AN ANTHEM OF HOPE IN THE SHADOW OF DEATH

51 years ago today in Memphis, a shot rang out, it’s report echoing off the walls of downtown.  The bullet found its intended mark; a silver retort to the message and the messenger. Martin Luther King fell backward, splayed on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel.  A teal blue door to room 306 stood silent behind him, his friends stood above the body and pointed in the direction of the gunman, cowarding in the bathroom of a flophouse 80 meters away.

Martin Luther King was dead.

The night before, April 3, at the Mason Temple, just a few miles from the Lorraine, Martin Luther King gave one of his most hopeful speeches.  With a thunderous storm booming overhead, a packed house heard the leader of the Civil Rights movement beckon them to the mountaintop, a figurative place he’d been to, a place from which one could see the Promised Land.  

Presciently he said he “may not get there with them,” as if he knew the unthinkable, as if he knew he would be dead inside 24 hours, lying prostrate just over there, around the corner, on that balcony in front of room 306.

“Like anybody, I’d like to live a long life, longevity has its place” he thundered in closing, seemingly matching the meteorological show and tell performance going on outside.  

He went on: “But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. … But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

His voice tailed off, spent on the effort of emotion, of the movement.

It has been said that “a tree is best measured when its down.”  Perhaps that is true of great people too. History, time, they are the benchmarks by which we make sense of our heroes.

King was not a perfect man; he was not a saint.  In that, he reflects all of us in our collective broken humanity.  Historian Harvard Sitkoff notes that history would come to reveal King’s plagiarism, his infidelity, the way in which he’d use soaring oratory to mask his organization’s lack of strategy.  His campaign for justice wasn’t fully successful; maybe because he died early, maybe because the voices of unrest drowned it all out. Maybe we’ll never know.

But as we measure the fallen King, we also see more clearly how his message — up to his last spoken refrain — was an anthem of hope.  His effort to “redeem the soul” of America, if not wholly successful, at least drew attention to an atonement that could draw us home.

Redemption does that, you know. The alchemy of hope transforms the ugly past into a brighter tomorrow.  While the shadow of every blessing can form the shape of a curse, the reverse is true too. History reads that way.  For there to be redemption, there must first be a fall, an ignominious failing.

And maybe that’s what King’s anthem was all about. Like refugees of a war torn country, his audiences back then were sojourners snaking through the shards and detritus of injustice.  To give up would be normal. But to give up would also make impotent hope’s redemptive power.

If we listen well, we can hear that refrain echo through the halls of history, even 51 years on.  We would do well to listen, even to hum along. For the tortured path of that era is, in many ways, the same trail we trod today.  Scarred and hurting, pocked by the ravages of old and new injustices, we are not where we belong. And we all know it.

Still longing for home, still looking for that Promised Land, we cling to hope.  King would have it no other way, and neither should we.

Onward, upward, we march on.

If He Walked These Halls

We have gathered to observe a man on a day that has been set aside to honor his legacy.  Specifically, we have come to install a banner as a memorial to our school’s namesake, Martin Luther King.  We opened in 1999, so it’s high time that we freshen the artwork that visitors, students, staff and faculty are greeted to upon entering these doors.  It’s good and right and exciting that we do this.

The image you’ll see of Dr. King is one of resolve, contemplation, and focus.  It is not the face of distraction or fear.  He is intent, solemn and his face and eyes are fixed. 

Since we do this so often, I wonder if Dr. King were here with us today, would he do as we do and critique the “selfie?”  How many of us do that?  We see an image of ourselves and we curl up our noses and say, “oooh.  Not good.”  In a digital era it’s easy to hit delete and wait for a better hair day, better light, or a better face.  Would Dr. King like the image of him? I hope so….

But I think a better question would be this: Would Dr. King like the school we’ve named after him? Would he smile and say “Hey … not bad”  or would he curl up his face and say we could do better?

I really have often wondered this.  If he walked our halls, sat in our classrooms, watched our games and listened to our conversations,  how would he evaluate us? 

Evaluating schools is an issue that Sacramento, Districts and communities kick around all the time, asking and wondering by what standard do you judge a school?  What is the benchmark of excellence? This too, is good and right.

