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“I have a dream today.” How many of us have a dream today? In what are those dreams grounded, rooted, sustained? Are those dreams for us alone? Are they dreams for the community in which we live as well?
Lest we forget, dreaming dreams can be a tough business. We must remember that not all of King’s peers agreed with him, with his dream. Many thought he dreamed too little, and his actions did not respond adequately to the cruel injustices around him — an eye for an eye spoke more strongly to them. Others pointed to his own character flaws — his womanizing, plagiarizing, etc. as signs he was imperfect and thus an inappropriate even false dreamer. Others heard in his voice, saw in his life, and felt deep within their bones the inspiration of his courage . . . something about the dream he had and spoke echoed in their own hearts and minds.
As a little girl I could spend Saturday night with a friend of mine and go to church with her on Sunday. She could not do the same with me. Not because my parents said no, rather because the minister of my church said no. She would not be welcome, he said. My father could not give me an answer that satisfied my mind, so I asked her father.
He very patiently explained to me how so many good white folks in the South found it easier to fear not only the dark skin but also the dark history perpetuated by their families. Fear made it easier to shove the “black folks” out of the way, to the bottom of the pile, even hate them for physical qualities given to them by the very God these good white folks worshiped.
Years later in seminary I came upon a Jewish author/theologian who had survived the holocast, Arthur Waskow. He wrote in a book titled, Godwrestling: “If Messiah is to be made possible, then the tradition itself says that what is most frightening to the tradition must be lifted into consciousness, faced — and redeemed. And the redemptive process cannot be left until the end of days: it must be happening along the way.” (64)
At a point in US history the very faith tradition in which Martin Luther King, Jr. was raised, and embraced as a minister . . . that very tradition spoke for slavery in many, many parts of this country and the world. People of darker skin were relegated to the balconies at best, and like women were believed to have no soul . . . to be animals in need of civilizing!
One of the miracles of the South lives in how the African peoples found the grace despite the doctrine used to eradicate their own tribal beliefs. Adopted the stories of exile/slavery, freedom, love for their own.
“I have a dream today.” Facing what was frightening in the Christian tradition King unearthed a redeeming power, sharing that power with all who would have ears to hear. And his dream did not stop with his own people.
As an adult who had the honor of working with many folks in Washington, DC, themselves students of King, I found one reality most intriguing. With all the racial hatred in the South, and all the risks King took for racial equality . . . his venture into economic and peaceful justice for all ultimately laid his life upon the altar.
King understood, as did many others, that its takes some powerful reasons to hate in such a pervasive manner. One of the tools used in the racial degradation had been a crafty manipulation, pitting lower income whites against blacks in general. To understand the healing process, one begins by looking at one’s own privileges. Privileges born and sustained upon another’s misfortune to be born with a darker skin, to have ancestry from the continent of Africa. It is difficult for those of us born with those privileges to fully appreciate the burden of being seen as less than human simply because of skin color. To carry the daily burden that results in constant abuse. The injustices wear many faces, and lurk in every corner.
I remember one young girl in DC in the early 1990’s rubbing my arm and commenting how she wished her skin was my color. Her honey brown glow that so many white folks work hours to achieve in tanning booths and summer sun, meant she was not liked – and worse. She wanted to be liked.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an educated, thinking man. A family man. A minister of the Christian tradition. He was also a black man in the South in the mid-1900’s.
He knew personally the cost of violence. The cost of racism. The cost of economic injustice. The cost of war in his community.
He had been raised with the songs of Zion. The stories of Moses leading his people from slavery. The stance of great courage taken against an unjust Pharoah building his kingdom on the backs of slave labor. He knew the stories of Christ and sacrifice and redemption. He knew how those stories had been used to destroy the African peoples’ native traditions. To keep control. To demean. His knowing radiated from his personal experiences grounded in heart, mind, body, and spirit.
When he cried out “ Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!” the cellular structure of his body spoke with his words. His was not just an intellectual exercise, rather a whole body experience.
One of my favorite King sermons wove its message around the scripture, “Be as wise as serpents AND as innocent as doves.” In this sermon he reminded his listeners that wisdom yielded a double-edged sword. To know one’s own heart freed you to hear the beating of another’s heart more clearly. What was said and done was not always (usually not, in fact) the roots of the real story. Wisdom and innocence walked together in a life lived justly.
A man of dreams and visions born of a deep knowing of reality. “We will either learn to live together as brothers, or we will die together as fools.” He breathed in the teachings of his faith tradition and he redeemed the divisive nature of Christian doctrine in the South by simply living justly from its roots. His personal beliefs reached to a profound community dream of well-being.
As well as reaching deep into his own soul. He studied the non-violence teachings and life of Gandhi, and took that dream into his own rooms and hallways. Do we think King never thought of violence ? I don’t. The sneering faces and taunting voices, the utterly horrendous signs over bathrooms and restaurants and hotels, etc. The sheeted figures of the Klan riding in the night.
