Paul Tingen, a fellow Order of Interbeing Member in the Plum Village Tradition of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh has made this wonderful offering of music which he calls “Light in the Dark.” It is an acoustic guitar rendition to the tune of Leonard Cohen‘s Hallelujah. Paul hopes that we keep in mind the lessons learned from World War II. It seems that in the excitement of modern technology at everyone’s fingertips (even mine as I type this into the computer) we have forgotten the heroes of the past seventy years.
Tingen reminds us with quotes and images from Mahatma Gandhi, John Peter Humpfrey, Eleanor Rosevevlt, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thich Nhat Hanh, Simone de Beauvoir, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Pablo Neruda, Nina Simone, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, The Dalai Lama, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and of course, Leonard Cohen.
The video is billed as,
A celebration of some of the most inspirational post-WW2 people who blazed trails of light for mankind by speaking words of peace, truth, tolerance, freedom and social justice.
When I watched the video, I had trouble identifying all the characters, and I was moved by the intensity of their appearance, even when I did not recognize them. We have forgotten how much these people contributed to our lives today with the example of their lives and the work that they did. Some of them are continuing to make a strong impact on the light in the dark.
