It’s Gandhi’s Birthday

“Mahatma Gandhi was essentially a man of God — a man whose supreme power and virtue lie in his magnificent influence in awakening humanity to the eternal verities of life, and leading it on to the height of moral and spiritual culture. Both East and West have recognised in him a Divine messenger of peace upon this earth.”

— Swami Ramdas

These are the words of a beloved sage of modern India on the great birthday that falls today.  We cannot improve upon them.  We can only endorse them, and we cheerfully add our small voice to do that.  “I do dimly perceive,” Gandhi said in an inspiring message of 1931, “that in the midst of darkness, light persists. . .”  He is not the only giant to give voice to that vision down the centuries, but he gave it the full force of his extraordinary life for over fifty years, which perhaps few others had the opportunity to accomplish.  Behind that vision was, as he also said, a “living power” that worked wonders while he was still in the body and goes on working, if less visibly to most of us, where courageous individuals and institutions work and sacrifice for peace.  Our world would be lost without their work and witness, and there is no better way to honor him, on this day or any other.