I must say that I have great respect for the political legacy left by Ted Kennedy. He was an astute politician. Having had a friend die from cancer in the brain, I can only vaguely imagine the difficulty of his final days. I also suspect he was a wealthy white guy that got away with murder.
I just read the post, Death and Redemption, by Steve Bergstein, over at Psychsound. Excellent and worth the read!
Can a person find redemption in this life, redemption for some horrid offense in your past? What a question intimately decorated with the beauty of hope.
When I lived in Georgia and was a member of St. Mark, I found myself surrounded by people of faith who would answer that question with the simple belief that the whole of the life journey is the quest for redemption, not from any particular evil, but to a more complete good.
Steve reminds us of that tragic reality: you kill one person, you have committed murder; but, killing thousands is just US foreign policy. He indicates that Ted's life after Chappaquiddick was his redemption and that Robert McNamara's life at the World Bank was his redemption. He states, rather convincingly, that a non-contrite, belligerent Kissinger is nothing more than a non-remorseful killer, despite his Nobel Peace Prize.
Interesting that the Nobel Peace Prize itself was funded from the wealth of a man whose life work probably resulted in the killing of more people than any other person to walk this planet--perhaps his path to redemption.
Would that all people of faith today focus their life force on redemption and not hatefulness. Maybe Ted Kennedy's more important legacy is his model for redemption.
Rest In Peace
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