Tara Brach

One of my inspirations on the panel, tell you one more story here.

This is John Lewis, a lifelong civil rights leader and congressman.

And here's what inspired me.

He was sharing a story about, I think it's 1961, being in a bus station, Rock Hill, South Carolina.

And he and a colleague were beating with baseball bats by a group of white men.

And they didn't fight or press charges.

They just treated their wounds and continued their work.

So five decades later,

One of those attackers, his name was Elwin Wilson, walked into Lewis's Capitol Hill office with his son.

He said, I'm one of the men who beat you, and I want to atone.

Will you forgive me?

So Lewis is telling the story.

He says, I forgave him.

We embraced he, his son, and I. We wept.

We talked.

But after he finishes telling the story, he says this kind of quietly, almost to himself.

He says, people can change.

People can change.

So I'm sharing that because that understanding of our potential, it allowed him to maintain his engagement and his heart through all these decades of real cruelty and injustice and hatred.

But it needs to be cultivated in most of us to be able to see that and trust that.