You see how I try
To reach with words
What matters most
And how I fail.
―Czelaw Milosz

Language, for me, has continued to be both blessing and curse, a love affair and a trial. To commit a word to paper (or screen), to launch a string of words into a public sphere, to destine a paragraph for the larger work of an essay or story, to craft poetic words that hold the integrity of a line–herein lies the pleasure and the pain of language.

During my university and professional years, my season of language was largely characterized by explaining, interpreting, analyzing, critiquing, reflecting upon, and recommending. I remember the evening hours I spent in the Calvin T. Ryan Library on my college campus. These were dedicated writing hours during which I labored (and I mean labored) to transfer my research and insights into something worthy of being submitted to my professors. A productive night? A three-hour hashing and re-hashing of the best words I could muster into a single paragraph. A blood-letting of the mind and soul that resulted in a fatigue that often left me even too tired to sleep. There was no quick-drafting. No spontaneous overflow of ideas or emotions. Nothing like that. This was more the work of a laborer than an artist. This was the gut-wrenching work of trying to reach with words/what matters most only to fail more times than I succeeded.

Ernest Heminway writes:

All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

In spite of the challenges of this season of language, I was, and continue to be, smitten with the beauty and power of words. I like the way they sound when spoken, the way they appear, letter by letter, on the page. I like the feeling of seeing them for the first time–those I’ve never encountered and those I see with new eyes. Sometimes, I carry a word around with me like a stone in my pocket, taking it out every now and then to admire it. Or to shudder in its presence.

When my brother was in kindergarten, my mother and I were in the kitchen and overheard the neighbor boys yell across the fence, “Throw our ball back, nigger!” Even before I really understood the power and history of this word, the shudder that went me was seismic, literally off the language richter scale. And after my brother had thrown the ball back into the neighbor’s yard and burst through the back door, he asked, “What does it mean when someone calls you a nigger?” Standing before my five-year-old brother in that moment was a moment in which my language failed. Any words I might have offered would have been woefully inadequate or tragically wrong in the face of such injury. For as Wilkie Collins writes: Our words are giants when they do us an injury. . . [A Woman in White]

I admit that I’ve often used words thoughtlessly, tossing them out too quickly–sometimes in the heat of the moment and sometimes in a moment of what can only be called ignorance. Regardless of the intent or lack of intent, I’ve come to understand the consequences of such careless words which generally take on lives and intents of their own. In The God of Small Things, novelist Arundhati Roy claims, That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.

Unfortunately, the season of careless words has no apparent end. It hangs around our necks like an albatross, groaning at the words that make people love and respect us a little less, take us a little less seriously, and make us wounders instead of healers. For better or worse, we live in a time when words–carelessly, intentionally, or naively delivered–are under considerable scrutiny. Say the wrong word, and you make people love you a little (or a lot) less. Say an inadequate or an ambiguous word, one whose history and intent may be questioned, and you can also inflict pain. Keep your words to yourself and maintain a carefully cultivated (or cowardly) silence, and your unspoken words can still wound. And that these careless words can be from your past–even and especially words from a younger, less introspective or less ‘woke’ self–matters little or not at all.

Op-Ed staff editor and writer for The New York Times, Aisha Harris recently wrote about the current season of This You?. In her article, she explains the movement and its intent:

Brutally crisp and blatantly rhetorical, the phrase has become a catchall representing the internet currency of receipts, forcing bandwagon participants to confront things they might have said or done that seemingly contradict their newfound commitment to the cause.

In the season of This You?, whatever language you may use now to support a person, idea, or cause may be tarnished or even obliterated by language you once used. And so, language from your past can become the proverbial gift that keeps on giving, keeps on making others love you less, keeps on reminding everyone of who you once were, and keeps on targeting words you once used. Truthfully, when I consider things I’ve said and written in the past, I can only brace myself for a potential This You?

But there are seasons when words delight and bless, when they move us with the sheer magnificence of their beauty and power. St. John of the Cross writes:

They can be like the sun, words.
They can do for the heart what light can for a field.

Before I die, I want to write one thing that truly does for the heart what light can for a field. One thing that–if I were digitally outed by a This You? devotee–I would joyously say yes, yes, yes! I would say this is me, and perhaps these words are the best of me. I would confidently announce that, of course, the sun must shine when I commit these subjects to paper: the violet clouds along the horizon, the hand of my grandson in mine, the sound of the cottonwoods in the wind. In this season, the words of poet Anne Sexton are as close as any in describing my bliss:

Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face. ["Words"]

Let the doves fall from the ceilings and the legs of summer stroll through fields of sweet clover! Let six–no 100–holy oranges sit in my lap! Let us call upon all the words that do for the heart what light can for a field! Let us choose a word to hold in our palm and, as Emily Dickinson writes, look at it, until it begins to shine!

And if we can’t find the right word, then let us throw caution to the wind and invent our own like an 11-year-old girl did the day I worked with her during a poetry residency. Struggling to find the right word to describe a keepsake–a glass figurine she kept on her dresser–she’d erased a hole in her notebook paper when suddenly she cried, “I got it! It’s glassable! Yup, that’s exactly what it is, glassable!” I might have offered up the word I thought she was searching for, but how this word fragile paled in the light of her sun. And I could only hope that her season of wonderful words stretched long into her life. Like writer Aldous Huxley, I could only hope that she might have Shakespearean feelings but never talk about them like automobile salesmen or teen-agers or college professors, that she never practice alchemy in reverse–touch gold and it turns to lead; touch the pure lyrics of experience, and they turn into the verbal equivalents of tripe and hogwash. [The Genius and the Goddess] In her season of words, let her become a master alchemist turning a leaden world to gold.

In her poem “Words,” Anne Sexton concludes:

Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.
But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair.

In all my seasons of words, I, too, most often fly like an eagle/but with the wings of a wren. I have sent my words into the wind only to find that they lack the muscle to stay the course. I have used words of prey only to discover that they cowered in rock crevices or were eaten by more capable foes. I have summoned words of color and sound and motion only to realize that, wren-like, they furiously flap their wings but fail to take flight. And yet, I send them out. Again and again. Because even when I try–and fail–to reach with words what matters most, even when my words struggle and subsequently die, they have too much life-force to contain. And when they occasionally soar? There is no better season.

Let it be said that I am no stranger to shame. Truthfully, I suspect most people aren’t strangers either. But there are those like me who often find themselves cohabitating with shame, a ballsy roommate who raids your refrigerator and refuses to give up the remote, subjecting you to a curated set of films, programs, and videos designed to bring your shame into even sharper focus. Once shame has moved in and claimed squatter’s rights, you can forget about eviction. And just when you think you might vacate and move on to a new place, you find that shame has already loaded her suitcase into the back of your car, that she has buckled herself into the passenger’s seat and reminded you: Whither you go, I will go.

I admit that much of my shame has been self-imposed, thus making me both landlord and tenant of the psychological, emotional, and spiritual house I inhabit. I’ve thought a lot about why I so willingly host shame and have often seemed powerless to evict her. Licensed clinical psychologist and author Marilyn J. Sorensen writes that [u]nlike guilt, which is the feeling of doing something wrong, shame is the feeling of being something wrong. I think this comes closest to explaining my landlord status. I give shame permission to take partial possession of my house because I fear that I am something wrong.  I’m something wrong because of what I believe, what I don’t believe, what I’ve felt, what I haven’t felt, what I’ve dreamt, what I’ve failed to dream–the list goes on. In short, there have been many times in my life when I looked at who I thought I was and found myself sorely lacking, at times enough so that I felt paralyzed by and powerless in the face of shame.

