With the news of tax reform and the noticeable sense that many in power have lost their way to the need for safety for themselves and their tribes ~ which always leads to the temporary impossibility of higher ground or care for others~

I am reminded of the good that we all carry within us no matter what the fearful will choose in a moment. When we choose not to be fearful, we choose from the power within us. We choose again from the sense of care and from abundance. We change our world. Our world is the only one we have any real possibility of transforming.

I add these Beautiful Words: an invitation to remain inspired and powerful in your seeing and care in this world.

May we be the ‘truly great’ who rise above the greedy limited chatter of those who see scarcity in this moment, and instead create a wide berth of love within which to do our work.

The Truly Great
—by Stephen Spender

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious, is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

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The Truly Great by Stephen Spender, which John F. Kennedy, Jr. read when the library and museum bearing his father’s name was dedicated in 1979.