To my granddaughters who visited the Holocaust Museum
on the day of the burial of Yitzak Rabin, November 6th 1995.
Now you know the worst
we humans have to know
about ourselves, and I am sorry,
for I know you will be afraid.
To those of our bodies given
without pity to be burned, I know
there is no answer
but loving one another
even our enemies, and this is hard.
But remember:
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine
though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.
You do not have to walk in darkness.
If you have the courage for love,
you may walk in light. It will be
the light of those who have suffered
for peace. It will be
your light.
-Wendell Berry
Gladsome Lights 
We are of a common mind. I also set this one aside for a post: a complement of sorts to a musical piece I probably will pair with it.
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Aptly chosen.
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I put that in my queue a week or two before the recent horror, and then forgot about it until the day before it was scheduled to post… mysterious.
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Oh, how I liked Rabin. I remember that day he was shot – I was washing the kitchen table before supper and heard it on the radio; why do I remember that? I was angry that the announcement came when it was too late to pray for him. This poem is wonderful.
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I don’t think it’s ever too late to pray for someone.
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I guess I didn’t word that rightly; I mean that, when someone well-known is shot or whatever, mortally wounded, it should be broadcast right away, so people could pray for them, and maybe if enough were doing that, maybe God would spare them. But, they wait and time goes by, and that’s that. At least that’s how I was thinking at the time.
Of course, when Princess Diane died, they didn’t want to say too much until her boys were informed.
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Yes, very aptly chosen. How amazing that you chose this before this latest trouble.
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I remember the day that Rabin was assassinated. I was keeping a journal of song-lyrics for a project – trying to actually write what happened day-to-day was too hard. The song for that day was The Marmalade’s “Reflections of My Life”, which is fairly obscure, but seemed fitting. Every once in awhile, the song pops up in weird places, including occasionally in Mark Belling’s bumper music rotation on the radio, but that song now always reminds me of that event, even if it is just a little.
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