Part 2: Martin Luther King: I have a dream... Personal Reflections

It is worth remembering the stated demands of the event which led to arguably the greatest speech of the 20^th century. The March on Washington represented a coalition of several civil rights organizations. Among the demands were the passage of meaningful civil rights legislation; the elimination of racial segregation in public schools; protection for demonstrators against police brutality; a major public-works program to provide jobs; and the passage of a law prohibiting racial discrimination in public and private hiring.

The second part of Professor Hilary Russell’s lecture began with a film of Dr. King giving his famous speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. A crowd of over 250,000 attended what was the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation’s capital and despite worries of violence and a large police presence, the march is remembered for its civility and peacefulness.

Watching the speech again after many years, I was quite over-whelmed by my own memories of that time in my life. There was a great deal of coverage on television and the March on Washington was the major news event of the summer. I was 18 years old and as I watched the speech live longed to be there, too. Within 10 days or so, I would be leaving my New England home to attend George Washington University – only a few blocks away from where Martin Luther King was speaking.

I can remember watching the speech as it built to its astounding and mesmerizing conclusion. As Professor Russell said, “It was a sermon, a political treatise, a work of poetry, all rolled into one.” I remembered well how the speech began slowly and then seemed to swell in authority and excitement as the words “I have a dream” echoed and re-echoed in to an all-inclusive crescendo to “Let freedom ring”.

Midway through the speech,  the great gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, is said to have cried out, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin!” and that’s when he ad-libbed what followed. “This” said, Professor Russell, “gave ‘I have a dream’ its raw power and edge – King was living the words that he spoke.

As I listened to the power of the oratory so many half-forgotten memories of that time came flooding back. His words and the peacefulness of the movement he led inspired me to believe that all things were possible. I was on my way to the future filled with hope. Hope that came crashing down around me two months after my arrival in Washington, D.C. with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I remembered the evening of that day running to the White House – only a few blocks away – and seeing hundreds of black people, sobbing, walking aimlessly, as if a great dream had been destroyed. I saw the helicopter arrive with the new President – the man who it turned out was able to pass laws to uphold civil rights.

The decade of the 60’s was troubled and often violent. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were both murdered – within weeks of each other. I witnessed riots in the streets not far from where I was living. Many more began to believe that non-violence would never succeed.

We still have work to do, but the words and work of Martin Luther King definitely started us on a better path to righteousness. As he said at the end of his speech, 

“When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Reflections on Past Influences: Martin Luther King ... Part I

The final lecture in the recent series I attended  was an informative and fascinating study of the American Civil Rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King. The lecture was given by Professor Hilary  Russell from John Moores University, Liverpool.

The Vicar began the evening by playing a clip from the movie ‘In the Heat of the Night”. The clip was very effective in explaining and depicting the relationship between the black man and his white counter-part in the American south in the early 60’s and possibly up to the present time in some places.

The Martin Luther King who arrived in Montgomery, Alabama in 1954 did not have civil rights activism on his agenda. Brought up in Atlanta, the son of the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, he had been educated at Boston University and was still working on his doctoral thesis in philosophical theology. The church he went to in Montgomery was proud of its access to the white establishment and, therefore, access to political power. The congregation may have hoped for an end to discrimination, but offered no challenge to the status quo.

Professor Russell picked three events to illustrate King’s spiritual journey and his evolving thinking.

Martin Luther King’s journey toward non-violent activism began with the arrest of Rosa Parks in December 1955 for refusing to sit in the back of the bus and give up her seat to a white man. The result of this refusal was a bus boycott by blacks. King became the President of the boycott group, the Montgomery Improvement Association. It was the first step toward becoming the leader of the Civil Rights Movement. The boycott continued for 382 days when King himself was arrested, abused and had his home bombed.

When King arrived in Montgomery he was not a pacifist; he believed the only solution would be armed revolt. However, during the bus boycott he had an intense spiritual experience in the midst of a period of great harassment and personal fear. While praying at his kitchen table, in the depths of despair, he experienced the presence of God as he never had before. His fears left him and he had new strength and resolve and he was now clearer about the real goal. Three days later he authorized his lawyer to challenge the segregation laws. “Segregation is evil and I cannot, as a minister, condone evil.” He was also determined to meet violence with non-violence and to resist pressure from others in the black community who were impatient for change.

The second experience came in 1963 from jail when King responded to a letter from white clergy in Birmingham, Alabama who took issue with King for being an ‘outsider’ causing trouble in the streets of Birmingham. In response, King wrote famously, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly... Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider...” When the clergy accused the civil rights movement of being extreme, King argued that Jesus and other heroes were extremists, “So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or love?”

