Forum Post: Like the SUN through the morning clouds:  Why there is GOOD REASON to have HOPE

They say it better than I ever could:

"Truth crushed to earth rises up." - MLK Jr.

"The moral arc of the universe bends towards justice." - MLK

"A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history". 

~ Gandhi

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” - Gandhi

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."    ~  Margaret Mead

Breyton Breytonbach said this just before he was sentenced to prison in South Africa for his protest activities:. "With confidence, we lay our case before the whole world. Whether we live, or whether we die, freedom will rise here like the sun through the morning clouds.". The genuine and courageous confidence of his statement speaks volumes. He, like M L King, Jr., could feel it in his bones, just like we did in Zuccotti Park.

"No lie can live forever." - MLK

And then there's this by the Rastafarian poet, Bongo Jerry:

"Sooner or later but mus'

the dam is going to bus'

What force can stop them,

this river of people who know their course?"

And this from Stevie Wonder: "You better tell your story fast, 'cause it won't be too long."

"Sooner or later it'll all come down 'cause you can't. . push. . . people around." - unknown jazz musician

Bob Marley - "They would do anything to materialize your ev-er-y wish."

Bob Marley - "We refused to be. . . what you wanted us to be. We are what we are. That's the way it's going to be."

Bob Marley - "There's a natural mystic flowing' through the air. If you listen carefully now you will hear."

"And I am talking about getting ready because it is coming." Because there are those of us and yourselves out there who are dedicated to the proposition that it is going to happen." - CORNEL WEST from Prophetic Thought in Postmodern Times

AND THIS from P.B. Shelley:

'Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you -

Ye are many - they are few."

And this from JAMES BALDWIN's "No Name in the Street": "The representatives of the status quo are sickened and divided, and dread looking into the eyes of their young; while the excluded begin to realize, having endured everything, that they CAN endure everything. They do not know the precise shape of their future, but they know that the future belongs to them. They realize this -- paradoxically -- by the failure of moral energy of their oppressors and begin, almost instinctively, to forge a new morality, to create the principles on which a new world will be built."

Quote from John O'Donohue essay:

"Sometimes when we look out, the world seems so dark. War, violence, hunger and misery seem to abound. This makes us anxious and helpless. What can I do in my private little corner of life that could have any effect on the march of world events? The usual answer is: nothing. We then decide to do what we can for our own, and leave the great events to their domain. Thus, we opt out, and join the largest majority in the world : those who acquiesce. Believing ourselves to be helpless, we hand over all our power to forces and systems outside us that then act in our names; they go on to put their beliefs into action; and ironically these actions are often sinister and destructive.

We live in times when the call of full and critically aware citizenship could not be more urgent. We need to rediscover the careless courage, yet devastating simplicity, of the little boy who, in the middle of the numbered multitude, in naive Socratic fashion, blurts out; " But the emperor has no clothes." When spoken, the word of truth can bring down citadels of falsity.

Real presence is the ideal of all true individuation. When we yield to helplessness, we strengthen the hand of those who would destroy. When we choose indifference, we betray our world. Yet the world is not decided by action alone. It is decided more by consciousness and spirit; they are the secret sources of all action and behavior. The spirit of a time is an incredibly subtle, yet hugely powerful force. And it is comprised of the mentality and spirit of all individuals together. Therefore, the way you look at things is not simply a private matter. Your outlook actually and concretely affects what goes on. When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it.

When you take back your power and choose to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world. In this way, even in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent of transformation in a broken, darkened world. There is a huge force field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself toward transformation."

Dostoevsky wrote the following in the Brothers Karamazov:

"Today, everyone asserts his own personality and strives to live a full life as an individual. But these efforts lead not to a full life but to suicide, because instead of realizing his personality, man only slips into total isolation. For in our age, man has been broken up into self-contained individuals, each of whom retreats into his lair, trying to stay away from the rest, hiding himself and his belongings from the rest of mankind, and finally isolating himself from people and people from him.

And while he accumulates material wealth in his isolation, he thinks with satisfaction how mighty and secure he has become, because he is mad and cannot see that the more goods he accumulates, the deeper he sinks into suicidal impotence. The reason for this is that he has become accustomed to relying only on himself; he has split off from the whole and become an isolated unit; he has trained his soul not to rely on human help, not to believe in man and mankind, and only to worry that the wealth and privileges he has accumulated may get lost.

Everywhere men today are turning scornfully away from the truth that the security of the individual cannot be achieved by his isolated efforts but only by mankind as a whole.

BUT AN END to this fearful isolation is bound to come and all men will understand how unnatural it was for them to have isolated themselves from one another. This will be the spirit of the new era and people will look in amazement at the past when they sat in darkness and refused to see the light. . . . . . Until that day, we must keep hope alive, and now and then a man must set an example, even if only an isolated one, by trying to lift his soul out of its isolation and offering it up in an act of brotherly communion, even if he is taken for one of God's fools.

This is necessary to keep the great idea alive."

Albert Einstein said this:

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way:  "I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.  We are, all of us, inextricably linked."