The Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States and all the events surrounding it seemed to swallow up the last days of January. The event even became a part of our Sunday service on the 25th in that the preacher, our young intern, used the event as an analogy. The gospel story for the day was of Jesus passing the fishermen Simon and Andrew and telling them to ‘come follow’ him and he would make them fishers of men. It was the ‘inauguration’ of Christ’s ministry. Both the new President and Christ offered tools to carry out their mission, The intern said, Christ by way of the beatitudes, parables, and the acts of the early Church. The new President offered a change in the ‘divided house’, by a renewal of the individual’s ability to do so – “you can”! He gave us reasons to hope using the words of George Washington, “that in the depth of winter of our hardship when nothing but hope and virtue could survive..that the country..came forth to meet it”
I later pointed out to the Intern, Aaron DeBendetto, that he omitted one other ‘inauguration’, namely his becoming a father and ordained Minster. He and his wife Meredith are expecting a daughter this month!
We had some first for the McSorleys in this campaign and inauguration. Grandson Tommy marched in the parade. His Mom and Dad, and sister Linda all went to D.C. to watch the swearing in ceremony. His Uncle Bill also went to watch the country receiving a new president. His dad and his uncle both worked for Obama’s election for over a year before it occurred. During that Tom had a picture taken with the then candidate Obama. Grandson Tom was a participant in the parade as a member of the Americorp. It is, as I understand it, an organization of young college grads that take on jobs like Tom did in “Teach America”. He was selected for the parade in a lottery, which picked 150 of the organization as participants. He incidentally carried the state flag of Florida in that march. We tried to catch a glimpse of him as he marched past the President and Vice President and their wives, but they weren’t on camera long enough to do so.
In all the years I was active in politics I never went to an inauguration. The closest I ever got to a President was watching John Kennedy coming north in a convertible on Broad Street in Philadelphia during his campaign in 1959. My Dad and I left our law office, also on Broad Street, and went down to see him drive by. He gave us a wave! But Tom, his wife Donna, daughter Linda, and Bill weren’t the only ones to see an inauguration for the first time since the crowd on the Mall was the largest ever for such an event.
Putting Kennedy and Obama together in this writing brought back another thought: They were as far as I know they only Presidents, other than possibly Thomas Jefferson, who at the time they were inaugurated had published a book. In fact Obama had published two: “Dreams of My Father”(1995) and “The Audacity of Hope” (2006)
At the end of October 2008 on the advice of a respiratory specialist, I took a sleep test. From that test it was determined that I stopped breathing up to 15 times or so an hour. The specialist thus recommended that I start inhaling oxygen as I slept and the rest of the day. So began my being tied to a leash. When I sleep I use a mask to receive the air and a machine humidifies it before it is blown into my system. I have mentioned this condition before but then the climax has to be that my son-in-law and good friend, Ron Yake, sent me a book entitled “THE INVENTION OF AIR” by Stephen Johnson. It has a subtitle. “ A Story of SCIENCE, FAITH, REVOLUTION, and THE BIRTH OF AMERICA”. “The book came to me early January and I thought it appropriate that Ron should send me something about “air” in view of it now being provided to me by machine to make up the loss of it being circulated in my body. The book is a biography of Joseph Priestly and an early inventor, minister, and politician in the time of the American Revolutions. He dabbled in electricity before hitting upon oxygen. Now the title alone, “Invention of Air”, is a bit amusing in that he didn’t do so. Air is there, and here, etc. and we along with the animals and plants use it. As the author notes, “…there was little reason to think there was anything to investigate: the world was filled with stuff – people, animals, plants, sprigs of mint – and then there was the nothingness between all the stuff. Why would you study nothingness when there was such a vast supply to explain? There wasn’t a problem in the nothingness that needed explaining…the lack of a clear problem kept the questions at bay, and the lack of questions left the problems as invisible as the air itself.” But maybe, says the author, it was because now in 1770 they had new tools with which to explore it. One particular tool that brought this about was an ‘air pump’. It could create a vacuum, or absence of air, and a candle would go out, etc. And so goes the story of Priestly getting into trying to discover just what was this ‘stuff’.
The book was the subject of a review in the New York Times Book Review for January 25,2009. I can not remember ever owning a book before it was so reviewed. I have, in the past, because of the review gone out and purchased a book. So Ron gave me another ‘first’! I recall the name Joseph Priestly from my readings of the life of Jefferson. However I didn’t recall him as specifically being the one who led Jefferson to becoming a Deist. The beliefs of Priestly caused his home to be destroyed in England and his leaving for America. Even here he had, after being well received and praised for his work, a run-in with Adams and the politics of the day nearly causing for him another ouster. His friendship with Jefferson and Jefferson becoming President in 1801 solved all those problems.
Priestly didn’t believe in the divinity of Christ. Jefferson didn’t either. Jefferson took the New Testament and cut out the sayings and acts of Jesus that to Jefferson made Him to be a ‘good moral teacher’. He put these items in vertical rows, the first in Greek, the next the Latin and last row in English. This was his “New Testament”. This editing by Jefferson reminds me of the analysis by C.S. Lewis. Lewis asks, how could Christ be a ‘good moral teacher’ if he lied? He says this because in the gospels Christ said, he was the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies some twenty one times; he said he was the ‘Son of God’ twenty times; the ‘Messiah’ or ‘Christ’ seventeen times, etc. You could go on and enumerating all the statements he makes of being the Savior, the Son of Man, etc. So the ‘selective’ reading by Jefferson and others, with claims of him being a good moral teacher lose their validity. Priestly and Jefferson don’t seem to be very ‘scientific’ when it comes to checking out Christ’s divinity. Their overlooking his claims of his divinity in effect ignores what are stated facts.
Sometime ago I lost my wedding ring. It falls off my finger when my hands get cold. It had happened before but I then saw it drop off or heard it hit the ground. This time I couldn’t find it. I left messages at the places I had been that day. It became the subject of a story. That I was on a leash now because I lost my wedding ring and June put me on that leash. Actually she didn’t tell anyone that, but I made believe she did. Then I was lucky and found the ring. It was in the car door on the driver’s side. I must have been looking for something in the pocket like section on the side of the door and the ring fell off. Until the weather warms up I’m keeping it on my key ring. Oh! Yes! I’m still on a leash but this time just to keep the oxygen coming into my system.
Until next time, Pax Tecum!