Memories of JFK

Last December we visited the John F. Kennedy, Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. It was a novel experience for me, the first museum I had been to where I remembered not only living through the events that were showcased but of hearing the original of many of the speeches that were being rebroadcast there. There were many quotes from speeches of the Kennedys on the walls. And I not only knew immediately why I had liked him back in the ‘60s but also couldn’t help but recognize similarities to what we had been hearing pre- and post-election from Justin Trudeau.

“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor,

it cannot save the few who are rich”

John F Kennedy

Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on,”

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

And from his brother:

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve

the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice,

he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope,

and those ripples build a current whitecap sweep dow

the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance”

Senator Robert Kennedy

University of Cape Town, South Africa, June 6, 1966

All of these resonate with me. On the mug we brought home are these words, also by quoted Kennedy which are from Tales of the Ramayana, as told by Aubrey Menon (New York: Scribner's, 1954), p. 276.

“There are three things which are real:

God, Human Folly and Laughter.

The first two are beyond our comprehension

So we must do what we can with the third.”

This is a quote that I find myself taking exception with every time I handle that mug! I realize that Kennedy was just repeating views which resonated with him based on an upbringing in Roman Catholicism and the scientific knowledge of the 1950s and ‘60s. But that is precisely what makes it (but not the other quotes which are based on ideals which are timeless) dangerous! It is all too easy to put them all under the umbrella of quotes to remember and live by.

We have learn a lot about human psychology since then and new frontiers are continually being explored. Human actions are becoming more and more understood…certainly no longer beyond our comprehension. The upsurge in biblical knowledge and spirituality over the last 60 years, has encouraged the average person to look at what their understanding of God might be and how that understanding changes with a maturing faith.

So while we can’t deny or denigrated the importance of laughter, our horizons have expanded since Kennedy uttered this quote. Here we have the perfect example of the necessity of applying the knowledge of our time and place to the wisdom handed down from the past. Things change, new discoveries are made, and new insights are discovered. It is up to us to incorporate all of that into the wisdom from the past in order to come up with something that works for us in our time. The wisdom from the past tells us what was true for them at that time. We have to decide for ourselves what is true for us now!

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