|("Gathering of Spirits" by Carrie Newcomer)
* Let it go, my love, my truest
* Let it sail on silver wings
* Life's a twinkling, that's for certain
* But it's such a fine thing
* There's a gathering of spirits
* There's a festival of friends
* And we'll take up where we left off
* When we all meet again
* I can't explain it
* I couldn't if I tried
* How the only things we carry are
* The things we hold inside
* Like a day in the open
* Like the love we won't forget
* And like the laughter that we started
* And it hasn't died down yet
* Oh, let it go my love, my truest
* Let it sail on silver wings
* Life's a twinkling, that's for certain
* But it's such a fine thing
* There's a gathering of spirits
* There's a festival of friends
* And we'll take up where we left off
* When we all meet again
* Just east of Eden
* But there's heaven in our midst
* And we're never really all that far
* From those we love and miss
* Wade out in the water
* There's a glory all around
* And the wisest say there's a thousand ways
* To kneel and kiss the ground, oh
* Let it go, my love my truest
* Let it sail on silver wings
* Life's a twinkling, that's for certain
* But it's such a fine thing
* There's a gathering of spirits
* There's a festival of friends
* And we'll take up where we left off
* When we all meet again
* And we'll take up where we left off
* when we all meet again
- Welcome to Healing the Heart of Democracy,
an evening of song and spoken word,
celebrating "We, the People,"
exploring the power of the broken open heart
and imagining how we might live as people
of healing and hope.
We're here at the very lovely Monroe Arts Center
in Monroe, Wisconsin.
We're just 60 miles from the Iowa border,
but this is not an Iowa caucus.
(laughter)
It is, as Carrie just sang, a gathering of spirits
for the common good,
a chance to reflect on politics in a different key.
Carrie and Gary and I are very grateful
that you wanted to share this evening with us.
We're among millions of Americans
concerned about the future of our democracy.
We're not worried about our honest differences.
Creative conflict and diversity
is part of democracy's beating heart.
We're worried about the divisiveness and the demonizing
that alienate us from one another
and render us powerless.
We want to re-weave the tattered fabric of our civic life,
but our goal is not Midwestern niceness.
Our goal is to reclaim the power of "We, the People."
It's a power we lose when we succumb to the divide
and conquer tactics of those who want to take us
out of the action,
creating a void that big money
is ready, willing and eager to fill.
We can't fix all of this in the next 90 minutes,
but we can go home with spirits renewed
by life-giving words and music.
And then we can find ways, small and large,
to renew our citizenship with whatever encouragement we take
from this time together.
America's history is full of music,
from "Yankee Doodle," to "This Land is Your Land,"
from "The Star-Spangled Banner" to "Born in the USA,"
from "America the Beautiful" to "We Shall Overcome."
The music of democracy has never stopped flowing.
At the heart of our political history,
we also find words of pure poetry.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident,
"that all men are created equal,
"that they are endowed by their Creator
"with certain unalienable rights,
"that among these are life, liberty
"and the pursuit of happiness."
The people who wrote those words fell short
of their own aspirations, just as we do today.
Their definition of all men
did not include Native Americans, enslaved human beings,
women or white men who did not own land.
From the very beginning,
the American challenge
has been to catch up with our own aspirations,
even as we celebrate all that's good about this land.
And that's why this next piece of American poetry
is so important
"We, the people of the United States,
"in order to form a more perfect union
"to ordain and establish this Constitution
"for the United States of America."
The founders knew that they had not created Utopia.
They had launched an endless struggle
to get democracy right,
and we're part of that struggle yet today.
At times, our union becomes so imperfect,
it nearly flies apart,
as on the eve of the Civil War when Lincoln issued
this poetic call to unity,
"We are not enemies, but friends.
"We must not be enemies.
"Though passion may have strained,
"it must not break our bonds of affection.
"The mystic chords of memory,
"stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave
"to every living heart and hearthstone
"all over this broad land,
"will yet swell the chorus of the Union
"when again touched, as surely they will be,
"by the better angels of our nature."
Lincoln had great faith in the better angels of our nature,
but he was well-acquainted with their shadowy counterparts.
All his life, this great man was torn
between a strong call to public service
and an equally strong pull
toward destructive depression and despair.
He knew something we all need to know.
