I didn’t pick up John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg as a protest read against Donald Trump’s impending inauguration. It wasn’t like watching The West Wing to escape reality and imagine a president who aligns with my ideals.

But the timing of my Libby book loan was perfect.

This is an exhaustive biography, and I’m grateful my Kindle hid what must be an enormous physical book. For a couple of months, I woke up early to read before work. Lewis’s life became a balm for the wide-open wound in my heart.

He looms so large in our collective consciousness that it’s easy to forget that as a kid his first sermons were to an audience of his family’s chickens, a young man with a drawl so thick that people wondered if he had a speech impediment, and a n emerging leader whose impulse wasn’t to immediately step in and command a room.

John Lewis became a titan because he tirelessly Did the Work — building an interracial coalition rooted in the ideals of The Beloved Community, transforming society through unwavering nonviolence, and getting into Good Trouble.

Now seems as good a time as any for us to take a page from John Lewis.

Notable Lines

• “And remember this: Violence of the spirit is even worse than striking back.”
• “I am fully convinced that the true way to bear witness to the Truth is to preach through action also and not by faith alone. I definitely feel that if the historical Jesus were here today, He would be in this jail cell with us for the same cause, the cause of justice and righteousness. Since He is not here, we must do what He would do.”
• “It may sound strange,” he later said, “but I think someplace along the way I made up my mind that I would not become bitter or hostile. I think that’s part of the whole philosophy of nonviolence. When you let the nonviolent discipline or philosophy become a way of life, it will control all aspects of your life.”