The light just blinked on…a glimmer way out there at the end of the tunnel. It gives me a buoyant feeling I haven’t had in months. I saw it the day candidate Joe Biden finally announced his vice-presidential pick, Kamala Harris. Call out all the political reasons you want for why this is a good choice, or not, for America. The reasons I see, or rather feel, have to do with a transformation in character for the leadership of our country. Because what happens next will derive only partly from policy. Most of it will occur because of the restoration of humanity to the Oval Office.

Never in my lifetime has the contrast been so dramatically drawn, the consequences so horribly lived out, between two political choices. To give it credit with a disgusting spin, the current administration has served as a boil on the face of our nation, bringing to a head all the hatred, corruption, greed, and division which has existed for so long just beneath the surface. We see it now, we feel it now, and we have a chance to lance it so that healing can begin. Needless to say, the process is ugly and painful.

Now we can see that before policy can be made, we must look to the character of leadership. Frankly, I don’t know how to get my head around it all: economics, health care, social safety nets, infrastructure, environmental protection, trade relations, and countless other challenges on the national scene. I do see that the qualities of compassion, the experience of grief and loss, the principles of integrity, the ability to listen, and the capacity to learn from mistakes matter. They are everything. Policies and laws can be rationally argued. We’ll never get unquestioning agreement. We wouldn’t want it. But obstinate lunacy is total darkness.

In John Lewis, we saw the light with considerable purity and impact. Add to his legacy your own list of local, state, and national political leaders, leaders of workers and leaders of business, leaders of non-profits and medical experts—all those you personally know who are striving in self-giving ways to bring us to healing. Yes, we will continue to disagree about the best way to get where we think the city, the state, the nation should go. Let’s begin by choosing the best people.

I’m with you Quinton Lucas, Nicole Galloway, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. That’s for starters.

I’m adding a poem here which will probably appear nowhere else, being topical and timely. It is a lament for a young man I never knew. I preserve his name. In spite of the ending, I am not indifferent to the nameless young men and women who are dying daily from despair, violence…and indifference. We have healing to do.

FOR TREVION IN THE LOCAL NEWS

So you were only nineteen—funny, smart–
as friends will often say of one who’s dead.
You’d talk for hours, had a troubled heart,
a fearless future swirling in your head
as you stood sometimes on the rocks beside
the local creek, soothed by your bare feet cool
in shallow water. On the day you died
among a gang of buddies out of school
the current took you. No one noticed when
or how you disappeared without a cry,
got swept and trapped beneath a bridge.
And then
the flashing lights, the sisters standing by.

Next article. I click your death away.
How many times, this tiresome cliché.