Within each of us are the warring forces
of darkness and light,
and we can work on peace in the world
only as we work on peace within ourselves.
Lincoln was the leader we needed at the time
of the Civil War.
Knowing that everyone contains both darkness and light,
this President refused to split the nation
into us and them.
When Lee surrendered,
Lincoln scandalized the jubilant Union crowd
by saying, "Let the band play Dixie.
"Now it belongs neither to the South nor to the North,
"but to us all."
Today, when we demonize those who differ from us
as the source of all evil,
we have much to learn from Lincoln,
the peacemaker who knew that all reconciliation
begins within,
who refused to project his own darkness on others,
refused to make enemies where none exist.
At the midpoint of the Civil War,
Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address,
whose closing words name the tasks still before us
and take us into Carrie's next song.
After honoring those who died on that bloody battleground,
the President said,
"It is for us, the living, to be dedicated
"to the great task remaining before us;
"that this nation, under God,
"shall have a new birth of freedom
"and that government of the people,
"by the people, for the people,
"shall not perish from the earth."
("Better Angels" by Carrie Newcomer)
* What we want is nothing less
* Than the dream behind this land.
* A country where each person counts
* And gets a helping hand
* When those who've been given much
* We can sing this simple song
* We can keep this gift alive
* By passing it along
* And there's more perfect union
* We can have it if we try
* And our hearts are broken open
* Better angels fly
* This is the people, by the people
* For the people, this is true
* So we'll summon up the very best of us
* And call it me and you
* We have lost, and we have suffered
* Cried an ocean of tears
* And we know the dread that comes
* When the shadows gets too near
* And we know the comfort of a good friend
* Saying it'll be all right
* I take my hand, and we will find
* Our way through this night
* And there's more perfect union
* We can have it if we try
* When our hearts are broken open
* Better angels fly
* This is the people, by the people
* For the people, this is true
* So we'll summon up the very best of us
* And call it me and you
* We're gonna make a few mistakes
* We can't do it all today
* And our hearts our gonna break
* But we'll do it anyway
* We are all in this together
* We can't rise when many fall
* And so we're work for the common good
* And write upon the wall
* Take care of one another
* Be truthful and be kind
* And day by day by reaching out
* We will surely find that
* There's more perfect union
* We can have it if we try
* When our hearts are broken open
* Better angels fly
* This is the people, by the people
* For the people, this is true
* So we'll summon up the very best of us
* And call it me and you
You can learn a lot about people by figuring out
who they mean when they use the word "we."
When America's founders spoke of "We, the People,"
they meant only a handful of people,
and they spliced inequality into our national DNA.
But the good news is
that our white, male, land-owning founders
were quite diverse when it came to politics.
In fact, their differences ran so deep
that at the Constitutional Convention of 1787,
nearly 1/3 of the delegates walked out,
refusing to sign the document saying,
"A pox on all your houses."
I find that statistic reassuring
because 1/3 is about the number of people in my own family
that I have trouble talking politics with.
(laughter)
And that of course, means I have an all American family.
Because the founders had to deal with deep divisions
among themselves, they gave us the first
form of government,
the first form of government that treats conflict
not as an enemy of a good social order,
but as the engine of a better social order.
It's a form of government that invites dissent.
And dissent has allowed us to keep working
to correct the founder's limitations
and expand our definition of who "We, the People," are.
By 2050, over half of Americans will be people of color.
The founders could not have imagined that possibility,
and some of them might not have approved of it.
But they had the genius to give us institutions
that opened the way to the creative diversity
that America is today.
Democracy is not about mere tolerance of diversity.
I don't know about you, but I've never found it reassuring
when someone says,
"Be of good cheer. I'm willing to tolerate you."
(scattered laughter)
Democracy is about actively valuing our differences,
valuing what can emerge from the creative conflict
of backgrounds, experiences and ideas.
Democracy demands that we reject all paranoid warnings
about why we should fear one another.
It asks us to restore the ancient virtue of hospitality,
welcoming not only those who look different from us,
but also those who look at life from different angles
than our own.
If that sounds like a Utopian dream, it's not.
We practice hospitality to diverse ideas all the time:
in science, in technology, in the humanities
and in a wide range of private and public institutions
with practical problems to solve.
That's where new ideas and solutions come from.
