“Such courage is an underground river, flowing far beneath the shifting events of one’s experience…”

—Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart

We think courage has to look like something. Loud, certain, unflinching. When the world feels this unsteady, a lot of us reach for exactly that: the strong opinion, the armor, the sure voice. Much of it is fear in a good costume.

Thurman points at another kind, a quieter one. It runs underground, far beneath the shifting events, and it doesn’t wait for the world to calm down or the headlines to improve. It comes from something deep in us that trusts life means something, even when we can’t see how.

We can’t make this river. We don’t have to. It’s running right now, beneath the news, beneath the uncertainty, beneath whatever we’re afraid of.

All we do is stop staring at the surface long enough to feel it.