I was listening in the car as I drove along, weeping so much that my shirt got damp. It was the good kind of tears, the kind that says I'm so grateful to live in a world shaped by these leaders. It was also the kind of cry that knows what's missing still.
I thought it was brilliant of Nancy Pelosi to play part of a commencement address that Lewis gave a few years ago. It was wonderful to hear him tell us all to go out and make good trouble.
It was also good to have a minute of self-reflection. When I was younger, I aspired to changing society the way that Lewis did. He was much more relentless than I am proving to be. I am sure that he had months or years where he, too, wondered if he was making a difference. But I am also sure that he did more than I have done.
It's good to be reminded of the importance of trying to do good in the world, of trying to transform the world. He told the story of asking his parents and grandparents why there were different facilities and services for whites and coloreds, and they shrugged and said, "It's just the way it's always been. We just have to accept it."
But he didn't accept injustice. As I listened to people reflecting on the ways that Civil Rights workers did that work, I thought about the simple act of people ignoring the law and sitting at lunch counters and riding buses. Who would have predicted that those actions could so totally transform society before it was all over?
And of course, it's not all over, is it? Lewis also reminded us that the fight for a better world is never over. In that commencement address, he talks of the evil people who want to take away the hard won rights and how we must never allow that to happen.
I thought of John Lewis as a child, preaching to the chickens on his family's farm. I thought of what that experience taught him, and how even until the end of his life, he was preaching in all sorts of settings, to all sorts of creatures.
May we all have the courage to follow.
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