If we didn't have a capacity
for holding our differences creatively,
we would have made little or no progress
in any of those areas.
We can use that capacity in politics as well,
if we are willing to seek out patches of common ground,
no matter how small,
where we can stand and talk with each other.
Fortunately, common ground comes with being human.
You and I may well be at odds on matters of public policy,
but when it comes to what we love and hope for,
the odds are good that we overlap.
For example, we love our children and grandchildren
and we hold high hopes for their futures.
I have seen what happens when we begin a discussion
of public policy in education by talking about
the youngsters in our own personal lives.
The conversation becomes more grounded and more fruitful
because it grows from our shared concern about their fates.
Carrie's next song celebrates the shared humanity
of "We, the People,"
as witnessed in one of the most democratic places
in our society; not the State House,
not the U.S. Capitol, but the roadside diner:
Betty's Diner.
("Betty's Diner" by Carrie Newcomer)
* Miranda works the late night counter
* A little joint called Betty's Diner
* Chrome and checkered tablecloths
* And one steamy windowpane
* She got the job that shaky fall
* And after hours she'll write 'til dawn
* With a nod and smile she serves them all
* Here we are all in one place
* The wants and wounds of the human race
* Despair and hope sit face to face
* When you come in from the cold
* Let her fill your cup with something kind
* Eggs and toast like bread and wine
* She's heard it all so she don't mind.
* Arthur lets his earl grey steep
* Since April it's been hard to sleep
* You know they tried most everything
* But it took her in the end
* Kevin tests new saxophones
* But he swears he's leaving quality control
* For the Chicago scene, or New Orleans
* Where they still play righteous horns
* Here we are all in one place
* The wants and wounds of the human race
* Despair and hope sit face to face
* When you come in from the cold
* Let her fill your cup with something kind
* Eggs and toast like bread and wine
* She's heard it all so she don't mind
* Jack studies here after work
* To get past high school, he's the first
* His big hands look comfortable
* With a hammer or a pen
* Emma leaned and kissed his cheek
* And when she did his knees got weak
* Miranda smiles at Em and winks
* Here we are all in one place
* The wants and wounds of the human race
* Despair and hope sit face to face
* When you come in from the cold
* Let her fill your cup with something kind
* Eggs and toast like bread and wine
* She's heard it all so she don't mind
* You never know who'll be your witness
* You never know who grants forgiveness
* Look to heaven or sit with us
* Deidra bites her lip and frowns
* She works the Stop and Go downtown
* She's pretty good at the crossword page
* And she paints her eyes blue black
* Tristan comes along sometimes
* Small for his age and he's barely five
* But she loves him like a mamma lion
* And Veda used to drink a lot
* Almost lost it all before she stopped
* Comes in at night with her friend Mike
* Who runs the crisis line
* Michael toured Saigon and back
* Hair the color of smoke and ash
* Their heads are bowed, their hands are clasped
* One more storm has passed
* Here we are all in one place
* The wants and wounds of the human race
* Despair and hope sit face to face
* When you come in from the cold
* Let her fill your cup with something kind
* Eggs and toast like bread and wine
* She's heard it all so she don't mind *
Well, Carrie has just given us
some very evocative images of community,
a keyword in the American vocabulary.
We treasure stories of locals coming out for a barn raising
to help the newcomers get started,
of neighbors supporting a family or families
hit by devastating loss,
of citizens gathering in town hall meetings
to practice direct democracy late into the night.
Our sense of community has made us the most
charitable nation on earth by a factor of three.
That's our better angels at work,
and they're still alive and well.
But the truth about us is that we fear community
even as we treasure it.
When our communal responsibilities become too burdensome,
we revert to rugged individualism,
the other pole of our national character.
We stand apart from community and pretend to be making it
on our own.
Or we compete for whatever we can get,
sometimes taking more, much more than we need.
We pretend that it's okay to thrive
while others barely survive.
We forget that a nation is finally judged
not by how successful the strong can be
but how well it cares for the weak.
We forget that there is a price to be paid
for a world of economic injustice.
In truth, of course, no one makes it
on his or her own.
From the first breath I took to the one I just drew,
I've been dependent on other people
for my opportunities to be independent.
For example, how do I measure
the debt I owed of public school teachers?
