Remembering to remember

I hate to admit it, but when it comes to music, I'm basically stuck in the mud. I'm likely to turn on something when I get downstairs, but listening to anything other than classical or a smattering of new age would be, for me, beyond unlikely. What I know about Lady Gaga (am I spelling that right?) could be uploaded in a couple seconds. There's scandals there, I think, is that right? I don't know if she, like others, started her musical career in church, but I have this vague sense that if we we rearrange the letters of her name, we could likely spell something in the uncomfortable neighborhood of sinful. 

What I don't know won't hurt me, so I'm not particularly interested in researching her history. All I know is that her soaring performance of our national anthem created in me about as much teary patriotism as I'm capable of. Wow. I've listened to it a half-dozen times, and not a whit of its power has dwindled. It was--and still is--amazing, deeply stirring.

What most people are saying after 46's inauguration is that it was almost shockingly beautiful in its timid simplicity. It carried none of the flamboyance of most anything 45 ever did in public, now show at all. I can't help but think it is a bit effusive to say, as did Fox's Chris Wallace, that it was the best speech he ever heard. It don't believe it had the the sheer jet engine power of Lady's Gaga's national anthem. 

What made it memorable, like most everything else yesterday, was the ordinariness normality of almost everything that happened. Covid meant no crowds, of course; and those who were there were safely distanced. 

Everything that happened at the nation's capital was the polar opposite of what went down two weeks before. That's what was most memorable. It had absolutely nothing to do with the Trump-bred Capital Mall insurrection--no screaming, no shouting, no confederate flags.

And even though Trump's minions hoisted Jesus signs, there was more honest spirituality in that Inauguration Day than anything 45 and his crew could stage, even if they wanted to. Trump basically emptied the word evangelical of whatever it once held of deeply-felt spirituality. In a post-Trump world, to be an evangelical means you pray a lot, hate gays, and think America is the Kingdom of God. His people, plain and simple, are Christian nationalists; they love Jesus just like they love the flag.

Yesterday, there was none of that. 

But the very best thing about yesterday was what happened the night before, the stirring silence of remembrance on the National Mall. Amazing, isn't it?--how incredibly easy it is to forget what we simply hadn't done as a nation, offered remembrance for the tally of souls that gets harder to imagine the bigger it becomes. 

In Sioux County, we've lost 57 people; in Iowa, 4400; in the USA, 406,000, and in the world, better than two million. The truth is, the Schaaps have not suffered personally from the attack of virus. As long as you don't, 400 thousand men and women is a number so vast it long ago climbed out of our personal and collective imagination. 

Try this: take the entire population of the city of the Des Moines, wipe them off the face of the earth. Now add to that every last resident of Sioux Falls, and then just about all of Sioux City. Wipe all of them out. That's where we're at. 

This morning I'm thankful for whoever in the Biden camp determined that the fitting way of beginning the inauguration festivities was with lament and remembrance. The dead are gone; they no longer need our devotion; but the millions who grieve their losses need to know that the rest of remember and care. To begin what has now begun by remembering to remember, in silence and awe, was a blessing.

This morning I'm thankful for Lady Gaga, but my deepest thanks goes to those who helped all of us remember to remember.