Time to Speak Up

Leading with Integrity

“Nelson Mandela went to jail believing in violence, and 27 years later he and his colleagues had slowly and carefully honed the skills, the incredible skills, that they needed to turn one of the most vicious governments the world has known into a democracy. And they did it in total devotion to non-violence.”

Scilla Elworthy

Pope Francis described our way of life like this: “We have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves as if it were normal we continue to sow destruction, pain and death.” Each week we are galvanized by another mass shooting. The American response to it is to buy more guns, and to blame our president for “leading from behind,” as if leadership requires, actually demands, more violence. Is that the America we truly want? What, exactly, is our end game? In the words of Pope Francis, “Violence and war lead only to death.”

If guns and violence have become a way of life for us, perhaps it is time we led from behind—perhaps we have lost the moral integrity to lead at all. Because leadership is not measured by how many obnoxious comments one can pack into a three-minute interview, nor is it laced with racist and macho ideology, whether it comes from a man or a woman. When we aggrandize people who espouse more violence, when we sell our souls to the National Rifle Association, when we block laws that would stop the proliferation of semi-automatic weapons, we are inviting and even complicit in the violence that is killing our children and turning our streets into bullet-ridden rivers of blood.

People of conscience have to become as vocal as those who are ranting about vengeance and hatred. We must wake up to the direction our country is going, and decide if this is the world we want to perpetuate and hand down to our children. If it isn't, we should to act collectively to stop it—with our votes, with our voices and with our refusal to allow violence to rule our own hearts.

                                      In the Spirit,

                                          Jane