It has been a pleasure to share so many joys and little triumphs on this blog since we began it four months ago. We at TCASK, and me personally, have had a lot of great moments and have a lot of momentum building. But there is no getting around the fact that, as in any movement, we also have to cope with some failures, and last week I had a fairly significant one.

Thursday was the last day for unlimited bill introductions in the Tennessee State Senate. From now until the end of session, each Senator can introduce only nine bills, so if we wanted a moratorium and study bill in the Senate this year, we needed it to be introduced before Thursday. Unfortunately, despite spending the better part of several days on the hill last week, and having some terrific meeting with legislators, I could not secure a Senate sponsor for our legislation this year. This may make it difficult for us to get the bill introduced in the House as well (the House deadline is this week).

Now, in the end, this is not the end of the world. We had never hoped to pass legislation this year, which is one reason that legislators are unlikely to pick up the bill. Why sponsor something that isn't going anywhere? And he has done almost no work on the issue in the legislative field, so the ground had not been softened. With or without a bill, we'll be spending significantly more time this year on the hill to begin educating our legislators about the moratorium, but it certainly would have been a great start to have sponsorship secured in both houses the session prior to our attempting to pass legislation.

So, we take the failures as they come. A new provincial of the New Orleans province of the Jesuits once spent a day meeting with all the groups doing work in his province, working for living wages, health care, just treatment for immigrants, care for the homeless, children's services etc. At the end of the day, the provincial congratulated all of them on their hard work and informed the that it would all fail. Failing is a part of life, especially working for justice, swimming against the current of society. I believe very deeply and honestly that we will soon abolish the death penalty in Tennessee. I believe that we will see a moratorium enacted in a few short years, but we will fail many times along the way.

"Do you know what separates the winners from the losers, kid?" Gene Hackman asks Keanu Reeves in "The Replacements," a movie I will grudgingly admit to enjoying.

"Yeah, the score." Reeves replies. Hackman smiles and shakes his head.

"It's getting back up on the horse after you've been kicked in the teeth," he says.