In 2007 I took our cross country teams to Birmingham and Montgomery Alabama to compete and also to see the sites in those cities made famous by Dr. King, Rosa Parks and others.  That experience captured my imagination not only of the past, but my hope for the present as well.  For 11 years now, I’ve been on a quest to understand Dr. King at a deeper level. Despite dozens of books read, I am not done, but this one thing I know: However complex King was, no matter how nuanced and layered his perspective on Civil Rights was, his life really can be reduced down to one thing, and I think that one thing is what he’d use to evaluate our school … If he walked our halls … if he listened to our conversations … if he sat and ate lunch with us.

In early 1956 as the Montgomery Bus Boycott was just getting on, Martin Luther King was worn down by weeks of death threats and admitted that he was nearing the end of his strength right there at the start of the battle. Unable to sleep, he made a pot of coffee and sat at his kitchen table in the middle of the night frightened, lonely, tired...  Later he would write about what happened:

The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. He wrote. "I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. … I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can't face it alone."

At that moment, I experienced the presence of [God like never before]. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: "Stand up for justice, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever." Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything."

One thing we try to emphasize with our students is that their lives matter.  Each one, created in the Imago Dei, we greet on the doorstep of adulthood and try to usher them into maturity, equipped for the one life they get to live.  What will that one life look like?  What will be the pillars of belief and conviction upon which their lives will stand?  If Dr. King were here … how would he answer that question? What would he say his life was about if he spent time on this campus and … walked our halls, listened to our conversations, and sat down to eat lunch with us. What would he say?

It was just days after that moment at midnight there in his kitchen that a bomb with murderous intent exploded on the front porch of his home leaving a gaping hole and broken windows in its wake. While no one was hurt, everyone was angry. Police arrived and a barricade kept at bay a swirling crowd fixed on revenge. 

King stepped out onto the porch and into the jangling discord, saying: “We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. Remember the words of Jesus, ‘He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.’ No matter what they do to us, we must make them know that we love them. Jesus’ words echo across the centuries, “love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that spitefully use you.’ This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love.”

Today in South Africa, they are familiar with a Bantu word.  That word is Ubuntu. It comes from a saying that essentially says,  “A person is a person through other persons.” Ubuntu declares that we are not alone, that we are designed to connect with others, that Mankind is better off when we live in community with one another. The great South African leader, Nelson Mandela spoke of Ubuntu and practiced it.  Mandela described it this way: Ubuntu does not mean people should not address themselves, but the bigger question is this: Are you going to live in such a way that enables the community around you to improve?

In 1956, when the Montgomery Bus Boycott had been successfully completed, King spoke of what he called a Beloved Community and it resonates with Ubuntu.  “The end is redemption;” he said of the budding civil rights movement.  “the end is the creation of the beloved community.  It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers [sic] into friends. It is this type of understanding that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.”

What if he walked these halls, listened to our conversations, and sat to eat lunch with us?  What if Dr. King were alive and here today?  We might ask him many things about his views on civil rights, but really, I think he’d ask us just one question:

How well are you doing at loving one another?

You see, King had just one life, as do you and I.  He lived it well. He lived it with purpose, even if it took an encounter with God at his kitchen table to bring him to it.  But say what you want to say about that one life, his life really came down to one thing … love. From the Rock of Love flowed the rivers of justice, equality and reconciliation. The light of love, King argued, would dispel the dark shadows of hatred.

It’s been almost 19 years since we first opened these doors and on a day like today, it’s good to consider again the singular call King gave to each and every one of us.  A celebration like today should force us to reflect and ask ourselves how well we are living our one life, both as members of the King High School community and as Americans.

How well are we doing at loving one another? Do we love the camouflaged kid as much as we do the AP scholar with a 4.0?  Do the down and outers get loved as much as the up and comers?  Do we love those to the Left of us and to the Right?

Do we hear the echoes of Dr. King as we walk these halls?  He’s calling us!  Love each other! Love even your enemies.  Sacrifice for others. Live in community, seek ways to improve the community around you.

