In the New Year
The end of a year is always a bit melancholy. I feel
it most keenly when I update my Christmas card list. This year is no exception,
but the early weeks have been a bit hectic. Jan and I have been on the road
since Christmas with a lot of driving, some times of reflection, a near family
wedding, a near family memorial service and a lot of time to think “what if?”
The wedding reached back to a church I served while in
seminary. With parents now dead, we stood at the creation of a new blended family.
We were a parental presence, and the officiate serving the state and offering
the presence of the church and the blessing of God on the occasion of this
second chance at marriage.
And why? Because to the couple marriage mattered even
if they had not done it so well the first time around. The work now is no less
hard than it was when there were twenty-five, but they still thought it
important to go public with their affection and desire to make it work this
time. Despite mistakes, poor decisions, and the battered
reputation of the institution itself, they
believed it important to say before their families and children that they
wanted to make this marriage work.
There are many who believe marriage is in trouble
because same gender couples want to crash the traditional party. My experience
tells me that marriage is in trouble not because the players have changed but
because we have all forgotten what hard work it is to create a new family and
make it function over the long haul in the service of our best intentions.
Rather than support these intentions and offer our support we want to keep the
club closed in the name of tradition. We
are better off when we offer new families our care and blessings. God can
sort out the details.
The memorial service reached back to the heady days of
undergraduate study 50 years ago. Our friend had a successful career as a surgeon and
teacher of medicine. He died from a disease that was a variant of a foe he had
battled for his whole career. He had
answered Matthew Arnold’s contention that the world “so various so beautiful,
so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor help
for pain;…” (Dover Beach) by offering however imperfectly his life and his
friendship as a joy for over fifty years.
His students spoke of his high standards and his
integrity. He turned his back on the certitude of religious commitment aware of
the humanity of the church and attracted by the promise of science that might
right the wrongs tolerated by God and excused by those who explained away the
hurt. In his final illness the irony was that the
practitioners he depended on misread the signs and cut short his life. Science failed him. I remembered a friend who gave his life in the
service of humankind and offered help for pain.
In the background we have returned to office our first
black President and heard him articulate a vision of the future that is as
hopeful as it is bold. His words were
heard on a day celebrated as a memorial to the martyred Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. Fifty years ago there was no holiday and the thought that one
day there might be a black President stretched the imagination of the most
hopeful. Those details have been sorted out and I am persuaded God’s hand is on
his able servant.
What if in this new day the story can be one of
working together to build a better future for us all? Barack Obama has made it clear that he will
commit to the possible rather than demand the perfect. I share his vision of
the common good. The Republican Party has made it clear that they will risk
nothing that might enhance his legacy, but now that they have not defeated him
it is time for them to commit to common ground where we can work together. Shared effort will benefit us all and confirm
that the progress of the last fifty years is a shared endeavor. God will sort
out the details; our fears need not hold back our hopes. In the New Year melancholy can give way to
joy.
Robert M. Randolph
Chaplain to the Institute
