• Tag Archives Martin Luther King

  • This Light of Mine

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                                  Full Harvest Moon

    “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman

    Howard Thurman was a theologian who studied with the Quaker mystic, Rufus Jones.  His work, which I had forgotten until I read this quote yesterday, reaches deep into the human heart.

    The Quaker concept of the light that leads from within influenced many theologians, including Thurman who, in turn, influenced Martin Luther King.

    In Scientific American Mind a recent article referred to the human “self-schema.”  Created due to our ability to see into our past and project ourselves into the future, this organization of thoughts, experiences and natural gifts produces the Self, that ever elusive entity at the heart of our life.  Self-schema strikes me as a scientific description of the Self I refer to here from time to time, that Self that pulls us into the future, that can challenge us to live a deeper, richer, fuller life.

    This Self is the light that leads us, a light whose brilliance and warmth comes not from a supernatural realm, but from a super natural one.  When Thurman challenges us to find what makes us come alive, he asks us to dig deep into our Self, to use our imagination and our deep heart to find vitality within it.

    When we can locate a path, our own ancientrail, that knits together the genetic gifts, the particular experiences and the most exciting prospects we can imagine for our future, then we can come alive to the personhood for which we each yearn.  We can become alive in every fiber of our being. Such persons live.  They burn with an incandescence available only to those who feed all of themselves into the furnace of their Self.

    You know such people.  Martin Luther King was a such a person. Perhaps you are.  I know for sure you can become one.

    This is a spirituality that holds nothing back, that demands it all, all you have and all you will have.  This is a humanist spirituality, a call to kindle the light of your true Self, the one light only you can bring into this world.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Humanities 📎and tagged

  • Well, You Gotta Think About It.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                           Waning Artemis Moon

    Went to office max and had the smaller artemis honey labels printed up.  Now it’s time for a workout then the vikes at 7:00.

    As to demagoguery in our time.  Glenn Beck and his band of merry men and women, almost all white, want to return the country to the God drenched republic it was in the golden days of the American revolution.  Let’s aside for the moment that the bulk of the revolutionary leadership, among them Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and many others were not Christian, but deists who believed in a watchmaker god, one who set the universe in motion then stood back to watch how things turned out.  Let’s set aside for the moment the fact that Beck show the same date and place as Martin Luther King chose for his rally 47 years ago.

    Instead, let’s look at an ancient Greek idea, one that preceded Christianity and Deism, MLK and Glenn Beck, hubris.  Hubris means extreme haughtiness or arrogance. Hubris often indicates being out of touch with reality and overestimating one’s own competence or capabilities, especially for people in positions of power…The word was also used to describe actions of those who challenged the gods or their laws, especially in Greek tragedy, resulting in the protagonist’s downfall.  When a person, or persons, claims to have the mantle of the Almighty around their shoulders and intimates they know what this God wants, then the word hubris applies since that person has pitted their knowledge of God’s will against God.

    Demagogues, political leaders who seek support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument, will, as Jesus once said of the poor, always be with us.  A democracy can fall prey to them, witness George Wallace, Huey Long, Nathan Bedford Forrest, David Duke, but the self correcting political process can and usually does reject them sooner or later. Beck’s brand of conservative populism fits into this history and his style, co-opting both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King in one gesture, shows his cunning.

    Here’s an example of the though world in his crowd:

    Becky Benson, 56, traveled from Orlando, Fla., because, she said, “we
    believe in Jesus Christ, and he is our savior.” Jesus, she said, would
    not have agreed with what she called the redistribution of wealth in the
    form of the economic stimulus package, bank bailouts and welfare. “You
    cannot sit and expect someone to hand out to you,” she said. “You don’t
    spend your way out of debt.”

    Perhaps Ms. Benson and Mr. Beck have not thoroughly read their bible:

    Luke 4:

    18“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to preach good news to the poor.
    He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
    to release the oppressed,
    19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Politics US History 📎and tagged