Reverend William Sloane Coffin could put a spin you hadn’t thought of on an idea you believed you knew all about. Imagine him playing with a top, the well-known child’s toy, and flipping it so that it moved in a fashion that defied gravity. He took on grave matters that terrify us, turned them around, and offered hope.

Jaw-dropping and sometimes joy-enhancing.

Here is his definition of patriotism, split into three:

There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country, a reflection of God’s lover’s quarrel with all the world.

Savoring this will expand its meanings. In Coffin’s words about being good citizens, he speaks of the human tendency toward thoughtless admiration on one side and finding too much fault on the other. Love of country and the lover’s tenacious effort to establish “a more perfect union” were closer to what he believed was “good patriotism.”

Coffin was a fearless advocate and activist in the latter effort, “putting his money where his mouth was.”

As Winston Churchill said to rally the British people in World War II:

“This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” —Harrow School, 29 October 1941.

Here is a successor to those great men, a woman, who has picked up their baton and run with it. If you don’t know who she is, you soon will. She offers a way forward and speaks not least for those who are afraid. The lady in question, Mallory McMorrow, is fearless:

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The top image is called Gyroscope Precision. It is Lucas Vieira’s work, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.