When you listen to a witness, you become a witness.
― Elie Wiesel

Recently, I presented at a teachers’ conference held to commemorate the life and works of my father and to offer ways through which my father’s writing might be used in K-12 classrooms. Needless to say, there was considerable witness made to the enduring legacy of my father’s work as poet and teacher. Former students and colleagues, family and friends testified to the influence that Don Welch had–and continues to have–on their lives in and out of the classroom. To be in the presence of such witnesses was truly humbling, for it became evident that the father and teacher I knew was also present in homes and classrooms all over the world. Those who’d listened to my father were passing it on to others. In the sanctuary of a witness, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, you equip yourself to deliver what you’ve learned to others. The witness becomes a witness becomes a witness. And so it goes.

In his 2005 address to the United Nations on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel opened by confessing the challenges facing those who’ve witnessed things so unimaginable, so horrific that words fail them:

When speaking about that era of darkness, the witness encounters difficulties. His words become obstacles rather than vehicles; he writes not with words but against words. For there are no words to describe what the victims felt when death was the norm and life a miracle. Still, whether you know it or not, his memory is part of yours.

Though words may become obstacles, as Wiesel contends, and though they impose limitations–as all words necessarily do–on suffering and despair that are genuinely limitless, words remain the primary means through which we bear witness. And when those words have been carefully chosen and conscientiously crafted, the witness evokes in us such urgency and conviction that we’re forever changed. Wiesel’s words in this address, as well as in other speeches and writings, move us to remember and to become active witnesses to what we’ve heard and read. He concludes his address with these powerful words:

And now, years later, you who represent the entire world community, listen to the words of the witness. Like Jeremiah and Job, we could have cried and cursed the days dominated by injustice and violence.

We could have chosen vengeance. We did not. We could have chosen hate. We did not. Hatred is degrading and vengeance demeaning. They are diseases. Their history is dominated by death.

The Jewish witness speaks of his people’s suffering as a warning. He sounds the alarm so as to prevent these things being done. He knows that for the dead it is too late; for them, abandoned by God and betrayed by humanity, victory came much too late. But it is not too late for today’s children, ours and yours. It is for their sake alone that we bear witness.

Ultimately, we bear witness, as Wiesel contends, for the sake of our children and future children. We sincerely hope that our witness will help ensure that their lives are better and safer.

As effective as words often are to those bearing witness, there are other tools. In Walking on Water: Reflection on Faith and Art, American writer, Madleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time), writes:

As Emmanuel, Cardinal Suhard says, “To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.”

I think my siblings would agree that we grew up in a home where our father and mother witnessed daily through the way they chose to live their lives. Truly, they lived in such a way that their lives would not make sense if God did not exist. My mother is the human embodiment of Christ’s compassion and mercy. She’s an unfailing advocate for the least of these, the handicapped and poor, the grieving and suffering, the invisible and forgotten. For years, we watched her love our neighbors–both literal and universal neighbors. We witnessed her work as a community advocate for the handicapped and for those suffering from and surviving breast cancer. Year after year, she was God’s hands and feet on earth as she carried this witness into our community. Largely housebound now, her witness is nonethless powerful. She writes encouraging messages to literally hundreds of people. Facebook Messenger has become the primary means through which she witnesses, and what a powerful witness it is.

And as powerful as my father’s words are, his life, too, became the kind of witness that changed people’s lives. As an undergraduate and graduate student at Kearney State College, I lived for the precious moments I could spend alone with my dad in his office. During these visits, I didn’t have to share his attention with anyone, and through our conversations, I learned more about how to live a good life than I learned about how to improve the essays I was drafting. And perhaps more than anything, I learned the immeasurable worth of offering your undivided time to another, of making another feel as though he or she is just that important to you. I watched my dad give this gift of undivided time and attention to so many others: colleagues, family, friends, students–past and present. When he was dying and these people came to bear witness to his influence on their lives, I saw how the time my dad had spent with each of them had shaped the people they’d become.

English art critic and essayist John Berger writes of the photographer’s role as witness:

Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A photograph is a result of the photographer’s decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.

Berger’s insights into the choices that good photographers make have broader applications, I think. We don’t bear witness to everything that happens, for if, as Berger argues, everything is worthy of witness, our witness would become meaningless. I’ve watched my daughter photograph individuals and groups, places and things, and I’ve seen the care she exercises in choosing what to shoot. Today, anyone with a smart phone can point and shoot. And the quality of these photographs is surprisingly good. Still, good photographers make careful choices about what to shoot and how to frame their shots, for they want these photographs to bear witness to a particular emotion or state, an atmosphere or attitude. They want their photos to be much more than technically good; they want them to be emotionally and spiritually good, to move audiences to think and feel as they look at their images. They want their photographs to bear witness to the noteworthy people, places, and events that they’ve chosen to record. And perhaps above all, they want their photographs to bear witness to what we abhor and what we cherish, to what we must destroy and what we must keep, to what we must change and what we must preserve. Their photographs can become a powerful historic witness in much the same way as words, spoken and written, can.

American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson understands that at the very heart of witnessing is the responsibility to speak the truth. He writes:

Speak the truth and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.

In the sanctuary of a witness, the truth lives and moves through words and deeds. Many of us are blessed to live among those who witness with their very lives. And the least that we can do is to bear witness to their witness.