Mystery may lie in the hope for a battered institution: democracy.  Yesterday’s inauguration was a procession of artists standing up to sing with optimism and a poet who proclaimed in her own words:

We did not feel prepared to be the heirs

Of such a terrifying hour.

But within it we’ve found the power

To author a new chapter

To offer hope and laughter to ourselves.

Amanda Gorman, Youth Poet Laureat

Why do some insist on writing and singing for hope, when the preceding year was inscribed with defeat? Is it because of the occasion of a new President being inaugurated? Does ceremony demand optimism? Are we just singing or writing what the occasion demanded of us? Will we sing the same tune a year, a month, a week from now?

Yes, it is part of mystery that humankind keeps cheering for life, when death surrounds and pessimism seems to carry the day. And pessimism has a stronger undertow than ever, because the songs of conspiracy, of denial, of accusations seem stronger by the day.  We can anticipate no honeymoon period for the new President, because so many, even in Congress,  deny even the legitimacy of his election.  The celebration is over, the affirmation is dead within a day of the inauguration, because the rivals are already campaigning for the next one.

Legitimacy is just a fantasy when you play the game of politics, and the next election is the only issue you take seriously.  The outgoing Secretary of State tweeted his accusations against multiculturalism on the SAME DAY as the inauguration. What can that be but a hat in the ring for the next election, a smirk at the diversity on the very inauguration platform? There is no honeymoon, only the pointless bickering that can ruin a marriage.

The mystery is that we keep alive the hopes of an inauguration, when there is so  much static and pessimism to distract us. The mystery is the determination to see the sun behind the clouds, the spring beyond the chill of the mercury descending, the promised vaccination when the hospitals are full of patients precariously holding on to life. The mystery is that the cynics do not take over after another tragedy, another shuddering disappointment. They make headlines, but they do carry us into the pit.  We turn back. We shake them off.

Increasingly our dancing steps to the band on the platform, while a discordant army marches just behind it. Hope demands faith and focus.  Maybe we are naive for defying the naysayers, but I prefer to believe we are embracing the mystery. The mystery is not defensible, it just is. As the Moody Blues sings it