Saturday
In a time of suffering—one million Covid cases, a quarter of a million Covid deaths, economic collapse–we now know that our next president will be a man who himself has suffered and who has developed an extraordinary capacity for empathy. In other words, Biden may be just the leader America needs at this moment.
To mark the occasion, I turn to a passage from Aeschylus’s Agamemnon written 2500 years ago
He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
Such wisdom came to the president-elect. May it come to the United States of America.