Ted Kennedy was a great and extremely flawed man whose mark on the United States will last for an eternity. He was the sole surviving son of Joseph P. Kennedy and led a life of public service, success and defeat. He remained a constant pilar or strength in tragedy after tragedy that befell his family. He rarely spoke of his family's tragedies, but in the final chapter of his book, True Compass, he commented about his parents in a speech to Congress and said this:
"Every single one of us, if we are awake to the brokennes of the world and of our lives, wonders at some point, 'How could you allow this, O God? I believe, but help my unbelief.' and these questions, this wonder, this pain and this pleading knows no bounds of faith - for the simple hard fact is that God plays no favorities; that we all suffer; that we all die; that, at one time or another, we shake our fists at God; and that, if we are lucky, we all come home to God in the end. Thomas Carlyle siad, 'I had a life long quarrel with God but we made up in the end.'
The hardest thing for any human being to understand is that God loves even those who take what is most precious from us. The most awesome thing about God is the width of His embrace. I think that in the end my mother understood that too, for she never allowed her grief to cloud her joy, never allowed that moment of despair to impede a lifetime of laughter.
Relationships like that don't even require words. At the end of my mother's life, when she could no longer speak, the smallest of children in the family used to love to spend time with her, exactly because there was no expectation that they would have to talk to her as they did with other adults. We who sometimes drown in words could afford to learn that sometimes the deepest relationships are built without them."
I could not express these thoughts better...Thank you, Audrianne, for sharing them with me...XOX.
"Every single one of us, if we are awake to the brokennes of the world and of our lives, wonders at some point, 'How could you allow this, O God? I believe, but help my unbelief.' and these questions, this wonder, this pain and this pleading knows no bounds of faith - for the simple hard fact is that God plays no favorities; that we all suffer; that we all die; that, at one time or another, we shake our fists at God; and that, if we are lucky, we all come home to God in the end. Thomas Carlyle siad, 'I had a life long quarrel with God but we made up in the end.'
The hardest thing for any human being to understand is that God loves even those who take what is most precious from us. The most awesome thing about God is the width of His embrace. I think that in the end my mother understood that too, for she never allowed her grief to cloud her joy, never allowed that moment of despair to impede a lifetime of laughter.
Relationships like that don't even require words. At the end of my mother's life, when she could no longer speak, the smallest of children in the family used to love to spend time with her, exactly because there was no expectation that they would have to talk to her as they did with other adults. We who sometimes drown in words could afford to learn that sometimes the deepest relationships are built without them."
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