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Dear Still Water Friends,
No twentieth century American is more identified with the path
of love, compassion, and nonviolence than Martin Luther King, Jr.
Like other great spiritual teachers, although rooted in a particular
religious tradition, his message and moral courage easily crossed
denominational boundaries. Martin Luther King, Jr, was
himself touched by other traditions, including Gandhian
"soul-force" and engaged Buddhism. (The picture to the left is of
Thich Nhat Hanh standing with Martin Luther King as King announced his
opposition to the war in Vietnam.)
This Thursday evening, after our meditation period, we will watch
together segments from several speeches Martin Luther King, Jr. made in
the last five years of his life and share our reflection on King's life
and legacy.
The text of one of the speech segments we will watch is below. It
comes from a remarkable speech given at the National Cathedral on
March 31, 1968, and clarifies the relationship, as King saw it, between
interbeing and activism.
You are invited to join with us.
Warm wishes,
Mitchell Ratner
Senior Teacher
From Remaining Awake Through
a Great Revolution, a talk Martin Luther King, Jr., gave on 31 March,
1968, at the National Cathedral, Washington. (The text of the full speech is available at http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/sermons/680331.000_Remaining_Awake.html .)
Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this
world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to
make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to
do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all
perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of
destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever
affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I
can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And
you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.
This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is
structured.
John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: "No man
is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a
part of the main." And he goes on toward the end to say, "Any
man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind;
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for
thee." We must see this, believe this, and live by it if we are to
remain awake through a great revolution.