The blood ran down his face in crimson rivers. John Lewis lay on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, his skull fractured, his body broken. The young man from Troy, Alabama. The young man who had already spent years preaching nonviolence and love in the face of hatred. He had been silenced. Or so it seemed.

But Lewis had learned long before that bridge about the power of a voice that refuses to wound back. Even as a seminary student organizing sit-ins, he studied Gandhi's teachings. He practiced Martin Luther King's philosophy of responding to hatred with love. When white supremacists spat on him, beat him, dragged him from buses, his voice never turned to venom.

On that bridge in Selma, Lewis was not transformed by violence. He was confirmed in his convictions. His voice had already learned what the Yogis teach. That true power doesn't come from shouting louder or striking back. It comes from a voice that speaks truth without wounding.

Over the decades that followed in Congress, Lewis refined this voice even further. Firm, yes. Honest, absolutely. Unshaking in its conviction. But never cutting. Never cruel. Colleagues from both sides of the aisle remarked on his gentleness, his refusal to return fire with fire. He became the kind of man who could speak truth to power in a whisper and still command a room.

When asked what kept him from hating those who beat him, Lewis would smile. "Hate is too heavy a burden to bear," he'd say, with a voice carrying the weight of hard-won wisdom.

As Mabel Collins wrote in 'Light on the Path': "Before the voice can speak in the presence of the Masters, it must have lost its power to wound." Lewis embodied this truth. His voice reached the higher planes of influence precisely because it had learned to speak without wounding.

This is the voice that changes the world. Through the power of words that heal rather than harm. And your voice carries the same potential. In every conversation, every text, every moment of conflict, you choose. Weapon or balm? Blade or healing touch?

The voice that has learned to speak without wounding, this is the voice that moves mountains.