LEAD KINDLY LIGHT

 

          LEAD KINDLY LIGHT

            Innumerable saints, seers and sages have said that only the present moment is dependable. The past moments are no longer surviving and the future moments are unreliable dreams. In one of his most famous quotes the English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744)  says:

            “Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate.

All but the page prescrib’d , their present state.

From brutes what men, from men what spirits know.

Or; who could suffer being here below?

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today,

Had he thy reason would he skip and play.

Pleas’d to the last, he crops the flow’ry food.

And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood.

 

Oh blindness to the future! Kindly giv’n,

That each may fill the circle mark’d by Heav’n:

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.”

 

            After reading these lines, look at today’s news story of air crash in Ahmedabad (India). Just in a couple of minutes, hundreds of lives were burnt to death. Could anybody forecast this heart-rending tragedy?

           

            In the Lead Kindly Light prayer by Cardinal John  Henry Newman (1801-1890), the supplication to God is couched in the following words:

           

            “Lead, kindly Light, amid he encircling gloom, --

            Lead thou me on!

            The night is dark, and I am far from home,

            Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see

            The distant scene, one step enough for me.

                                                *******

G.R.Kanwal

12 June 2025