My life, my thoughts and actions, is a walk to the end atop an unsteady wall. On my right side is the religious fanaticism that I despise, that fathers repression and intolerance. I hate to be walking this wall for the things that I see when I look down on that side. But on the other side is something even more frightening for me. I’m so repelled by the right side that I gravitate towards the left, where another kind of fanaticism festers. It is another that breeds hostility and absolutism, but of a kind that is spawned from good virtue and grows into something more sinister. It is anti-religious fanaticism, and it blinds you with reason rather than showing it to you; like its enemy, it doesn’t attract you by goodness or by honesty but by fear and command; and for those high on this wall, it is a very easy land to descend into.

This wall that I walk on is uneven and unsafe, and if I look towards either side I can be shocked into unbalancing and I find myself closer than ever to losing my footing and tumbling down into one domain. Once a man has fallen, it is very difficult for him to find his way back onto that honest route again.

But from my position up here, I can see Everything. I can call down to the people on either side, and for those who hear me and listen, I can give them a hand up. For as long as I can stay my balance, and retain my energy so that I don’t fall, I, more than anybody on either side of me, more even than the leaders of the millions on my left or my right, have the real power to change the world. And if those of us who are walking will hold hands, and help each other to stay up, and call out together, We can change the world.

I don’t know how long I’ll make it up here, but as long as I’m scared to look down, and I keep my eyes forward and my feet sure, I think I’ll be okay.