I come to this place more times than not, words stuck tight in my throat. There is so much felt, deeply, and I trip and stumble over words that might possibly express what’s in my heart.
For you.
Words fail. You wait, faces upturned, eyes on me, hearts hungry for the offering that will satiate, sentiment that will lead you into battle again. Today.
Ancient depths in me remember: what I had to kill in me lifetimes ago, to speak the words that would light your rage, set you ablaze, remind you of your brazen and deepest courage. The enemy is out there. We’re going to annihilate him. Victory will be ours. Follow me. There will be no surrender.
Words that cost. Lives. Hearts. Beliefs. Strength. Futures. My soul.
I stand before you here and now, once again. The words that will lead you into battle for your hearts, your souls, your minds, your lives come just as hard.
Not because there is not sacred truth to stand on.
But because to speak the words means I face the enemy. In you. In me.
And words cannot possibly capture what is at stake in my heart, or in yours.
You. are. holy. power.
This is perhaps the only thing of true value that I can say.
To remind you of your courage. To lead you back out into the danger. To inspire you to fight a battle that we have to keep choosing to believe is worth it. Because it is a choice, and it takes everything in my heart and everything in your heart to keep believing why we must keep fighting.
You. are. holy. power.
To admit that it’s not easy to sound the rally cry, that it takes a hard battle first in my heart to overcome the overwhelming sense that the Enemy outnumbers us, that there are real and very deeply felt consequences and sacrifices that come from choosing to fight, choosing to live, choosing to face that danger…it’s dangerous to admit that.
People want to believe that we’re fearless.
After all, fighting, and fighting all the way through, is a warrior’s nature.
People want to believe that to lead people to life, to hold them to a sacred trust that life must be lived, to give them a reason why deep suffering and pain and sorrow is worth surviving — people want to believe that effort comes easy.
Maybe it should. Maybe if you don’t know in your bones exactly what you’re asking them to do, maybe it’s easy to utter smooth words that tell them to live, tell them to just fight harder, tell them to carry on oblivious to the exhaustion and the weight of what they carry. To the cost. Maybe then, it’s easy.
You. are. holy. power.
Asking – ordering – commanding – there’s a responsibility in that, a sacred responsibility to know exactly what you’re asking them to sacrifice, to be honest about the cost. And to face that cost with them.
You cannot just tell warriors who have been carved up, marched, deprived, muscles and sinew worn, strength depleted, spirits traumatized, fear gnawed, to get on with it.
They have to be held. Held tight by a faith in something they cannot see.
Returned to love.
You. are. holy. power.
So no, it’s not popular to admit any of this. We grieve that we lose 22 a day. A number that is meant to alarm, but masks the deeper issue. We stand around baffled by why this keeps happening.
We fail to count the cost. We prefer to believe it should be easy to choose life.
We fail to account for what we ask of them when we do lead them into battle.
You. are. holy. power.
That is perhaps the only words our hearts need to hear.
Because the battle is not out there with the Enemy. It’s not Death that snarls and sneers at us. Death isn’t actually the enemy we’re battling.
The battle — the real battle — is in what we believe in our hearts.
The rally cry isn’t to keep fighting, but to remember that we are sacred. Holy power.
Love.
Here to be Love.
The battle is to remember that Love is who we are, why we’re here, why we matter.
The reason we fight. The reason we hold one another.
The reason we don’t quit.
The reason we don’t take ourselves out.
It’s the reason I stand before you, your eyes on me, and find it in myself to walk out into THIS battle with you.
You. are. holy. power.
And you are loved.