Before the arrival of COVID-19 and the closure of most major entertainment venues, the hottest ticket on Broadway and in most cities across the US was the musical Hamilton. I finally had the chance to see it in the summer of 2019 while visiting San Francisco on a day trip from LA, and despite it being rather long, it was the most entertaining show I had ever seen on stage. The combination of acting, singing, rapping, and dancing piqued my inner musical theater nerd and had me downloading the soundtrack as soon as the cast took their final bows. If you have not seen it yet, Disney Plus released it online this past summer with the original Broadway cast. While everyone seems to love the signature piece, My Shot, where Alexander Hamilton (Lin-Manuel Miranda) fervently proclaims, “I’m not throwing away my shot!” the show-stopping number for me is the song Satisfied. Performed by Angelica Schuyler (Renée Elise Goldsberry), the song takes place as a toast at the wedding reception where Angelica is the maid of honor, and she offers words of encouragement to Alexander Hamilton and her sister Eliza Schuyler. She begins with a toast to the bride and groom, and then the song rewinds to when she meets Alexander for the first time. Alexander tells her: “You're like me. You’re never satisfied.” She’s initially taken aback by his stance but later becomes intrigued by his flirtatious banter. Within a matter of moments, she has to decide if she will pursue this chance at romance, or if she will offer Alexander to her younger sister Eliza, who finds him equally attractive. Hamilton is broke and poor, and as the older sister, her only job is to marry rich in efforts to climb the social ladder of success. Essentially, she has to choose between potential love or her livelihood. If Angelica chooses love, she would be reduced to a state of living that was not conducive to her lifestyle, and she would not be satisfied. However, if she chooses a comfortable livelihood and marries for wealth, she would potentially lose out on the love of her life and still would not be satisfied. For Angelica Schuyler, it’s a lose-lose situation, what we call a catch 22. In the end, Angelica offers Hamilton to her sister Eliza, to have some relationship and see him from time to time. At the end of the song, she reaches this moment of self-awareness, where she’s riddled with emptiness and regret and realizes that she will never be satisfied. In my most humble opinion, it is the most powerful and vulnerable performance, and I understand why it garnered Goldsberry a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.
I realize that for many of us, the year 2020 has left us feeling like Angelica Schuyler after her show-stopping number: vulnerable and empty. We have had to make some tough decisions and sacrifices this past year, where it seems like regardless of the outcome, it is a lose-lose situation. We have had to choose between love, spending time with family and friends, or maintaining our livelihoods and well-being by staying safe in the confines of our apartments and homes. We have neglected social outings, such as birthdays, and even everyday routine activities, like yoga and the gym, to maintain socially distant lifestyles. Some of these decisions have come at the expense of our mental health, and being socially distant has taken a toll on us emotionally and mentally. If I can be honest and transparent, even as a chaplain, I have had moments when I have felt empty over the past 10 months. However, one thing that keeps me going, despite the weariness of a pandemic and lack of human interaction, is hope. I have hope that things will get better, and I’m going to be satisfied while in this season of waiting.
With a year filled with a relentless and unyielding pandemic, racial upheaval, several deaths of friends, family, and celebrity mentors, this feeling of hope has sustained me. It continues to sustain me even as Rhode Island is on the precipice of yet another two-week semi-lockdown. Ironically, this lockdown falls at the beginning of what we Christians celebrate as the Season of Advent, a season of waiting in expectation for the birth of our holy savior. I realize that many of you reading this message practice different faith traditions; however, regardless of our religious identities, most of us can understand what it’s like to wait in expectation for something and not necessarily know when it will come to pass.
We wait in expectation for a vaccine for COVID-19, and we have hope that we will be able to embrace each other when we see each other in passing. We have hope that our economy will rebound and that that the unemployed will find jobs post-pandemic. For those millennials struggling with student loan debt, we have hope that we will see some loan forgiveness in the future. We hope that the world will finally begin to see the humanity in one another regardless of our racial, religious, and sexual identities. So, we wait in expectation for a better tomorrow, a better future, with the hopes that our latter years will be greater than our former.
Last week, I felt down because I could not travel to Chicago for Thanksgiving and experience my mother’s famous sweet potato pie. I went to my local grocery store and picked up a Patti LaBelle Sweet Potato Pie. As I bit into this Patti pie, I realized that it was certainly not my mother’s and was not what I expected. It was just okay, decent at best, as the spices were different from my mother’s……….I still ate the whole pie. Even though it didn’t taste like Shirl Pearson’s pie, it was fulfilling and satisfied my sweet tooth, which provided me with some Thanksgiving normalcy; I was still thankful and was satisfied. This pie experience was reflective of my entire year. 2020 has taught me to be grateful and satisfied with the things that I do have instead of things that I don't. My sincerest prayer is that while you are in your season of waiting, you sincerely have hope while being thankful and satisfied with what you already have.
This is our last chapbook for 2020. Look for us again in mid-January, 2021!
