Yesterday, as I watched the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden, Jr., as the 46th president of the United States, I cried ugly tears. I wiped every bit of makeup off my face as I cried tears of fear, tears of relief, tears of joy.
I listened as Biden declared that “we must end this uncivil war,” and I cried.
I watched America swear in a woman—and a woman of color, at that—as vice president, and I cried.
I sang “Amazing Grace” with Garth Brooks, and I cried.
I thought about the walls that are being built, the babies that are in cages, the systemic racism that pervades our nation, the climate change that is swallowing up our world, the pandemic that has taken family and friends, the violence that reached all the way to the U.S. Capitol building—and I cried.
But most of all, I cried tears of joy at the words of a 22-year-old former National Youth Poet Laureate.
Amanda Gorman put to words the push and pull that many of us have been feeling in our divided nation. With her poem “The Hill We Climb,” she became the youngest poet to speak at a presidential inauguration. She followed in the footsteps of Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, but she took backstage to no one.
Gorman encapsulated the very real struggles we have faced over the last year by saying “Even as we grieved, we grew.” She offered a chorus of calls of “we will rise” from every corner of our country. And her calls for unity and harmony mirrored President Biden’s own speech. Gorman said:
“And 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
That 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.”—Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb” (Watch her read it here.)
Again, she said: “We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.”
At Prairiewoods, we talk a lot about the “wider We”—that focus on the Earth community as a whole, not just on the individual. It is a way of being that folds in all people, as well as all creatures, all plants, all parts of this glorious planet Earth. It is an attempt to reach our arms out to one another, celebrating ways that we are connected rather than ways we are separate. It is a focus not on the ego (the individual) but on the eco (all of Earth).
Yesterday, I felt like Amanda Gorman got it. And I cried.
—Andi Lewis, Prairiewoods marketing coordinator