They not only gave me knowledge and tools
to find my way in the world,
they believed in me when I did not believe in myself.
So I also owe a debt to a nation
that values education enough to have provided me
with those teachers.
A debt I must pay forward to the next wave
of "We, the People,"
not just out of duty, but out of gratitude.
We, the people, depend on each other.
Let's remind ourselves of that fact.
Here's a modest proposal:
by making the 5th of July Inter-dependence Day.
(laughter)
The challenges that come with life together
are not an excuse to take refuge
in the Lone Ranger illusion.
Instead, they are opportunities to take next steps
towards that more perfect union:
to listen, to speak, to learn, to grow,
and most of all, to forgive and to love.
That's a big agenda.
But as we all know, all of these capacities
begin in the human heart,
which is where America itself began,
in the hearts of people who dared and still dare to dream.
As Carrie says in her next song,
the greatest revolution is a simple change of heart.
("A Simple Change of Heart" by Carrie Newcomer)
* There's never been a day
* when the world wasn't new
* When the sun did not rise
* Or the light break on through
* Things might get a little worse
* Before they get a little better
* But there's always clearer skies
* Stretching out beyond that weather
* The world holds its breath just to see
* Well will it climb this time
* La la la la la la la la
* La la la la la
* I feel something has shifted
* I know the story's changed
* In the window of a crisis
* We can build a better frame
* Come on and look inside you
* It's the best place to start
* The greatest revolution
* Is a simple change of heart
* I can't put the sacred in such a little box
* Because it's not
* La la la la la la la la
* La la la la la
* And there is no shame in learning something
* When there's something that must be learned
* But there's danger
* When we will not see
* What our actions earn
* Now courage doesn't always shout
* But whispers and reminds
* When we get up one more morning
* And we try another time
* We tried yelling at each other
* It hasn't worked so well
* Throwing gas on a fire
* Never helped as far as I can tell
* Throwing stones cut deep
* A little kindness goes deeper still
* La la la la la la la la
* La la la la la
As we launch into our second theme this evening,
The Power of the Broken Open Heart,
I want to quote a wonderful writer
named Terry Tempest Williams.
She says, "The human heart is the first home of democracy.
"It is where we embrace our questions.
"Can we be equitable?
"Can we be just?
"Can we be generous?
"Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds,
"and offer our attention, rather than our opinions?
"And do we have enough resolve in our hearts
"to act courageously, relentlessly,
"without ever giving up, ever,
"trusting our fellow citizens to join with us
"in our determined pursuit of a living democracy?"
End of quote.
The heart is where we hold democracy's questions
and the tensions they create in us.
Today, some of us are not holding those questions very well,
giving rise to what many have called the politics of rage.
But I think rage is only a symptom,
and you don't cure a disease by treating the symptoms.
My name for the underlying malady
is "the politics of the brokenhearted."
That's the condition we must treat if we want to heal
the body politic.
Across the spectrum of political convictions,
people are brokenhearted about many things:
from fears about holding on to jobs and homes,
to the tragic costs of war.
But we don't talk about our heartbreak much.
We find it more acceptable to share our anger and rage
and our cynicism than our tears.
And yet, when we're able to share our brokenness,
something human happens that can unite us
across great divides.
I know of day-long retreats that bring together folks
who differ on very difficult issues like abortion,
but participants are forbidden from speaking
about their positions on those issues
until the last session of the day.
Instead, they are invited to tell the personal stories
that led them to whatever position they hold.
And almost always, these are stories of heartbreak.
As people connect with each other around
their shared heartbreak, that "something human" happens.
People learn that similar stories can lead different folks
to different convictions.
They learn that the more you know
about another person's story,
the less possible it is to dislike, distrust
or dismiss that person.
They build bridges with these stories instead of walls,
perhaps not changing their minds, but almost always
opening their hearts.
There are at least two ways for the heart to break.
The heart can break apart,
shattering into a thousand scattered shards,
no longer able to serve as a vessel,
to hold the suffering in our lives or anyone else's.
And sometimes that heart, as it breaks,
gets hurled like a fragment grenade
at the perceived source of its pain.
In both personal and national life,
violence is what happens
when we don't know what else to do with our suffering.
But there's another way,
and we see it around us every day.
Pain can also break the heart open into new capaciousness,
making the heart larger, better able to hold our own sorrows
and joys and those of other people.
