Raise Us All

There were fans yelling racist insults at our match last week. At a volleyball match. Women speaking out about women's rights are being threatened every day. Because they dared to champion equality. We're constantly losing LGBT youth to suicide. In a world that doesn't accept them they don't know how to accept the world. And I can't understand. I actually cannot understand how people can see the differences in other people as proof of their own superiority. How they can believe that their intolerance leaves them standing on the moral high ground. We can be so much better. That's where this comes from...

Raise Us All

Lower your hands

Your pitchforks, your knives

Step out of the angry mob

Long enough to see the ignorance that begets the hate

To see that you are acting in a false self-defense

That those you wield your weapons against, wield none

Their differences, their choices, their happiness don’t wound you

The only poison that may threaten you is that of your own hatred

Lower your hands

And raise your compassion

Lower your voice

And listen

When everyone is yelling, no one can hear

The power of your voice comes not from its volume

Or its ability to inflict pain

But from its ability to inspire another

Shouts and insults are not the tools of inspiration

And you cannot make someone listen if you will not

Lower your voice

And raise your ear

Lower your eyes

Stop looking at everyone else around you

Searching for his sins, his faults, his differences

Look inside yourself instead

Examine your heart and ask yourself

If you like what you find

If you are being the person that you want to be

If the world is better off for your place in it

Lower your eyes

And raise your heart

Lower yourself

Step down off of your pedestal

And stand next to your fellow human beings

No matter their color

Man, woman or other

Whoever they love

None of these things makes them worse or you better

We only find the best of ourselves when we come together

Lower yourself

And raise humanity

When you have lowered your hands, your voice, your eyes, yourself

And done your best to bring some light into the world

Then—

Raise your hands

To aid the one beside you who has stumbled

Raise your voice

In the service of another’s cause

Raise your eyes

And look for the beauty around you

Raise yourself

And it will raise us all