I finished a book today and it pushed me into thinking.
It all comes down to the old Good vs. Evil parley.
There’s an unending debate about whether this very thing even exists. So, perhaps I should call it “Enlightenment vs. Ignorance.”
Either way, that behemoth of a book I mentioned is “The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett. As many of you know, I have been reading this for the past 32 years, or so. Well, it feels that way, at least. I would say that I enjoyed it, but that wasn’t all. There were many, many, many — and I stress the word “many” — of those 1,000 pages, which caused me to reflect intensely. Not only of that period of history — the 12th century — but also on the similarities in our current society, and its condition.
I just finished it, so there is a lot swirling in my mind. But one passage stands out, near the very end of the book. This may be construed as a spoiler alert. So there you have it. The disheartening passage goes:
“Until this moment he had believed that he and people like him were winning. They had achieved some notable victories in the past half century. But now, at the end of his life, his enemies had proved that nothing had changed. His triumphs had been temporary, his progress illusory. He had won some battles, but the cause was ultimately hopeless. Men just like the ones who killed his mother and father had now murdered an archbishop in a cathedral, as if to prove, beyond all possibility of doubt, that there was no authority that could prevail against the tyranny of a man with a sword.”
I cried. For we have seen this time and again in history. We have seen men in power convince other people to do the most abhorrent of things, all in the name of fueling and preserving that power. The man with the sword. Time and again. Yet, as with Hitler — who managed to kill six millions Jews, and to destroy the lives of millions of others — his tyranny was eventually thwarted.
All over the world, there is destruction of good people’s lives at the hands of those in power who will answer to no one.
We have to be extremely vigilant to this behavior. We have to.
Hmm.
I believe, that when we are born, we come into this world as beings of light. We do not know hatred, we have no enemies. At the moment we are born, only one thing is true. We begin to search for those who will love us and help us. We begin to survive in this way.
Then, our surroundings begin to creep in, and we learn things from all the stimuli around us. Both the good and the bad soaks into our very core of being. Depending on the balance of that — the ratio — we are led in any number of directions.
I saw a quote this morning and I don’t think I agree with it, not wholly, not in an absolute way. It says,
“Our entire life – consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.” (Jean Anouilh)
I think it is partly true. It is important to acknowledge ourselves, in our goodnesses and weaknesses. But more than that is remembering who we were when we started. Those little beings of light, who have no inclination for hatred, bigotry, prejudice, power, or greed. Those wonderful creatures who are spirit, having only just found their human form. We should remind ourselves daily, and constantly educate ourselves in the way of the light. The good. The whole of us.
You see, I finished a book today, and it pushed me into thinking.
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Today is the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, where nearly 1 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis. World leaders gathered in Jerusalem last week to mark the occasion, and yesterday Pope Francis offered a message we’d like to echo:
“In the face of this huge tragedy, this atrocity, indifference is not admissible and memory is a duty.”
(From Morning Brew, January 27, 2020)
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“I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.”
― Charles Dickens
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“There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
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“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
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