Navigation Tools, 8
Remember Yarrow, Travers and Stokey? Remember Nelson Mandela?
We’re in a time that Peter Yarrow, Mary Travers and Paul Stokey would have recognized. Especially when they sang “… no easy walk to freedom”.
When the trio sang that song (and the audiences sang along), Nelson Mandela was still in prison. He navigated that time by refusing to let his jailers take his humanity from him. Quite a potent survival tool, wasn’t it?
Leaning into parts of William Ernest Henry’s 1875 poem, Invictus was a prime navigation tool for Mandela’s act of moral courage. Here are the first and last verses:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul ...
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
I left out the central two verses of the poem because they make patently 19th-century references to not wincing or crying out loud and being found unafraid. But Mandela’s own quotes belie that pose. Instead he embraced his humanity: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” and “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
Timely observations. As Senator Cory Booker said tonight (Feb 20), “More Americans are starting to see what this is really about.” and “Folks need to use their voice now to condemn what is going on.”
The current and intentional attempt to dismantle the US government and its agencies is wrong. Has it been perfect? No; it’s a human institution. But the callous indifference to the well being of the American people and the land under our feet is wrong. Unequivocal, that.
And apparently no easy walk forward to freedom from here. Time to get the hiking boots on. In community. Find - or organize - yours.
Inspiring
This gives me strength for this cold and windy day🙏🏼