One day you wake up and realize this might be your last....that in the blink of an eye you could cease to exist...or that 5, 10, 15 years of your life can be taken away from you, all for the good of a cause...an ideology. Ideology is a righteous thing...when founded in natural virtue, human rights, life and liberty, but it is a bloody wicked force when in the hands of extremists. For Terry Waite his life became a symbol for a body of people ruled by ideology, religio-political extremist ideology. Mr. Waite's inspiration was not in his words truly, because words can be practiced, theaterized and subterfuged. His inspiration was in his person. He stood before us as a man surviving 5 years of death for many years of affirming life. In some ways Mr. Waite is the Responsible self that Niebuhr speaks of....He is a Relativiser and affirmer of life. I hope someday, I have the pleasure to say, I've lived up to my responsibility as a human being. That I have turned a philosophy of death into a philosophy of life.
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