And so, given my familiarity with shame–self-imposed and otherwise–I should have some expertise navigating the current climate of shame. That’s what I thought, but I was wrong. My boat has capsized, and I’m struggling to even tread water. I’m in trouble.

After weeks of furious treading, I’ve decided that my real problem lies fundamentally in my confusion about shaming. That is, is shaming generally a necessary means to a desired end? Or is shaming rarely, if ever, a necessary means to any end? Is shaming primarily a whole group rather than individual act? Or is shaming–if used at all–generally more appropriate and effective on the individual level? Is shaming a natural and acceptable consequence of all sorts of moral and social evils? Or perhaps is shaming a natural consequence of all sorts of evils but one that shouldn’t be condoned? The bottom line: Is shaming necessary and “good” or not?

When I’ve turned to those who have studied and written about shame, I’ve discovered that–suprise, surprise–they don’t always agree. Author, speaker, and licensed social worker Brene Brown is one of these authorities. Consider her words:

—Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.

—We cannot grow when we are in shame, and we can’t use shame to change ourselves or others.

—You cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame.

—Guilt is just as powerful, but its influence is positive, while shame’s is destructive. Shame erodes our courage and fuels disengagement. 

Brown is perhaps best known for her research on and willingness to talk openly about shame and its effects. She contends we can all agree that feeling shame is an incredibly painful experience, and that even if those who’ve shamed us apologize, the truth is that those shaming comments leave marks.

Or consider these words from Joseph Burgo who wrote “Challenging the Anti-Shame Zeitgeist” for Atlantic:

The consensus within our culture is clear: shame is a uniquely destructive force, and one to be resisted. Movie stars, educators, pop icons, psychologists, and spokespeople for the pride movements will all tell you the same thing — shame is the enemy. It drives those individuals who are different into the shadows. It causes us to hide our vulnerability, distancing us from those we love. It enforces conformity and stifles the creative or dissident individual. It kills the spirit.

Or consider the claims of Willard Gaylin, writer and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons:

—Shame and guilt are noble emotions essential in the maintenance of civilized society, and vital for the development of some of the most refined and elegant qualities of human potential.     

—But, like other aversive emotions such as fear, shame is functional to the extent that it encourages goal-directed behavior and survival. There is now substantial psychological evidence – including physiological, cross cultural, social, and evolutionary – to suggest that shame helps us to negotiate group life by alerting us to when our membership of, or status within, groups is at risk.

Or Kara Alaimo, a global public relations consultant, professor and writer for Bloomberg (2017):

But shaming can also be good for society, because it allows us to hold people and organizations responsible for bad behavior. Witness the ad Dove posted in October showing a black woman turning into a white woman with its product. The picture immediately generated lots of criticism online, and rightly so. The company apologized. Similarly, in January, activists exposed the identity of Mike Enoch, a prolific podcaster who founded the website The Right Stuff. Enoch, who peddles in horrific racism and anti-Semitism, deserved to be called out for his abuse. He was fired by his employer.

Or John Amodeo, Ph.D. and author of “The Power of Healthy Shame” (Psychology Today):

—A positive aspect of shame is that it tells us when we’ve hurt someone, when we’ve crossed a boundary that violates a person’s dignity.

—Shame grabs our attention. If we can pause and notice it rather than plow forward, we have an opportunity to correct our behavior.

—Being mindful of our shame offers an option to apologize as a way to rebuild trust.

I could go on and on quoting writers, authorities, commentators, and ordinary people who hold very different views on shame and effects on behaviors and beliefs. And I could provide even more diverse views on if and when there are conditions or situations in which we should use shame as a primary tool for change.

Before I go futher, however, I want to concede the following:

1. Our nation, like many of the world’s nations, has a history of systemic racism. Tragically, this continues.
2. Blacks deserve opportunities to thrive in safe environments, as well as laws and practices that guarantee this.
3. The institution of American law enforcement sorely needs reform, including better and more training involving deescalation strategies, increased accountability, and serious consideration and redefinition of the responsibilities of law enforcement officers.
4. As a white woman, I have privileges that many blacks do not have.
5. The right to peacefully protest has always been, and continues to be, a valuable, poweful, and legal way to affect change.