50 years ago this April, Martin Luther King’s life tragically ended too early, his Beloved Community not yet realized.  A half century later, there is much to be done both here, and in the country he loved.  But while Ubuntu, American style, may still be a way off, and while there’s still a mountain to climb, this fact should not deter us from striving on toward that distant land. 

May our resolve be strengthened.

May we not be distracted or fearful.

May our eyes be fixed and hearts convicted.

And every time we see this mural, may we be reminded of that call of Dr. King’s that our one life is best lived when it’s lived in service and love toward those we are inextricably bound together with.

If and when that day comes, on that day … if we could imagine Dr King walking these halls, listening to our conversations and sitting down to eat lunch with us, then I’m sure he’d say,

Well done!

Finding Hope in the Mountain of Despair

Like a Matterhorn in Kansas, a mountain of despair towered in the middle of the last century, casting a dark shadow on African Americans across the US. Its jagged features were chiseled through centuries of racism. From the first slaves who arrived in the colonies manacled to the ships of the Middle Passage to their 20th century descendants who were chained to the lowlands of social, political and economic discrimination, the monolith menaced and for decades it seemed insurmountable.

Racial discrimination was Everest before Sir Edmund Hillary. It was the four minute mile before Bannister, flight before the Wright brothers, portable light before Edison. Overcoming racism and its twin peak of discrimination was, in the minds of most who lived then, not possible.

Obstacles of mountainous size know no color line. We all face them. But to describe the daily hurdles we cross as equal to scaling the towering cliffs of centuries-old institutional racism is to be either ignorant of history or callous of heart. A measure of empathy for that generation of African Americans would offer a pass if they concluded the mountain was too high.

Into that story a young preacher man rose up. Inspired by the challenge and the moment in history, Martin Luther King passionately called his listeners to overcome the temptation to retreat. Brandishing the weapon of love and harnessing the impatience of millions of African Americans who had grown weary of living in the shadows, he challenged them to “hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.”

Those words were one of the capstone phrases of his most famous address, the one delivered fifty years ago today on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. When one has hope, one has the freedom to dream. When one is undaunted by the “difficulty of the moment”, one has the ability to see that “it is not an end, but a beginning.” The “fierce urgency” of the moment compelled Dr. King to beckon Negroes of the early Sixties to “rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.”

The speech soared; not only on the airwaves of that sacred ground, but on into history. Today, 50 years on from that August day, we hear the echoes still. But not all was good that day, or the ones before and after.

The city of Washington DC was on high alert leading up to “the first ever Negro led public gathering in the nation’s capital”. President Kennedy had positioned nearby almost 20,000 military troops in the event a riot had to be quelled. Liquor sales were halted in the District. Some store owners deposited their inventory in warehouses in the event of looting. Even the Washington Senators postponed two ball games until the week following the March. While it all proved to be unnecessary, clearly the prejudice of White Americans was present and accounted for.

Racism didn't end that day. Three weeks after the March, down in Birmingham, the KKK threw some TNT at the 16th St. Baptist church and killed four young black girls as they prepared for Sunday school. A riot broke out. By ’64, legislation addressing Civil Rights had been passed, but the nation remained on the edge of a seeming apocalypse. The “jangling discords” of the nation were incessant, brassy and everywhere. Even a Dream described with eloquence was not enough to end the nightmare.

Into the middle of that chaos a simple song drifted lightly up, then like a phoenix rose on the crescendo of works much mightier than its simple score. Coupled with Dr. King’s soaring rhetoric, it formed a duet that inspired millions to march. From ditty to anthem, a theme song was born.

We Shall Overcome

Written in 1900 as a gospel song and first used as a protest chorus by Food and Tobacco union workers in 1947, by the time the civil rights movement was gaining speed in the late 1950’s, the song’s moral clarity had caught hold of protesters at lunch counters and behind jail bars. Marchers on Main street and Marchers on Washington held it aloft on a cappela shields of soul force. Folk singer Joan Baez sang the hymn as an invocation to the proceedings that led to King’s great sermon in DC.

We Shall Overcome | we shall overcome someday | Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe | we shall overcome someday.

The remaining verses take us on an emphatic journey: … we shall all be free … we are not afraid … we are not alone … we shall overcome. The destination is nothing short of victory.

