The Death of Judy Bonds, and Life

by Robert Shetterly

What magic occurs to make an invisible person visible, visible and powerful? Well, sometimes it's spectacular crime or titillating celebrity, but for lasting visibility, for making the shadow life that most of us lead into substance, the necessary magic is courage. Moral courage. When an ordinary person plants a simple, but abstract idea like justice, like fairness, the common good, in her own body and lets it grow, and understands what actions she must perform to nourish that abstract idea into reality, then we witness the birth of an agent of change. We see an idea become a viasible narrative because it is embodied. The embodiment becomes a story in which we can all play a part. A person does not have to have gone to Yale; she can be short and stocky, and a grandmother by the time she's in her forties, but by an act of moral courage in the name of justice, human and environmental justice, she becomes a teacher for all of us. She becomes very tall, indeed. She demonstrates that she has taken to heart the most profound of  education's lessons --- that none of the things we cherish in life will be ours unless we act courageously, in Helen Keller's words, “…to make good our claim on them.â€