I'm 76 years old, and I know so many now
who've suffered the pain of losing the dearest person
in their lives.
After long nights of darkness and grief,
they gradually wake up to the realization
that their great loss has made them more understanding,
more forgiving and more compassionate
than they were before their hearts were broken.
The heart breaks open not in spite of that loss,
but because of that loss.
The heart that breaks open into largeness is a supple heart,
made so by the exercise of love.
It's the unexercised, brittle heart that breaks apart
into pieces under stress.
So here's a question worth pondering every day, I think.
What can I do today to make my heart supple enough
to break open, rather than apart,
when I encounter whatever it is
that's going to break my heart?
Good answers to that question can help turn the broken heart
from a politics of rage toward a politics
of generosity and compassion.
What do personal stories have to do with healing
the heart of democracy?
I said it before, I'll say it again:
the more you know about another person's story,
the less possible it is to dislike, distrust
or dismiss them.
Stories create a container to hold a relationship.
And in a relationship, we can have an ongoing dialog
about complicated things between people who differ.
In the long run, I'm convinced.
It's more important to be in right relationship
than it is to be right.
(gentle guitar music in background)
I have a very brief word to say about Carrie's next song,
which came to me recently.
I was in a Quaker meeting once
when a woman spoke out of the silence,
and she said, "You know, we keep trying to find
"unity with each other at high levels of abstraction,
"where none of us are speaking our own language.
"What we really need to do if we want to find unity,
"because up there we get divided and things get abstract
"and pale and thin,
"what we really need to do if we want to find unity
"is to each go into the deep well
"of his or her own experience
"until we tap into the source of living water
"that feeds all the wells."
And I've never forgotten that image.
about going deep in the story.
The same thing happens in politics.
We ask, "What do you believe about public policy?"
And we find ourselves floating away
into abstraction and division.
But when we ask, "What do you believe about your own life,
"about your hopes and your fears,
"about your commitments and your doubts and questions,
"what you value in your personal life,
"in your immediate experience?"
We find more common ground.
- [Carrie] Amen.
(applause)
("I Believe" by Carrie Newcomer)
* I believe there are some debts that we can never repay
* And I believe there are some words
* That we can never unsay
* And I don't know a single soul
* Who didn't get lost along the way
* And I believe in socks and gloves
* Knit out of soft grey wool
* And that there's a place in heaven for those
* Who teach in public school
(applause)
Yeah!
* And I know I get some things right
* But mostly I'm a fool
* I believe in a good strong cup of ginger tea
* And that all these shoots and roots will become a tree
* All I know is I can't help but see
* All of this as so very holy
* I believe in jars of jelly
* Put up by careful hands
* And I believe most folks are doing just
* About the best they can
* And I know there are some things
* That I will never understand
* I believe there's healing in the sound of your voice
* And that a summer tomato
* Is a cause to rejoice
* And that following a song was never really a choice
* Never really
* I believe in a good long letter
* Written on real paper and with real pen
* I believe in the ones I love
* And know I'll never see again
* I believe in the kindness of strangers
* And the comfort of old friends
* And when I close my eyes to sleep at night
* That it's good to say amen
* And I believe that life is comprised of smiles
* And sniffles and tears
* And in an old coat that still has
* Another good year
* And I know that I get scared sometimes
* But all I need is here
* I believe in a good strong cup of ginger tea
* And that all these shoots and roots will become a tree
* All I know is I can't help but see
* All of this as so very holy
* I believe
- Well, we've arrived at the third and final section
of our program, How Then Shall We live?
That question comes from the prophet Ezekiel
who lived around 600 before the Common Era,
so we know there's no one answer to that question.
If there were, people wouldn't have been asking it
for 2,700 years.
In our personal lives, we understand the question,
"How then shall we live?"
We ask and answer it all the time,
by the friends and choices we make,
by the paths we take and the values we embrace,
by the aspirations we pursue.
It's not always an easy question to answer,
and yet we understand what it means in our personal lives.
But when it comes to our political lives,
we have a hard time with the question.
In a society dominated by non-stop mass media
that offer us caricatures
of what our elected officials are doing in distant places
like Washington, D.C.,
we have a bad habit of thinking of politics
as something beyond our reach, except at election time.