But of course, the dogmatic and overtly optimistic “shall” -- as if there were no alternatives but overcoming – can give rise to cynics. “Just put a happy face on it” seems a bit contrived when you've got a two-fisted grip on jail bars. It’s hard to think there’s only one outcome to the battle when you’ve got a German shepherd tearing at you and racist cops are swinging their clubs and looking to score. Is there a song for the mountain of despair? Couldn’t we adapt the lyrics to read “We might overcome?”

King was fond of saying that if you don’t have something you’re willing to die for, then you've got nothing to live for. While that reads a pinch pessimistically, it’s in that paradox that the hope of the Civil Rights Movement is found. Doubt is switched with certainty. “Maybe” becomes “will.” How can you lose if “redemptive suffering” and even death isn't a deterrent? Emboldened by their faith, the marchers belted out the lyrics and soldiered on.

We shall overcome … they became three words that formed the soundtrack of a movement that changed the course of history.

The night before he died, King put this truth to words. It’s a chilling last paragraph to his last speech:

“I've been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” 

Death has lost its sting when the stones of hope are found scattered in the shadows of the valley of death. If evil doesn't scare you, any mountain can be overcome.

Even the one named Despair.

Treble White, Bass Black and the Imago Dei ~ Reflections on Martin Luther King Day

Last July while vacationing in Washington DC, I woke for an early morning run. The mid-week streets were not yet crammed with commuters, and the memorials on the mall were equally absent of pedestrians and sightseers.

My run wandered by monuments of the past ... each standing as present testimonies to national greatness and tragedy. I made a lap around the obelisk to Washington; over and around the tidal basin where Jefferson stood still beneath his immortal words that "all men are created equal".  The four rooms of FDR’s memorial were empty except the sound of rushing water. FDR sat in his chair and watched me go by, his carved countenance seeming to match the mood of the time in which he served.

Empty too were the steps that lead to Lincoln's great memorial. They were bathed in the gold of a rising sun. I climbed them slowly, selfishly enjoying the solitude and the calm before a mid-summer DC day. Interestingly, my thoughts didn't go to the days of Lincoln, nor the year of 1863 when the Great Emancipator called for the freedom of slaves and a renewed resolve to sustain the great American experiment.

No, instead, my thoughts were triggered by the words etched into the granite steps midway to Lincoln's shrine. On the spot where in 1963 Martin Luther King delivered his opus, the "I Have a Dream" speech, it’s title is chiseled into the granite, a permanent reminders of a grand moment in which the preacher called for a renewed resolve to carry out  liberty and justice for all. For a moment, sweat dripping from my brow, I was transported back to another time, a catalyst for the age in which I live

Martin Luther King's youth was spent in the oppressive heat of Southern Jim Crow. Raised by his preacher father and challenged by his mother to never think of himself as less than anyone else, the theology of his later social activism, (not to mention his sermons) was crystallized at the very steps of that Lincoln Memorial.

It was Easter Sunday of 1939. At the Constitution Hall, Washington DC's largest concert venue at the time, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) were holding a concert. Barred from performing due to the color of her skin, Marion Anderson (widely renowned as the nation's greatest contralto) was relegated to a "lesser" spot, in the "auditorium under the sky" as Harold Ickes called it. She would hold stage on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before an audience of both blacks and whites that numbered in the thousands.  Offering a mix of operatic classics, she finished her set with a hint of protest by singing "My Country Tis' of Thee." Standing in front of a Steinway grand, with the gaze of Lincoln off her shoulder, Anderson offered a subtle demurral.  Lifted on the notes of a gifted voice she switched the words "of thee I sing", to "of thee we sing."

Had Lincoln been able to hear it, I wonder if he would have smiled.

In the audience that day was a ten year old boy, Martin Luther King Jr, who did hear it and may have grasped right then the power of the words that end the first stanza,

"From ev'ry mountainside, Let freedom ring!"

