ve braved the belly of the beast, we’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice. 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, the successors of a country and a time 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. And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect, we are striving to forge a union with purpose, to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.
So we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another, 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, even as we hurt, we hoped, that even as we tired, we tried, that we’ll forever be tied together victorious, not because we will never again know defeat but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one should make them afraid. If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in in all of the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare it because being American is more than a pride we inherit, it’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it. That would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy, and this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can periodically be delayed, but it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith, we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us, this is the era of just redemption we feared in its inception we did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour but within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves, so while once we asked how can we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us.
We will not march back to what was but move to what shall be, a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free, we will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, our blunders become their burden. But one thing is certain: if we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left, with every breath from my bronze, pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one, we will rise from the golden hills of the West, we will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution, we will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states, we will rise from the sunbaked South, we will rebuild, reconcile, and recover in every known nook of our nation in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful, when the day comes we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid, the new dawn blooms as we free it, for there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.
I feel like I can breathe again after four years of waiting to exhale.
1961 TENNESSEE ERNIE FORD CELEBRATES THE INAUGURATION OF JFK
MARRIED May 26, 2019 Lexington United Methodist Church
This occasional journal began ten years ago at the time Terry was diagnosed with cancer. It was my companion through the years of her illness and my struggle to be an adequate caregiver. In the years since her death it has been an outlet for my reflections on the experience of adjusting to the unwelcome reality of life without her.
Little by little over the course of time I have felt the persistant force of hope and joy pushing against and subduing my grief. The bearer of that hope and joy came in the person of Jane Heithoff. Our coming together has been a long process of working things out, accepting the history we both bring to our relationship, recognizing our mutual woundedness, and embracing the beauty of a second opportunity to love. In one post I described it as "Dancing in the Dark." I am pleased to report that over time there has been been more dancing and less darkness.
On May 26 Jane and I were married in a ceremony encorporated into the Sunday worship service at Lexington United Methodist Church. We selected LUMC because of the love and support they extended to us during the year I served that congregation as interim pastor. Becca, Rachel, Carl and Mary; our adult children, stood beside us. It was a time of great joy and a declaration of our commitmemnt to embrace hope, joy, and kindness in the life we will now share.
There have been many obsticles to overcome on our way to this happy moment. Some have expressed impatience with us for taking so long. Jane and I believe that we have taken the precise amount of time necessary for our circumstances. We made our commitment to each other clear to one another long ago. We are very happy now to make that commitment public.
Jane saved my life. She invited me to embrace light and joy. She did not take away my grief. Instead she accepted my grief and helped me accomodate my life to its reality. She taught me that grief and joy, sorrow and happiness can coexist in the same heart. It is a lesson worth learning.
We took our honeymoon at Point Betsie Lighthouse were we lived in the keepers quarters for a week. I can think of no better location to represent this new chapter in our lives.
Life goes on. Cliché not withstanding, I find comfort in this truth. In November 2018 Carl and Anna welcomed their second child, Zeke (Ezekiel). In January of 2019 Mary and Andrew welcomed their second child, Rhetta. Within that brief span of time the numer of my granchildren doubled. Theo, JD, Zeke and Rhetta will know their biological grandmother, Terry, through the loving stories we share with them. Grandma Jane has embraced them as her own grandchildren with love and her special talent of targeting them for showers of travel gifts and craft projects. Life goes on. Love is real. Hope is justified and joy endures.
I have created an unlisted video welcoming Zeke and Rhetta into our family. You are welcome to view it by copying and pasting the following URL into your search engine.
My year as interim pastor for Lexington United Methodist Church will soon be over. Soon I will return to my home at Lake Louise. I look forward to regaining my retirement. I look forward to projects, pontoon boat rides, and attending Teddy Bear Camp with grandson Theo. I will also miss my connection with the people of this congregation. I will miss them more than I anticipated.
It would be fair to say that I accepted this interim appointment because I thought I still had something to offer in ministry. I am in fact proud of the work I have managed to accomplished here. Working with the remarkable leadership of this congregation we have prepared the church well for the next chapter of its ministry. I have great hope for the future of this congregation. Rev. Susan Youmans, my successor, is eager to take my place and journey forward in Christ's name with this church.
My easy "yes" in accepting this interim appointment did not take into account the many gifts I would receive from my connection to this church. That is the source of my reluctance to leave. This interim appointment has put me back in touch with the joy of pastoral service in the context of a congregation ready and eager to serve God and be of service to its community. My time here has renewed my faith in the ability of a local congregation to re-present Jesus the Christ. This church has redirected my heart away from the troubles we face and turned my attention to the possibilities within our reach. This year has been a spiritual Holy Saturday for me turning me away from the despair of the crucifixion to the promise of the resurrection. It has been a Holy Interim for my heart.
Wednesday, November 13, 2024 at 02:24PM 
Amanda Gorman 2021
Tony Hinchcliffe 2024One speaks of over coming trouble. Another speaks of blame. One instills confidence. Another elicits fear. One invites reflection and growth. Another imagines a perfection that never was. Which voice have we chosen?
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