the horizon of history

I am befuddled that the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is still up in the air a year after his death. As an educator, I think a lot about the future we are setting up for our children, especially now that our little Poppy Seed is 5 months old today. "May we work for those on the horizon of history."

John Lewis has bequeathed us America.
May we work for those on the horizon of history.
May we be steadfast in making the America that could be.
May we be worthy caretakers of the struggle.
May we be the very good troublemakers now. https://t.co/0kzOtqL5xA

— John Pavlovitz (@johnpavlovitz) July 13, 2021

After eight decades braving taunts and threats and bruises and broken bones, trying to make the world that could be out the world that was, this very good troublemaker has slipped from here to hereafter—and he has departed, he has bequeathed something invaluable to us:

He has left us America.

It is our precious, unearned inheritance, entrusted to us to fully steward in these days that he can no longer, whether we feel capable of or qualified for or ready to. You and I awake today with a fragile, fractured nation in our trembling hands, and the tired eyes of a world upon us waiting to see what we’ll do with it. 

The beautiful parts of America have never simply happened, they have been made: willfully, steadfastly, and faithfully fashioned by human beings whose eyes were on not only their existence and their struggle and their worth—but of those on the distant horizon of history who were following after them, whose names and faces they’d never know. [...]

photo {the Hudson River at dawn from last week}