Well, five years later, young Martin King gave one of his first recorded speeches titled "The Negro and the Constitution." He said, “She (Marion Anderson) sang as never before, with tears in her eyes. When the words of ‘America’ and ‘Nobody Knows de Trouble I Seen’ rang out over that great gathering, there was a hush on the sea of uplifted faces, black and white, and a new baptism of liberty, equality, and fraternity. That was a touching tribute, but Miss Anderson may not as yet spend the night in any good hotel in America.”

24 years after that speech, in August of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. would stand in the same spot that Miss Anderson did, and belt out on soaring rhetoric a dream that one day America would "let freedom ring from every mountainside."

But from where does this freedom come? What would give such a young preacher-man from the South, immersed in a cultural context of state-sanctioned racism, the audacity to proclaim such a dream?

The answer is found in the concept of the Imago Dei, or "the image of God." It was a concept deeply rooted in not only King's thinking, but in the "American Dream" as well, as King reminded his audience at the start of his oration that August day. It emanates too from Jefferson's preamble to the Declaration of Independence. It’s a understanding that states that every man, woman, child, no matter the race, is "endowed by our Creator with certain, unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Certain privileges -- rights -- come with being made in the image of God. The Imago Dei.

In a sermon King once preached he said: "You see, the founding fathers were really influenced by the Bible. The whole concept of the imago dei, as it is expressed in Latin, the "image of God" is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected ... this gives him worth. There are no gradations in the image of God, Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on God's keyboard. ... One day we will learn that. We will know one day that God made us to live together as brothers and to respect the dignity and worth of every man."

While post-modern sensibilities and some revisionists may recoil from the thought of King's Christianity or simply dismiss it as a minor irritant to the civic leader's greater secular impact, there is no escaping the bedrock of Christian theology from which King preached and moved America to action. King’s faith was woven into the fabric of the civil rights movement and is an integral part of what made the "I Have a Dream" address hit home. It resonates, because it connects with the deepest longing of every human being: Justice.

In his dream address, King ascended from the foundation of justice to the pinnacle of brotherhood. Equating the lack of justice to “quicksand” he warned America that “the whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”  Then, in an echo of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, King quickly followed his admonition with the reminder that the outcome of freedom demands a non-violent approach to justice. “In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.” The sunlight of justice falls equally on white and black people. The Imago Dei is in all and justice must not be bought with the coin of hatred and at the expense of brotherhood.

King’s theology stems from the Old Testament prophets.  Timothy Keller has written a superb study on the practice of social justice and notes that the Hebrew term for “justice” is “Mishpat”. Used over 200 times in the Old Testament, its basic meaning is to treat people equitably, especially the widow, the orphan, the immigrant and the poor. (Zechariah 7)  King, stating the obvious that blacks had received a raw deal from the promises of the Declaration and the Constitution, warned America using the words of one of those Old Testament prophets, that “we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” (Amos 5:24)

America was a crooked place back then, thirsty for the waters of righteousness.  Bent by racism, hatred and injustice, America needed a modern day prophet to challenge Americans to “transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood”.  The prophet-preacher King quoted from Isaiah to proclaim his own vision for America: “One day, every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places shall be made straight and the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.” (Isaiah 40) Then came the obvious:  If we are not all created in the Imago Dei, should we not judge each other by the content of our character?

Near the end, his voice rising on the winds of inspiration, King proclaimed that “From the mountain of despair would come a stone of hope,” and that one day all of those made in the Image of God, would be able to sing with new meaning “my country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty of thee I sing; land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride; from every mountain side, let freedom ring.”

In the audience was Marion Anderson and I’m sure she must have smiled.

Last July on those very steps, in silence and alone, I was connected by understanding and place with both the present and the past.  I soaked it in, relishing my moment there on that historic spot. In time, I descended and continued on my run, reflecting on the greats who had passed this way so long ago, people who in words that soared and actions that roared changed the way we live.

Their echoes reverberated in the quiet of the morning, and I couldn’t help but smile.

We Have Only Our Bodies

Three days after Martin Luther King heard the call to carry on, the local KKK threw a bomb on the porch of King's home, exploding and ripping a hole in the front wall. Fortunately no one was injured in the blast, but the gauntlet had been thrown down.

Calling or not, the message was clear: You and your kind are not wanted.

