the once and future...

At the end of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, he describes the “candle in the wind:” the grand idea that King Arthur had to create a kingdom founded on chivalry and justice tempered by mercy. Arthur has a great epiphany before he passes this candle to a young boy named Tom, so that Tom may carry light of this idea with him and pass it on to his countrymen. The epiphany is this: that man must learn to disregard possession, that “mine” must become “ours” and boarders must be discounted as the nothing that they are. Then, and only then, will humans find lasting peace.

Granted, Arthur is supposed to come again – or perhaps he already has come, as they say, in the form of Churchill. But to read his great tale of hope (even if it is largely fictitious) and to know that he, like so many other would-be saviors in history, failed in his efforts to settle and bring prosper to a people leaves a bittersweet feeling. And perhaps living in a country like Haiti only makes that feeling stronger.One must strive to make a difference – to change the status quo or improve it. To do nothing would be a crime, as acknowledged by White in the last pages of his oeuvre. The record of failure, however, is daunting.