So. Today is the anniversary of a voice silenced by hatred. Martin Luther King was assassinated this day 44 years ago. Martin King, denounced hate.
I love Martin. Mainly because he left in his Letter from Birmingham Jail the four points to overturn injustice time and again… and the foremost was “self-purify” ourselves before we go making demands.
THis– self purification before demands– is left out of most every moviemiento that starts strong, falters, falls into factions, becomes focussed on individuals instead of about the Soul of the world… becomes frail and eventually barely visible.
I think of others in our world who led great and small movements– not as religious figures, but as leaders of the true self, that is, what in western terms we’d call the Soul… in Burma, in Russia, in India, in the Southwest US, in Quebec, in so many places of the world. Self purification came first and daily. Daily, daily.
Thank you for your lesson Martin. Thank you for your precious life of being preacher to the soul. No man, no woman is perfected in human form, but the Soul is and will ever be perfected and for all to see. THAT is the radiance of you, Martin.
You were called. You stepped forward instead of holding back, instead of being mealymouthed, instead of bragging on yourself, instead of wandering around and saying you were really doing something when you werent. You spoke of others instead of your own unjust arrests. You continued to see ‘the shining mountain’ no matter what dreck of jail and mayhem were offered to you as bile to drink.
*That* Martin, that you took the blows and never whined about yourself, that you kept your eyes on the Greater, that you both blocked and thundered after the conceited, the fatuous, the narcissistic, the self-preening, the off-message, and the evil… may we honor you by doing so daily in some way, large or small, ourselves.
Think of these things dear brave souls… in what way to block or to thunder after injustice– each in its own thoughtful timing as decided by soul–
I send love and prayer –with you–for all who of necessity struggle forward in the midst of gunfire at this time, for all who strive to block evil from harming the innocents in whatever ways they can. In tempest, there is no sure outcome, but there is unleashing the Soul which has behind it the strength of all Seraphim and little angel-Cherubim combined.
dr.e
CODA
My friend, 88 year old Robert Stein writing today said: “From the start in 1955, King renounced hate. Although harassed, arrested, with a bomb exploding on his front porch, he would not respond with violence. “If we are arrested every day,” he told followers in the Montgomery bus strike, “if we are exploited every day, if we are trampled over every day, don’t ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate him. We must use the weapon of love.”