A crowd of angry protesters assembled on the lawn that night, armed and dangerous, seeking retribution. Above the shouts and expletives, King's voice rose and called for calm. He asked the throng to put away their guns, love their enemies, turn the other cheek. "We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory voilence" he said as a cocktail of dynamite and vengence stirred the night air. "We must meet violence with non violence. Remember the words of Jesus: 'He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.'" Then, like throwing moral salt into the open wounds, he finished with "We must make them know that we love them. Jesus still cries out in words that echo across the centuries: 'Love your enemies; bless them that curse you ...' This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love."

His message was clear: Me and my kind will not be moved.

As a student of Gandhi, a nonviolent approach to segregation had been percolating in King's mind for some time, but the radical call to withhold the counter strike met one of its first real tests that ugly night. As the splinters and dust settled and by the time the crowd deflated and dispersed, a movement unlike any other was born. The foot soldiers would carry only their bodies into battle. Evil would be met with love. Fists with faces. Teeth with legs. Though history has shown that revolutions are fought with guns, and fire is fought with more fire, this one would be different ... and very difficult. It would be an "Anti-Revolution" and King was betting that despite the difficulties it would ultimately prevail.

When tested and tired, King returned to his home. While accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he recalled that reference point, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. "When the years have rolled past" King said, "and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvelous age in which we live, men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization, because these humble children of God were willing to 'suffer for righteousness sake.'"

All of that sounds well and good until you get to the "suffering" part. Most of us don't like to suffer, most of all me. Why else do we have pills and air conditioning? Truth is, that part was a hard sell for King too. Though many signed on to suffer with him for righteousness, many gagged on it or balked. In a tense meeting with the double-crossing mayor of Chicago who reneged on a promise to let them march, King explained the weariness that comes in doing the hard thing:

"Let me say that if you are tired of demonstrations, I am tired of demonstrating. I am tired of the threat of death. I want to live, I don't want to be a martyr. ...I am tired of getting hit, tired of being beaten, tired of going to jail. " But then, pulling out his ultimate weapon, he said,"Now gentlemen, you know we don't have much. We don't have much money. We don't really have much education, and we don't have political power. We have only our bodies and you are asking us to give up the one thing that we have when you say, 'don't march.'"

Ouch. Moved, the mayor changed course and the bodies marched. Score one for the unarmed foot soldiers.

It is difficult (perhaps impossible) for those of us in 21st Century Southern California to really imagine the plight of African Americans who lived in the South in the middle of the last century. The violence perpetrated by racists is sick enough to leave unmentioned here. The KKK was given by local governments "free passes" to do as they pleased to demonstrators prior to the police moving in. The FBI, like so many holders of power then, was bent. Even President Kennedy, with his own secrets to hide, was made to realize it'd be in his best interests to stall a civil rights bill King had personally pleaded with him to enact. The Sixties were stained with the sins of pride and racism. To be in the trenches of that fight was to sign up for suffering. Some survived, some didn't.

But the movement King led did survive, and perhaps it's life was best summed up in a speech King gave on the steps of the State Capitol building in Montgomery, after one of the largest and most brutal marches recorded. 25,000 folks were tired, not just of the march, but of marching. Yet it was again the hope of victory, the assurance of victory that Martin Luther King offered them that lifted their spirits. He finished his thoughts this way:

"I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?" Somebody’s asking, "How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?" ...Somebody’s asking, ... How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?"

I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because "truth crushed to earth will rise again."
How long? Not long, because "no lie can live forever."
How long? Not long, because "you shall reap what you sow."
How long? Not long: Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch above his own.
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. How long? Not long, because 'Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on. He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat. O, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant my feet! Our God is marching on.

Glory, hallelujah!
Glory, hallelujah!
Glory, hallelujah!
Glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on."

Had the crowd not already been on it's feet, it would have stood. Tired and sore marchers were reminded that the God of the moral universe marched with them. A banner of truth unfurled and flapped in the Southern breeze.

Carry on!

A Kitchen Table Calling

In her great, recent work titled Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin paints a glowing portrait of her subject, Abraham Lincoln. Lately the book has attracted a large national audience as President Elect Obama has been observed creating with inspiration his own "team of rivals" for his cabinet.

