Only the Beautiful

by Susan Meissner

Why aren’t there places like that for fallen men, I wonder, where they are tsked and told every day that their recklessness has led to disaster?

A book is always in many places at once. That is its singular wonder. A book takes one voice speaking and makes it many. A book can shine far brighter and longer than I ever could on my own.

“Power like that can’t be stopped,” and my own voice saying back to him, “Of course it can.” It can. It is stopped. All the time. Not with a magic wand or hopeful thoughts or wishful thinking or mere words, but with courage and resolve and the refusal to allow those without voices to remain unheard.

This is what makes us sublimely human, isn’t it? Not unsullied genetic perfection, but when we stubbornly love and honor one another. Just the way we are.

How we treat one another is what we are still able to do something about.

With giving, there is cost, isn’t there? There is always cost. Sometimes it is an easy sum to hand over. And sometimes it exacts from you the whole measure of your heart.