For the past few weeks, I’ve read, heard, and watched others who have argued that I should be ashamed, truly ashamed, of the fact that I am a privileged white woman. I should be ashamed of who I am because being white is the real problem, more aggregious even than what I’ve done/said or haven’t done/said. Honestly, I admit that I haven’t done enough to help end systemic racism, to change the institutions and laws that need changing, to listen and consider closely enough. And I accept guilt for this.

As a human being, however, I’m struggling with whether or not accepting shame for the skin color I was born with and can’t change, will serve as a positive catalyst for change in my own life. Right now, more than anything I feel shame’s destructive nature, how, as Brown writes, it erodes our courage and fuels disengagement. That’s why I’m furiously treading water instead of truly engaging. That’s why I feel that, at any given moment, I might just stop treading and let myself sink to the quiet depths of despair– even though I’m painfully aware that many will regard all of this treading and disengaging as even more cause for shame.

If you listen or read enough, you soon realize that there are many voices vying to be recognized. It appears to me that some of these voices matter a lot, and others, not so much, if at all. This appears to be true even within the same race–black or white. The shaming may occur even when you acknowledge a voice that matters, but you also acknowledge a voice that one group has claimed doesn’t matter. The shaming occurs when you’re not on the right side, when you don’t hold the right view, say the right things, feel the right things. And this shaming is an equal opportunity force. There’s a tsunami of shaming sweeping through every ideological camp. And for those of us who have lived with a fair amount of our own shame for years, this storm threatens to drown rather than motivate us.

I have more questions and more heartfelt concerns than answers. Still, I’m plagued with what legacies I will leave my black son and my white grandchildren. I fiercely love my son and have done what I could to help him understand that he should never be ashamed of his skin color, of who he was born to be. And I fiercely love my granddaughter and grandson. But what should I help them understand about their race? That it’s not enough to acknowledge and accept guilt for what their race has done and continues to do, that it’s not enough to be a catalyst for real systemic change in their own lives, but that for any of this to matter, they must denounce their race and embrace the shame of their whiteness? Am I to help them understand that although I want their uncle to be proud of his black heritage, they should be ashamed of their white one? If I listen to many voices today, the answer would be yes to all of the above. As I wrote in a previous post, I find that I can only weep.

In Till We Have Faces, Christian theologian and writer, C. S. Lewis writes:

“I felt ashamed.”

“But of what? Psyche, they hadn’t stripped you naked or anything?”

“No, no, Maia. Ashamed of looking like a mortal — of being a mortal.”

“But how could you help that?”

“Don’t you think the things people are most ashamed of are things they can’t help?”

This is where I am right now. Perhaps more than anything, I’m ashamed of being a mortal. And because I’m a mere mortal, I’m struggling with the notion of whether or not I should feel shame for the things I can’t help. Still, I’m hopeful that, even as a mortal–albeit a white mortal– I will soon stop treading water and have the courage and conviction to begin the slow swim towards a better somewhere. And I’m hopeful that once I get there, I will find it to be a place where my son and my grandchildren–where all mere mortals–are safe, valued, and flourishing.

End Note:

British Indian novelist Salman Rushdie wrote that [s]hame is like everything else; live with it for long enough and it becomes part of the furniture.  I’m quite confident that there will be those who will read my words here and argue that I should be ashamed for who I am or who I’m not, for what I’ve done or what I’ve failed to do. And so, I’m just as confident that I’ll soon find myself sharing a sofa and bowl of popcorn again with the roomate who has become just like another part of the furniture, a persistent and permanent fixture.

photo by Collyn Ware

On The Occasion Of My 65th Birthday
 
At the edge of the pond:
a single leaf,
a mottled mess
of green and brown and gold
lies beached upon the sand.
 
