MLK Day

PIP thoughts: February 1, 2010

Addy (our 2 year old) and I took our usual morning run through City Park on the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. day. She's a little angel, bundled up in her pink and purple snowsuit and nestled into her jogger that she is soon to outgrow. We roll past snow and ice, and brush past the lake at City Park on the way to our favorite roundabout. In it are statues of remarkable human beings; Mahatma Gandhi, Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth and at the center, looking over his predecessors, is a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr.

My wife Tara and I always give thanks when we stroll past this place. We give thanks, not because he was a perfect human being. I think he would have been the first to dispute that notion. We give thanks because he carried the banner of a peaceful philosophy, based on love, that he championed with eloquence. Poetic non-violence was his weapon, and it stood up against fire hoses and terrorist bombs, nooses, jails, guns and history. Our girls' dreams can be limitless because he had a dream that fueled and punctuated a movement of people.

Some of you may have lived through this. Some of you heard him speak in person. For us, born after his time, we caught bits and pieces of the story in school. We might have caught his "I have a dream" speech every year on the radio around MLK day. A few years ago I realized that I knew almost nothing about his life except what I heard from that speech. I bought the audio book "A Call to Conscience". It is a compilation of recordings of his most important speeches with introductions by civil rights icons. It is the most amazing piece of audio that I own. It is hours of heart wrenching and uplifting poetic history, filled with lessons that we as a human race have yet to master. I've listened to it many times over.

That day I happened to put on his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech as Addy and I ran through the park. I love this excerpt and I thought I would share it with you.

“I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up.”

The “audacity to believe” is one of the many great legacies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. It is a legacy that we must strive to pass on to our children.

Hope you all had a good MLK day.

If you're interested you can download the audio book, check it out from the library or buy the CD. Nothing takes the place of hearing his voice with the words.

-Bryan