It's MLK Jr. Day and I feel I should say a quick word about the influence he has had on my personal outlook on life. The first I heard of him in my youngest days was at school rather than in home or church conversations. There is a strong reason for this. In the home of Jehovah's Witnesses the names of the famous are often spoken of with amendments and subtexts. An instance of this can be seen in how I was taught about the Pope and of Mother Theresa. "They are the old man and the old woman," my parents would say, "they are the beast and the harlot." Of course they would recognize the good deeds of these two individuals but only in passing, the overlooked and unremembered bits. For King there were perhaps a few more statements of good. "He spoke for justice and equality but he should not be followed for the man he was because of his extramarital affairs and other sins. Seriously, they might as well have simply been racist. It was a short distance from the religious and social separation they were implying. To know someone for who they really are is a great blessing and makes the good they work for that much more inspiring. Like the named and recognized saints of the Christian church the bold lives of men and women new and old are made livable, possible by the sinning laity. King's message was tangible, though supremely weighted, by those he spoke for and among. He was a man. He is a symbol. He is a saint, sins included.
This morning at the breakfast table the interns and Brayton discussed the education we receive in public schooling about figures like King. For all that he stood for and preached the lone message that sunk into us from school was that he worked for civil rights and gave a speech, something about a dream. I remember the crackling recording of this speech and little more from my own public education. But social justice was but a tithe for a much larger message, one in which he spoke for more, of nonviolent love and response to a world of hate, violence and over-empowered government. Before leaving for a series of talks at a church in North Hampton in Massachusetts, we listened to recordings of King to get us pumped for the day. Beyond social justice he spoke of patient resistance to our own government who at the time was warring in Vietnam. He spoke of Gandhi and Nietzsche and Jesus, men (and certainly uncounted and unspoken women) who were believable, successful, realistic humans working for peace in a way never shown by any governmental system ever created. I thought of the warmongering taking place today by our own United States. In a war both illegal by U.S. law of the original invasions and certainly by the international law of the United Nations we are celebrating as American people the efforts of a man who was adamantly seeking nonviolent forms of piece. If we had only heeded his vision in the sixties thing of how that era of LBJ would have changed in the history books. Think of how this uncalled for war in Afghanistan and now unrest in Palestine will look in the decades to come when we realize our mistake. We have already done enough damage, too much to redeem our actions, but we can make a statement in such a way as King, "At the center of non-violence stands the principle of Love." Love is not a soft emotion - it is a powerful motivator of peace in a time when we need powerful people to show it.
No comments:
Post a Comment