Today we celebrate the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I won't go on and on. I'd just like to throw up a few quotes I found that seem worth being reminded of. The issues dealt with by Dr. King and all the people who worked and lived with and around him in that day are still with us - perhaps not as glaring, but still here. People don't change that quickly, and they don't change because laws change. We don't change because someone yells at us and tells us to change. Our hearts don't really respond to that kind of thing, not by turning around and changing they don't.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important. (right - point taken)
Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having your legs cut off, and then being condemned for being a cripple. It means seeing your mother and father spiritually murdered by the slings and arrows of daily exploitation, and then being hated for being an orphan.
Keeping reminders in front of our collective eyes is good though. Dr. King wasn't about violent revolution. To put out reminders is much like liturgy is in our worship - it keeps what's true and necessary in front of us at all times, consistently. It's not yelling necessarily, just like a constant whisper. Maybe today we make it a little louder - a crescendo. What's most important, though, is the continual drone of our lives being lived according to the dream of not only King, but Christ Himself - the transformation of all mankind into Loving beings for whom hate becomes unknown and foreign. May that be so for us. Give us Grace, Lord, to cooperate with that long process.
"Then, if we cannot as yet think alike in all things, at least we may love alike. Herein we cannot possibly do amiss." John Wesley
"Keep your eyes on the crucifix, for Jesus without the cross
is a man without a mission, and the cross without Jesus
is a burden without a reliever." Fulton J. Sheen
"...I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be
completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self." Henri Nouwen
Today we celebrate the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I won't go on and on. I'd just like to throw up a few quotes I found that seem worth being reminded of. The issues dealt with by Dr. King and all the people who worked and lived with and around him in that day are still with us - perhaps not as glaring, but still here. People don't change that quickly, and they don't change because laws change. We don't change because someone yells at us and tells us to change. Our hearts don't really respond to that kind of thing, not by turning around and changing they don't. 
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