Indigo Light

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When Lady Gaga started singing the national anthem, the tears started. Continued through Garth Brooks and J-Lo. This was the America I recognized—one of diversity and talent and achievement. Loud, different, proud. 

Not knuckle dragging gorillas peeing on statutes in the Capitol. 

And when Kamala Harris took the oath of office, I was so glad that I lived long enough to see an intelligent, empathic woman claim leadership in my country. But the tears really accelerated when I saw Kamala stand next to Joe at Arlington. For some reason, that really emphasized, to me, the reality that a woman was in the second highest office of our country.

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And when Joe Biden spoke for unity in my country, for Americans to end the “Uncivil War’ I responded to those words with such longing. I hope, I truly do, that the nightmare of the last few years will be coming to an end. And I will heed the words of my President—I will really try to open my heart to forgiveness for those who empowered a tyrant. 

For me, though, one of the most important lessons that I have learned in the past few years is the recognition that people who look like me, sound like me, people that I work with and socialize with, can knowingly empower someone that abused children and will not speak up against it even when they have become aware of it. Once I have seen that, I can’t unsee it. So, I will give them a wide berth. Life is much too short to tolerate values that one does not agree with.

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I think I really lost it when Amanda Gorman, the very young Inaugural Poet read her recent work, “The Hill We Climb.” I’ve included it here with my photographs because her words resonated with me.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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Thank you, Amanda, for giving voice to my emotions and my hope today. You remind me, once again, that youth represent our future….and it is very bright indeed.

Diana Lyn Davidson