This week I’m reminded of my favorite quote from Helen Keller, which is indeed my favorite quote of all time:

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail.”

This mess isn’t going away anytime soon. It won’t stop just because we vote for so-and-so. It won’t stop if we take away guns or give out guns to everyone or throw money at people who say they’ll do either. It won’t stop when we sing God Bless America or when we don’t. It won’t completely stop at all. There is simply evil in this world. If there’s any doubt of that in your mind at this point, then I certainly am at a loss to try to convince you. As long as we live in this world there will be evil. There will be wrong. There will be suffering. There will be things for which we have no explanation or framework to understand them, other than just calling it out for what it is: pure evil.

Our job, then, is not to explain it or make excuses for how it could have happened in the first place. Our only job is to stare it in the face, call it what it is, and do whatever small part we can to offer some hope.

Evil is a person who take lives for no apparent reason. Offer to mourn with the grieving families. Evil is a person who preys on innocent children to do them harm. Offer a safe haven for children you know so this doesn’t have to happen to them. Evil is a lifetime of horrific abuse visited on a person from which they had no escape. Offer them the truth that they need not be ashamed, and that they are special and loved no matter what.

Evil is all around us, my friends. But so is hope. As long as any of us are standing, so is hope. Let’s not just sit In our cozy homes wrapped up in cozy blankets on our cozy couches, shaking our heads at what the TV tells us. Offer up some hope… Look evil square in the face and tell it that you’re launching an assault and there’s nothing it can do about it.

Then GO. Do some good. ANY good. Good just done for the sake of doing it offers a glimmer of hope and spits in the face of evil. And I think that spitting in the face of evil sounds like the most lovely thing I’ve heard all week.