Looking for signs – or not – as Trump takes office in the rain

About a half an hour before Donald J. Trump took the oath of office and became the 45^th President of the United States of America, I was driving south on Second Avenue and noticed dark rain clouds looming over the city.

I didn’t consider it a sign.

In my life, I’ve experienced beautiful days that looked ugly and ugly days that looked beautiful.

For example, on a January Friday more than 20 years ago, Bess and I were living in Frankfurt, Germany, and were driving to spend the weekend in Berlin.

Not far from home, we got stuck on the autobahn in a snowstorm and sat there for hours, watching angry flakes blot out the sun. Then we noticed, off the shoulder and into the woods, a gravel service road. After a brief risk assessment, I stepped on the gas, powering our little Volkswagen into a thicket and then through a dark tunnel leading under the autobahn.

After a hairpin turn, it deposited us into the Frankfurt-bound traffic, and we were home before we knew it. There, we heated up some gluhwein and spent the next two days on the couch watching American movies. It was one of the most pleasant weekends of my life.

But it works both ways. One of the most beautiful fall days on record was on Oct. 10, 2010, when I took my boys to Turner Field to watch the Braves battle the Giants in Game 3 of the Division Championship Series.

Man, it was a gorgeous day. When Eric Hinske hit a pinch-hit homer in the eighth inning to give the Braves the lead, the fans chanted and did the tomahawk chop. The sun was setting, and we were all bathed in golden light.

A half an inning later, when Brooks Conrad set a record for most errors in a division series and squandered the lead for good, the fans swore and threw things. But the sun was still setting, and we were all still bathed in golden light.

And note the date: 10/10/10. But I don’t blame weather patterns, or numerical patterns. As I learned as a child in Sunday School, an evil generation demands a sign.

Jesus said that, when the Pharisees and Sadducees asked him for a sign from heaven, “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky,” Jesus said in Matthew 16, “but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”

So I didn’t read anything into the rain clouds. They merely meant it would probably rain.

In Washington, D.C., it was raining, and President Trump was talking about ending “crime and gangs and drugs.”

“This American carnage stops right here and now!” he said.

Somewhere in America, Mad Max was climbing on his motorcycle and heading for the border.

When Trump finished his speech, he was followed by a rabbi and then the Rev. Franklin Graham.

“Rain is a sign of God’s blessing,” Graham told the new president, “and it started to rain when you came to the podium.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way. I was hung up on rain as biblically a bad thing – you know, the flood and all that.

On social media, the people were also looking for signs.

“The world just ended,” somebody posted on Facebook.

“For the better,” someone else wrote.

“A president doesn’t have a big impact on your life,” said another.

So it all depends on what you already thought before any of this happened.

So may your days be sunny and bright.

Or filled with soothing, blessed rain.

You know, whatever floats your boat.

This story was originally published January 20, 2017 at 5:14 PM with the headline "Looking for signs – or not – as Trump takes office in the rain."