In Part 2 I will discuss the “I have a dream” speech and my own personal reflections of that event.

Martin Buber -- "I and Thou"

In 1925 the Austrian philosopher, Martin Buber, published his best known work, I and thou which explored the way humanity relates to the world. Last Thursday I attended a lecture that was an absorbing look at the book as well as a study of the man who wrote it.

(Photo courtesy of wikipedia)

We began by looking at this photograph of Buber and many of us gave our impressions of the face that seemed to be looking back very directly at us. To some he seems to have a piercing even mesmerizing gaze. As those eyes interrogate you, they also engage with you and seem to invite you to come on a journey to a better understanding ... The discussion which followed was to discover something of what that understanding was and to clarify Buber’s philosophy by looking at the man. A man who believed that ­real life was about meeting and actual life was about encounter; that the mystical is in the here and now.

Vienna at the time Buber was growing up was a hub of culture and anti-Semitism. His father was a famous scholar and a member of the Zionist movement. By the age of 26, Buber was a student of Chassidic texts and greatly influenced by them. He would have believed that learning is about enlightenment, not about finding a job. He would have believed learning is religious. He also believed in “Tikkum Olam” which is a classical Hebrew doctrine, a pragmatic approach to repairing the world: What’s gone wrong we try to fix. One cannot understand Buber without understanding his emphatically Jewish perception of the world.

Martin Buber is difficult to read. He did not wish to be read quickly and so he tries to slow the reader down. Modern man always in a hurry often fails to read well. He was concerned that we recognize life’s meaning where we are addressed by God as ‘Thou’.

In I and Thou Buber talks about two kinds of relationships: ‘the I-it’ relationship where we use each other to get things done. For example, I want to learn about Martin Buber so I go to the Vicar’s lecture to learn about him!  The Vicar asks me to write about the lecture. Most of our relationships are ‘I-it’ relationships.

The second kind of relationship is ‘I-thou’­. This kind of relationship cannot be engineered or organized. Buber wrote with surprising sensuality and intimacy about I-thou relationships in describing the mystical translated through the ‘every day’. He said “The Sabbath is every day, several times a day.”

Our relationship with God is an ‘I-thou’ relationship. God is the “Eternal Thou”. The ‘sacred’ is here and now and the only God worth keeping is a God which cannot be kept and cannot be seen, but can be listened to in the present. Jews do not visualize God, though they do ‘personalize’ Him. God is to be ‘heard’ or ‘listened to’. God as a person is indispensible. If we can have an ‘I-Thou’ relationship, it cannot be less than personal. God cannot be an object. This is why most Christians do not understand the Jewish objection to the incarnation. God penetrates events in our lives. Event upon event calls upon the human person to endure to be open to the demand of the Divine because “where there is a need there is an obligation.”

The complex and absorbing meeting ended with the moral demand of Tikkun Olam: the duty of repairing the world, little bit by little bit.

Since the lecture last week, I have found some additional and intriguing quotes from the work of Martin Buber, which I think are worth contemplation.

The world is not divine sport, it is divine destiny. There is divine meaning in the life of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and of me.

Creation happens to us, burns itself into us, recasts us in burning — we tremble and are faint, we submit. We take part in creation, meet the Creator, reach out to Him, helpers and companions.

Through the Thou a person becomes I

"Eye'll" Be Seeing You!

Way back on the 27th of November I wrote about my eyes and that I was in the pipeline to have my cataracts removed. It was not too long after that appointment that I received a letter from the NHS to report to the Cataract Clinic for an assessment. This appointment was at the end of January. It's been an interesting NHS experience.

The Eye surgeon that I saw on this appointment agreed that it was time to have the cataracts removed. He then asked me where I wanted to have the surgery done. I was rather flummoxed by this question because I had not idea that I had a choice about 'where' nor did I have any idea where the 'where's' were, let alone which one to choose. So I asked, didn't they do the surgery. Oh, yes, they did and he named a hospital about 10 miles away where this surgery was done. I said I would have it done there.

After speaking to him, I was then seen by a nurse who went through details of the procedure and said I would be hearing from them with an appointment for the first operation. The second eye would be done about 6 weeks after the first. Throughout February and most of March I heard nothing. I hadn't expected the wait to be so long...

