Come Home, America
Good Sunday morning to you, readers, and happy first day of February.
Like many of you, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what’s happening in our country and how it feels to live here right now.
I’ve been thinking about how many people feel shaken and exhausted. Many feel as though the ground beneath them has shifted—and they don’t know what to hold onto anymore.
Many of us don’t just feel politically broken. We feel spiritually and emotionally broken too. And at times, it feels like so much that it’s hard not to wonder if it’s just us. It’s not.
Let me say this loud and clear: You’re not crazy or weak for feeling this way, and you’re not alone. You are human.
We the People—of all ages, faiths, backgrounds, and political leanings—are living through a moment that is asking everything of us. And that’s why we are here. Because our value is inherent.
Our value doesn’t lie in our job. Or in our productivity. Or in our politics. Our value is inherent in our humanity. And right now, the values our forefathers and foremothers fought so hard to establish—the values many of us were raised to believe in—are being tested before our very eyes.
Decency.
Honesty.
Safety.
Belonging.
Freedom.
Respect for one another.
A belief in the common good.
They’re all being put to the test.
And yet, something else is happening too. People are rising.
I was deeply inspired this week by the outpouring of support for Minneapolis. Neighbors showing up for one another, artists and organizers speaking up for one another, communities feeding one another, fellow human beings checking in on one another and refusing to look away.
The response has rippled outward across social media and throughout the country and world. Boomers have marched alongside millennials. And veterans have stood up alongside students. Everyone who has stood up and spoken up knows this is about the bigger us in the United States of America.
We the People have had enough, and the message is being heard. What we are seeing is not chaos. It is conscience. It is a reckoning moment—one in which attempts to distort the truth have been met, swiftly and courageously, by witnesses willing to say: No. That is not what happened. Witnesses who spoke the truth and who refused to allow lies to calcify into history.
The culture responded. Parents pushed back. Friends spoke up. Poets began to write. Singers began to sing. And the voice of resistance—grounded not in hatred but in humanity—rose from the people.
This moment is about reimagining what becomes possible when we decide that the humanity of America matters more than the brand of any one person, party, or slogan. And it certainly matters a heck of a lot more than any strongman fantasy.
This is not about shaming people for how they voted. This is about coming home to ourselves. It’s about recognizing the rupture—and being willing to do the work of repair. Power looks permanent until it isn’t.
Just last Sunday, I was on a walk with my brother when he told me something that stopped me cold. His high school-aged daughter had recently told him that she didn’t believe we had the power to do anything about what’s happening in our country. Not because she was cynical. Not because she was apathetic. But, she said, because she had never actually seen that power work.
Imagine that for a moment. A young person coming of age in America who has already begun to doubt her own agency.
What a difference a week can make. What a difference it makes when people stand up and refuse a false story. When they show up, tell the truth, and say: This is not who we are. This is not what happened.
For the first time, my niece could see human power made visible. Ordinary people shaping reality. Conscience in action.
Recent polling suggests that for many Americans, this moment has served as a personal turning point across party lines. That matters. Because once people see what is possible, they cannot unsee it. Once people realize they matter, they act differently.
Years ago, someone told me a story about Tiger Woods and how, when he was winning relentlessly, other golfers began to believe he was invincible. They played as if defeat was inevitable. Then he lost, and suddenly the field changed. Not because he became weaker—but because everyone else remembered their own strength.
This feels like one of those moments. You can fire a commander. You can deflect blame. You can try to change the subject. But once people have seen something, they cannot unsee it. Once people have felt something within them move, they carry themselves differently. They speak differently. They walk differently.
And so I want to say this directly: If you voted for someone and now you wish you hadn’t, it’s okay. You can come walk with us now. If you’ve stayed quiet before because you were afraid of upsetting your family, your friends, or your community, it’s okay. You can speak up with us now. If you feel ashamed of how hardened your heart has become, it’s okay. We’re here to catch you. And if you feel so angry you no longer recognize yourself, it’s okay. We’re right here beside you.
We the People who believe in a better way, I call on all of us to lock arms and walk together now. We are what I like to call the Move Humanity Forward Brigade.
And yes—if you wear a uniform, or work inside the system, or have been told to follow orders that violate your conscience—you are welcome to join us too. We are not building a movement of perfect people. We are building a movement of awake people. Decent people. Honest people. People who respect the law and want the law to serve them, not trample them. People who want a free press, not a government that arrests journalists for doing their job.
We want leaders who act like decent human beings. We want leaders who tell the truth. We want leaders who understand that power is not permission to harm. Leaders who can be strong and tender. Firm and fair. Clear-eyed and compassionate.
Because this is not a reality show. These are our lives. These are our children. This is our country.
In 1972, my father, Sargent Shriver, ran on the Democratic presidential ticket alongside George McGovern. Their campaign slogan—“Come home, America”—is a phrase that has stayed with me ever since and now hangs on a wall in my home. And while it may not have fully landed in his moment, it feels deeply right for this one. We the People are resurrecting that call—not as nostalgia, not as retreat, but as a return to our highest ideals.
In his speech accepting the Democratic vice-presidential nomination that year, my father spoke to what that return could look like. He said: “Now we mount a wider stage with new and greater responsibility, in a harder world than we have ever known. ‘But someday,’ as the philosopher [Teilhard de Chardin] told us, ‘after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love—and then, for the second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire.’”
My fellow Americans, may we now come home and accept our great responsibility in this world that’s harder than we have ever known. Because America does not belong to the loudest voices. It does not belong to the cruelest men. And it does not belong to the richest few. America belongs to the people.
Please, I’m asking you: “Come home, America.” I’m not asking that as a politician, or a pundit, or as someone trying to win an argument. I’m asking you as a fellow American. Come home. Come home to decency. Come home to truth. Come home to each other. Come home to the great work of repair.
Because We the People are still here. You matter. We matter. And we are not going anywhere. We are the Move Humanity Forward Brigade. And we are walking together into the future. Will you join me?
Prayer of the Week
Dear God,
May we have the courage to come home to our humanity, to one another, and to the work of repair before us.
Amen.
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