No, to study Gandhi, to embrace non-violence in such a setting? The dream wove its way into his soul, his inner being, and profoundly transformed the ordinary man. King did the tough work of his own dark nights. And the vision for a better day for his people, for all God’s children took root in his own deep, dark places.
From studying his teachings, his life, and working with those who walked with him, we learn that living justly involves looking deep into one’s own fears and finding their grace. Only then can the fears be transformed, redeemed from the inside out. To attack the fears, seek to hide and/or confine them, only give the fears more power. Ultimately someone/ something has to bear that burden.
So living justly is not about doctrine, Christian or otherwise. Rather such living roots itself into the soil of our daily beliefs and experiences. If we believe the dark is evil, so it is in our world and we act accordingly. If we believe nothing exists beyond ourselves, than it does not and our world shapes itself likewise. If we believe we are an integral part of “something” the likes of which we can only imagine, so we live. We are confined and freed by our choices.
A colleague of mine in DC once shared that as a young man he was always focusing on what was not being done, on what he couldn’t do. He said that one day King sat him down and began preaching to him. “Brother,” he said, “focus on what you can do, what IS being done. Leave the other to someone else. The more you give me negative, the more energy you take from me. Give me your best. That is enough. That is all God asks.”
History has taken many stances in regards to Martin Luther King, Jr. Growing up white in the South, I heard as much bad as good. One thing I’ve learned along the way — in the end of it all, he became the roots that nurtured him.
As the Unitarian Universalist Church struggles with what to believe, how to teach and live those beliefs, even whether or not to believe at all . . . King’s message bears down on us all. We will either learn to live together as brothers and sisters — including our environment and its diversity as part of our family — or we will all die together — yes, as fools.
As we watch our political campaigns (both within our government and in our churches) deteriorate into uglier and uglier sparring matches, we see the lessons of negativity and tearing each other down to win whatever it is we are seeking to win. Such a victory is always short-lived.
King’s life began in so many ordinary ways. He believed himself an ordinary man living in extraordinary times. Weaving his personal experiences, the times in which he lived, redeeming his faith stories and traditions to reveal life and freedom in the midst of death and slavery, to be changed as profoundly as the change he sought . . . well the rest is truly history.
The gift he gives us today? To bring together our hearts, minds, bodies and spirits into a dream here and now. A dream both personally important to us and to our communities. To be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. To find that courage to turn towards whomever our Pharaohs are, and to gather and courage and walk away, speaking/living freedom so all might do so.
I wonder what advice he might have to offer the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Billings? What is it that would truly set us free to live justly here in the Fellowship and everywhere we go?
Not to idolize an individual, try to imitate his life . . . rather to hear and respond from our own hearts, minds, bodies and spirits to the dreams dwelling in us today. To be and do enough?
King often spoke words from the prophet Micah describing what is truly enough in the eyes of God . . . a statement we each are called to hear and ponder in our diverse ways, no matter what our personal beliefs and philosophies . . .
God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)
What is good, and what does life require of you but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly within this wondrous universe . . . so be it and most blessed be . . .
Wanda Daniel
Consulting Minister
Christmas 1997. Metropolitan Memorial National United Methodist Church, Washington DC. A contemporary Sunday morning service. Bill Anderson, guitarist and songwriter, had written these words and sang them for us that morning. As he began, I found myself wondering . . . what would happen in our world IF we looked at each child with such reverence, wonder, and promised care? As the song progressed and it was clearly focused on Jesus, the son of God, I wondered further . . . what would happen in our world IF each child was seen as so precious?
Who Is This Child? (Bill Anderson, 1997)**
Joseph:
who is this staring from the face of my child
barely born, yet those eyes have seen a thousand lives
wise men bring gifts from strange places
shepherds say the angels sing
Mary my love our child is a king
Mary:
who is he this mystery I hold in my hands
wonder child do you think he understands
will he bring peace to our nation
or will he tear it apart
Joseph my love, keep him from harm (I’ll keep him from harm)
Both:
messiah and savior, (Joseph) the angels sing songs,
(Mary) the angel told me
he’s just a baby, could he be the one
God’s only son
tell me who is this, this infant that the prophets foretold
king of kings, or just a little one for us to hold
will you be ours for a lifetime
or must we give you to God
Joseph/Mary my love who is this child
will he bring peace to our nation (Joseph)
or will he die in my arms (Mary)
tell me my love who is this child
Joseph/Mary my love, who is our child
A story of a child, a child’s birth. A Christmas story we hear over and over again. Whether we are Christian or not does not much matter. A story woven into the fabric of our lives. Somewhere, sometime . . . long ago, just yesterday . . . a child was born in Bethlehem. Of this child, the angels sang. To this child, wise men brought gifts. A child conceived by a woman. A father called God. Foretold by the Hebrew prophets of old . . . Isaiah, Micah to name a couple. And he shall be the one of peace. (Micah 5:5)
A child in the womb recognized by another child in the womb. (Luke 1:41) One woman (Elizabeth) embracing another woman (Mary) and celebrating the impending birth of their sons. Blessed among women. Exalted among men.
Everywhere we look this time of year, this story is present. The beauty of it. The contortions and distortions of it as well. Who is this child?
Is there anything more precious than the birth of a baby? A hope and a promise lives in the eyes of each newborn. And in the hearts of the parents who celebrate the birth. Wars can be raging. And somehow, this little one offers the possible in the midst of the impossible. Likewise, there is no greater sadness than the birth of a child into impending death from hunger and disease. Look into the eyes of a mother with AIDS . . . a mother with no milk for her child and no food for herself. Such despair in the face of such promise.
What power there is in the stories of a child’s birth.
“The idea that our well-being depended on the truth of the stories we heard fascinated me . . . how much stories shape all of our lives. (14, The Stories That Shape Us: Contemporary Women Write about the West, editor, Teresa Jordan) . . . how much we are the stories we tell about ourselves . . . often measuring ourselves and each other against someone who had never existed . . . (17) sometimes the stories of one culture can heal the wounds inflicted by another . . . other times stories translate in less benevolent ways and they can travel a long way (20) As we approach the dawn of a new millennium, the challenges that greet us seem almost overwhelming. Our population keeps increasing, even as we deplete the earth that supports us. We must live together in new ways if we are to live at all, shaped by stories of nurture and interdependence rather than conquest. When shifting paradigms, the historian Patricia Nelson Limerick has quipped, it is important to remember to put in the clutch. Stories ease our passage from one way of seeing ourselves to another.” (21)
We have also talked about David Korten’s view of rewriting our stories to embrace community rather than Empire in his book, The Great Turning.
And yet, what does this rewriting mean? To throw out the babies with the bath water? To find the ways to write anew from the traditions, and in so doing to transform both the stories and ourselves in ways that are creative and healing rather than destructive and disease-producing?
As Unitarian Universalists, we come from a rich tradition of questioning, rewriting, and questioning some more. We have created rituals like the Flower and Water Communions which rewrite themselves each time they are celebrated. We have discarded creeds that bound us in unhealthy ways, and written the Seven Principles that open doorways to creative thought each time they are studied. What better group than us to rewrite some of the most profoundly shaping stories of our lives, beginning with the Christmas Story.
Who IS this child?
We are scientists, poets, thinkers and artists. Let’s put our heads and hearts together on this one and see what we design, create, live!
Why might embryos in two wombs recognize each other? Do we truly think communication is limited to people we see walking around us? More and more medicine unfolds the wonders of what the embryo in the womb can hear, sense, know. In this frenetic, loud and crazy world we’ve created, I wonder if the unborn embryo does not have the best sense of hearing? Listening? Knowing of life?
Why might each child hold the promise of the universe? We don’t have to be ethereal here. Are we not each one of us, designed from the very fabric of the universe in which we live?
Who Is this child?
And more than just the child born . . . what about the child in each of us? The one who sings in the shower, gazes at the stars, stamps a foot in anger, knows – deep down knows what is enough and what is not? What about those children? The ones we hide, denigrate, forget, destroy.
The very source of creative promise, living and breathing in the child. Who IS this child?
A very wise Hebrew prophet tells us “the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” (Isaiah 11:6)
Certainly the world as we often like it ordered turns upside down in the presence of a child. Ask any new parent . . . life is never quite the same again. Children touch our hearts, drive us crazy, and generally turn us upside down IF we open our hearts to them and don’t seek to control every move they make.
The same holds true with each creative spark igniting and dancing its way into our existence. Some of those creative sparks nurture us. Some are used to control us. The choice is ours. What we cannot control is the change each creative spark, each child brings. Only how that change is manifested day to day. Did the creative genius of nuclear fission have to lead to the nuclear bomb? Does the use of tests and inventories have to lead to the lifelong labeling of a child?
Does the Christmas story and the birth of baby Jesus have to push our own humanity aside? Can this story celebrate our humanity, and the birth of each new baby as miraculous as the one we sing about this time of year?!
When we dismiss this story, what exactly do we dismiss? Do we win the struggle with what we call religious fundamentalism, or do we lose something very precious to us?
We don’t need psychiatrists to tell us that an infant loved deeply, cared for wisely, grows to be different from an infant discarded, abused. The same holds true for each creative spark embraced with love and wisdom rather than with fear and greed. We DO know all of this to be true, don’t we?
The baby we throw out with the bath water is not some limp doll used in a Christian nativity scene. The child is the creative spark in each one of us . . . the light in the dark of each newborn baby’s eyes.
Let us listen to this song . . . it’s words and music offering us a place to ponder and begin to write the story anew.
How will each of us rewrite this blessed story? How will we describe the child? How will we teach our children about the child?
Who is this child? Could this child be each and all of us ? ? ? Most blessed be . . .
Wanda Daniel
Consulting Minister
** Special note. Bill Anderson’s music is copyrighted. He has given churches permission to use his work, but churches only! Thanks for honoring his wishes.