Because of the impending operations, I had told many people that I would not be able to promise to do this or that in case the hospital wanted me for the 'laser'! One day after church, a friend approached me and said she understood I was not available to work on the Art Exhibition this year. I explained to her that I couldn't make a definite commitment, but that if I could be there I would be. My friend was a former head-mistress. She looked at me sternly and said,

"Where are you having the operation?"

I told her.

A pained look crossed over her face. "You don't want to have it done there... I had mine done at Drayton House. They are wonderful." She then proceeded to parade me around the parish centre meeting all the people in the congregation that had had their eyes done at Drayton House! They all agree that the named hospital was a terrible place to go!

Not only was the hospital several miles away, but Drayton House was walking distance from where I live. So I had a good excuse when I called the Clinic to explain that I wanted them to refer me to Drayton House instead. I was astonished to learn that there were several other places where I could have this work done -- all private clinics/hospitals -- all paid by the NHS! I asked to be referred to Drayton house. This was on the 2nd of April. On the 16th of April I had an appointment at Drayton House for Monday 13th May.

I went for my appointment this past Monday and by the time I left had an appointment for my first operation on the 10th of June! The second operation should be done about two weeks later instead of the usual 6 weeks because one eye will have near perfect vision and the discrepancy  would make it very difficult with me to balance my eyes out.

There has been a lot in the news of late about the NHS farming out work to the private sector. The pros and cons of this have caused quite a debate. I don't quite understand all the ins and outs of this debate. I expect it has to do with money and with whether or not the doctors are NHS doctors getting paid as private doctors. It would seem that the private clinics around here have a much better reputation that the NHS hospital. I never got a date from the NHS when I was on their list --  over two months. Within two months of being referred to Drayton house I will have had my surgery.

As for the Art Exhibition -- I'll be working on that from the 7th-9th of June!

Twelfth Century Woman Composer

A week ago, I attended a lecture about Hildegaard of Bingem. A 12th Century nun she is considered by many scholars to be the first 'known' composer of music! She was also a respected theologian whose correspondents included the Pope, she was also a revered healer, who wrote medical and scientific works and she had 'visions'...

Hildegaard was the 10th child of a noble family and upon her birth her family promised her to the church, a 'child oblate' -- it was suggested by the lecturer that as the 10th child she could be considered 'tithed'! So at the age of 8 she entered an enclosed Benedictine 'anchorage' with an older nun, Jutta, who was to be her teacher.  The anchorage was attached to a monastery and Hildegaard lived there until Jutta died, when Hildegaard was 38 years old! 

The anchorage had two windows -- one would have enabled her to witness the mass and the other would have given access to the outside world. 

Anchors of both sexes, though from most accounts they seem to be largely women, led an ascetic life, shut off from the world inside a small room, usually built adjacent to a church so that they could follow the services, with only a small window acting as their link to the rest of humanity. Food would be passed through this window and refuse taken out. Most of the time would be spent in prayer, contemplation, or solitary handworking activities, like stitching and embroidering. Because they would become essentially dead to the world, anchors would receive their last rights from the bishop before their confinement in the anchorage. This macabre ceremony was a complete burial ceremony with the anchor laid out on a bier. (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/hildegarde.asp)

In time  the fame of the two nuns spread and many pilgrims came to visit them for advice and spiritual guidance. As a result other noble families sent their daughters and soon a small convent was established. When Jutta died, Hildegaard was named Abbess and it was not long before she demanded from the Monestery, authority to build a convent in its own right. Although reluctant -- each postulant brought an impressive dowry with her -- the abbott was 'convinced' that it would be best to let Hildegaard have her way. She was suddenly laid low with a kind of seizure and would lie prone and immovable until her wish was granted. Hildegaard's fame and nobility were such that it was best to acquiesce to her wishes. She built the largest convent in Europe!

The second half of the lecture focused on Hildegaard's  music. Whether or not she wrote each piece of music herself or in concert with other sisters, is not known though it is probable. Until then singing was in the form of the Gregorian chant and followed the words of the Latin Mass. Hildegaard's compositions were Liturgical dramas with original music and words. These dramas can compared to the nativity and passion plays we see today.

She also wrote 2 symphonia and 77 songs. Unlike the monotone of the Gregorian chant, this music soars and the notes ascend and descend. It sounds very ethereal and rather primal. it also sounds like it should be sung rather than listened too. They were 'ruminatos' -- that is music and text working together to help contemplate the deeper meaning of her visions. 

Hildegaard became famous for her miracles and was allowed to go on preaching missions outside of the convent. She also had a secretary -- a monk -- who went with her and wrote down her writings. Nowadays she is criticized for her conservatism in only allowing noble women to join her convent -- only they would have the kind of education and manner to understand her work, her visions, her theology...

