Schweitzer's Creed
In his book, "Out of my life and thought" Albert Schweitzer recalls
the afternoon in a boat at Lambarene, where he first conceived
his guiding philosophy, "Reverence for Life". The staggering
implications of such a seemingly innocuous generality still
confront us today...and perhaps more than ever with recent
discoveries at the sub-atomic level in quantum physics. But when
I buried my dad, it came to me that all the contempt I have for
anything military was compromised somewhat. I thought that day of
Arlington, when the historic burial rites of the US Army had
such a profound effect upon me.
Schweitzer's Creed
The doctor would have smiled, I think,
in reverie off Lambarene's shores,
to field a posthumous dream--
to learn dry atoms' call to other worlds
can reach and penetrate those alien shells
with marching cadences.
How so like Blake!...who found his universe
within a grain of sand,
for science stops in awe where life begins--
for it begins forever.
Small boats and yes, quixotic ideologies
will never let us be; old lives give way
as sandbars to the river; the old doctor
takes his bow, steps into history
and smiling still, bequeaths
a still more monstrous God of life
where even Alpha and Omega yield
to immortality!
~
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