This Awful Week in Our Nation’s Capital

If you are reading this and live in another part of the country or in another country, I don’t necessarily fault you if you don’t grasp the enormity of it. Those who know me well know that I’m not normally one to hyperbolize, so please take me at my word when I state that this has been a truly awful week in our nation’s capital.

Those of us who live and work here have had a front row seat as the President of the United States has intentionally manufactured widespread chaos. I can’t think of a metaphor accurate or precise enough to describe it.

And then not halfway through the week, 67 people fell to their deaths in the Potomac River. Requiem aeternam dona ets, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ets. Kyrie eleison.

I live right under the approach/departure path for National Airport and the normally busy sky was eerily silent when I walked around my neighborhood on Thursday morning. I hoped that this time, just maybe, it might be different, but the president did what he does best and demonstrated a complete lack of leadership during this tragedy.

I spent two evenings this week in the company of two different groups of friends, saw my coworkers in person twice as well as virtually throughout the week, and the anger and tears have reached a new level. I myself, who normally doesn’t get very angry, have found myself bordering on being absolutely livid.

Livid that dear friends and neighbors have gone to bed each night, not knowing if they’ll wake up to a notice that they’ve lost their job. Livid that those friends and neighbors who are still in the federal workforce have had the most stressful work days of their careers, not knowing if they can even do the work they went into public service to do. Livid that the nonprofit organizations I work for or simply care about are unable to plan even for what they’ll be able to accomplish next week, let alone next year.

One friend showed up to dinner the other night minutes after finding out that twenty percent of her bureau had been laid off. Last night, another friend told us he had spent the whole week in meetings with senior leaders of his department, trying in vain to interpret nonsensical executive orders. I’m in my final week at my current job and I have really struggled with providing my boss a final cash flow forecast since the external variables may very well change significantly moments after I log off for the last time. I’ve lost count of the number of depressing, gut-wrenching anecdotes Naomi and I have shared with each other over dinner in recent days.

More than once in the last week and a half, I’ve thought to myself and expressed to Naomi or a friend: “You know who would actually be doing a good job right now? Kamala Harris.” And I’m not normally a snarky much less a cynical person. (And actually, from digging a little further beneath the top headlines, it seems that Kamala Harris is actually doing a great job distributing food and supplies in communities in Southern California who are devastated by the wildfires. Remember when that crisis was top of the news earlier in this month? Turns out that the fires are still burning, even though we’ve become very distracted by the literal fireball over the Potomac this week, let alone the proverbial dumpster fire that is the executive branch of the federal government.)

I consider myself a person of prayer, but I have struggled mightily with what and how to pray. And so, I’ve simply gone to the guidance that Jesus gave us when he taught us how to pray, commonly known as the Lord’s Prayer. Even as I type them here, I confess they seem inadequate to the moment. But if the collective voices of millions of Americans calling their congressional representatives can get the White House to reverse a directive freezing federal funding, then surely our collective voices crying to the Lord for the kingdom to come and for our daily bread and for deliverance from evil will be infinitely more powerful.

Our Father, who art in heaven

Hallowed be thy name

Thy kingdom come

Thy will be done

On earth as it is in heaven

Give us this day our daily bread

And forgive us our debts

As we have forgiven our debtors

And lead us not into temptation

But deliver us from evil

For thine is the kingdom

And the power

And the glory

Forever and ever

Amen

Lord, in your mercy. Hear our prayer.