January 20

   The first January 20 deposited in my memory bank began with three generations of Thyren men, snow shovels in hand, digging out the long driveway leading to the garage. Twenty inches of snow had fallen and drifted leaving eight or nine car lengths to be excavated.  How my grandfather, two months shy of his sixty-ninth birthday got to our house I don’t remember. Maybe he walked; maybe he dug his old two-tone Plymouth out earlier that morning. Either way, still adjusting to life as a widower, and fifteen years from joining his beloved for eternity, he was happy to lend a hand.  At thirty-nine, sixteen years away from his Palm Sunday heart attack, my father hefted the heavy steel shovel that sits beside my fireplace today.  He paused occasionally to lite an unfiltered Camel cigarette.  Seven, almost eight-year-old me completed the trio, using a smaller shovel than my elders. If memory serves, we  made it from the street to the place where the driveway squeezed between our house and the neighbor’s rock garden when my mother called us in for lunch.

   I’m guessing that we were treated to a steaming bowl of Campbell’s Tomato Soup and a grilled
cheese sandwich, but I really don’t remember. What I do recall is that we didn’t sit at the kitchen table. Instead we gathered in the living room using tray tables because it was Inauguration Day. The doors to the black and white Zenith were open, the power was on and the dial was tuned to one of the three networks. On the screen was the scene playing out on the steps of the Capitol Building. Pictured were men in top hats and tails and women wearing fur coats and hats. Each speaker emitted a stream of steam on that frigid winter day. We watched as the hatless young Senator from Massachusetts took the Oath of Office to become the President of the United States. We listened to his Inaugural Address with its memorable call to service: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” We watched the orderly, peaceful transfer of power take place before our eyes. Then we went outside and finished shoveling the driveway.

   Inauguration Day has occurred fourteen times since that cold, sunny day in the aftermath of a storm. Sadly, twice in between the appointed day a Vice-President has been called upon to complete the term of his running mate, once due to an assassination, once in response to a resignation in disgrace. In sixty years, eleven men have held our nation’s highest office. Six of them have been Republican. Five have been Democrat. In 2020 both the popular vote and the Electoral College evened the score. However, as January 20th nears the transfer of power has been neither orderly nor peaceful. The legitimacy of a free and fair election has continued to be challenged despite recounts and court rulings that have proved it sound. Urged on by the current office holder, a mob marched to the Capitol on the strength of his pro-mise that “I will be with you,” words which proved empty as he retreated to the guarded sanctuary of the Oval Office to watch the mayhem that led to five deaths and the disruption of the constitutionally mandated verification of the Electoral College votes by a joint session of Congress. Washington D.C. and State Capitols across the land are on high alert, guarded by various law enforcement entities bol-stered by the presence of National Guard Troops. The land my grandfather came to as a young man
and served in the Army in during World War I; the nation for which Dad left behind college days and career dreams in order to join the Navy in World War II; is deeply divided when it should be united to fight off a deadly virus that has taken the lives of nearly 400,000 of our fellow citizens.

   As January 20th approaches, I pray that the day will be memorable for all the right reasons and none of the wrong. Amid threats of further violence based on misinformation, misunderstanding and hate, I pray that the orderly transfer of power will take place without further violence. As the assault on truth continues, I pray for closed minds to be opened as trustworthy voices sort fact from fiction and reveal fanatical conspiracy theories to be baseless. As family ties, collegial bonds, and friendships have been fractured by hurtful and hateful words hurled in anger out loud, on paper, and over the internet, I pray for repentance, forgiveness, restoration and the step by step work of reconciliation that recognizes our common heritage as children of God called to seek the best for all our neighbors as we do for ourselves.

   Psalm 130 is a prayer that speaks for me at a time when words seem to fail me. The only way out of the mess we are in is with the Lord’s help. An honest confession that we have contributed to the crisis in thought, word and deed is part of the process. Recognizing where our only source of help is to be found is required. And then there is hope, not wishful longing for the good old days that never were all that good, but hope in the word of the Lord; hope in the Lord. With January 20th and all the hard work that  lies beyond it in view, I offer Psalm 130 as a guide with one major change noted by the asterisks below.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. 

Lord, hear my voice! 

Let your ear be attentive to the voice of my supplication. 

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, 

Lord, who could stand? 

But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. 

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, 

and in his word I hope; 

my soul waits for the Lord 

more than those who watch for the morning, 

more than those who watch for the morning. 

O Israel*, hope in the Lord! 

For with the Lord there is steadfast love, 

and with him is great power to redeem. 

It is he who will redeem Israel* from all its iniquities. 

*America

Psalm 130, New Revised Standard Version of the Bible