Things Fall Apart, the Center Cannot Hold

What we need in the United States is not division....but love and wisdom

a ray of Hope

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.

Robert F Kennedy, April 4, 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Compare these thoughtful words to the words being said today after an assassination…

We have deteriorated as a society. We seem to have no decency, no reverence, no empathy for others. We are self-obsessed and self-righteous. We have a deep hated of the Other and cannot seem to get out of the duality of ‘Us vs Them’ mentality. I will not accept that this is innate in us as humans, but rather it is learned.

We are born sacred and everyone feels that when they gaze upon a newborn baby, but at some point we no longer look at others in that way, we no longer see another’s life as sacrosanct; we just see ‘Other’. Since I was a teenager I have wondered at this phenomenon - at what point do we loose our divine nature in the eyes of those around us? When do we become the enemy?

---

There are many people in this world I wish would stop speaking, I think their views are abhorrent, but at no point have I wished them dead. That is a line never to be crossed. As much as I disagree with some views, I will always hold the belief that it is their right to possess, and moreover to express, those views of which I do not agree. This is the logical conclusion because I will maintain always that I, too, have the right to hold my own beliefs and if I deny someone else’s beliefs then I am a hypocrite.

But, it is not another’s right to murder in order to cease opposing viewpoints. It is not another’s right to murder full stop.

Kennedy’s plea for compassion, not lawlessness, is appealing to a culture, who in the 1960’s, was still on common moral and ethical ground. By this I mean, RFK was appealing to our common religious doctrine. As a nation, people understood what he meant….go home and pray, pray for the family and our nation, do not seek retribution as that is not our role (judgement will come from a Higher Authority).

The eloquence with which Kennedy delivers his message is no longer seen in politics in America. And I think this reflects the state of our nation - leaders previously spoke with sincerity, with sympathy, with humility and with faith, but now those that are in power (notice I didn’t call them leaders here - that is because I think they do not deserve such a title) are week in rhetoric and week in mind.

Robert F Kennedy was himself assassinated only months after he uttered those words. I fear, just as in 1968, there will be more violence to come. So I appeal to you, dear reader, to dig deep into your Self and find your empathy and your strength, and use your moral compass to guide your ethics (ethics has to do with the way you enact your moral code in the world, i.e. how you treat others).

I implore you to heed the call made by RFK so many years ago - right now we do not need any more violence, lawlessness, division and hatred; what we need is love, wisdom, compassion and justice.

Say a prayer for us all.

---

I will leave you with a poem, a poem I find haunting and somehow apt for this age:

“The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?