While convelescing from my recent surgery, I decided to do some reading.
A couple of weeks ago I had, therefore, stopped in at Well-Read Books to find some 'new' reading material - looking for something that might be a bit different from what I would normally read.
One of the books I took away was Lead, Kindly Light - Gandhi & the Way to Peace by Vincent Sheean (Random House 1949). The book's summary on the inside of the dustcover got my attention ...
Though this book is in some sense an attempt to reveal the meaning of Mahatma Gandhi's power and life and teaching, it is, in a more important sense the author's eloquent testament of belief in Ghadhi's mission. Vincent Sheean went to India to ask Gandhi many questions. It was a quest brought on by the failure of every other human institution to supply hope for the future. What he learned there, from Gandhi and others, is of immense, immediate importance to all people everywhere and to the future of humanity.
In the early part of the book, it's clear that for author Sheean a huge mind shift was necessary. Here's some information from his bio, also on the book's dustcover ...
He was a foreign correspondent at the time of Mussolini's march on Rome, he was present in Vienna when Hitler moved into Austria and in Prague when he took Czechoslovakia. And was in Paris when France fell; in England during the Blitz; and left the central pacific Wake Island just one plane ahead of the Japanese attack. He also served in the United States Air Forces in North Africa, Sicily and Italy; in the China-Burma-India Theater, and later in Austria and Germany.
This sets the context for the following comment by Sheean:
... the armature of a child of the century, born in a materialist society in the age of scientific supremacy, was not easily penetrated. We absorb the assumptions of the time and place, almost without knowing it, and find ourselves equipped with weapons we have never bought. It takes years to learn how to throw them all away and go, defenseless and undefending, toward whatever the truth may be.
This observation was made 60 years ago. I can't help but wonder just how many years Sheean contemplated it might take for us, as a society, to learn how to take this different approach. Considering the conflict in the Middle East, in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're not there yet.
Which makes me think the Canadian Department of Peace Initiative is a step in the right direction.
Posted by Hank
Oh, in case you were wondering about the title of the book ...
ReplyDelete'Lead, Kindly Light' is said to have been Gandhi's favourite Christian hymn.
Here are the words:
Lead, kindly Light, amid th’encircling gloom, lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!
So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still will lead me on.
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till the night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile, which I
Have loved long since, and lost awhile!
Meantime, along the narrow rugged path, Thyself hast trod,
Lead, Savior, lead me home in childlike faith, home to my God.
To rest forever after earthly strife
In the calm light of everlasting life.
______
Hank