Lane von Herzen: Remember Who We Are

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.

Sunday, April 27, 2025

Remember Who We Are

Who are we as Americans without our freedom to worship God as we wish? Without our access to the sacred words, the soaring hymn, the whispered prayer?

Who are we without our pristine lands? Without our purple mountains, our fruited plains, our endless forests and coursing rivers and unfolding seas?

Who are we without the sovereignty of our people? The safety of our children? The freedom to say what we think, even if we're the only one brave enough to say it?

Without these gifts, America is unrecognizable, diminished, a shadow of the ideals we held as necessary, vital, and irreplaceable to the soul of the nation.

Let us not betray our faith, our lands, our sovereignty, or our children to the exigencies of the moment.

We will not regain them later.

Our greatest gifts require our constancy, our loyalty, our vigilance, and our insistence.

Our nation is much more than an idea.

It is our home, our sovereignty, our people, and our freedom -- and the love, respect, and sanctity that bind these together.

If our foreign adversaries would wish to take away all that is best about us, then together we must give voice to the answer that denies them.

We, the People endure, and we will continue to endure as long as we remember that our most defining commitments to one another, even in the midst of great challenge, upheaval or change, must be upheld as inviolable.