Church briefs

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Away From the Game: Wyoming Seminary wrestling coach Scott Green

<p>We typically make great fanfare and hoopla for a person coming into a prominent office. We even have names for the events. A presidential inauguration, the installation of a bishop or university president and, of course (though not in this country), the coronation of a king or queen.</p><p>That&#8217;s all well and good, but why do we not have similar words for the day that person leaves that office?</p><p>Bishops and university presidents aren&#8217;t uninstalled, though that would make them sound like obsolete computer programs. They simply retire or step down, often with some sort of goodbye dinner within the organization, but never with an uninstallation ceremony.</p><p>The truth is that most monarchs leave office by, well, dying, and they routinely get as big a send off in death as they got upon ascension to the throne. But if one opts to retire (like a bishop or college president) there is no pomp and circumstances surrounding a de-coronation.</p><p>Heck, it&#8217;s called &#8220;abdication,&#8221; from the Latin &#8220;abdicatus,&#8221; meaning renounce. You can&#8217;t elegantly step down as king or queen, you can only fail to fulfill your responsibility.</p><p>Similarly, there is no uninauguration or ex-auguration for presidents. They may give farewell speeches, but so do a lot of people who have worked a long time at one job.</p><p>In fact, the origin of &#8220;inauguration&#8221; is sort of (if not literally) ominous &#8212; derived from the word omen.</p><p>To quote directly from merriam-webster.com:</p><p><em>Inauguration is all about telling what the future holds&#8212;etymologically speaking.</em></p><p><em>Inaugurate comes from the Latin word inaugurare, which was formed by combining in- with aug&#275;re, meaning &#8220;to increase.&#8221; Aug&#275;re is likely the origin of augur, spelled the same in Latin and English, though the path of the word&#8217;s development isn&#8217;t certain. Either augur originally meant &#8220;one who furthers the growth or increase of an enterprise&#8221; and subsequently &#8220;one who sees favorable omens for success&#8221; or the progression could have been &#8220;growth or increase owing to the gods&#8217; favor&#8221; and subsequently &#8220;favorable omen,&#8221; with the omen then becoming the word for the person who reads or announces it, making an augur &#8220;an official diviner of ancient Rome.&#8221; Another related word developed to name the activity of augurs: augury.</em></p><p>By that definition one could argue we hold an inauguration to mark &#8220;favorable omens for success,&#8221; in which case critics of a sitting president could just as easily hold an inauguration when said president leaves, seeing it as sign of future success.</p><p>But interpreting an inauguration as an augur of future growth or increase of success may actually explain why we have no comparable ceremony for outgoing presidents. As they leave the office, they have already done whatever they were going to do to help us succeed, regardless of your judgment of their efforts or outcomes.</p><p>We inaugurate a president as a sign of upbeat hope.</p><p>Regardless of your politics, there is nothing lost by, at least for a day, hoping for better.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">President Donald Trump waves after delivering his inaugural address after being sworn in as the 45th president of the United States during the 58th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Friday, Jan. 20, 2017.(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_AP17020626498523-3.jpg</photo0><caption0>President Donald Trump waves after delivering his inaugural address after being sworn in as the 45th president of the United States during the 58th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Friday, Jan. 20, 2017.(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)</caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>

Our view: Inaugurations should be time for optimism