Phil Burpee, Comment
Mandela is gone – ‘Madiba’. In
any lifetime one must consider it a blessing to witness the work of a
true strider across the roiling fields of history. We have been given
such a gift. We have watched Nelson Mandela elevate the possibilities
of the human condition far up and beyond the customary rancour and
pettiness and sense of compromise and defeat that so afflict our
world. The smallness of our leaders only serves to remind us of his
towering and extraordinary transit – “He bent the arc of the
moral universe towards justice.”- as Mr. Obama has observed so
acutely. Quite so. And now we are without him. And it is true to say,
of course, that any place where the fight against ugliness and
brutality and inequality goes on, so toil there his spiritual heirs.
Yet one cannot help but realize that we live in cheapened times, and
though the battle surely rages on, the king is unhorsed, and the
flanks are tattering badly.
Phil Burpee
December 6, 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for taking the time to comment. Comments are moderated before being published. Please be civil.