For 13 years she has served as Washington D.C’s first female diocesan bishop. She is the Bishop of Washington’s National Cathedral and as part of her dominion tradition, she held a service for the incoming President. No matter your faith or what country you live in, her words and request of that sermon are words of basic human decency; nothing out of the ordinary for a congregation of decent humans. And her steadfast commitment to refuse to apologia for human decency is nothing short of heroic to those of us who desperately need a hero now.
In less than one week, the greatest country in the world has reverted to the ideology of the greatest evil our world has ever known; it is truly the stuff of cinema — but sadly is not fiction. This is a time when our voices and stories matter more than ever.
But at the core of Bishop Budde’s compassionate plea for humanity, is a brilliant character study in cinematic conflict. Watching the unqualified president elect, his immigrant wife, his spineless and fraudulent VP and wife born into citizenship from immigrant parents, and all of his long blonde extension-addled bimbo daughters and in-laws and cocaine-addled sons, squirm in their seats as the Bishop asked a simple act of mercy for human decency, could not have been captured more powerfully from Spielberg or Scorsese.
I have watched that clip so many times to see the silent uncomfortable seething that the misinformed populace has entrusted with our future elected, it is both joyous and heartbreaking at once, and a master class in storytelling. The demand that the bishop apologize and her refusal to do so is not even the point. The cinematic beauty of it, is the sweet melodic sermon that held the heathens captive in a confined space, to squirm and feel the power of her every word. The squirms indicative of hearts knowing they have been caught and are being called out for all to see. The perfect way to take down an adversary.In dark times we need to find the bright spots, and the helpers.
Never in a million years did any of us imagine one would emerge from the National Cathedral’s inaugural prayer service. And unlike every other branch in D.C. that is being dismantled and reduced to joke status, the Bishop cannot be fired by the insane president elect she so perfectly made squirm.
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Mariann Edgar Budde showed us what true moral courage looks like.