Isn't it fascinating to consider that such a woman making her way with such success and so respected in the 12th Century. She lived to be 81.

Passing Thoughts

When I first came to Britain to live September 1, 1980, Margaret Thatcher had been The First Among Equals for 16 months. My very first visit to Britain has been from mid November 1978 till early December of that year. Little did I know it at the time, but negotiations between the unions and the government over the amount of pay rises were critical at that time and would eventually lead to the devastating strikes that would become known as 'The Winter of Discontent'. Strikes that would arguably lead to the unexpected election of The Iron Lady.

Upon my first visit I was warned that the unions had a habit of one day strikes -- especially affecting public transportation -- and indeed that did prove to be the case. However, in general I was not unduly affected by industrial action. My love life brought me back to Britain only 6 months later -- in June. So in the interim, Mrs. Thatcher would have been newly elected -- but  on that visit political history made no impact on me at all! I had to live here before that would happen.

The move to England came in September 1980. This novice American had quite a shock as she watched the annual political conferences shortly after arrival! Words like 'manifesto' instead of 'platform' were used by both parties without the innuendo of 'communism'! The Labour party conference addressed its delegates as 'comrades'. You don't hear that word used by the Labour Party  any more!

Then in November Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States -- and 'the die was cast'...

Around September 1981 we moved to the town of Southport in the north west of England from Diss in Norfolk -- just after the Toxteth riots in Liverpool. Margaret Thatcher and her government were facing down the unions and the battles had begun. A newcomer to British politics, I was an enthralled witness to a very different kind of political drama than what I was accustomed to in the United States. Battles between the 'right' and the 'left' would be violent and prolonged. The miners were convinced they had the power to bring down the government -- as they had once before. Mrs. Thatcher was determined to stand firm and she did not flinch. The cost to the miners is still being felt today.

My politics do not coincide with those of Margaret Thatcher. I did not like her stridency. Her hectoring voice could give me a headache, while her attempts to sound calm and reasonable seemed false and insincere. But I did admire her forth right candour and her toughness. . She was right about Gorbachev, who I greatly admire, and I give her credit for the influence she had on Reagan.

There were moments when she took my breath away -- such as her strength of character after the Brighton bombing. I agreed with her when she demanded that Europe pay back the money Britain had owing -- and which ironically still has not been paid. Her appearance when she appeared in Parliament for the last time was phenomenal.

I believe that Mrs. Thatcher exhausted those of us who had to live with her. I can remember the feeling of relief when John Major with his authentically calm voice became Prime Minister. The arguments prevailing over her upcoming funeral bring it all back -- Her premiership was eleven years of that kind of vitriol -- and whether she was right or she was wrong, it was exhausting.But I don't believe she was 'evil'. Perhaps her policies were a necessary evil -- and even though I and many others think there could have been 'better ways',  we will never know, because things just are what they are.  She was a force of nature and she changed everything. I do believe history will be kind to her.

A Rapist, a Murderer, and a Thief

Habemus Papam! Although I am not a Roman Catholic, I have always been interested in the person who, as the Bishop of Rome, leads the vast number of Roman Catholics and fellow Christians. In my lifetime there have been three following in the footsteps of St. Peter who have particularly impressed me with what I, lowly as I am, perceive as 'holiness': John XXIII, John Paul I, and now Francis I.

On Maundy Thursday it is traditional in many churches to re-enact Christ washing the feet of his disciples just before the last supper. It is customary for the Pope to participate in this re-enactment also, usually washing the feet of selected clergymen. But this year our newly elected Pope went to a prison and washed the feet of a rapist, a murderer and a thief.  For me, the implications of this are very powerful and imply that this man is breaking away from the inculcating protection of the wealth-bound glory of an enthroned papal head. (In addition, it should be noted that he also washed the feet of a Serbian Muslim woman inmate.)

Pope Francis 'gets it'! Christ is to be found among the poor, the wretched, the people who believe and those who do not;  not in the edifices and trappings made and built to glorify him. We, his community, bring Christ to these places, we do not find him there otherwise. Places are spiritually powerful because of those who come -- and have come before us.We find Christ in our humanity toward and for each other -- whether we are rich or poor, white, black, English, Chinese, Korean, German, French, saint or sinner...

I am writing about this in response to the Good Friday service I attended this year. The Vicar made a special reference to the Pope's actions on Maundy Thursday and made the point that the sign of a successful church is in its 'diversity'. Society is now multi cultural. This may well take us out of our comfort zone. We may long for past days when life may have seemed simpler. It doesn't really matter because this cultural diversity is here to stay and it is the lifeblood of the church.

