Tuesday, April 16, 2013

We are all from Boston tonight.

"
Looking out the north gallery windows of The Boston Museum of Art, January 2013.
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."  -- Martin Luther King, Jr.


Twenty-four hours later, we don't know much more than we did late last night.  At least three people are dead, many more in critical condition and and probably a hundred more past that in serious condition.  People lost their legs in the bomb blast.

Today is the anniversary of the sermon Martin Luther King Jr. gave after he came out of the jail in Birmingham in 1963.  He was angry when he gave that sermon, and I am angry today.   I stood with him in 1963, and I know he would stand with us today, to say:

Light nearly always trumps darkness.

It is possible to identify and contain evil.

Change is always at the horizon.

Just as in the '60s we marched especially on the day after people were arrested, tonight runners from the organization Red White and Blue (former military, mostly) light the path along Storrow Drive in Cambridge to honor the Boston Marathon and to say (as we did then)

You have not succeeded.

We are not afraid.  Deep in my heart, I do believe -- we (light) shall overcome (darkness) some day.