John Lewis has left this place.
After eight decades braving taunts and threats and bruises and broken bones, trying to make the world that could be out the world that was, this very good troublemaker has slipped from here to hereafter—and he has departed, he has bequeathed something invaluable to us:
He has left us America.
It is our precious, unearned inheritance, entrusted to us to fully steward in these days that he can no longer, whether we feel capable of or qualified for or ready to. You and I awake today with a fragile, fractured nation in our trembling hands, and the tired eyes of a world upon us waiting to see what we’ll do with it.
The beautiful parts of America have never simply happened, they have been made: willfully, steadfastly, and faithfully fashioned by human beings whose eyes were on not only their existence and their struggle and their worth—but of those on the distant horizon of history who were following after them, whose names and faces they’d never know.
The best parts of who we are as a nation, were fought for, bled for, suffered for, and worked for by people like John Lewis, who with every cell of their beings, refused to let the arc of the moral universe bend away from justice, while they had body and breath and voice and mind to push back against the bigots and the bullies.
The bigots and the bullies are not resting today.
They are already trying to undo the work of John Lewis’ life; in the rooms of the White House and the halls of Congress and the streets of Portland and the back roads of Georgia. Even as we grieve his absence, there are people seeing the space he’s left as one they can fill with inequity and inhumanity and indecency—and the only obstacles in their way now, are you and I if we choose to place ourselves between them and America.
In 2019, during the impeachment hearings for the former president, Rep. Lewis said, “When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something, to do something. Our children and their children will ask us, ‘What did you do? What did you say?’
And this is the question John Lewis speaks to us from the place where souls alone reside and where we cannot go right now:
What will you do?
What will you say?
We’ll answer today and in the coming days, America.
We’ll answer with the choices we make in the trenches of our daily lives: with the words we say or withhold, the battles we engage or avoid, the blows we run from or lean into, the fight we sidestep or charge hard into.
It is a fitting thing to grieve men like John Lewis when they leave us, but that is the easiest option, the least costly decision, the most selfish path. That is the life of least resistance, which John Lewis was never known to travel.
It takes very little to mourn the loss of courageous, selfless human beings. It takes something far greater to aspire to become them too.
Rep. Lewis famously said,
“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
This is our inheritance, oh grieving, disheartened, hurting ones.
It is the will of John Lewis, kept alive in our collective will.
May we work for those on the horizon of history.
May we be faithful servants of our better selves.
May we be steadfast in making the America that could be.
May we be worthy caretakers of the struggle.
May we be the very good troublemakers now.
