"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God."
~ Aeschylus (a playwright in ancient Greece)
1968 presidential candidate Robert Kennedy used this quote when he addressed an audience in Indianapolis the night Martin Luther King was killed.
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----------------------- Working as a lobbyist at the state level, in the '90s, there was a lawyer who was at the legislature every year - he, also, was a lobbyist - although I don't know who his clients were.... we talked a few times - he was knowledgeable, and soft spoken. Very calm.
Somehow we got onto a topic of conversation one day - well, I know why, it was because the movie JFK came out and we discussed that a little bit - he revealed that in the early 1960s he had worked in the FBI.
I was very impressed by that, and I was eager to hear stories and descriptions. But he wasn't much of a story-teller. He did mention that he had a role in the arrest of the guy who murdered Medgar Evers. (I wasn't an expert on Mr. Evers, by any means, but I knew the name.)
He also mentioned he was there, "on the ground" at the Mississippi college where James Meredith wanted to register and attend - (they wanted to keep Mr. Meredith out because he was black - there was an angry mob, and a journalist from the U.K. was killed).
I was fascinated.
It's kind of like - someone was quoted as saying that when Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis entered a room "history walked in with her."
I felt like history had walked in with my fellow lobbyist, and I really wanted to hear more.
I asked him, at the riot outside the college in Mississippi, "What was it like?"
He hesitated; I tried to help him by adding, "Like - how did you feel?"
"Scared!" he replied.
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Bob Dylan wrote and recorded a song about the Medgar Evers murder, called, "Only A Pawn In Their Game." You can find it on You Tube.
Under one of the videos, I noted these two comments:
^^ "For our fight is not against flesh and blood but against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
~ Ephesians 6:12
^^ He sings and plays with passion and empathy as well as intelligence and magic distance.
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