Question. Stand. Speak. Act.
We have a history of bravery in this nation and we must call it forward now. Our future is guaranteed only by the degree of our personal involvement and commitment to an inclusive justice.
In the open space of democracy, we engage the qualities of inquiry, intuition, and love as we become a dynamic citizenry, unafraid to exercise our shared knowledge and power. We can dissent. We can vote. We can step forward in times of terror with a confounding calm that will shatter fear and complacency.
It is time to ask, when will our national culture of self-interest stop cutting the bonds of community to shore up individual gain and instead begin to nourish communal life through acts of giving, not taking? It is time to acknowledge the violence rendered to our souls each time a mountaintop is removed to expose a coal vein in Appalachia or when a wetland is drained, dredged, and filled for a strip mall. And the time has come to demand an end to the wholesale dismissal of the sacredness of life in all its variety and forms, as we witness the repeated breaking of laws, and the relaxing of laws, in the sole name of growth and greed.
Invitation: “… life in all of its variety and forms ...”
Engagement by Terry Tempest Williams in Orion Magazine January 1, 1970
More about Terry Tempest Williams - in Americans Who Tell the Truth by Robert Shetterly.
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Learn More About Circles of Courageous Commons HERE
"In the open space of democracy, we engage the qualities of inquiry, intuition, and love as we become a dynamic citizenry, unafraid to exercise our shared knowledge and power. We can dissent. We can vote. We can step forward in times of terror with a confounding calm that will shatter fear and complacency," Terry Tempest Williams. The fact that she wrote this in 1970 is uncanny, as I thought she was speaking about this moment in time -- and she is.
Yes. I needed this. Thank you.