It has been 45 years now since Martin Luther King, Jr. was
killed. At the time of his death I was
about to turn 13. Little did I realize
at the time the deep impact the man would have on my life.
The celebrations that our country have now and what our
children are taught, rather quickly, about this man continue not touch the depth of what his life and his
work represented. We see for the most part his “I have a Dream
Speech” and for the most part settled
for it as a history that we have completed and moved on from. For me his words and his work are far from completed.
I believe that Martin Luther King provided Americans with
our last great call to conscience.
At the very young age of 28, Matin Luther King, Jr. formed
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and declared his mission in its
motto: to save the soul of America.
That “soul” is a belief in deep democracy.
That rare combination of belongings and independence that is
so hard to integrate. The "idea" that is America.
He showed us the injustice that was flourishing in our country
something that is rarely seen or talked about today.
King used his creativity and imagination to take us to the… “space of elsewhere.”
Prophets always have
a way of showing us a place that does not yet exist and before he was killed
Martin Luther King, Jr. was moving the civil rights movement he is now known
for toward a new vision for all of America.
He awakened America.
He brought us face to face, and allowed us to have an encounter with ourselves
(the looks with-in place)…. many did not like what they saw….but they looked
into their own shadow… and many were transformed.
His words are a
remarkable example of “a wisdom that disturbs”… sorely missing in the world
today.
He disturbed the
status quo with his words and his deeds…. And put a mirror up to America so we
could look at ourselves.
It was not pleasant.
In many ways… it still is not very pleasant.
He used marches and protests and demonstrations to bring
America’s shadow to the surface where she could no longer deny its existence, and
then, rather than leaving her wallowing in guilt and shame, he offered her
specific redemptive measures she could take toward healing and wholeness, which
would ultimately lead toward the manifestation of what King called…
The Beloved Community,
his term for the individuated culture.
King knew that transforming the world would be the work of
“nonconformists”… It always is.
He called upon people to become MALADJUSTED !
Listen to his words:
“ Modern psychology has a word that is
probably used more than any other word. It is the word maladjusted. Now we
should all seek to live a well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and
schizophrenic personalities.
But there are something’s within our social
order to which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I call on you to be
maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination.
I never intend to adjust myself to mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to
the tragic effects of the methods of physical violence and to tragic
militarism. I call upon you to be maladjusted to such things.” ( King, 1958 )
Martin Luther King Jrs. Riverside Church Speech, delivered in 1967
spoke of where he was taking us.
With the Riverside Church speech, the civil rights leader
moved beyond concerns of racial injustice. But the speech is more than just an
outcry against the war.
When King spoke of
“the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism,” he got at the very
core of the American character; when he said we need to shift from a
“thing-oriented” to a “person-oriented society,”.
The Triple Evils of POVERTY, RACISM and MILITARISM are forms
of violence that exist in a vicious cycle. They are interrelated,
all-inclusive, and stand as barriers to our living in the Beloved Community.
When we work to remedy one evil, we affect all evils.
The Beloved Community- (http://www.thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy)
For Dr. King, The Beloved Community was not a lofty utopian
goal to be confused with the rapturous image of the Peaceable Kingdom, in which
lions and lambs coexist in idyllic harmony. Rather, The Beloved Community was
for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be attained by a critical mass
of people committed to and trained in the philosophy and methods of
nonviolence.
Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which
all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community,
poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international
standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of
discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive
spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international
disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of
adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear
and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.
Dr. King’s Beloved Community was not devoid of
interpersonal, group or international conflict. Instead he recognized that
conflict was an inevitable part of human experience. But he believed that
conflicts could be resolved peacefully and adversaries could be reconciled
through a mutual, determined commitment to nonviolence. No conflict, he
believed, need erupt in violence. And all conflicts in The Beloved Community
should end with reconciliation of adversaries cooperating together in a spirit
of friendship and goodwill.
“They said one to another, Behold, here cometh the dreamer. Let us slay him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.”
As we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. we will rarely hear
much about his vision of the Beloved Community.
We will see clips of his “I have a Dream” speech as if his dream has
been realized in America.
For me, this is the
wrong focus.
We might consider his vision in a deeper way.
How well have we in America done on Kings Triple Evil
Threats of….of POVERTY, RACISM and MILITARISM??
King, like Jesus, like Gandhi, like the other prophets and
saviors and lovers before him, gave us
enough wisdom to live by for centuries.
We most certainly will not all agree as we discuss and
dialog about what Kings words and messages mean… however… I would suggest that it is way past
time to begin to use this holiday to begin the discussion of what do we want
America to mean and to be?Behind King’s conception of the Beloved Community lay his assumption that human existence is social in nature.
"The solidarity of the human family" is a phrase he frequently used to express this idea.
"We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality," .