It has sailed the waters
of better days.
With chlorophyll coursing through its veins,
it once steered bravely into summer,
trolling the shoreline,
easing into deeper water until
the tides of sun and time pulled it here
to rest among the rocks.
 
I, too, am mottled and beached,
my sailing days over,
my mast graying
and spineless.
 
True, there is rest in dry-dock:
a life mostly lived, the years floated out
and returned to shore.
 
But oh, the waters of better days!
The sunny soul of them!
The greening promise of tomorrow
and tomorrow!
The taste of sweet tempests
that whip the world with abandon!
 
Let these waters rock me.
Let them roll in glorious waves that pound my final years,
oh, let them roll.

For my dad, Don Welch, whose last full measure continues to fill our lives

In Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, he writes:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain —

On Memorial Day, The New York Times printed the names of 100,000 Americans who have died from the coronavirus. Like any memorial–in stone or in print–this full page of printed names should give us pause, should convict us to live better and more fully so that those who died will not have done so in vain. On battlefields, in neighborhoods and workplaces, in refugee camps, ICU units, and emergency rooms, there have been, and will continue to be, those who give their last full measures of devotion to causes, to faith, friends and loved ones, to principles and ideas. And there are those who pledge to take increased devotion to that cause for which these individuals gave the last full measure of devotion. On our deathbeds, most of us hope that the great measuring cup of our lives is filled to the brim with the best of us. We hope that our last full measures will be legacy-worthy, that our deaths will not go unnoticed, that we will continue to live in and through others.

What is the size of a significant death? This is a question my father wrote in his 1997 journal, and what a question it is. Isn’t every death significant and, therefore, large? I think most of us would answer yes and yes. But I also suspect that most of us would concede that some deaths are truly immeasurable and perhaps even more than significant. Identifying the impact of such deaths in no way diminshes the impact of any and all deaths. But there are some deaths that make unique and sizeable marks on the world.

Today would have been my father’s 88th birthday, an occasion on which we traditonally bestowed him with new sports shirts, cartons of malted milk balls, sundry office and racing pigeon accessories. Four years ago, his birthday marked the beginning of his last weeks. When he came home from the hospital to die, these precious weeks were filled with family, friends, colleagues, and students who came to pay their respect and sit–one last time–beside the man who had changed their lives.

Humbled is altogether an inadequate word to describe how I felt as I listened in on these final conversations. My dad’s memory was sharp until the day he died, his words as articulate and artful as ever. I watched how his visitors soaked them all in, desperate to fill themselves with as much of him as they could. I watched how they agonized over leaving, how the trip from his hospital bed to our front door seemed all too short and woefully wrong. I saw tears, heard the tremors of grief bubble in their throats, felt the palpable longing to simply hold on. And hour after hour, it broke my heart.

For we all understood the significance of his impending death. Even today, I find myself thinking If only I had just one hour–just one more hour–there are so many questions I want to ask, so many things I want to say . . . But I suspect that are so many others who have had similar longings, for my father was not just my mentor and teacher but the mentor and teacher to thousands all over the world. One of his friends and former students has been passionately working on a website dedicated to bringing Don Welch to the world. Two former students edited and published his final collection of poetry, and another is currently working on a video project to feature my dad’s life and work . Several friends and colleagues host an annual Don Welch educational conference to help bring my dad’s poetry into more K-12 classrooms. And former students, now teachers, are filling their classrooms with my father’s voice. What is the size of his death? Clearly, this has yet to be determined, for the cup of his life and work has only just begun to run over.

In my dad’s journal, he quoted one of his colleagues and best friends, David Rozema:

You could not, in the language of propositions, say what makes a poem a poem.  A great poem simply is.  It shows itself.  . . . You could not, in the language of propositions, say what makes a man’s life great or worthwhile.  A great man simply is.  He shows himself. 

