BOREALIS

                              ‘LIGHT FOR A WHILE’,IT DIMS SO FAST,USE IT WELL
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
WHO,WHAT,WHEN,WHERE,WHY?
 
Many a Sunday morning I find myself asking myself those very same questions.
The first four are fairly easy, the last one can be tough.

In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until,
in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of
God
Kennedy-King Memorial, Kennedy-King Park, 17th & Broadway.This was the site
Bobby Kennedy was to give a campaign speech April 4, 1968 which became a eulogy
for Martin Luther King, Jr. and a plea for peace.”I have bad news for you, for
all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and
that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.Martin Luther King
dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he
died because of that effort.In this difficult day, in this difficult time for
the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and
what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black–considering
the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were
responsible–you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for
revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great
polarization–black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled
with hatred toward one another.Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King
did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain
of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with
compassion and love.For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled
with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white
people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I
had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have
to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand,
to go beyond these rather difficult times.My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He
wrote: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart
until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful
grace of God.”What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in
the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not
violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another,
and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country,
whether they be white or they be black.So I shall ask you tonight to return
home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that’s true, but
more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love–a
prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.We can do well in
this country. We will have difficult times; we’ve had difficult times in the
past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence;
it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.But the vast
majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country
want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice
for all human beings who abide in our land.Let us dedicate ourselves to what the
Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle
the life of this world.Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for
our country and for our people.”

Just words.