Martin Luther King holiday – Candid Observations

The trembling in my soul that began leading up to the observance of the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr has not yet stopped. I shuddered at the thought of hearing people who hated and still hate what Dr. King did to dismantle the capitalistic, white supremacist system that caused and still causes so many people to suffer offer flowery words of tribute. For what purpose? Only to bolster their objectives of continued racial oppression. by twisting and manipulating a few words that he said.

Were he alive today, they would be attacking him. As it is, though Dr. King was murdered in 1968 it wasn’t until 1983 that Congress approved a holiday in his honor and it took three more years for the holiday actually to be celebrated.

We live in a society that thrives on deception. The powers that be from the very beginning created a myth of American exceptionalism. They decided from the beginning that some people were more worthy than others, and they wrote those beliefs into the Constitution. This country was never meant to be the “land of the free and the home of the brave;” too many people were excluded from human and humane treatment from the beginning.

The deception with which this country was founded, and the deception that continues to be an identifiable element of our society can make one tremble with rage. Do the people in power know they are being deceptive? And if they do, do they care? Howard Thurman, though, makes an observation about deception – saying that it is “perhaps the oldest of all the techniques by which the weak have protected themselves against the strong.” The disinherited have survived by practicing deception, i.e. acting like everything is OK when that is far from the truth. The words of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “We Wear the Mask” comes to mind:

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but O great Christ our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!

If Thurman’s observation is accurate that deception is that which the weak use to survive, then we have to lift up the possibility that this country, which has touted and boasted about its strength, is actually very weak. It has created a narrative that has enabled it to survive against nations, principles, and ideas that are much stronger than anyone cares to admit.

But on an individual level, we deceive ourselves if we do not admit to ourselves that this entire debacle called Americanism grieves us to our souls. It causes us to tremble. Every time we have to swallow our pain and anger because of one more assault, we tremble. We dare not show it for fear of being castigated, fired, or worse, but it is inside of us. Thurman says that the “question of deception is not academic, but profoundly ethical and spiritual, going to the very heart of all human relations. For it raises the issue of honesty, integrity, and the consequences thereof over against duplicity and deception and the attendant consequences.”

We must admit and own the trembling within us. We must not fall prey to the narrative presented by the deceptive American society and government that criticizes the anger that the disinherited rightfully feel. This American government is not good for “the least of these,” and Thurman says we cannot continue to call a lie the truth.” He writes, “the penalty of deception is to become a deception.” That is not acceptable. We cannot be in true relationship with God – who is Truth – if we submit to a deceptive narrative that was created to steal our joy, our hope, and our faith. Thurman says, “sincerity in human relations is equal to sincerity to God.”

I got through the day by refusing to listen to any of the “tributes” to Dr. King that were offered by people who are actively trying to destroy everything he and other Civil Rights leaders did. They are not only trying to destroy what he and the Movement accomplished; they are also trying to dismantle and destroy the entire country.

It may be that it will not only be Black people will be wearing masks to hide their pain at what is going on in this country because the attack on liberty, constitutional rights, honesty, integrity, and principles will affect a lot of people. Were Dr. King alive, he would be mortified.

As well we should all be.

A candid observation …a

The celebration of the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King has come and gone, and what is troubling is that so many who are working against everything he stood for had the audacity to give tributes to the man and to his work.

It was a sham of epic proportions. Even as the possibility of voting rights legislation being passed hangs by a thread, those who have said publicly that allowing it to pass would be a violation of the Constitution praised Dr. King, who wrote in 1965 in aNew York Times article, “Civil Right No. 1: The Right to Vote. “

The words of these people, coupled with effusive praise of Dr. King given by corporations that are funding Republicans who are supporting the making and passage of voter suppression laws is all the evidence that one needs to understand that there was and is nothing genuine in their words.

Howard Thurman, inThe Luminous Darkness, wrote about the “sound of the genuine” that we listen for in others. Specifically, he wrote, “There is some region in every man that listens for the sound of the genuine in other men.” When there is no fellowship between persons, however, Thurman says the “sound will not come through and the will to listen to it is not manifest.”

There is no fellowship between “us” and “them,” teams that have been a part of the American infrastructure since the beginning of this country. There have been times, notes Thurman, when there was a sort of fellowship between Black and white people in the South, but under the terms determined and dictated by whites. As long as Black people stayed in their lane, and understood their place, the two races could communicate. But the fellowship was false because there was no agreed-upon foundation for that relationship. Black people could not offer or ask for what they needed in order to feel validated and affirmed as human beings.

It seems that we search for the “sound of the genuine” not only in our relationships with people of other races, religions, and ethnicities but often in our relationships with each other. We know when something is amiss in our conversation with another person, someone we purport to know. Our spirits tell us. We become uneasy, and very often, we will back away from those relationships rather than do the work required to create an honest and authentic relationship, where there is, in fact, genuine caring and concern for, and understanding of, the other person.

Searching for the sound of the genuine is difficult work in any relationship-building, but more so when it comes to the relationships between Blacks and whites in this country. Our relationship broke down hundreds of years ago – based on the acceptance of a faulty belief in white supremacy, causing the white race to believe in its superiority over Black people. The human spirit – that which is in every one of us – rejects that type of denigration, even as it struggles to find its place within it. Whites and Black people have made each other an “it” as opposed to a “thou,” and in so doing, have decreased if not eliminated the possibility for genuine fellowship and thus, a sharing of the “sound of the genuine” in each other. If we juxtapose that against the words of Jesus, who believed in and taught the Great Commandment – that we love our neighbor as ourselves, we find ourselves in a difficult position. The command of Jesus seems as unattainable as it is undesirable. We do not want a relationship with the “its” in our lives. We are content to stay far away and not even think about looking for or expecting the sound of the genuine in them. They have already shown us who they are, and, as Maya Angelou advised us, we have chosen to believe them.

What do we do, then, when we are spiritually and morally offended by the type of dishonest “honoring” of one who worked until he died for a “beloved community,” including in it even those whom we doubt have the capacity for genuine love within them? We have to step back, away from our raw anger, bitterness, and resentment – which Thurman says becomes a residue in us that becomes “hate.” Some kind of way we have to inhale the spirit of God which says that God is greater than the hypocrisy and hatred and determination to destroy the quest for freedom of Black people and all others who are oppressed in this country. Our relationship with God has to come front and center and move us to understand that within everyone, even those whom we despise, there is a place that is human and not political, and that place can be reached but only when we are committed to the truth that God is greater than any foolish, painful, and destructive “ism” that works to destroy others.

What words do we whisper when our very souls are cringing with resentment? What do we do when we remember the words of the Great Commandment, or the words of Jesus that we are to love those who persecute us, or worse, love our enemies? Maybe just this: that God is truth. Octavia Butler famously said “All that you touch, you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change.”

In search of the sound of the genuine, those of us who have the strength to push forward and work to “touch” the evil that hurts so bad must do it, and in so doing, show the rest of us how to move. It is only God who can water the dried-out spirits that are so dry that their capacity to release their “genuine” parts is badly limited. Maybe we who are able can work to touch those dried-out spirits, first in ourselves and then in those with whom we would rather not, for the sake of building of the Beloved Community here on earth.

Amen and amen.