Dave knew my father well, and his words here are so fitting. This is my dad exactly. A man who simply was, who showed himself in love, in wisdom and in art. A man who lived and wrote up, claiming a heroic voice and spirit in a flat and cynical world.

A book of collected poems:  It is not often you can fit your life’s work into one hand (Don Welch). Hours before he died, my dad received the final draft of his collected poems, Homing. As I handed him the book draft, my mother and I looked on as he held much of what he considered his life’s best work in his hands. But as much as this collection truly represented his best work, it could never fully represent Don Welch, the husband, father, teacher, colleague, and friend. This Don Welch could never be contained within the covers of a book, even a book of his finest poetry.

In his journal, I discovered an epitaph my dad had written for himself 19 years before his death:

 Epitaph
 Think of all those great,
 below, above;
 then remember who I loved.

My dad understood that remembering who he loved was, indeed, a truer measure of his life than anything he’d written. And he loved well. In reading letters he’d writen my mother in the early years of their marriage, I discovered a man who loved his wife with a passion and devotion that took my breath away. This was a love story for the ages, a love story that spilled over and through all the letters and poems he wrote for my mom and into the lives of his children, friends, and students. Above all, his last full measure of devotion was love.

He was a good man.  He went into the dirt, but not out of this world. I’m confident that when my dad wrote these words, he wasn’t writing about himself. And yet, how aptly they describe him. He left behind volumes of exceptional poetry, speeches, essays, and letters, a wife and sister, daughters and son, a parcel of grand and great-grandchildren, and a host of students, colleagues, and readers. And all testify to the fact that he remains gloriously in, not out of this world. And that he was a good man–a very good man.

In response to the deaths of great individuals, Abraham Lincoln advised that we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. As a writer and teacher of great literature, it’s no surprise that my dad wrote that there was no greater inheritance than language. I hope to live out my days with an increased devotion to the language I’ve inherited from my father. And a devotion to love. Language and love–what a bountiful and eternal last full measure.

The author of a book is a voice with a new body. Don Welch

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

In the past few months, I’ve held conversations with two young adults who both admitted that they didn’t really feel as though they could bring a child into this world. Both were principled, compassionate, educated, and talented individuals. Clearly, both had genes worth passing on, and both were committed to making this world a better place. And yet when they considered the current state of the world, they couldn’t bring themselves to think about their own children navigating such a world.

Their despair and fear shouldn’t surprise me. But I found myself thinking about my 20-30-something-self and asking: Did I ever consider the world to be such a cruel and hopeless place that I wouldn’t bring a child into it? The world of my young adulthood was marked with painful images from the Viet Nam War, as well as the anti-war protesting and rioting that followed. Suffering, death, and injustice bled through our black-and-white console television sets and into our living rooms nightly: Viet Nam demonstrations in Washington, D. C.; clashes between police and protestors at the 1968 Democratic National Convention (the Chicago Seven); 1970 Kent State shootings; France nightclub fire leaving 142 teenagers dead; damages finally awarded to Thalidomide victims, just to name some of the most awful. Because most of us only had access to newspapers and three major television networks, news traveled more slowly, and our world seemed relatively smaller and less global then. But not less cruel, not less unjust, not less ugly.

I watched every Viet Nam feature film and television series that came out. To the extent that I could, I tried to imagine myself in the jungle, in a field hospital, in an airport returning home to those who loved me and those who hated me, on the streets of my hometown, jobless, damaged, and despised by many. If I empathized enough, if I vicariously took on the pain and despair, I rationalized that somehow in my young midwestern life, I was standing with and for all those who suffered. That’s what I tried to tell myself as I closed my eyes and images of Viet Cong ambushes exploded like schrapnel into my consciousness. Bring it on, I told myself. This is the least I can do.

