Make a Gentle World

 

Tame Our Savageness

“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 black.”

Robert Kennedy, April 4, 1968

          This is part of Bobby Kennedy’s speech after he learned of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Two months later, he too was dead from an assassin’s bullet. The nation was mired in the chaos of war and civil unrest. President John Kennedy, who had enacted Civil Rights legislation, had been murdered in Dallas, Dr. King had led march after march across America on behalf of equal rights for African Americans, the Vietnam War was raging, and the street protests warranted calling in the National Guard. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago was disrupted by war protestors and Black Panthers and violence erupted. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

          I believe this era was the beginning of the cycle we find ourselves in now. In that same speech, Kennedy said, “We have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.” He called for prayers for Dr. King’s family and especially for our nation, adding, “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.” (Quoted in John Archibald’s book, Shaking the Gates of Hell, p.166)

          All of that happened 53 years ago. Bobby Kennedy asked in 1968 for America to decide what it was going to become, and we are still pondering the question—what will we become? Only now we must also ask, who were we? Were we ever who we thought we were? Can we bear to look at ourselves just as we are, as we have always been, and as the rest of the world sees us? A young nation, both greedy and generous, self-indulgent, and demanding, creatively genius, and colossally stupid. We are all the above, and so are many other nations—we are indeed, “one of many.”

          Let’s tame the savageness within us and make the world gentle. It’s time for this cycle to end, but let’s end with conscious awareness and not with our heads in the sand.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane