A New Song for America ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
September 27, 2026
Every year, sometime in February, I start to notice some subtle changes outdoors. There’s always a morning when I look at the trees and notice that the branches look slightly different: you can see tiny swellings and some reddish color that signals the beginning of a new season, of new growth.
Lately I have been feeling that same sense of small changes stirring in our political life: hints, perhaps, that a pendulum that has swung very far in one direction might be slowing in its arc, maybe approaching that critical point that a pendulum always reaches, the point where it pauses and then begins to swing back.
Over the last 10 years, I have been sustained by my faith that tiny buds always begin to appear, in what feels like the dead of winter, and that a pendulum always swings back in the other direction. And my interest in human history has contributed to this faith, that humanity can take a wrong turn in very destructive directions, but eventually does right itself and begin to act in ways that help people to flourish.
If this moment is beginning to emerge, then we have been waiting a long time. Some have been waiting far longer than others: African Americans and indigenous people have been waiting for hundreds of years.
In the United States, the pendulum of our history began a rapid change of direction around 10 or 11 years ago, as we prepared for the presidential election of 2016, and the end of the Obama Administration. I was more naïve then, and thought that two terms with a president of color would usher us further along a path of inclusion, of broadening who we see as our neighbors, of who has a seat at this table we call the United States.
And then, moment by moment, the pendulum began to swing back. It was hard for me to believe at first, hard for me to take seriously. But step by step, the momentum gathered speed, and a tipping point was reached that felt unimaginable: a presidential nominee that was unfit, divisive, and determined to drag the US back to some point in the distant past when white males could largely do what suited them.
Tipping points are important indicators, like tiny buds, that we should carefully watch for. They can be explained as a point when changes we observe become irreversible; a trend that no longer can be stopped, a direction that is suddenly self-sustaining. Often we think of tipping points as negative; for example, a point where leaders or government officials we once considered trustworthy sold out for political or financial power. How often did we watch while a politician derided the current president until all of a sudden they announced they would support him? And those moments built up momentum until the pendulum moving backwards toward the 19th century could no longer be stopped.
Another example of a very important negative tipping point has to do with the health of the world’s climate: that 1.5 or 2 degree Celsius rise in the earth’s temperature that will signal irreversible damage to our polar ice and our coral reefs. There is a lot to worry about.
Here in the United States there is also much that is worrisome, even frightening, and still many incidents that could lead to a tipping point downward into complete authoritarianism. We see the lawless grabbing of people off the streets by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the injuries and deaths, the denial of due process. We see the threats to voting rights and the rule of law. It’s important to not downplay these very real threats to our way of life.
But in recent weeks, I have begun to feel the way I do in February, with those little hints of buds swelling on tree branches. As we approach the midterm elections in just over a month, I feel more and more a sense of waiting for a new tipping point, a pendulum swing back toward our democratic norms.
It’s early days, yet. I sense the pendulum slowing, not reversing. It’s up to us to reverse it. It will take great effort of everyone who wants our country to return to our long-held values. Perhaps the new tipping point is as close as the midterm elections on November 3. Are we ready to help change direction? Can we begin to once again hear America singing?
Our theme this month is Beginnings: a very apt topic for September, with back to school, so many events and activities resuming as we move beyond summer’s less structured days. So our question today is: what would a new beginning for America look like?
“I want a new song,” wrote our poet. (Dear Mr. Whitman, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)
The song she describes, interestingly, begins not with louder singing, but with listening. With silence. In the past 10 years, we’ve had very little silence, but ever-increasing arguing, and refusal to hear one another. Public speech has become intended to divide, not to unite us. We have grown used to name-calling, derision, and insults. Somehow, to listen to someone else, to say “Well, maybe you’re right,” or, “I never thought about that,” is seen as weakness. Somehow, strength is equated with never giving in, never listening to another. Calling for more silence is a wise first step in learning how to come together.
I have my own thoughts on a new beginning for America, and I wanted to share them with you this morning to help you start thinking about the future, for that time when the pendulum does begin to swing back. How do we help our country begin again?
