Most children learn very early in life that they have two voices.
One voice is meant for the inside. It is low and soft and measured. It is sweet and non-threatening. When they feel safe and secure they use this voice. When quiet is helpful they use this voice. When disturbance is unwelcome they use this voice. When they do not want to make a scene they use this voice. It has its purpose and its place.
But children know there is another voice, and it is one not meant to be held behind doors or within walls or beneath roofs. It is the full-throated siren they engage when there is danger. It is the mighty shout they raise when they are afraid. It is the shimmering song that erupts when the joy within them cannot be contained. It is the furious sound that comes from the deepest recesses of their souls to chase away the monsters. It is the audacious, scandalous, disruptive noise that not even the sky can contain.
These days are meant for outside voices.
These are days when silence is wasteful and dangerous and reckless.
These are days when holding one’s tongue is not a virtue but a sin.
These are days when your volume matters, because hatred and bigotry have been so loud for so long that the world has grown comfortable with their abrasive noise. It seems normal to their ears now.
People need to hear the sound of hope again.
They need to be awakened from the dizzying, cloudy stupor of animosity and bitterness they’ve been stumbling round in.
They need to be reminded once more of the beautiful noise that love makes when it raises its voice and blows the freakin’ roof off.
Hatred needs to be put on notice that its presence is unwanted and that its time is short.
This day before us is the only one we have. It is the fleeting, sacred space we get to fill with our voices.
So children, decorum be gone and manners be damned. Don’t be concerned about being proper or appropriate or apologetic anymore. You make a deafening scene.
Speak.
Speak for yourselves and for others here, and for the children who have yet to find their way into this world, speak.
Speak words of compassion and healing.
Speak words of restoration and reconciliation.
Speak words of justice and mercy.
Speak words that give life, that bring rest, that make peace.
But don’t speak them in thin, hushed, gentle tones that might easily be swallowed up by the hissing din of discord and fear filling the air.
No, let rip with a screaming bottle rocket blast of hope, propelled by every bit of breath stored up in your burning lungs.
Let it fly up from your chest, careening off vocal cords strained to their very limit and into the atmosphere in a noise so loud that it frightens even yourself—because it will surely terrify the demons too.
Say everything good within you but do not whisper it.
Be heard in these days.
Be loud in these days.
Speak love, children—and use your outside voice.
Get John’s book, ‘Hope and Other Superpowers’ HERE!
