It was my 17th birthday: April 4, 1968. I was driving home from an after-school
event, listening to the radio, looking forward to an enjoyable evening
celebrating my Dad's and my birthday.
(Yep, he got me as a birthday present the year I was born!)
Suddenly... "Breaking news from Memphis,
Tennessee. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., has been shot. News reports
are saying that he has died." I was
stunned, shocked, saddened, and not just a little afraid. The previous summer had seen race riots all
over my hometown of Joliet, Illinois, with the National Guard being activated and
a dusk to dawn curfew put into effect.
Fights had broken out in my high school one day the previous year, and
the school was closed for four days.
Classes resumed with helmeted Illinois State Police troopers walking the
hallways. "What would happen after
this," I wondered.
I have two older sisters.
My closest one in age is 10 years older than me, so I almost was raised
in a different generation. I truly was
in a generation that experienced very different things than when my sisters
were in their most formative years, and those things affected us. I'm a Presbyterian; both my sisters are
Christian fundamentalists. I'm
politically liberal; both my sisters are staunch conservatives. I was never in
the military; both of my brothers-in-law were in the Air Force, and one
continued working in Civil Service at the Pentagon. Over the decades, every now and then one of
my sisters would look quizzically at me and ask, "Where did you come
from?" I remind them that their
formative years were in the 50's, while mine was in the 60's. So what happened to make me different in many
ways from them? President Kennedy and his youthful idealism and vast social
programs happened. What happened? The assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy,
and of Martin Luther King, Jr. happened.
What happened? Race riots
happened. What happened? Vietnam happened. In short, I grew up in a community, in a
nation, in a world that was very different than that in which my sisters grew
up.
I long have felt connected to Dr. King. It's not just the connection that happened with
the conjunction of his assassination on my birthday. It's about how he lived much of his
life. It's about the power both of his
ideas and of the ways in which he shaped and framed those in his writings and
his speeches. It's about deep truths he
spoke concerning the sinful and shameful ways in which we have let race divide us. It's about the dreams and hopes he shared
that we can build a better society and can live in better ways. It's about how he embodied the fact that,
even when confronted by hate, by violence, by ignorance, by mere indifference,
there is another way in which we can choose to respond. We can respond with peaceful and constructive
confrontation... with justice... with compassion... with love... with
nonviolence.
How will you be observing this year's Martin Luther King,
Jr. holiday? I'll be engaged in some
service projects Monday morning. I'll be
having lunch with someone who's in some pain at the moment. I'll be doing other things I routinely do on
King's birthday: reading some of his writings and watching and listening to
some of his speeches. I find I need
these reminders that I, too, can search to live and serve, love and respond in
other ways than might seem "natural."
I find I need these reminders that I, too, can have a dream, and I can
work to see dreams realized in my own life, in our Presbytery, in the PC(USA),
in our world.
Keep the dream alive, friends.
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