Tag: Martin Luther King Jr.

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Grief on the Way to Transformation: My Cell Phone and Violence #2

TeardropWhy concern myself with human rights abuses in far away places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Why make connections between myself and the behavior of a long-ago king, the Belgium’s colonial policies or missionaries’ behavior when, although I personally am outraged by their behaviors, none of these people were my family members?

Why think too much about the fact that materials for my cell phone and wedding ring may have involved injustice and ill treatment of others half way around the globe? For me, my cell keeps me connected to people I care about and my wedding ring is a symbol of a life-long love.

I have no interest in collapsing in shame and despair. That is a dead-end street that feels lousy and helps no one.

Yet, I am no longer willing to keep global horrors at arms length, grateful that since I don’t approve I can wash my hands of any connection to things done by other humans, national and transnational corporations who produce the goods I buy, or “my people” (which includes people who share my Euro-American roots, white skin, Christianity or wealth).

Distancing myself from other’s behavior makes it too easy for me to forget the deep historical roots of today’s world events and the fact that I enjoy the benefits of things grown and produced under horrifying conditions.

Maintaining that distance requires that I go back to sleep. That isn’t an option for me anymore.

However I can’t, nor should I, shoulder the responsibility for all of these actions. Nevertheless, I can stop and grieve. Weep for violence and injustice—for both victims and perpetrators. Let my heart break open for those who suffered and continue to suffer far outside my neighborhood.

My personal grief and the world’s grief meet in my heart. That is where I experience the truth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”1

No defensiveness is needed. Only seeing. Grieving. Not getting stuck there, but also not bypassing my need to wail about tragic aspects of human behavior.

Fear is fanned on every street corner and news show. Despair for the enormity of the environmental destruction and human inequity feels like it could easily undermine our capacity to cope with daily life.

The only path I know of that moves toward transformation, runs right through the middle of grief. “To let ourselves feel anguish and disorientation as we open our awareness to global suffering is part of our spiritual ripening. … Out of darkness, the new is born.”2

Against all logic, this path leads me to joy and gratitude. Standing solidly in the center of both grief and joy, I find clarity about my place in the global world. I am prompted to continue to ask myself, “What’s next? What is my next step to further align my behavior with my values?” Not from a place of despair, shame or over-responsibility but from a solid knowing of the interconnectedness of us all.

Paradox again. I always return here. The more I can learn to hold grief and joy, the greater my capacity to live life fully in ways that serve us all.

 

1. Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963
2. Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown. Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World (British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 1998) Pg 45

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“What is my emotional inheritance?”

Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey
Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey

That question jumped off the page in Colette Winlock’s book Undoing Crazy.* Earlier in the novel, when “Mama” spoke about her childhood in Love, Texas in the 1930s, I was thrown back into my memories growing up in West Texas in the 1950s and 1960s.

What was the emotional inheritance passed down to me from generations of my white-skinned family living in North Carolina, Tennessee then Texas?

I can still hear Mom’s voice telling me that emotions aren’t trustworthy. “Don’t let emotions detract you from the work to be done.” “Emotions have no place in the Church.” “Responsibility is more important than how you feel.”

I was taught to think critically.  To be curious. To study. And yet, we were discouraged from thinking, or noticing, the Big Topics like racism, sexism or classism.

My grandfather O.R. Tipps, an attorney, was direct in a letter he wrote to his daughter, my mother, in 1945—“Social reformers all try to make people equal. They can’t do it, and by trying, they impede the best ones and don’t help the weak ones. However, they usually get worked up into a lather in trying to get some law, or some tradition, or some precedent changed to make each and every person exactly equal.”

What laws, traditions or precedents did he mean? Redlining? Segregation? Black codes? Jim Crow? Lynching?

How much was my family’s emotional inheritance stunted in the clash between our valuing of intellectual analysis of every topic except the big public ones?

Part of us had to go to sleep to live in the face of such a stark contradiction. We were trained not to notice anything that didn’t fit into the official, white-skinned, USA self-image of rock-solid values of democracy and justice for all.

My family was politically moderate, Christian and thoughtful. I never heard my parents make a racist statement or treat individuals disrespectfully based on the color of their skin.

Yet, in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called my family to task: “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice…Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”

My family’s silence spoke volumes, and perpetuated injustice.

The cost of our sleep was profound.

Believing so deeply in law-and-order yet averting our eyes to injustice (or feeling bad, but doing nothing) stunted our emotional inheritance. It is impossible to be profoundly asleep in one area of our lives and be vibrantly alive in the rest of life.

For me personally, I still struggle to notice, then pay attention, to my own emotions. But the cost to my nation is far more serious. How else can we explain our deep sleep to the reality of inequity, injustice and environmental destruction all around us?

