So many converging forces. A powerful weekend service at WRF showed clips of King's speeches that I'd never seen before, including this moving talk given at Montgomery, with a powerful refrain: "How long? Not long! Because no lie can live forever." I was in tears in the Meetinghouse, both of grief and of simply being moved by his faith.
That night I watched the second episode of John Adams, the HBO series on the life of the founding father. It was the episode when the delegates to the first Continental Congress decide to declare independence from King George. Jefferson, an unassuming man with a ponytail, writes the words "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
That line was evoked by tonight's speaker at Earlham, Michael Eric Dyson. He spoke of how the all-inclusive term which really favors one segment of the population in our history and our present, must be expanded to include all those who would challenge it: women, blacks, LGBTQ+ individuals. He talked about the error or innocent whiteness, that knows nothing about its own heinousness. He talked about the discomfort that America feels with a black president that succeeds at all the challenges our society puts to white individuals: we can't stand his swagger while he deplanes from AirForce 1 and gives a chillaxed wave or throw of the dice. (The speaker was very, very funny and had the auditorium in hysterics many times, not least when he imitated Obama fulfilling the speaker's personal fantasy of getting angry and going off on all the nonsense he's had to put up with these 8 years. Dyson said, "It'd just be great, you know, on the last day.")
He evoked the period of slavery when black people had to learn everything about white people in order to survive, and white people knew nothing about blacks. It was the lack of understanding from whites about blacks, that led to such massive discomfort around King's ministry. White America felt uncomfortable with the upswell of black voices because they didn't understand what was going on.
Both Dr King in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail and Dr Dyson in his talk tonight referenced Reinhold Neibuhr, the theologian and political scientist whom I studied closely in my last year at Utah. Incidentally, Obama also draws on Niebuhr's wisdom, as we learn from this enjoyable article, the beginning of which I'll share with students tomorrow: "How Obama Survived the White House Years: Books". It's helpful that this article came out while we are studying Shakespeare in both grades, since Obama says that it was the Bard whose plays were “foundational for me in understanding how certain patterns repeat themselves and play themselves out between human beings.”
Now, school resumes tomorrow, and I will be returning to the social movement that Quakers and thousands of others carry out each day: teaching, preaching, nursing, ministering, administering, doing the quiet work of witnessing God's world and returning our gift of life by offering love and justice.
That night I watched the second episode of John Adams, the HBO series on the life of the founding father. It was the episode when the delegates to the first Continental Congress decide to declare independence from King George. Jefferson, an unassuming man with a ponytail, writes the words "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
That line was evoked by tonight's speaker at Earlham, Michael Eric Dyson. He spoke of how the all-inclusive term which really favors one segment of the population in our history and our present, must be expanded to include all those who would challenge it: women, blacks, LGBTQ+ individuals. He talked about the error or innocent whiteness, that knows nothing about its own heinousness. He talked about the discomfort that America feels with a black president that succeeds at all the challenges our society puts to white individuals: we can't stand his swagger while he deplanes from AirForce 1 and gives a chillaxed wave or throw of the dice. (The speaker was very, very funny and had the auditorium in hysterics many times, not least when he imitated Obama fulfilling the speaker's personal fantasy of getting angry and going off on all the nonsense he's had to put up with these 8 years. Dyson said, "It'd just be great, you know, on the last day.")He evoked the period of slavery when black people had to learn everything about white people in order to survive, and white people knew nothing about blacks. It was the lack of understanding from whites about blacks, that led to such massive discomfort around King's ministry. White America felt uncomfortable with the upswell of black voices because they didn't understand what was going on.
Both Dr King in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail and Dr Dyson in his talk tonight referenced Reinhold Neibuhr, the theologian and political scientist whom I studied closely in my last year at Utah. Incidentally, Obama also draws on Niebuhr's wisdom, as we learn from this enjoyable article, the beginning of which I'll share with students tomorrow: "How Obama Survived the White House Years: Books". It's helpful that this article came out while we are studying Shakespeare in both grades, since Obama says that it was the Bard whose plays were “foundational for me in understanding how certain patterns repeat themselves and play themselves out between human beings.”
Now, school resumes tomorrow, and I will be returning to the social movement that Quakers and thousands of others carry out each day: teaching, preaching, nursing, ministering, administering, doing the quiet work of witnessing God's world and returning our gift of life by offering love and justice.
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