Thank goodness I have 3 siblings, not 13.

A famous scholar once said, “Never give up; never surrender.” I failed to heed that advice, and now I get to suffer the consequences.

Justice is one of those words that everyone understands and no one can explain. Mixed in with the term are notions of getting what one deserves, of fairness and equality, and of worth and value. More fundamentally, mixed with our understanding of justice is the concept of right and wrong. All of these things, again, are things that everyone understands but no one can explain. We all try, and when we do we say things that seem deep and sound truthful and meaningful and yes, even profound sometimes. But ultimately, after all the words have finished and all the talking is done, we still feel that we haven’t captured everything that these seven letters describe.

No attempt is made here to define justice; I have learned not to wade into some topics. But if I had to define justice, I know who I would ask for an explanation: the older of my two younger sisters. She is almost certainly the only other person on this planet who has a more accurate list of my misdeeds as a child than my parents; I would almost be willing to say that she has a more accurate list than I do. A large part of that is because most of my misbehavior was against some subset of my siblings, so she always got a good view. But more important than that was that I, like many children, was slow to apologize for my actions. She never let me get away with that. Whenever I tried to ignore my actions and move on, she would hold it over my head until I apologized.

To this day I would almost guarantee that on a list of her top ten memories involving me, one of the top three involved my accidentally (or intentionally if you listen to her side of the story) closing a van door on her finger. She shows off the scar every chance she gets. But more important is that she knows the details of that day better than I do, though I must admit she felt the pain, not me. Growing up she was always the most stubborn in her anger with the rest of us siblings and with parents as well. But as I look back with 20/20 vision now, it is quite easy to see that she was the most upset when she felt she was being wronged, being treated unfairly, not getting what she deserved. Though I won’t put them on the spot, I think even my parents would admit that sometimes she was right; in fact, I know they would, as the phrase I will forever remember from my father’s repeated uttering of it was the phrase, “Life’s not fair.” They had their reasons, and she will someday grant that they were good reasons; but justice, justice was what mattered to her.

My sister has faith, has belief, perhaps more strongly than anyone I have ever met. Not just belief in God; many people, the rest of my family and I included, have that. Not in herself, though with the many blessings she has received she could easily fall into that trap (even if she is the fat, ugly, bad-haired sister). She has faith in justice, as I have mentioned. But she also has faith in other people and their senses of justice. All of these things combine to give her, not the total confidence of the morally bankrupt, that confidence arising from a conviction that nothing matters but oneself; but the sublime confidence needed to stand up for one’s beliefs, the sublime confidence of one who knows something that others do not. And for her that extra bit of information is that justice can win, if we will stand up for it. I just wish she did not have to stand up for it against me so often.

On the lists of the great pioneers of justice her name may never appear. On the list I keep it graces the page with all of them. She decided that teaching was for her and is just getting started. Since junior high school she has known this was to be her path, citing her love of kids and school. But I think on a deeper level even that is evidence of this sense of justice, since what better place for a champion of justice than a classroom where not only do you teach children justice for the future but in being a good teacher (and she is and will be a very good teacher) you can close gaps between children at different levels and give everyone the opportunity for a better future. Everyone deserves chances, and she gets to help ensure that her students get them and can make the most of them.

G.K. Chesterton a century ago lamented that humility as one of the seven heavenly virtues had been reversed to the detriment of mankind. He said that humility was supposed to mean that while man was to be sure of his aims he was doubtful of his efforts; instead, he said, it had come to mean that people were quite sure of their actions but never certain of their aims. Humility was to him the spur that drove one to work harder but had become the pebble in the shoe that makes one stop altogether. The charge was true then and is true now; the times in my life where I have found myself lost were the times when I later realized I was most sure of my actions and least sure of my aims. This proper humility is something I lost and fight to recover every day. But every such later while looking back on the times I was lost, I have struggled with that sin so far from humility’s antithesis of pride: jealousy, for a girl so close to me in so many ways but so different in having found this humility in her fervent belief in justice and in mankind’s better angels. This tops the list of the many things that make me proud to have her as a sister. Family members are required to love one another unconditionally; it was just a pleasant surprise to be graced with a sister I could admire as well.