Shining a Light in the Darkness

"What hope is there for individual reality or authenticity, when the forces of violence and orthodoxy, the earthly powers of guns and bombs and manipulated public opinion make it impossible for us to be authentic and fulfilled human beings? The only hope is in the creation of alternative values, alternative realities. The only hope is in daring to redream one's place in the world -- a beautiful act of imagination, and a sustained act of self becoming. Which is to say that in some way or another we breach and confound the accepted frontiers of things."
Ben Okri

For the last several days, I have been trying to string words together to express my grief about the atrocities in New Zealand, and I have failed. Others do this better than I. The fierce and eloquent Terry Tempest Williams made an appearance here yesterday, and this morning's offering is from Ben Okri. The incandescent Ursula K. Le Guin's words will probably turn up here this week too. We are all poorer for her departure from this plane of existence last year.

We carry on. No matter how dark and brutal things get, we light our candles and butter lamps and lanterns and carry on. We shine our little beacons into the dark corners where evil festers, and we call the beast by its true name.  We summon the fiend into the light of day and expose it in all its grotesque hideousness.

We carry on. We dare to imagine a world where such unspeakable things do not happen. We work to make that world so by our thoughts and words and deeds.

We carry on. We do not give up, ever.