Virtue Consists in Action

Jessica Craven (0:10)

Hey, everybody. Chop Wood Carry Water, my name is Jessica Craven, and this is episode 31 It's October 18th, 2021

Last night, I found myself Googling inspirational quotes for tough times.

Yeah, that's where I was. You know, with everything going on, I was thinking that it would be helpful to start my newsletter with a quote, and then I thought, you know, I'll use the quote in the podcast too. I like to have an inspirational quote. Usually I find them in things I'm reading, but occasionally I'll Google, just see what I can find on the worldwide web. And I couldn't find anything. I couldn't find anything. Everything rang hollow. Nothing was hitting.

It's been a tough week, right? I mean, I feel like every week I say it's been a tough week, but it was a tough week last week. And I was sort of coming in off of, trying to take a weekend off of the internet, but occasionally sort of seeing a news alert coming through that had Joe Manchin in it and looked really bad. And I would see a Slack alert pop up on my phone from someone in Indivisible saying that, you know, we're fucked and Joe Manchin or Kirsten Sinema attached to almost every single negative alert. I mean, honestly, it's gonna be Pavlovian for the rest of my life with those two. You could just say one of their names and I'm gonna yelp in pain.

But anyway, I couldn't find a quote. And then this morning, as I was sitting in sort of, you know, trying to get through my inbox and you know how we do, we end up following links and going on to some internet page and then on to some other internet page. And I ended up on a web page called House of Names.

Looking up my own last name. This is not something I really do. I have almost never Googled myself. The last time I did it was 10 or 15 years ago. I'm not interested. I don't Google people I meet. This is not really a thing that I do. But for some reason, I ended up on this website, House of Names, and I'm looking up the Craven family history, you know, such as it is.

I've looked this up before, but, you know, never gotten very far. I know the Cravens come from, I believe, the Yorkshire area in England. Anyway, I don't know why I was doing it. I think I was avoiding starting work. There I was. And you know what I learned that was really cool? The Craven family motto, which was on their family crest starting back in the 14th or 15th century is, it's in Latin. It says, virtus in actione consistit. And when you translate that into English, it is virtue consists in action.

I was really excited when I saw this because anyone who's been reading my email newsletter for any amount of time knows that the sort of subheading to that newsletter is hope is in action. So, hope is in action is a saying I use constantly in my activism work. And it turns out that the Cravens have been saying, virtue consists in action for a lot longer than the last four years. So, I thought that was pretty neat. And that's gonna be my inspirational quote for today. Virtue consists in action. This motto was originally, according to this website, a war cry or a war slogan. And you know what it still is. Virtue consists in action. Virtue consists in action is still a war cry. It's one that I have been using in slightly different words for years. And it's one that I hope you will use as well. Virtue consists in action. Hope is an action. Patriotism, gratitude, love, all of these things are actions if they're gonna be worth anything at all. In other words, I don't become virtuous by sitting and doing nothing. Virtue comes from the actions that I take. Hope comes from taking hopeful actions. Patriotism comes from taking patriotic actions and so on.

So I decided, who cares if I couldn't find a pretty quote? We're gonna take some hopeful, virtuous, patriotic actions today. And that's the most important thing of all.

So in lieu of a gratitude section today, we are going to make a phone call to our senators. I'm gonna do this for you on the, online, okay?

Cause I think it's important to sometimes hear what this actually sounds like.

So I'm calling my senator.

Hey, my name is Jessica Craven, and I am a constituent calling from 9-

I'm calling for a few reasons. First, I would like to thank the senator because I know he is a co-sponsor on SJ Rez 1, which is the resolution to remove the deadline to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. And I would like to say thank you to him and ask him to keep pushing to get that done.