Monday Morning Musing

March 8, 2021

Columbus, Ohio

It's International Women's Day and I'm thinking of all of the amazing, powerful, faithful, compassionate, creative, fierce women I have known. It fills me with hope to name them. They are out there changing the world in ways big and small, which is exactly how the world gets changed. And some of them only live in blessed memory and that is also how the world gets changed.

I have the enormous, mind boggling opportunity to serve in the same position that was once held by one of my mentors. She changed the world in the way she believed in the work she was doing and the students she was walking alongside. I am trying to do the same.

For today, here's a poem by Atticus that seems appropriate. I almost chose Amanda Gorman's work, for obvious reasons, but I've been reading this poem almost every day as I do this new work, entrusted to me, I am certain, by the movement of the universe, and by some incredible women doing amazing work, and by my mentor, who I feel is close at hand.

Put your hand on your heart

in you

there is power

there are ideas

no one has ever thought of

there is the strength to love

purely and intensely

and to be loved back

there is the power to make people happy

and to make people laugh

the power to change lives

and futures

don't ever forget that power

and don't ever

give up on it.

-Atticus