This is Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Sunday.
This is the day President Barack Obama officially takes the oath of office for his second term as President of the United States.
This day we celebrate these two leaders and the significant parts they hold in the mosaic of this country.
Thanks to all who take the injustice they experience and witness, who take poetic and prophetic words and deeds, visions and dreams to create a more just and loving world.
Our country is a mosaic of many pieces –
Slave ships and auction blocks
Lynching and whippings
Slaves escaping by following the drinking gourd, the stars of the big dipper
Separate drinking fountains
The Birmingham church bombing killing four little girls.
Police dogs, fire hoses
Six year old Ruby Bridges, moving through crowds, first child to integrate a white southern school, praying for her hecklers
Blacks and whites linking arms marching like a mighty stream
Voices raised in singing “We Shall Overcome”
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream, black children and white children joining hands….
So many pieces form a mosaic of race in America.
Through singing spirituals, slaves persevered with dignity and strength. Through singing Civil Rights songs, activists found courage and power.
African American spirituals are their own kind of mosaic. They draw on the Bible stories, nature, and personal experiences. They sing of deep sorrow and abiding faith.
They have faith: if God freed the Hebrew people from bondage in Egypt, eventually God would free the slaves. Images of nature, like crossing the river, were codes for routes to freedom. Personal experiences of desolation as well as courage are expressed in spirituals.
Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman was a spiritual mentor to Dr. King and the founder of The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco.
Dr. Thurman preached of the importance of religion for the slave community. When the community gathered for worship, the most important insight was every human being is a child of God.
The community knew what each other had lived through during the week – beatings, abuse, husbands sold away from wives, children from parents.
Everything about their lives conspired to tell them they were of no significance. In worship what was lifted up in sermon and song was, “You are created in God’s image. You are not slaves; you are God’s children. You’re not things, not property, not objects, not inferior. You are beautiful, worthy, children of God.”
This “validation of the human spirit” encouraged their transcending the hardships of their lives. Religious folk songs are born out of the belief: you are a child of God.
In spirituals, life is seen in terms of a river. The flowing river is the bearer of the human longing for freedom. The river begins small as snow melt and increases in momentum, in depth and breath as it makes its journey and reaches the wide sea. Through times of drought and times of flood, the river keeps on. Though it may be dammed up and forced to cut a new channel, though it may make twists and turns, the river will not be stopped. Surely people would grow in strength like a river and make their way to freedom and the Promised Land.
Deep River, Dr. Thurman believed this song, carries the universal longing for a promised land.
The poetry and power of the river were a refrain for Dr. King in words from the Old Testament Hebrew prophet Amos. Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.
I am moved by a young person who recently heard the universal longing in Dr. King’s I Have A Dream speech. She writes,
“The first time I heard Dr. King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech was a few years ago on the radio while crossing the Bay Bridge, I was so moved I cried.
I became oblivious to the traffic around me and I became so absorbed in the beauty of his words and his vision.
Some of Dr. King’s words that moved me are:
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!”
Not long after first hearing Dr. King’s speech, this young person also discovered Yerba Buena Garden, the San Francisco city park and its Martin Luther King Memorial. She is awed by the majestic waterfall which cascades over Sierra granite lit by blue lights. She says,” I try to walk behind the waterfalls whenever I am at Yerba Buena at night. With the towering San Francisco buildings and city lights as its backdrop, it is a beautiful and calming place to be. And it is free…for all to see.”
But the most moving moment is her next discovery. She writes, at the memorial “Dr. King’s poems are inscribed in 13 different languages including Tagalog which is my first language.”
Wow! Imagine her delight. These words she has come to love written in her native tongue.
I am so touched by this young person who migrated to the United States from the Philippines who cries over Dr. King’s words and seeks out the memorial garden as a peaceful place for quiet contemplation.
I am grateful to the city of San Francisco for this public art, for the financing and the creation of art that reminds us of our history, inspires and keeps alive our dearest dreams.
I am grateful that in 1993 this congregation buried 21 guns on the hill to the east of the church. A memorial sculpture was created to represent the biblical plea to beat swords into plowshares. The sculpture, a later addition of a Peace Pole, and a memorial stone encourage us to practice non-violence. Walk up the hill, sit on the bench, look out to the bay, feel the peace of this place.
Art, poetry, dance, sculpture, music express our longings, inspire us to live our values.
Today we begin a community art project creating together a Mosaic River of Life.
Everything about this touches my heart.
For the materials, people have been bringing precious pieces: gems a young woman collected when she was a child, a father’s cuff link, beads from a mother’s necklace, a ring, a key, a dog’s tag, a watch face.
There’s still time. The next couple of Sundays you can bring precious pieces to add to The River of Life.
Today I brought for the mosaic a campaign button. After President John Kennedy was killed, my brother Bruce mourned. Inspired my President Kennedy, Bruce joined the Peace Corps and volunteered in Ethiopia. After the Peace Corps, Bruce went to law school. During his first year in law school he ran for the U.S. Congress. Inspired by Dr. King, Bruce’s stump speeches were on ending racism, poverty and war. Bruce is six years older than I am, and he inspired me to also join the Peace Corps. Bruce was a delegate to the 2012 Democratic Convention. Newly retired, he worked on President Obama’s campaign. On this weekend of President Obama’s inauguration, I add to the River of Life, Bruce’s campaign button with his campaign slogan from 1968 “Give a damn.”
Creating together is an antidote to violence. Creating together, across generations, across areas of interests, makes community. Maybe you’ll work on the mosaic alongside someone new to you, someone decades older or younger than you. Just as in life, each of us has pieces, gifts, needed for the good of the whole.
Art making can release creative energies needed to make a loving world.
The tables for art making are open to us all. All of us are invited to participate. All of us are welcome.
Each of us has a divine spark. Take a seat at the table. Look around. See all the divine creativity.
Sitting side by side, co-creating with one another we can grow in joy, playfulness and love.
We are creating not just a mosaic, we are creating what Dr. King called the Beloved Community.
Like the African American spirituals tell us, people are not objects, not things. People are not consumers or marketing targets. People contain the divine spark. People are beings of worth and beauty who can be creators of worth and beauty.
Take what we practice here out into the world. Practice humility and compassion. Practice treating everyone we encounter as though they are beloved children of the divine.
We are creating together a River of Life. Across cultures and religions, rivers are life-giving waters. Rivers link us with our spiritual source, nourishing and sustaining us, and flowing forth to connect us with all things.
In mythology and imagination, The River of Life flows through the hills, watering the earth, making it fertile, a fruitful garden, a vibrant paradise where no person lacks anything. Life, as the song Deep River says, becomes a feast, where all receive abundantly. In the sound of The River is the call to the Promised Land that can be.
The mosaic of our country keeps being created. We build on the pieces of the past. More pieces are added. At tomorrow’s inaugural ceremonies, Richard Blanco will be the poet. Blanco is the first immigrant, first Latino, and first gay person to be inaugural poet. The mosaic is a story of transformation and love working through history. The River of Life keeps growing and flowing toward the wide sea.
Let us close with the words of poet Jamie McKenzie and the dance of Roger Dillahunty in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.
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Standing Tall Some kings rule their kingdoms sitting down When the driver told Rosa When some yelled for violence And when some spit out hate Until But this King |
And we pray. We act.
We sing, create, reach out ~
that justice shall roll down like waters,
and peace like an ever flowing stream.
Copyright © 2013 Rev. Barbara Hamilton-Holway. All Rights Reserved.
