“Let us never grow weary in doing what is right, for if we do not give up, we will reap our harvest in due time.” Galatians 6:9 (New American Bible (New Catholic Bible)
Today, I honor the life and work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I am spotlighting this day because there are efforts to diminish and ultimately dismiss King’s work for equality, civil rights and justice. And we thought we had come so far toward fulfilling Dr. King’s dream. We elected Barack Obama, we confronted our racist past following the murder of George Floyd by initiating and promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, and we affirmed civil rights for other marginalized groups. But all of that seems another galaxy so long ago and so far away.
We have been slipping back into the pit of the past, thanks to an administration intent on destroying “improper ideologies” that challenge its MAGA message. Rev. Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King, points to the continued efforts to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and the removal of content that does not properly reflect the greatness of America from government websites and Smithsonian museums as examples of today’s “troubling climate.” We also see it in the attempts to control the curriculum and staffing of Universities, punish school districts that promote Critical Race Theory, threaten sanctuary cities and states with loss of funds, and manipulate the press (and TV networks) through lawsuits claiming defamation. Recently, the president signed an Executive Order to remove Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth from the list of National Park free days. That might not seem like a big deal, but it is. The executive order replaced those days with a new free day–June 14, Donald Trump’s birthday.
The administration’s war on anything deemed “woke” has been empowered with the aid of sycophants happily lip-synching the “MAGA” song–people like the late Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA–who said publicly that Martin Luther King was ““awful” and “not a good person,” who was “not worthy of a national holiday.” He also claimed that the passage of the Civil Rights Act–the law that ended segregation and prohibited workplace discrimination on the basis of race –was “a huge mistake” and “created a beast, and that beast has now turned into an anti-white weapon.”
In light of the attacks on Martin Luther King and the “beloved community” he dreamt of, we need Martin Luther King Day more than ever. In an interview with the Associated Press, Bernice King said that this year’s observance is “somewhat of a saving grace” for the nation because “it inserts a sense of sanity and morality into our very troubling climate right now,” “Dr. King reminds people of… the ability to challenge injustice and inhumanity,” she concluded.
Dr. King’s dream was aspirational. It awoke us to the possible. It pointed us to the work ahead to shape vision into reality. Like gardening, it is slow, steady, hard work that requires patience and perseverance. It is the work of breaking up the hard soil of individualism, pulling the weeds of mistrust and fear, and planting and tending the seedlings of justice and righteousness so that we will ultimately harvest the fruit of communal love and collective liberation. So, on this day, let’s renew our commitment to the “kin-dom” work. The harvest will come…unless we give up.
“Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” 1 Corinthians 15:58 (NIV)
Tongue on Fire 