Clarity. 

January 6th.  George Floyd.  Trayvon Martin.  Children in cages.  The Muslim Ban.  The Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act.  Citizens United v. FEC.  Matthew Shepard.  The Defense of Marriage Act.  McCleskey v. Kemp.  Crack disparity.  Anita Hill.  The Willie Horton ads.

These incidents, across my lifetime, have inspired rage and profound sadness.  I will forever resent that we had to take to the streets proclaiming Black Lives Matter.  I will never forgive that our leadership’s response to Sandy Hook was inaction.  I remain flabbergasted that the 223-year old tradition of peacefully transitioning power, which wowed (and terrified) a breathless world in 1787, was violently torn asunder.  And I have painfully come to appreciate the courage it took for Anita Hill to speak her truth to power.

We are an imperfect union built on a sinful compromise.  The man who secured our liberty held men, women, and children in bondage.  The towering figure who saved the union and emancipated the slaves began his political career wanting to export freed slaves back to Africa because he could not imagine an America where Blacks and Whites lived and labored side-by-side.  We are a nation that has slain some of our most visionary and progressive leaders.  And it is a rule, without exception, every gain in civic and human rights has required spilling significant innocent blood. 

But we are also the greatest, most enduring, incomplete experiment that has ever been tried.  We are the shining city upon a hill.  Sometimes dim, sometimes casting a light on our own worst impulses as humans, but always shining and reminding us of our responsibility to lead. 

Americans, everyday people and leaders, have broken my heart.  But you can only experience despair and frustration that deeply if you love in even greater measure.  I don’t think I have ever been satisfied with the America I live in.  But I have always loved the America I believe we are capable of becoming.  I am eternally haunted, motivated and inspired by Jefferson’s opening proposition in the Declaration of Independence.  I don’t need to rehearse his grave failings to unequivocally believe that his pen was guided by a force greater than himself that could see our destiny and the tortured path we would take to reach it. 

It is not a matter of patriotism.  It is always about praying, marching, chanting, and sometimes shaming our way forward to the destiny we were created to fulfill.