Martin Luther King Revisited

Today I picked up books from the Cordes Lakes public library on Martin Luther King, which I had reserved. The librarian told me that she had met Coretta King at an event with Amaji, her spiritual leader, and had been deeply impressed by her.

I am making a study of his some of his works right now because I think he was the most effective civil rights leader in my lifetime. I think there is much to be learned from studying his writing. He knew how to raise people's consciousness with freedom marches, but he also knew that economic boycott was also necessary to get people's attention. That is a lesson that we seem to have forgotten. Cesar Chavez also understood this strategy. All the people I know who want to see a better world that is more fair and just, who want to be free and others to be free, who want not just to survive, but also to thrive, and for everyone else in the world to have the opportunity to do the same... to end wars, violence, and oppression; we need to be inspired. And who better than Martin Luther King for that inspiration?

I have just listened to an audio book while driving back and forth for radiation treatments, "Song Yet Sung", written by James McBride and narrated by Leslie Uggams. At first, I had a difficult time getting into the story; it seemed such a dreary theme, set in Maryland when slavery was still going, and chronicling the saga of slaves escaping and making a run for the north. But I'm glad that I kept listening to it because I got very engrossed in the story.

There was this women they called the dreamer because she saw the future. And she saw a man who said, "Free at Last!", who was of course, Martin Luther King, and she understood that someone she knew was his ancestor.

I had already ordered the books on Martin Luther King when I got to that part of the story. It was the kind of coincidence that underlines how important this is for me to do. I picked up the audiobook by chance, just choosing the most appealing one to me at the tiny branch library near me in Cordes Lakes.

So I have started reading Letter from the Birmingham Jail. Here is an excerpt: 

"...I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives in the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country."

I consider this an eloquent restatement of my favorite poem by John Donne, No Man Is an Island, which I have memorized and re-memorized over the years:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; 
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe 
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as 
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine 
own were; any man's death diminishes me, 
because I am involved in mankind. 
And therefore never send to know for whom 
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 


As a feminist, I learned that the personal is political; and what's political is personal. If we want

to build a better world, it begins with each and every one of us. And as a woman committed to 

bringing about the paradigm shift of the Aquarian Age, I understand that we must work

together because our strength is in cooperation, not competition; it is in numbers, not any one

individual. We must all play our part.