Dr. King: Second Stanza

photo courtesy United States Mission Geneva / flickr

E.J. Dionne, wise columnist writes on the eve of Dr. King's birthday these words. "We can't give up on  King's promised land." And we can't. Dr. King surely must have read the Book again and again. Moses, flawed as we are, left Egypt and led a very reluctant little band. Some days those stragglers  did not have a shred of hope There were revolts, fights and the longing to go back to the safety of terrible Egypt. But Moses kept at it even those days when he wondered too.But God bless him Moses dragged them along. It was a long and circutuous journey. Somebody has said, "Why did it take them so long to get there? It was only 400 miles and it took them forty years?"

It isn't only black folk that still ask that question. But here and there are those who keep the flame of hope still burning. I am deeply troubled as many people are at the climate of cruelty and hate that seems to settle over us all. But deep in his heart Dr. King believed that one day we really would overcome. So we have to do what little band of the scary and frightful did? They just kept going. And so must we.

Someone asked Dick Gregory who marched in countless civil rights marched why he did that. He was beaten up, life threatened, thrown into many Southern jails. Perople would ask: Why in the world did you do this? And he answered, "When my little granddaughter comes and sits on my lap and watches on TV the old tapes of the abuse of Rosa Parks in Montgomery and the hatred spewed when little black children had to march through screaming adults just to go to school in Little Rock" Dick Gregory told her Honey,  I did what I could."

And in this strange time of families living in cages and racism on the rise ad such a toxic climate I think we all have to answer this hard question" What did we do." I wonder what I will say and what you will say?

And so on Dr. King's birthday it would be good to think of our answer to this question.

"On Jordan's stormy banks I stand 

And cast a wishful eye 

To Canaan's fair and happy land,

Where my possessions lie.

I am bound for the promised land,

 I am bound for the promised land;

O who will come and go with me?

I am bound for the promised land."

There is one thing we know we can't make the journey alone- We have to go with a whole lot of others--Even with some people we do not know.

photo by Mobilus in Mobile  / flickr

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com