Larry Bassett’s Reviews > Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America > Status Update

Each and every one of us has the power to turn our enemies around because we are all a spark of the divine. It does not matter whether we are fit or weak, short and scrawny, or big and strong. There is no adversary who can defeat us if we believe in our own inner capacity to overcome.

In order to beat people who radiate love and acceptance, an individual has to override his or her own conscience and allow anger and brutality to have its way without limitation. Most people cannot do this. They have a conscience.

In his brother’s eulogy, Edward Kennedy said this about Bobby: “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.” I think this is a legacy to which we should all aspire.

You may be in your darkest hour, it may be darker than ten thousand nights on your path to lasting change, but there is something in you that keeps you moving, feeling your way through the night until you can see a glimmer of light. That is the power of faith.

The power of faith is transformative. It can be utilized in your own personal life to change your individual condition, and it can be used as a lifeline of spiritual strength to change a nation. Each and every one of us is imbued with a divine spark of the Creator.

When we were set free from the worst prison in the country, we emerged stronger than ever before. Our faith had seen us through. We knew then that even though Mississippi presented the most perilous dangers in our struggle, we realized through our imprisonment in Parchman that our faith had the power to deliver us even from the most vicious proponents of segregation.

By this point in the Rides, we had already been attacked in Rock Hill, South Carolina, a bus was set on fire in Anniston, Alabama, we had faced mob violence in Birmingham, and spent an entire night in a church in Montgomery surrounded by a bloodthirsty gang of three thousand vigilantes threatening to burn the church down.

Nothing can stop the power of a committed and determined people to make a difference in our society. Why? Because human beings are the most dynamic link to the divine on this planet.

John Lewis has died, but he has left words behind him that can still give us hope and strength. This book is an example of those words that remain with us today and tomorrow.

I held on to my mind and my faith so that today I am blessed to actually see so many of the changes in this world that we dreamed would take shape. And now I can share what got me through, my guiding philosophy, so that anyone feeling victimized by peers or impatient with our government, offended by the inequities of our economy, or wondering about the road to success, will be inspired.