I would start with a practice that also includes listening, and that is committing to a truth and reconciliation process. There is a wide crack in our national foundation, created by our embracing of enslavement, and our treatment of our indigenous peoples. We failed to live up to the ideals we set for ourselves in our founding documents: to treat all people as equal. We continue to fail. And yet we have made no attempt to face that history, to acknowledge it publicly, to apologize or to make amends. We will never repair our cracked foundation until we summon the will to listen, to apologize, to try to restore what we owe to people whose labor and land we stole.
Imagine the song we could sing, if we stopped trying to hide our history. Imagine if we could rebuild, begin again, with a sturdier foundation.
Another verse in a new song should be about universal health care. I have spoken before about Thomas Jefferson’s famous phrase, ‘the pursuit of happiness’, and how in his time, ‘happiness’ meant ‘flourishing’. Imagine if everyone was entitled to the heath care they need, not just the health care that their employer will pay for.
Our planet must have a verse in our new song. We have the technology to turn wholeheartedly toward renewable energy. As commentator Rebecca Solnit said recently, our clinging to fossil fuels is not a technology problem, but rather a political one. (NYT interview)
There was a very interesting segment on WBUR, public radio, on Friday, in which an English climate scientist, Professor Tim Lenton, was talking about how quickly an economy can change direction. He told of how Norway made a choice to commit to electric vehicles. It turns out that in 2010, there were 338 battery electric cars in Norway. And now, it’s approaching 98%. (www.wbur.com, On Point, September 25, 2026, What We Can Actually Do to Save the Planet.)
There’s an example of a positive tipping point, by the way. If a pendulum can swing so quickly in Norway, why not here in the US?
I could go on and on: we could talk about strengthening voting rights, returning to the vision of the 1960’s Great Society, committing to affordable education for everyone. I’m sure you each have your own lists: perhaps better mental health care, more affordable housing, an end to gun violence, a foreign policy that rejects aggression and war crimes. As I talk I keep adding more. Our new song will have many verses, rather like those old English folk ballads or maybe Alice’s Restaurant.
There’s no need to add more verses here today to our song. What we understand, in hearing our hopes spoken aloud, woven into a new song for our country, is that it is all completely possible. All these new beginnings, every one of them, has been implemented somewhere else. The song America has been singing for at least the last 10 years, and possibly for the last century, has become an old one. We aren’t really listening carefully to it anymore; rather, too often we are shouting over it, drowning it out, and with the noise and commotion, keeping a new song from being heard.
Our poet wrote,
“Any singer knows being louder
just makes discord, and harmony
needs constant attunement
to every other singer.
I want to hear America listening.” (Dear Mr. Whitman, Trommer)
So our message today, in the end, is a message about hope, the same kind of hope we feel in noticing the first tiny buds while standing in the snow of February. I have been remembering how I felt, how many of us felt, the day after the presidential election just about two years ago now. It was hard to feel any hope at all. The last two years have been very, very hard, possibly even harder and uglier and meaner than we could have imagined on that November afternoon when we invited people to gather here in this sanctuary to hold our feelings together and to process. I remember telling you to ‘find your people’. And that is exactly what you and other people all over the country have done. And I have been realizing in recent weeks that I am feeling hopeful again, and starting to turn toward the future.
Author and commentator Rebecca Solnit recently said this in a New York Times interview: “I think the counter to Trump always has been and always will be civil society. A lot of the left wants social change to look like the French Revolution or Che Guevara. Maybe changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war. Too many people still expect it to look like war…I just want us to understand that most of the important change is collective.” (David Marchese interview with Rebecca Solnit, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/magazine/rebecca-solnit-interview.html)
Collective. Communal. Community: gathering together, finding our strength in one another.
Our poet again: “And when the many parts do arise,
glorious in their differences,
I want to hear inside them
the careful attention that tunes
them to each other…”
We know a new song for America will emerge; a new beginning. I hope we are all listening for the faint tune and creating words to fit it. And we know that for it to be heard above the rancor and hatred that it will take the community of hopeful people raising their voices in harmony.
May we join other in raising our voices, and begin creating a new song for America.
