Midweek Faith Lift
January 22, 2025
The Legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Passages
January 13, 2025
The Polish composer and pianist Paderewski was giving a concert at Carnegie Hall. A mother brought her young son to the event. A few minutes before the concert was to begin, while his mom was talking to a friend, the boy slipped away, made it up to the stage, and sat himself at the huge Steinway piano, where he began playing with one finger, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." When his mother saw her son on stage, she was mortified. But the audience quieted down and began listening. Amazingly, the house lights went down and a spot light shone on the boy. Then the great Paderewski himself walked up behind the boy and whispered to him to keep playing. Then the composer reached around the young lad and, with one hand, began filling in the bass notes. With his other hand be played some running obligatos. The young upstart and grand master playing beautiful music together. That's how God is for us.
That is how God was for Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. whose legacy we are celebrating today, here at Unity, this afternoon at the UU Fellowship and tomorrow on MLK Day. From Spiritual Passages, January 13, 2025, we also learn:
During the less than 13 years of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s leadership of the modern American Civil Rights Movement, from December 1955 until April 4, 1968, African Americans achieved more genuine progress toward racial equality in America than the previous 350 years had produced. Dr. King is widely regarded as America’s pre-eminent advocate of nonviolence and one of the greatest nonviolent leaders in world history. At the age of thirty-five, he was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize.
No doubt, God was filling in all the notes to make the beautiful music that was
King’s life and the legacy of his words and actions. What do other’s say of King?
Quotes from Others
"When Martin Luther King said that ‘The arc of the moral universe bends towards justice,’ he was diving deep into the desire for a new day. We are called to live this new day. Maya Angelou said, ‘If we learn from history, we do not have to re-live the mistakes that were made.’ If we face our history honestly, openly, and lovingly, a new day can be born."
- Walter Brownridge, Episcopal priest
Early in his career, Martin Luther King Jr. preached about the need to have three dimensions in our life: length, breadth, and height. Length is about our connection to ourselves. Breadth is about our connection to our community. And height is about our connection to the transcendent. If these three dimensions are out of whack, King said, we will be, too." - Pete Davis, Dedicated
Quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr.
"He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love."
"This Universe is not a tragic expression of meaningless chaos but a marvelous display of orderly cosmos."
"Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."
"All life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality."
"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the one who wields it. It is a sword that heals."
Wow, what an incredibly powerful legacy of ideas, inspiring words and courageous acts. In the coming years, we shall revisit those words and cling to the truth of them in the face of all that is not love. I especially resonate with the quotation about the dimensions of our lives: length, breadth and height which all need to be in balance. While so much is made of King as a political leader, what is forgotten or neglected in the trivializing of his message is his deep, deep spiritual practice and connection to that which is greater, his connection to God. It was that connection and conviction that supported his mission and his leadership.
The theme for the AARLA service today is the “Network of Mutuality” which is a statement of inescapable reality, a spiritual truth that stands beyond our human attempts to deny it or control it. This quotation comes from King’s April 16, 1963 “Letter from Birmingham City Jail.” He wrote this essay as a letter to a particular audience in response to their editorial criticism of his mission and his marches in Birmingham. His letter was directed specifically to fellow ministers: white Christian ministers. He was calling them out for their complacency and admonitions to just wait for change. He was calling them out for labeling his mission as one of “outsiders” who had no business marching in Birmingham. His letter is a searing exegesis of the gospel of waiting, the gospel of patience, the gospel of doing nothing being preached by white Christian ministers.
It is not widely shared that as he lead what eventually became the Civil Rights movement, Rev. Dr. King continued to serve as the minister of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, preaching every week and tending to the pastoral needs of his flock as he was able. I have a friend, a seminary classmate, who attended Spellman College and was a member of King’s church. Rev. King gave the eulogy at the funeral for the three young girls murdered while attending Sunday school on September 15, 1963 at the 16th Street Baptist Church also in Birmingham. He told the parents of those girls, that, “at times life is hard, hard as crucible steel,” another statement of truth, of reality that stands above our attempts to deny it, or control it.
Defense of the status quo, of maintaining power and privilege sounds all too familiar these days. It is still with us as it stands with our own capacity and power to speak up and stand for what is Good, True and Beautiful. We are at a point in the evolution of human consciousness that is as “hard as crucible steel.” We have lived through and continue to live in the epoch of knowledge and technology and the acquisition of money and power as the primary values of utmost importance. What King’s words and his life remind us, and the urgency of these times, is how much real power there is in what is Good, what is True and what is Beautiful. These are also values of utmost importance and stand as a reality that our human consciousness is ultimately unable to deny or control.
We are living in the hard crucible of the birth of a new and greater reality, one of which King wrote in his book, Where Do We Go From Here? It is time to stop looking for answers outside of us and to look within. It is time to stop dreaming that there will be another Rev. Dr. King to lead us all to the Promised Land. It is time to acknowledge that we are all called to lift up what is Truth, spiritual truth, to seek what is Good, the highest and best Good for all and to see the Beauty in one another, in poetry, music and art and to preserve the beauty of planet earth, our shared home. “How did we get here?” is not the right question for us at this time of the hard crucible of birth.
There were four steps in each nonviolent campaign that King lead: first, collection of the facts to determine whether injustices were alive; second, negotiation; third, self-purification and four, direct action. Each step when followed gave way to the next. The step of self-purification was and is of critical importance. It was key to the power of standing for Goodness, Truth and Beauty in the direct and nonviolent action of the civil rights sit-ins and marches. The power is in standing for, not in hitting back. This is the bigger truth that King lifted up. He lifted up the beauty, dignity and worth of the Negro. It is incumbent on us to remember that as we lift up Goodness, Truth and Beauty in the face of the hatred, fear and violence that are part of our common life today. How to continue to love in the face of all that is not-love; that is the question we must live to day. How do we hold the light in the face of a narrative of darkness, carnage and destruction? Get comfortable with the questions!
Manifesto
May 29, 2019
by Rosmemerry Wahtola Trommer
And if we can’t save the world,
and who says we can’t, then
let us try anyway. Perhaps
we have no superhuman powers—
can’t see through buildings,
can’t fly, can’t bend the bars of cages—
but we have human powers—
can listen, can stand up to,
can stand up for, can cradle.
And if we can’t imagine
a world of peace, and who
says we can’t, then let us
try anyway. Perhaps we start
tonight—on a Wednesday.
Thursday works, too. Or Friday.
Doesn’t much matter the day.
All that matters is the choice
to meet this moment exactly
as it is, with no dream of being
anyone else but our flawed
and fabulous very self—
and then, wholly present,
bringing this self to the world,
touching again and again what is true.
What if we do? And if we can’t
save ourselves, and who
says we can’t, let’s try anyway.
There was a time I thought
I could never be healed. That
was only because it hadn’t happened yet,
so I decided it wasn’t possible.
Healing happened anyway.
What have we decided isn’t possible?
What if we stopped believing
that limit? What if, right now,
we used our human powers
of compassion, clarity, gratitude,
praise? What if we did it together—
opened all those closed doors inside
us? What if we let the opening do
what opening does?
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb