1968

For me, a child born in 1979, it is impossible to comprehend what the year 1968 meant to the people who lived through it. I once asked my mother how she made it through the year, and she said she was still unsure how so many did. It was a year rocked with tragedy that few even speak of today. No history class I ever had studied the tumultuous events of that year in America's history. Amidst the Civil Rights movement, a violent Democratic Party Convention, and participation in the VietNam war, we lost two giants among men, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy.

During a week in which history has been made, with the light at the end of one of the darkest tunnels being a man of integrity who is a spiritual son of both King and Kennedy, it makes sense to meditate on and remember that year. To live for and to believe in this nation is something that quite a few have had trouble doing lately, but when you pause and think about the change that could occur in the next six months, an electric current of hope should run up and down your spine. Let this spark of hope, initiated by two men 40 years ago, linger in your mind and heart, not the devastation of assassination.