Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King’s birthday, when I was growing up, was marked by African American kids staying home from school...which, no doubt, would have really, really horrified Dr. King. Now, of course, we have the official holiday (even if most years it's not actually on his birthday...then, somehow only Christmas and the 4th of July manage to escape the overwhelming force of Americans' everlasting desire for a long weekend), though I don’t know how thrilled he’d be about everybody staying home and playing Grand Theft Auto in his honor, either...which is part of what makes the Martin Luther King Day of Service a beautiful thing....last year, I walked around Germantown picking up trash in vacant lots. This year...I must confess...I didn’t...though I’ve spent much of the day reading books on therapeutic writing, which I hope will be useful in helping some of society’s dispossessed to tell their stories....I think maybe Martin would be okay with that....
Lately there’s a lot of talk about how happy he’d be right now...and I can’t doubt he’d be pleased with certain recent events...though it's hard to picture him sitting around with a complacent smile on his face—more likely, I imagine, he’d be thinking hard and planning, eyes focused squarely on all that remains to be done....
