Baker: Cages and keys

My words to you this month were inspired by the following quote, written in the fourteenth century by the great Persian poet and mystic, Hafez: “The small man builds cages for everyone he knows. While the sage, who has to duck her head when the moon is low, keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful, rowdy prisoners.”

These two simple sentences remind me of a certain man who had great power, but also a very fragile ego. Under his direction, terrible injustices were perpetrated upon innocent people. A man small in intellect, a very fearful man, he saw threats to his power on all sides. What he feared most was a realization of his own insignificance.