I want to leave a different emotional legacy to generations yet to come.

* Colette Winlock. Undoing Crazy (Oakland: Oaktown Press, 2013), 293.

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I Must Speak: A Time to Break Silence #2

In the process of updating my blogs’ categories and tags, I noticed that I omitted one posting from my series on A Time to Break Silence. And not just a random one, but my most personal blog about the topic.  Mistake? Freudian blip? What should I do–just ignore it, add it in to part #3 or send it out now even though it is out of sequence? Obviously, I decided on the latter. Life isn’t always neat and in the right order…

It is terrifying to speak knowing that my vision is limited. I don’t want to appear stupid or insensitive or disrespectful.

Sometime I blurt things out. Come on too strong. Get emotional. Exaggerate.

Big emotions scare me. I resonate with Dr. King:

“… some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night

 have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony,

but we must speak.

We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision,

but we must speak.”

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.*

“The calling to speak is often a vocation of agony” for me. Yet I was called to write a book about the hot topics of race, class and gender. I know much more about myself and the world around me than I did years ago. Yet, I still have limited vision.

These fears that bang around inside of me had me quiet for far too long. Since I care about our world, quiet is a luxury I can no longer afford. The times call for us all to step into the fullness of our sight and to speak our dreams and visions of situations where actions and beliefs are out of alignment with that dream.

The challenge goes beyond merely knowing that I must speak what is true for me. I must also take responsibility for what I say and how I say it. Venting my frustration or anger may be needed in preparation for speaking—taking the time to process with a close friend as I work toward my own clarity, for example—but it rarely helps move a conversation forward to speak from my initial emotional reaction.

I need to remember what I know. About myself. About the bigger partnership I seek with individuals and with generations to follow me. About the spirit at the heart of the other, even people with whom I disagree. I want my words to be in line with my own spirit and my vision for myself and the world around me.

What does it mean for me to be in true partnership with myself, with others, with my nation, with generations now and those to come?  What is my responsibility to be in conversation, to stop ancient patterns of disrespect or assumptions or behaviors that are part of the power dynamic or beliefs that have done so much damage over the generations?

Now is a time to break silence. Not in the abstract, but daily, speaking what is true for me, always remembering the deeper love that undergirds my life’s work.

Second in a series honoring *Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam–A Time to Break Silence, Delivered April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City. The next in the series is titled “Race, Class and Violence.”

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Breaking Silence: A Time to Break Silence #6

The Big Topics at Midnight book event that was held January 13 in Oakland was to be focused around the two big anniversaries of that month—the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., fifty years after he proclaimed, “I Have a Dream,” and the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Then death crashed in. Twelve hours before the book reading, in the dark of night, a phone call came to Lillie Allen that her twenty-nine-year-old grandson, John Kelley, Jr., had been hit by a car and killed. Just five months after the death of his father.

Wails from grandmothers and mothers, sisters and brothers, friends and cousins reverberated. And the silencing of a life lost left behind both a heavy weight and a deep hollowness.

Dreams made and dreams shattered. The future remains unknown.

I do believe in the power and grace of what can grow out of ashes. But now the ashes are before me. I am left with King’s death, John, Jr.’s death and the recent deaths of many around the country and world.

My time pondering Dr. King in early January took me back to my favorite, and most demanding, speech of his—Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. His words, first heard by me decades after he spoke, woke me up to connections I hadn’t seen before.

That would have been enough. But then I found out that he was killed exactly a year after this speech. The King family and attorney tried for years to get all of the evidence surrounding his death heard in court, but to no avail. The state clung to the confession and ignored the recanting of James Earl Ray.

In December 1999, the evidence surrounding the King assignation was finally brought to trial in Memphis, TN. Not in a criminal trial—that permission was never granted—but in a civil suit. All of the evidence was presented, recorded and heard in a courtroom for the first time. The jury rendered a unanimous verdict: King’s death was the result of a conspiracy involving local, state and regional US Governmental agencies, the Mafia and Lloyd Jowers.

The evidence is available on line and in William Pepper’s book An Act of State.

The silence around the evidence and that decision was deafening. Few heard the trial had even happened.

I understand why. The verdict was too horrifying to contemplate.

I didn’t want to do a whole series on this speech of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and especially not to end up here. But his speech showed up in me in January. The words flowed. I was obedient. It is, indeed, a time to wake up and break silence.

Sixth and final blog in a series honoring *Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam–A Time to Break Silence, Delivered April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City.

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The Clarion Call: A Time to Break Silence #5

So here we are. Things crumbling around us. Life spinning so quickly we can’t really catch up. Fear on the rise.

