Connect

From City Blog today:

We must never lose that feeling of connectedness, a necessity once
described like this by the great American novelist James Baldwin: “The Earth is
always shifting. The light is always changing. Generations do not cease to be
born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they
have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children
cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith
with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."

American author and clergyman Henry van Dyke: "Time is too slow for those
who wait, too swift for those who grieve, too long for those who would rejoice.
But for those who love, time is eternal."

Elie Wiesel wrote this about the blackest night a human being can know: "I
have learned two lessons in my life. First, there are no significant literary,
psychological or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second,
just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope too
can be given to one only by other human beings."

Eliot Spitzer, who took office in January and spoke at the 9/11
commemoration for the first time as governor, said:
"We stand on this
terrible threshold remembering all that happened. We feel today as we felt then,
that we belong to one another, not because we are inhabitants of the same city
or same country but because we are all part of the same human story, part of one
community of our fellow human beings. John Donne wrote these immortal words
centuries ago: "No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of
the continent, a part of the main, any man's death diminishes me because I am
involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It
tolls for thee."

As the poet William Blake wrote centuries ago, "Can I see another's
woe, and not be in sorrow too?"