Lincoln is described in Team as a man of relentless ambition. In a letter written to the folks of Sangamon County during his first-ever campaign Lincoln wrote, "Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. ...I can say for one that I have no other ambition so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed." Sadly the youthful Lincoln wondered if he had missed his moment, he "worried that 'the field of glory' had been harvested by the founding fathers, that nothing had been left for his generation but modest ambitions." Despite that dour outlook, his ambition to make something of himself carried him. Once, while in a severe depression that left Lincoln bedridden and others wondering if he should perish, he was able to muster on, for "I had done nothing to make any human being remember that I have lived."

Of course the history of the 1850's and '60's had different ideas for the politician. That old fear of Old Abe's was proven unfounded as that ambition would catapult him to the nation's highest office. In the midst of America's darkest hour, marked by Blue and Grey and Black, he would claim for his own the light of America's greatest achievement.

In August of 1963, Martin Luther King stood in the literal and figurative shadow of Lincoln's esteem to deliver his epic I have a Dream speech. With the soaring granite memorial to the Great Emancipator behind him, Dr. King's soaring eloquence spoke of a legacy and a dream, of a past and a future, of undeniable ideals left unfulfilled. Though the echoes of Lincoln reverberated in King's magisterial speech, the journey King took to reach that pinnacle could not have been more unlike Lincoln's. Where Lincoln was driven to great heights, King was called.

Martin Luther King Jr's desire had always been to simply preach just as his father and grandfather had done in Georgia. It was in his genes. While in his early twenties, the younger Martin moved to the North to attend seminary, met the beautiful Coretta, and was soon married. Only a dissertation short of graduation, an opportunity came to hold his own pulpit in Alabama and given the "stodgy wealth" of the Dexter Avenue Baptist congregation, he figured there would be a number of nice fringe benefits to go along with the gig. He took the job and quickly settled into writing sermons and church budgets.

Of course the history of the 1950's and '60's had different ideas for the preacher. That comfortable, promising career of young Martin vanished in the midst of another dark hour marked by tear gas, gunfire and German Shepherds. But it was through that fiery trial that Martin Luther King Jr. would be catapulted to heights of his own, and in so doing he ushered in the light of America's new morning. The daybreak of equality was cracking through the darkness of history.

All sunrises begin in the dark of night and it was no different for King. While leading the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956 -- a responsibility he accepted reluctantly -- the weight of death threats and the fear of what could happen to his infant daughter and wife shoved King to the cliff of capitulation. It was still early in the movement, but he frankly had enough and the comforts of preaching to a well-clad and receptive audience each Sunday at Dexter Ave. was alluring. Unable to sleep, he arose, poured some coffee, and sat at his kitchen table running through a mental Rolodex of options. King described what happened that night:

"And I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me any minute. And I started thinking about a dedicated, devoted and loyal wife, who was over there asleep. … And I got to the point that I couldn't take it anymore. I was weak. … And I discovered then that religion had to become real to me, and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee. I never will forget it. … I prayed a prayer, and I prayed out loud that night. I said, "Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right. I think I'm right. I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now. I'm faltering. I'm losing my courage." … And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world." … I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone. No never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone."

King's rise to greatness would not be a Lincolnian quest to live a life worthy of history's esteem. Rather, as darkness swirled about him, it would be a still small voice that jarred him into accepting his new reality. In the coming years, as despair would creep in, it would be that call of God that compelled him to deny himself and take up the cross of someone larger than himself. It would be an anchor through the storms of the civil rights movement that not only held him firm, but changed the nation as well.

Today, if you visit the Rosa Parks Institute in Montgomery, there is a sizable display in the museum to the "kitchen table" moment in Martin Luther King's life. Gazing upon it, one is confronted with how simple and serene it looks. It is not a grand stage or platform from which momentous events are launched. Absent are the trappings of power, prestige or office. It is a humble place. It is quiet.

But from the solitude of that little room came big things. Over a cooling cup of coffee, at a little kitchen table, a theological template for political action had been born. The voice of redemption was heard. America owes a debt of gratitude to the Call young Martin heard that night and to the courage he showed to follow it's voice.