Lane von Herzen: A Letter to President Biden

My Third Novel's Conclusion, My Heartbreak

My heart begins to break when I think about completing this particular book -- because this narrative has sustained me like no other story I've known. It's both more personal and more universal than my other works. But beyond memory and archetype, it's a cri-de-coeur about needing to become the person one is destined to be. And in the writing, I have met my own life's work, my own fated journey -- having the sense all the while that the pages are suffused with a resonance, an energy, an electrified field that defies explanation. Writers hope and pray to be overtaken by a work in this way -- to be conscripted into passionate service of a profound story. To experience it even once in a lifetime seems a great privilege. I still have several months before this novel is complete, and this constitutes my reprieve. Because I'm not ready for the beauty to end.

Monday, October 30, 2023

A Letter to President Biden

These are uncertain times, and my mother always taught me the importance of saying thank you.

So, I want to take this opportunity to express my abundant gratitude to President Biden for his faith, his bravery, his effort, his fortitude, and his defense of our democracy in a thousand ways that the American public hasn't yet observed.

Mr. President, your courage honors the office you hold. And even though the Presidency of the United States represents the highest elected office the American people can confer, I would like to take this moment to express that I hold you in yet higher esteem.

Your striving to claim the soul of this great nation for good has often taken place outside of the public view.

And yet, all of our freedoms depend on the compassionate and lasting bonds with one another as Americans of which you consistently and faithfully remind us.

You recall to us that we are one nation, unified in our defense of one another's civil liberties and human rights -- not a fractured confederacy of self-interest and division.

Because of your strength of character, democracy has this one all-important chance to abide, within our own nation and within that of countless others.

Only a few Americans recognize the means and methods of autocracy's attempt to usurp the sovereignty of the American electorate at this moment in our nation's history.

But the fact that, in your wisdom, you are one of those Americans, has formed the possibility that the freedom of mankind can endure.

I would hope that all Americans would come to recognize the great fortitude this path has required of you, and the great gift it has rendered possible for all who love democracy.

President Biden, thank you for your extraordinary leadership at this crossroads in America's course.

I stand with you in this struggle for the soul of the nation, and I give you my promise that I will remain standing by you through the effort to define that spirit as compassionate, courageous, truthful, and free.

In abiding gratitude,