Through it all, however, I don’t remember ever thinking that I couldn’t–or wouldn’t–bring a child into this world. Not once. Perhaps I should have, perhaps this would have been a more logical response to the world’s despair, but I didn’t. Even as I tried to vicariously shoulder the pain I saw around me, I lugged around a hope chest, unwilling to turn my back on the world I imagined for my children.

So, as I heard these this young adults speak of the probability of childless futures, and as I grieve the senseless killings of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, the injustice and racism, hatred and fear, destruction of property and lives, I find that I have no words in the face of this despair. That is, I have words, but I fear they’re not even close to being the right words, words with such fine and perfect edges that they cut wisely and lovingly into our collective conscience.

In Matthew 11:35, we read: Jesus wept. Perhaps if I were to say or write anything now, I might simply echo Matthew’s words: I weep.

I weep because if I were to write or speak, I’m truly afraid that my words may be more damaging than healing to someone(s). For herein lies the challenge: How do you wisely and lovingly hold the pain and despair of disparate individuals or groups in your soul? How do you empathize with one without hurting or betraying the other? I’m certain that there are many who may argue that you simply can’t and shouldn’t, that you must choose sides. They argue that your failure to choose is cowardice, at best, and hatred, at worst. Choose and let not your heart be troubled. Weep only for the righteous–or at least the more righteous.

But oh, the choosing! I weep for Ahmaud’s and George’s families, for victims of racism and oppression, for a system that all too often continues to be powered by white privilege. I weep for nonviolent protestors who long to have their voices heard. I weep for owners whose businesses and livelihoods have been damaged or destroyed. I weep for police officers, the good ones, those ethical men and women who continually put their lives on the line. I weep for city and state officials who yearn to listen to and care for individuals in their communities, as well as to reach peaceful outcomes. I weep for all those who have been victims of stereotyping and oppression, all who have been too easily and willingly associated with the worst of their group or race. I weep for all.

No doubt, some will accuse me of being insensitive and perhaps too much of a Pollyanna when I admit that I take solace in the words of one who is much wiser than me, Mahatma Gandhi:

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.

Gandhi’s words in no way diminish the terrible impact of tyrants and murderers on the world. Nor do they diminish our moral duty to end these tyrants’ and murderers’ reigns and to bring them to justice. Gandhi’s own life was clearly a testament to his unwavering commitment to end oppression, as well as to stand with and care for the oppressed. Still, when he says, Think of it–always, there is power and truth in his words. It would be great if truth and love won all of the time, or at least won much more quickly and decisively. And it would be great if the inevitable assurance of victory would heal our gaping, festering wounds. But it doesn’t. It may be, however, as novelist George Eliot writes, the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

I confess that likening despair to unfed hope–a hope we eagerly, passionately yearn for– is comforting. And encouraging. How, then, might we feed our hope in the midst of so much ugliness? German Romantic writer, John Paul writes:

The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering galleries, they are clearly heard at the end, and by posterity.

There are so many ways to feed our hope. Although the words of truth and love we speak to our children, our students, our friends and family in homes, classrooms, and workplaces may not immediately be heard by the world, in the end, they will be heard. So, our words matter greatly. Our persistance and conviction in delivering them matter greatly. Our unwavering belief that, in the end, truth and love will triumph matters greatly.

Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich believes that [w]hen a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something. Our current despair, like that of former generations, may be just this: evidence of our belief in something. We cry, we rage, we pray, we march because we believe that the world can be a better place for everyone.

And this is what I told my son, a 27-year-old black man who fears bringing a son or daughter into this world. We despair because we genuinely care, because we believe something better is possible. A world in which a child can flourish. A nobler world in which integrity and virtue take the throne. A humbler world that learns from past mistakes. A softer world that loves and listens better.

How I want this world for my son, for his son, for all sons. How I want them all to live without fear of judgment, oppression, and hatred. How I want the gene pool to explode with super novas, stars bright enough to light even the darkest corners of the earth. And how I want to feed the hope that continues to sustain and save us, to fix my eyes on the truth and love that triumph in the end–always.