Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change

by John Lewis

Nothing can stop the power of a committed and determined people to make a difference in our society. Why? Because human beings are the most dynamic link to the divine on this planet.

Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society. The work of love, peace, and justice will always be necessary, until their realism and their imperative takes hold of our imagination, crowds out any dream of hatred or revenge, and fills up our existence with their power.

What is the purpose of a nation if not to empower human beings to live better together than they could individually?

If the structures of our lives do not contribute to that purpose or if they complicate our ability to live, to be free and to be happy, or even worse, if they lead to the confines of oppression, then we seek change, sometimes radical change, even revolution, to satisfy the yearning of our souls.

The most important lesson I have learned in the fifty years I have spent working toward the building of a better world is that the true work of social transformation starts within. It begins inside your own heart and mind, because the battleground of human transformation is really, more than any other thing, the struggle within the human consciousness to believe and accept what is true.

Faith, to me, is knowing in the solid core of your soul that the work is already done, even as an idea is being conceived in your mind. It is being as sure as you are about your dreams as you are about anything you know as a hard fact.

Faith is being so sure of what the spirit has whispered in your heart that your belief in its eventuality is unshakable. Nothing can make you doubt that what you have heard will become a reality. Even if you do not live to see it come to pass, you know without one doubt that it will be. That is faith.

We believed that if we are all children of the same Creator, then discrimination had to be an error, a misconception based on faulty logic. The idea that some people were inherently better was a delusion of the human ego, a distortion of the truth. We asserted our right to human dignity based on a solid faith in our divine heritage that linked us to every other human being and all the rest of creation, known and unknown, even to the heart and mind of God and the highest celestial realms in the universe.

We in the movement decided to actualize our belief that the hatred we experienced was not based on any truth, but was actually an illusion in the minds of those who hated us.

So when people ask me how I managed my fear in that moment, I can truthfully say I was not afraid. I knew by that time that no one had the power to injure me. I had taken that power away by experiencing the worst they could do and discovering it did not diminish me; it did not harm me; it set me free and moved my soul beyond the fear of death.

Contrary to popular thought, waiting can involve more than defeatist, wishful thinking—it can actually be a pragmatic and realistic catalyst for change. Why? Because it takes our limitations into account. Waiting acknowledges that we are not prime movers in all things. It concedes that there are some factors that lie beyond our control, and any well-considered plan must find a way to manage the unmanageable, to somehow measure and account for the unforeseeable and the unknown, including the work of social change.

The vote is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have to make change in a democratic society, but one vote will not make all the change that is necessary. Change requires patient, persistent action.

I meet so many ambitious young politicians and leaders who want to jump to the head of the line. They do not know how we arrived at this point in our history as a nation, but they believe they should be appointed to lead us into the future. They think that because they are educated, articulate, and talented someone should usher them down the red carpet to a throne of leadership. But real leaders are not appointed. They emerge out of the masses of the people and rise to the forefront through the circumstances of their lives. Either their inner journey or their human experience prepares them to take that role. They do not nominate themselves. They are called into service by a spirit moving through a people that points to them as the embodiment of the cause they serve.

If one goes up, we can all rise. But if many fall, the height of the summit will be diminished.