Even 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.
Aeschylus
I heard this poem and it stopped me dead in my tracks. Robert F. Kennedy recited this during his speech in which he broke the heart-wrenching news that Dr. Martin Luther King had been killed and it got me thinking...
There are many words and deeds that fill the opinions of men, were life begets Life and death begets death. On the issue of Life we all intuitively know; It is uncertain, that we all occupy the same space, breath the same air, and want the same for our children.
The vast majority of us want to live together, want to improve the quality of our lives and want Justice for all human beings, regardless of race, creed, or orientation.
On the issue of death, unfortunately, some have striven to
draw lines within ourselves. To make caricatures of one
another and polarize humanity into hateful thinking.
Fewer still, there are those individuals that have
sacrificed themselves at the alter of Peace, in
order to replace that violence;
“those stains of bloodshed”, in an effort
for us to better understand each other
with compassion, dignity, and love.
Ultimately the sacrifices made
by those individuals will have
been in vain,
if we forgo the effort to accept,
to comprehend, to show unanimity.
For I feel that it is our
solemn duty to at least try to
understand each other,
and in that small
singular
effort,
we may
continue the
threads of
their
consciousness...
