The Salt March

This morning I was reading a web-log about Iraq. Al Sistani will be making a march to the Shrine in Najaf in a bid for peace, and there was a mention of Ghandi's 'salt march' in India; Ghandi was protesting a British-imposed tax on salt.

A little 'brown man' in a robe, helped bring down an empire. It seems to me that the 'greatest' among us, have been the 'humble outsiders,' men and women of peace and non-violence. Ghandi, Mandela, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, Steven Biko, Henry David Thoreau, Dorothy Day, the Dali Lama.

Many of them were shunned, many of them suffered, many of them gained power by suffering. Humility and suffering: a source of power. Also, each had a 'faith' in some higher calling or power. Beyond materialism, beyond political, or military power. They all called upon the 'higher' self.

Sistani is a 'black-robed' Ayatollah, not exactly a popular figure in the West, but if he speaks for peace, in some fundamental way, he speaks for all of us.