So when we ask ourselves the critical question,
"How then shall we live as citizens of a democracy?",
we end up, I think, with very limited answers,
such as: cast your vote,
donate money to the candidate of your choice,
email your opinions to your representatives.
All of these things are worth doing
and important, of course.
But if our answers stop there,
we fall short, far short, of full citizenship.
Gandhi got it right when he said,
"Be the change you want to see in the world."
There are so many human scale things we can do
in the fabric of our everyday lives
to help shape a politics worthy of the human spirit.
("One Woman and a Shovel" by Carrie Newcomer)
* Martha walked right down to the dam
* A hoe and a shovel in either hand
* Bound to dig for every woman and man
* And child who lay sick with fever
* The government men said, be our favorite sons
* Be a place of worth, be somewhere and someone
* If you drown this valley the canal boats come
* So they drowned their lovely valley
* But the waters grew black and the sickness came
* They hung their heads with grief and shame
* And Martha said, we've only ourselves to blame
* And took up a shovel and hoe, good Lord
* Took up a shovel and hoe
* When it's time to say enough and set things right
* The whole world is waist deep in trouble
* Never doubt or question the power of love
* Or one woman with a shovel
* Along came Elizabeth, Sarah and Rose,
* Eva, Clara and Ruth
* They came with picks and shovels and hoes
* And armed with a righteous truth
* Then came Calvin, Eli and Scott
* Timothy, David and Paul
* And together before the sun came up
* they tore down the cursed wall
* Yes, yes, they tore down the cursed wall
* When it's time to say enough and set things right
* The whole world is waist deep in trouble
* Never doubt or question the power of love
* Or one woman with a shovel
* The lake finally bled its bad blood south
* And they'd saved their ravaged land
* And not a single soul, jury or judge
* Would think to fine or jail them
* No, no, think to fine or jail them
* Martha walked right down to the dam
* A hoe and a shovel in either hand
* Bound to dig for every woman and man
* And child who lay sick with fever
* When it's time to say enough and to set things right
* The whole world is waist deep in trouble
* Never doubt or question the power of love
* Or one woman with a shovel
* One woman with a shovel
- Now, I have this like sense that there's a whole lot
of Martha's out there tonight.
I just feel Martha-ness
just kind of rolling in off of these.
So if you're sitting next to someone that's a Martha
in your life and you appreciate her,
you just give her a little nudge and you tell her
that you appreciate her Martha-ness.
(audience chattering)
* One woman with a shovel
* One woman, yeah
* One woman with a shovel
(applause)
- Most of us know someone like Martha,
someone who inspires us to find our own best answer
to the question, "How then shall we live?"
I want to invite you right now
to bring one or two of those people to mind.
They may be well-known or known only to you.
They may still be with us, or they may be long gone
and dearly missed.
Whoever they are, they are people who dreamed
of something better, not just for themselves and their kin,
but for the common good.
They are people who were or are committed
to high values, to the spread of love
and truth and justice,
people who acted on their commitments.
As we hold those names inwardly,
I want to ask a simple question.
At the end of the road,
how many of the folks you're thinking about
were or will be able to say,
"I'm so glad I devoted my life to that job
"because now everyone can check it off
"their to-do lists forever?"
I'm certain that the answer is none.
None.
After thousands of years of effort
by a long parade of good people,
love and truth and justice have yet to be secured
once and for all.
So however we answer the question, "How then shall we live?"
it's clear that we must live out the answer
in what I call the tragic gap.
On the one side of that gap are the hard realities
in the world around us.
For example, the realities of poverty and violence
at home and around the world.
On the other side of that gap lie all the things
we know to be possible,
not because we wish they were,
but because we've seen them with our own eyes.
We've seen generosity instead of greed.
We've seen people at peace instead of at war.
That gap is tragic not simply because it's sad,
but because it will never be closed.
It's part of the human condition.
Martha rid her village of water-borne disease for a while,
but in Martha's village and around the world,
our ecological catastrophe continues.
Our task is to keep acting while holding
the eternal tension between what is
and what could and should be,
refusing to flip out into the cynicism
that makes us part of the problem
or into the idealism that flies us above the fray.
How do we stay committed to things like love,
truth and justice when we won't see permanent solutions
in our lifetimes,
especially when we live in a society obsessed with
being effective and getting measurable results?
