Will you cry out?

Two things happened this weekend that on the face of it are unrelated, yet when I look a little deeper, I can see the connection. One was the March for Our Lives. The other was American Idol auditions.

American Idol judges (l to r) Lionel Ritchie, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan

March for Our Lives

One of the interesting things in watching American Idol, is the moment you realize the judges aren't simply looking for the best voice. Some of the people they choose from the auditions are raw, a few even make mistakes. Yet they are chosen over someone who sings perfectly. Why?

There is a quality of authenticity that eclipses simple talent. The ones who have that ability to project something that is purely themselves will move on, otherwise they get a no. Lionel Ritchie told one person he/she needed to go home and find out who they were. It wasn't a matter of performing someone else's material well, it was a matter of performing it as only he or she could. 

As a writer, how often have you been told you must "find your voice?" And then thought to yourself, well how am I supposed to do that? Natalie Goldberg recommends that writers do writing practice for at least a year or two before trying stories or novels, so they can discover what obsessions they have, and how their mind works, which is in a way that no one else's mind works. Doing timed writings with a prompt, she found that the same subjects keep arising, no matter where she started.

In the past few days I've read comments from several people who seem to feel the students who initiated the march had no idea what they were doing. Yet those students were not afraid to say - we are the future, we are the solution, you have done nothing - a myriad of voices, each one of them sounding genuine, heartfelt, and very real.

I suppose, like the fish on the left, you could say many of those students were swimming against the current of the status quo - the morass that adult politicians and lobbyists slog around in, so that even the best of them find it difficult to make any headway.

Since the shooting in Florida, those students have been heard. They have been who they are, spoken from their hearts, and given the best they could give - their determination that change must occur, and they must make a difference.

Pope Francis spoke to them in his homily this weekend on Palm Sunday: "...you have it in you to shout…It is up to you not to keep quiet. Even if others keep quiet, if we older people and leaders -- so often corrupt -- keep quiet, if the whole world keeps quiet and loses its joy, I ask you: Will you cry out?"

Will you cry out? As a writer, as a human being, will you offer that which no other human being can offer the world?

Pope Francis with the crowd on Palm Sunday 2018