On Courage -- An Essay

Lady Liberty is a symbol of many things to many people. For me she is the symbol of the best promises of the people of the United States as codified in our Constitution. Promises we have not yet completely achieved, but promises nonetheless. Promises of welcome. Of safety. Of power. Of freedom. Each of these, to me, requires great courage.

Welcome -- It takes courage to open our door to people we don't yet know. It takes courage to trust that the door will be open to those who leave the lands and families and neighbors they do know.

Safety -- It takes courage to build a government that will protect the lives and liberties of ALL the people here now and who will be here in the years to come.

Power -- This may take the most courage of all. The courage to use our power to care for ourselves, our families, our neighbors. The courage to exercise our power against those who would limit it to any of us. Those of us who have not historically had power must have the courage to stand up and demand the power we should have. And we must all always have the courage to accept the responsibility that goes with power.

Freedom -- Maybe this doesn't require courage so much as it requires honesty. We have to be honest with ourselves about the consequences of what we think, say, and do. Are we willing to allow our own treasured freedoms to the other people in our country, in our world? Are we honest about our goals, our methods to reach those goals, and whether or not those goals will be for good purpose? Greed and ambition cannot be allowed to corrupt that good purpose.

The promises of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness for all, as stated in our Declaration of Independence and codified in our Constitution, have not yet been realized. But we must continue to work toward keeping and protecting those promises.

This is a dangerous time in the United States. We have people at the top of our government who do not believe in these promises. They measure our republic's value by how much money and power they can take for themselves. True courage cannot exist when motivated by greed and ambition.

The current witnesses in the Impeachment Hearings are courageous. They know what they risk by testifying. And I'm not talking about just their positions as long-time government employees or the inevitable avalanche of hate mail and email. Their lives are literally at risk. There are plenty of damaged people out there who will see themselves as heroes serving "their leader" by killing these witnesses.

Trump's inflammatory speech and behavior not only endanger the witnesses against him, but the people who defend him. There are damaged people out there on the other side of the political spectrum who will see themselves as heroes by killing Trump and/or his defenders.

Many of the people who would be caught in that crossfire are government employees protecting Trump and his allies, not because they necessarily agree with them but because it is their job. Or it could be someone who shares opinions in the coffee shop or has bumper stickers or cuts someone off in traffic.

In times like this when there is so much dissension, there are those who will irrationally lash out against anyone for any reason or no reason at all.

The constitutionally mandated impeachment process must go forward. Thoughts and prayers alone will not protect our nation or our people. We must all have the courage to support our Congressional members whether we agree with them or not.

So, if we hear or see something threatening, we must have the courage to say something. Even if we are many miles away from Washington, D.C., and many degrees of separation away from any political side. And even if the people being threatened have no direct say in what's happening in D.C.

Danger -- Flash Fiction

image from stormchase.net

Lightning blazed across the sky silhouetting a wedge, black against the night. Transformers exploded marking its advance along the highway.

Thunder rolled toward me. Wave after wave. Rising and falling, then rising again. Each wave higher than the last, crashed around me. Vibrating against the car.

Ozone filled my nostrils. The smell of electrical fires. The smell of lightning.

Could I outrun the storm?

"A car is the most dangerous place to be in a tornado. Get out of the car." The whispered advice came from someone calmer than I. Someone from my childhood. "Better to lie in a ditch."

Rain and wind were being sucked into the storm. Once outside the false harbor of my car, I could feel the storm's pull. It was too close.

A rock outcropping rose from the wheat stubble on my left. Boulders, the size of barns, struck white by lightning then disappearing into black rain. Better than a ditch.

Miracle of miracles. A black hole a little more than waist-high opened into the rock. I was safe.

Safe from the storm but greeted by a low growl. Eyes reflected the flashing light from outside. Eyes in a face hidden in the dark. Maybe six feet away. It was hard to tell, but farther than arms length.

I looked away, back toward the mouth of the cave. The storm was on us. Debris churned past the opening. Rain and red dirt from the field boiled into the cave and I huddled against the stone wall.

Whatever the animal was, it was quiet. Like me, subdued by the storm raging outside. There was no place for either of us to go.

The storm passed as quickly as it had come. All was dark and still inside the cave. An eerie light, almost green, spread across the world outside.

I and my fellow refugee stayed quiet listening to the receding storm, our breathing matching perfectly. Inhale. Exhale.

Should I leave first? Or would that cause the animal to attack? The catch instinct. Or would it consider me a threat? And if it did, was there enough room for it to escape past me? Would it feel the need to fight its way out?

We had been safe from the storm, but were we safe from each other?

I backed out of the cave. Something brushed past me. One last flash of lightning showed a furry black and white animal, its fluffy tail held high as it ambled away, leaving just a whiff of its scent in the rain-fresh air.

And I fully understood just how much danger I'd been in.

J is for Justice

J is for Justice

 Justice is one of those two needs that motivate our highest and our basest behaviors. The other is Safety. Neither is attainable. We can’t give nor get them. Scholars and philosophers have studied and discussed them. Governments and religions have been built around promises of providing them. Tiny humans take up the concepts as soon as they realize that they are separate from the world around them.

Perhaps because Justice and Safety are impossible to have in our everyday lives, we imagine them. We invent stories around them.

The bad guy is identified, stopped, and punished. Safety is restored and Justice is served. There is nothing so dissatisfying as a murder mystery that goes unsolved or a villain who goes unpunished.

It happens all the time in real life and we still stop what we’re doing to watch our daily dose of news about the O.J. Simpsons and the Oscar Pistoriuses of the world on trial. We weren’t there. We can’t know what really happened or who did what or why. We hear too many possibilities – the prosecution’s story, the defense’s story.

These events underscore the perception that Justice is not only blind, but she’s lame. She staggers and stumbles along like Shakespeare’s Richard III, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform’d, unfinish’d, scarce half made up. The difference in Justice in the real world and Justice in Shakespeare’s fictional world is that Shakespeare could establish without a reasonable doubt what the crime was, who the criminal was, exact the appropriate punishment, and reassure the realm of a time to come with smooth-fac’d peace, With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days!

Since I have to live a real life, I am thankful for the fiction writers who give me moments and hours of respite in the imagined world of Justice and Safety.