In 1918 a young Andre Malraux was approached by a joyous friend of his father’s who invited him to come and celebrate the Armistice that ended the First World War. Malraux, the man who would pen the immortal “Man’s Fate” and “The Human Condition”, went with the family friend to the celebration.
He wrote in his diary that night that as he looked around the merriment he felt strangely disconnected. While all around him were laughing and clinking glasses his thoughts turned ashen. They turned to the fields of war where the bodies of many of his friends lay. They turned to the loss of innocence. They turned to the loss of hope.
Malraux wrote that he felt his legs giving way under him as he saw the smiling faces that he described as looking like skeletons locked in final agony. He wrote that while others danced lithely around the floor, he felt as though “the earth had been ploughed out from under him.”
What better epitaph for the week that was. The earth was ploughed out from under us. Physically for Haitians, spiritually for us all.
The hunt for reason and comfort began. People rushed to houses of faith, to at least test the bonds of friendship. They tried to suppress their fear, and eagerly sought fortitude. Some succeeded, some did not.
These are truly days of awe. They are beyond comprehension. If our faith is to have any meaning, it must be through a manifestation of action. When Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we commemorated this week, spoke of unearned suffering being redemptive, it can only be redemptive through our sacrifice and service. This is a time to dare to care. This is a time to give.
In the face of certain crises we are not always sure of how to react. This time there is clarity. Those of us who came to political maturity in the sixties and seventies knew instinctively how to fight the Pharoahs of hate. No one ever learned completely how to combat the consequences of fate. We do now. Dare to care.
This is not a time to ask where was God. It is a time to ask where is man. When Job said, “Though he slay me yet will a believe in him,” we may rightly ask “believe in what?”
We must believe in the capacity of each of us to share our universal humanity. To give until it hurts.
That is the truest expression of the divine.
Many, even here in this city, have lost more than can be imagined. A remarkable young woman named Dominique Anglade lost her parents and with extraordinary courage and grace said that she was at peace because “they died doing what they believe in.” If we believe in ourselves, we must stand with those who have lost.
That is the true faith. The commonality of our pain. What Aeschylus called the pain “that falls drop by drop upon the heart until through the awful grace of God we attain wisdom.” And we must understand that wisdom viscerally. Alone we are nothing. Together, in the brotherhood of man, we can tear down any walls of suffering and resistance.
Together we can cross over the mountaintop. We can realize the dream of Reverend King that we as a people…as the family of man…will get there. We can flood as a wave into the Promised Land.
