Moral Courage

It’s Christmas Eve, the Monday after the winter solstice. The political sky is covered by clouds of political chaos, the planet is overheating, treacherous territory lies ahead. Here in Sare, a soft rain is falling and I am thinking about moral courage.

Moral courage, it sounds so esoteric. Something that happens in one’s mind alone, a kind of internal time-sheet punched before you get to leave for the day. Something only you will notice, invisible to others, certainly screened from those who disagree with you politically.

But it’s not, I realize that now, as twilight falls gently around the little bergerie, settles around the base of the leafless birch trees. An owl agrees from an oak tree up the hill, a gentle, almost sad repeated hoot. A breeze catches and swirls the fallen leaves beyond the patio. Yes, all of us here tonight – flora and fauna – agree: moral courage has the impact of a volcano, an earthquake, a lightning strike. Moral courage can change the world.

To my mind, moral courage must be action. Thought alone does not qualify. It must be action that you take in the face of widespread disagreement and at some person risk. You take it because, and only because, it is the right thing to do. You take it despite the fact that the worldly cost to you will exceed any possible worldly gain.

It is Victor Lazlo singing the Marseillaise in Rick’s in Casablanca, but it’s not just the stuff of epic films. It is happening in our time, today, this year and last. It is Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. It is Christine Blasey Ford and Anita Hill telling their truth despite everything. It is John McCain turning thumbs down. It is the Parkland students standing up to the NRA. It is General James Mattis turning in his resignation.

We don’t have to be on the same political page as someone to feel the power of their moral courage. It is a force of nature, perhaps even THE force. Close your eyes, feel the light. It’s always been there. It will guide you. Thanks to every single person who helped this year to light the way.

Leaving home. Heading home. I walked out of the San Francisco apartment this morning in pouring rain, now waiting for an Iceland Airlines flight to Paris, then on to the little house in the mountains.

Home, a home I haven't seen for way too long, a home I left to get my Master of Fine Arts, to get my book published. I close my eyes and walk through the rooms in my mind, the brick walls, the peaked oak ceilings, the little wood-burning stove in the corner.

Hoping the snakes have stayed outside for the winter. Hoping the old Landcruiser starts. Hoping I am still enough the person I was when I left that the bergerie will allow me in. Love, fear, sorrow, regret, and hope. They mix and swell like waves.