For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for your people will arise from another place, but you and your family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your position for such a time as this? (The Book of Esther)
I watched the Democratic national convention Monday night. I heard the prophet’s voice: Come on up for the rising. Come on up, lay your hands in mine. (Bruce Springsteen, The Rising)
Can’t see nothin’ in front of me
Can’t see nothin’ coming up behind
I make my way through this darkness
Hell has broken lose. But heaven is before us like a catfish dancin’ on the end of the line. Within reach. But it just might get away.
America is on fire. The towers of freedom and justice have been struck. Not from above. But from below. A cabal of torch-wielding swamp creatures have struck the pillars of our nation.
It’s late. But not too late.
Still, many don’t see the fire. Or pretend not to. Some put on blinders. Some turn on HBO. Some fiddle. Some play golf.
But others have seen the fire, heard the bell, and answered the call to save our nation before it’s consumed.
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. (Thomas Paine, The Crisis, December 23, 1776)
We can’t see the light. We make our way through the darkness.
We don’t know the end. We walk by faith.
We take another’s hand. We hang on to hope.
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because conscience says it is right. (Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope)
Ours is not the musket.
Ours is not the firehose.
Ours is the ballot.
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Paula’s impressionistic photograph on the home page.
