In a time of national crisis, what our country really needs is a good poem.

—Herbert Hoover

This is the time when we must say to the stranger,

the other, sit here. Notice how difficult it can be

to even come to the same table, how hard

to look the other in the eye. Something in us screams,

“Right, I am right.” And it is hard to hear the voice

beneath that scream, a whisper of a gospel that says

nothing at all.

This is the time when we must say to ourselves,

I am also the stranger, when we must look

in the mirror and not know who it is we see—

someone capable of being more courageous,

more compassionate, more devoted, more

astonishingly vulnerable and connected

than we ever knew ourselves to be. Who

is that stranger in the mirror, we must ask,

and vow to never…