The Crowd Will Not Cheer
A brief dose of a dark-colored pill.
Even if you are correct,
Even if they see the truth,
Even if they march us into ruin,
Every if we pull us from the brink,
Even if your “logic is sound,”
Even if they use our blood for ink,
Even if the pendulum swings,
Even if the pendulum swings back,
and falls upon you,
like the edge of the guillotine’s blade…
The crowd will not cheer.
You will not be thanked. You will not be vindicated. You will not be apologized to. You will not even be remembered.
If you continue to fight this battle, the slow march of mirror-holding, the campaign to “have a look and see yourself,” they will not convert. Even so, if you can persist in holding the mirror high and aiming it directly into their face, raising it up again and again no matter how many times they strike you down, pressing forward and forward again even when they take every last inch of you, and in the end you even die,
The crowd will not cheer.
You will not be forgiven, you will not be vindicated, you will not be loved.
The conflict of our time is not political. It is no longer cultural, either. It is spiritual. It exists up high, in the places where all lines converge. The reward for fighting, if you’re lucky, will be that you’ll one day get to go back to the shitty, tedious, boring life you were always destined to live.
If you can handle all of that, and aren’t just in it for the satisfaction, then you know where you stand and you can use your power to its fullest extent. This battle is not for now, it is for those who live many years from now, who carry our names and DNA and who will not remember us. If you can do it for them, and know that none of them will even know your name (even if it is the same as yours), then that does not mean much but at least it means you know what you were made to do.
This is the fullest embodiment of love. It is instinctual to fight for those who live, but it is transcendent to fight for those who are right now only theoretical. They too, will not cheer. But at least they will exist. This is the highest calling of love. To make sure that others can exist, even if it means that you will no longer do the same.
For doing this, the crowd will most certainly not begin to cheer. But that probably doesn’t bother you all that much. If you were only in it for the approval of the crowd, you probably wouldn’t be here reading this or feeling the way that you do.
The crowd does not cheer for you, but you will save them nonetheless. There was another person who tried to save the crowd once. He even tried to save them after that very crowd sentenced him to death. People forget that, but he knew they would.
The crowd did not cheer for him. He saved them anyway.
Boomer here... reading on Easter Sunday morning. "this is the highest calling of love" and recalling how long I struggled, before understanding this was why I was taking communion. Not just to be forgiven but to carry forgiveness forward, unremarked.
Yes, yes, yes to this! To all of this. I'm going to steep in the tea of it, from one H.P. to another, thank you. The tenderness of your heart and the care you have is truly a treasure.