MLK

HATE IS TOO HEAVY

A BURDEN TO BEAR.

Congressman John Lewis, in The Art and Discipline of Nonviolence

I was entirely moved and humbled by this interview with John Lewis, the Congressman from Georgia who marched with Martin Luther King in Selma and who has devoted his life to the priniciples of nonviolence and, above all, Love. I don't know of any better philosophy or way to live your life.

You can listen to it here.

Musings on Martin Luther King Day

That's a photo of people lined up to leave Los Angeles for a civil rights march in Alabama. It was 1965, and they were going to join Dr. King for a "Negro vote" march. I look at these photos and think of myself in 1965, a little white two-year old girl. I wonder whether I might have climbed onto that bus were I an adult. I hope so.

My awe of the man and what he did and what he said and what he accomplished never lessens.

When people claim that violence is sometimes necessary to achieve some goal or another, I think not really. Not at all. Martin Luther King is testament to that.

The Greatest American Moment in American History

I'm a firmly middle-aged white woman living in southern California, born fifty years and one day ago, the one day, today, that the great Martin Luther King stood up in front of the Lincoln Memorial and let loose one of, if not the most, amazing speeches in the history of my country. I listened to the speech today while I folded clothes warm from the laundry. The hair on my white arms rose, tears pricked at my eyes, I wondered again at the preternatural magic that man possessed, how he wove history, the present and the future into words -- that glorious cadence of his oratory. As sabers rattle and metal machines lie in wait to drop bombs, yet again, in desolate places across the globe, I wonder, too, whether the words he spoke of, that dream, will ever be realized fully, whether the principles of nonviolence will ever take utterly and completely. I know better. They will not. But I know that I will take those principles into my own heart and teach them to my children and hope that by so doing we will be that many more added to the peacemakers.

Here's the speech:




And here's an excellent article for those of you, like me, who struggle with so-called patriotism and honoring soldiers and killing and dying for liberty. 

It's also for those of you who don't understand people like me.

No, thanks: Stop saying "support the troops."