We all want to be effective with things we care about,
but when effectiveness is our only standard for action,
the outcome is predictable.
We will abandon the big jobs: love, truth and justice,
and take on only the small tasks
because only then can we get visible results.
In my judgment, education today is a tragic example.
We no longer care in this country about educating a child,
a big job that's never done.
We care only about getting kids to pass tests.
In the process, we're...
(applause)
In the process, we're crushing the spirits of a lot of kids
and good teachers, and we have to pick up our shovels
and do something about this.
If we are to be in the business
of doing love, truth and justice for the long haul,
we need a standard that trumps effectiveness.
As I think about the folks I honor
for living lives of service,
I think the name of that standard is faithfulness;
faithfulness to the gifts we are given,
faithfulness to the needs we see around us,
faithfulness to the ways in which our gifts
might respond to those needs.
None of us on the day we die
will be able to claim ultimate effectiveness
in spreading love, truth and justice.
But I believe that if we can say,
"To the best of my abilities, I was faithful to my calling,"
I believe we'll be okay.
In the meantime, what long haul commitment requires of us
is very simple,
and Carrie addresses it in her next song
that requires us to keep on breathing,
breathing in and breathing out.
("Breathe In, Breathe Out" by Carrie Newcomer)
* To live we learn what we love most
* Embrace it all and hold it close
* Breathe it in and breathe it out
* Let it go
* To live is to love so many things
* To fly on beautiful wax wings
* Breathe it in and breathe it out
* Let it go
* Breathe in, breathe out
* Let it go
* Breathe in, breathe out
* Let it, let it, let it go
* Breathe in, breathe out
* Let it go, let it go
* I held anger like a coal
* Burning hot but not let go
* With the thought that I could throw it at someone
* Such a hard lesson to learn
* My own hand is what got burned
* Breathe it in and breathe it out
* Let it go
* Breathe in, breathe out
* Let it go
* Breathe in, breathe out
* Let it, let it, let it go
* Breathe in, breathe out
* Let it go, let it go
* What is won is won
* What is done is done
* Let it go
* What is real is real
* What we feel, we feel
* Then let it go
* I saw one candle in the night
* Become a thousand lights
* Breathe it in and breathe it out
* Let it go
* Life is fleeting, this I know
* Short and draped in marigolds
* Breathe it in and breathe it out
* Let it go
* Breathe in, breathe out
* Let it go
* Breathe in, breathe out
* Let it, let it, let it go
* Breathe in, breathe out
* Let it go
* La-a-a-a,
* la-da, la-a-a, la
* La-da-la-da-a-a
* Ah-a-a-a
* La-da-la-da,
* La-a-a
(chuckles)
(applause)
Well, we've taken a journey this evening,
a journey in democracy that began long before we got here,
a journey that will go on as long as there are citizens
committed to the common good.
We've celebrate "We, the People,"
asking, "Who do we mean when we say 'we,'
"and how can we let it mean one more and one more
"and one more?"
We've thought about ways of walking through our fears
to welcome and learn from the stranger.
We've talked about conflict in community
and how it can open us up to something new and better,
rather than shut us down.
We've brought to mind people who inspire us
because they stood and acted tenaciously
in the tragic gap, in spite of the fact that they never saw
their highest values permanently secured.
We've imagined ways in which we might
be moment-by-moment citizens
instead of waiting for the next election
to exercise our citizenship.
("If Not Now" by Carrie Newcomer)
* If not now, tell me when
- Come on, try that.
* If not now (audience sings along)
There you go.
* Tell me when
Then it goes like this.
* We may never see this moment
Just try that.
* We may never see this moment
* Or place in time again
* If not now, if not now
* Tell me when
Here we go, whole thing.
* If not now
* Tell me when
* If not now
* Tell me when
* We may never see this moment
* Or place in time again
* If not now, if not now
* Tell me when
* And I see sorrow and trouble in this land *
Can you sing that?
* I see sorrow and trouble in this land
* And yet we'll take the journey
* And we'll walk it hand-in-hand
* If not now, if not now
* Tell me when
Here we go.
* If not now, if not now
* Tell me when
* If not now, if not now
* Tell me when
* We may never see this moment
* Or place in time again
* If not now, if not now
* tell me when