Sep 12
ACIM Speaks - An Inspired Speech
(download)
This podcast episode contains the speech given by Ted Kennedy as part
of his eulogy for his brother, Robert. The main part of the speech was
given by Robert in South Africa in 1966. I believe it is an inspired
speech, as worthy of listening to today as it was pertinent when it
was given over 40 years ago. Below is my transcription of the speech.
Also available in iTunes: http://is.gd/2sBjb Thanks to Posterous.com for hosting and bandwith.
There is discrimination in this world, and slavery, and slaughter, and starvation. Governments repress their people, millions are trapped in poverty, while a nation grows rich, and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere.
These are differing evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows. But we can. perhaps, remember, even if only for a time, those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life, that they seek, as we do, nothing but the chance to live out their lives. in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goals can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. Surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us, and to become, in our own hearts, brothers and countrymen once again.
The answer is to rely on youth, not a time of life, but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet, will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already
dying, who prefer the illusion of security over the excitement and danger that comes with even the most peaceful progress.
It is a revolutionary world we live in. And this generation, at home and around the world, has had thrust upon it a greater responsibility than any generation that has ever lived.
Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man.
A young monk began the Protestant Reformation. A young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of
the earth. A young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the new world. And a 32 year old thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal.
These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and, in the total of all those acts, will be written the history of this generation.
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.
And crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society.
Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle, or great intelligence, Yet it is the one essential, the vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.
And I believe that, in this generation, those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves companions in every corner of the globe.
For the fortunate among us, there is a temptation to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy of man than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged. And, as the years pass, we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society, and the extent on which our ideals and goals have shaped that event.
Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond out control. It is the shaping impulse of America, that neither fate, nor nature, nor the irresistable tides of history. The work of our own hand, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance. But there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live. That is the way he lived. That is what he leaves us. My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death what he was in life, be remembered as simply a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him, and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us, and what he wished for others, will someday come to pass for all the world. And he said many times, in many parts of this nation, those who touch and who sought to touch him, 'Some man see things as they are, and ask why. I dream things that never were, and say, why not.'
