Madiba, Rest in Peace

A Voice in the World 12.6.13 Yesterday, was the first day in a week that I have had a voice that could be heard by others. Not even one week had passed since I had laryngitis, but I felt the loss keenly, because it meant the loss of contact, and I had the advantage of being able to write my words. My voice is the way I confirm my love and contact with the people I love, it is the way I express my happiness by singing a song, it is the way I express my thoughts most readily. So last night, as I sat watching and weeping over the reports of the death of a giant in our midst, Nelson Mandela, a man who his government tried to make silent for 27 years, I thought about what it means to be truly without a voice. All around our world, there are people without a voice. Every day I read the morning newspaper, and I see articles about children mowed down in the crossfire between gangs and police, not worlds away, but here in Los Angeles. There are articles about women worlds away, who are voiceless in societies which not only require that they hide their bodies, but punish them if they try to bring their brains out into the light. There are thousands of ordinary people “disappeared” by their governments, whose only voice in the world now is that of those grieving mothers who search for them in vain. And how many people live under “house arrest”, silenced for fear of what they might point about the ills of society? Our world is replete with examples of malignant silence forced on enemies of the state, enemies of those in power, truth tellers of all stripes. Many will emerge from their silence bitter and rageful, ready to tear down and destroy what they perceive as evil, and if the good get in the way of that, they just might be thought of as collateral damage. I wonder if we can find it in our hearts to model ourselves on the example of Nelson Mandela, a man who emerged from 27 years of imprisonment with a smile for even those who were responsible for his imprisonment, not because his neck was bowed, and not because he had triumphed over the system, but because he knew the time had come that his message of working together for the betterment of his people had come. His generosity and ability to see every citizen of his country as a brother and sister, white oppressors as well as rainbow shades of color that exist in South Africa mark him as singular. The smile he spared for all, the lilt in his voice, the dance in his step all marked him as a man who did not waste 27 voiceless years in bitterness. The obituaries that we have seen of the prison years on RobbenIsland have told of the friendships he made among his jailors, of the time spent learning their language, of the way a man in his 70s, freed after a lifetime of imprisonment, “hit the ground” running toward the life that he envisioned for all of his countrymen. His was not a grab for power, but a portrait of how a man can optimize the time he has been given on Earth, living gracefully within the boundaries of a righteous and courageous life. An example for the ages. Madiba, Rest in Peace.