It is time to go for a walk, take a nap and stop for a cup of tea. We’ll get nowhere running around full of fear. But King ends his demanding speech with a clarion call, saying,

“Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons [and daughters] of God, and our brothers [and sisters] wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? … The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.*

Often I do “prefer it otherwise.” But here I am. I was born for such a moment as this. So were you. The task is clear. It is time to “rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.” Struggle and beauty. Hard and easy. All of it at the same time.

The time is now. We each get to choose in this “crucial moment of human history.”

With my knees shaking I say “YES” and take the first step. And then the next one. The odds look good when we all walk together.

*Fifth in a series honoring *Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam–A Time to Break Silence, Delivered April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City. Next in the series is titled “Breaking Silence.”

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Sometimes Confession is the Best Response: A Time to Break Silence #4

I remember 1967. I was in seventh grade at San Jacinto Junior High School. Phones were still attached to the wall and only answered by people who were home when they rang.  Computers were huge and owned by big businesses. Schools were segregated. Protests felt like things that happened worlds away or on TV.

While I was captivated by the task of putting together a chicken skeleton for my biology experiment, Dr. Martin Luther King preached at Riverside Church, saying,

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin … the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.1

These words are particularly chilling to me.  If King thought we were a “thing-oriented society” in 1967, what would he think today?  The enormity of the task of undergoing a “radical revolution of values” seems hopeless.

I carried my heavy heart into church last Sunday where I was reminded that Lent starts this week, beginning with Ash Wednesday.  Since my first trip to Haiti in 1996, the Ash Wednesday liturgy has had a special place in my heart.  It is the only time when the Episcopal community asks for forgiveness of our cultural sins—sins such as values honoring “machines and computers, profit motives and property rights” more than people.

“We confess to you, Lord …our self-indulgent appetites and ways … our exploitation of other people … [and] our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts. …

Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty … prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us, for our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us. …”2

Breaking the silence about the ashes of our failures as a society, gives me the first stirring of hope that something new is possible.  Even now.

1. Fourth in a series honoring *Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam–A Time to Break Silence, HYPERLINK Delivered April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City. Next in the series is titled, “The Clarion Call.”

2. “Ash Wednesday liturgy, in The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Seabury Press), 267-268

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Race, Class and Violence: A Time to Break Silence #3

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a leader in the non-violent civil rights movement. The racial fractures in our society were deep and obvious to anyone of color and to whites who could step away from the cultural norms and see the injustice and violence at the hands of white individuals, society and institutions. It was a big enough topic for one fight.

But intertwined with the racial injustice was the deep poverty that disproportionately affected people of color. Money and opportunities didn’t flow through the generations as they had in my white neighborhoods.

As King and other leaders of the civil rights movement began to teach non-violence to people working for racial justice, they came face to face with the multiple layers of violence inherent in the escalating Vietnam War.

In addition to noting that his own government, not the “oppressed in the ghettos,” was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” King said, “We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.”*

While no one I knew went to fight in Vietnam, many without access to college deferments were sent off to war. As happened in World War II, black young men were sent around the globe to fight for liberties that they hadn’t found at home. As a result of the Vietnam War, money that had begun to flow into poverty programs was abruptly diverted to cover the costs of battle.

King saw the interconnectedness between racism, poverty and war, and “was compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.” He broke a silence that the people in political power did not want him to shatter.  He complicated the civil rights fight. He spoke the truth.

I wish I’d listened in 1967. But I hear these words loud and clear today. Race, class and national violence are big topics that still cut through our world.

It is time to wake up.

The hour is near midnight.

Alert, I listen for guidance about my next step. What are you hearing?

*Third in a series honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam–A Time to Break Silence, Delivered April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City. The next in the series is titled, “Sometimes Confession is the Best Response.”

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A Time to Break Silence: Series on A Time to Break Silence #1

Fifty years ago this month Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of his dream, including that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” We are closer now, though we are still a long way from fully embodying this dream.

In the month of the anniversary of King’s birthday and this often quoted speech my thoughts, however, go to a different oration. One that I rarely hear quoted. While the words of King’s dream stirred my imagination, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence* shook me awake and brought me to my feet, breathless.

I was in junior high school when King delivered this speech at Riverside Church in New York City in 1967. King was talking about the war that spanned my growing up years, one that is history now. But his words reverberate with a truth that is as relevant and crucial today as it was forty-six years ago. King saw and proclaimed the complex web that connected economics, race and war.

In gratitude to King for his courage to speak, an act that flowed out of love for his country and all of his fellow citizens, I will focus the next few blogs on A Time to Break Silence.

What else can I do?  It is, indeed, a time to break silence.

*Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam–A Time to Break Silence, Delivered April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

First in a six part series. The next in the series is titled “I Must Speak.”