have donkey, will travel

As I was travelling from Cleveland to Indiana last night, my son and I listened to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels With A Donkey in the Cevennes. I was particularly struck by this passage concerning RLS’ time in the region of the once terribly persecuted Camisard Protestants who staged a revolt against France and Rome:

…perhaps the same great-heartedness that upheld them to resist, now enables them to differ in a kind spirit. For courage respects courage; but where a faith has been trodden out, we may look for a mean and narrow population.

I send this out as a salute to all the bloggers I admire and respect, especially those fighting legal battles today. The hearts of many are with you. To further draw from Mr. Stevenson:

We are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world - all, too, travellers with a donkey: and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a fortunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. They are the end and the reward of life. They keep us worthy of ourselves; and when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent.