Courage is the great enabling virtue that allows one to realize other virtues, like love, hope and faith.
To have courage is to be willing to look unflinchingly at catastrophic circumstances and muster the will to overcome the fear; never to fully erase or eliminate the fear but to overcome the fear so that fear does not have the last word, so that fear does not push one into conformity, complacency, or cowardice.
For me, in many ways, the opposite of courage is not simply cowardice, but it is even worse than that – it is indifference, and indifference to evil is more invidious than evil itself precisely because evil is contagious. The great Abraham Joshua Heschel used to make this point in almost every text and he is absolutely right.
Courage for me is always a difficult thing to discern and find. There is always not enough courageous folk around. There are too many folk that want to fit in. There are too many folk that want to just go with the grain. There are too many folk that want to simply opt for the seductions and temptations to become drunk with the wine of the world, intoxicated with the felicities of bourgeoisie existence.
Courage says ‘No, I will think critically. I will love across borders, across races, across gender, across sexual orientation, across national boundary and I will hope I will never let despair have the last word, but I will recognize that he or she who has never despaired has never lived. Never allow that despair to have the last word.
Courage, to think critically! Courage, to love! Courage, to hope! That, for me, sits at the very center of what the Socratic vocation and prophetic witness are all about.