It seems to me that the history of Christianity has been one of struggle: A struggle through persecution and  intolerance. As often happens in  history, the persecuted became the persecutor, those who were not tolerated, became the intolerant. We do indeed "see through a glass darkly".

The Game is Up

Being in charge of the care and well-being of our 12-year-old grandson means we have been thrust head-long into the pitfalls of parenting in the 21st century. Our biggest problem has been coming to terms with and controlling Sam's access to modern technology. As he is not interested at all in girls or matters sexual (yet) we have at least not come across any of the problems as mentioned by one of my favourite bloggers,  John Gray today...

We have had a problem of another sort. I would call it Addiction to Games. In our house, he has had access to two gaming machines: an X-box and a portable Sony Play Station. Both of these have been confiscated. An I-Pad, which was given to him by one of his aunts in Korea just before he left to join us, has also been taken away from him and he is given only very limited access.

When Sam plays a game he becomes transfixed, mesmerized. If you speak to him, he does not hear you. His face becomes beet red and the eyes glassy. If he plays for much longer than an hour he will develop a headache and he will vomit. I think it's a kind of allergic reaction.

For the first few months Sam was here we wanted to show that we trusted him and we also wanted to allow for some 'mistakes' in order for him and us to learn about each other and our boundaries. When it comes to games, we can not trust him as far as we can throw him... A few weeks ago, I caught him red-handed at night when he was supposed to be in bed -- lights blazing playing the X-Box. I later learned that he had been doing this for quite a while. I removed the 'controllers' and they are in a place where he can not get to them. It will be a long time before they will be available to him again.

As for the Sony Play Station -- I/we told him that he would be allowed to play with that when we went on long journeys in the car. As a matter of trust I kept it in the bottom drawer of my desk. I later discovered that rather suspicious behaviour on his part was because he was plugging the damn thing in from the bottom drawer and playing his little heart away when I was busy elsewhere! I thought he was watching television. Well, the Play Station is now where he can't get his little mitts on it! He can now spend more time looking at the scenery!

I asked him one day, if he felt he wanted a cell phone. He said he used to have one in Korea, but that his parents had taken it away from him --

'I got in trouble', he said.

'Games?', I asked.

'Yes', he replied, with a sigh...

For My Doggie Lovin' Bloggy Friends!

This should bring a smile to y'all! You might even applaud... (N.B. this is not my video! Compliments of The Internet!)

Laying Down the Law -- Grandma Style

This 'parenting' gig has been quite an adjustment for me. I didn't like parenting much when I was 'mommy-ing' it a few years ago, and now it's not so much a question of 'liking' or not 'liking'. It's more a question of remembering how to do it in the first place! Like, for example, Homework!

Since living in England this has been a struggle for me. Not because I have a problem with my children having homework. My problem was that I just believed them when they said they didn't have any! To put it bluntly they were Lying Toads. In the Connecticut town where I spent my homework years, I  would not have dreamed of not doing my homework and it would be done on time, too. I had homework in every subject every night -- hours of it in high school. We had to turn it in. It was part of our grade come report card time. There was no escaping it!

And that is another thing. The schools here don't have report cards! In fact my mother kept all of my report cards and gave them to me a few years ago! Report cards came out 6 times a year and had to be returned, signed by a parent. Report Card Day was a big deal...it was reported in the paper, the names of A and B honour roll students were in the paper. The kids could not keep it a secret very easily.

So it never occurred to me that my boys would not do their homework or that they would deny having any. I don't know where or when it was, but alas and alack for Sam, I have discovered how it works. First of all I now know about 'homework books/diaries'! I know that I'm supposed to sign them each week. I also know that if I don't sign them, I won't hear anything from the school.

My brother has a theory about homework -- at least it's true for where we went to school. He says that if you do your homework every night, you will do well in school ...

Homework here is quite different. But then school is different. In Sam's school the schedule is over two weeks and you do not have the same core subjects every day. Core subject to me are English, history, a foreign language, mathematics, science.

Now it is 2013 and we have the Internet. Things have  modernized! Sam's school has a website and on the website there is a 'Learning Zone' where I can go and download major project assignments -- like two that Sam is working on at the moment -- and which I am over-seeing. I look at my job as teaching him the difference between doing what is 'necessary' and doing what is 'the best' he can do. Usually, we have to compromise. But I only compromise a little!!! At the moment he has two projects about medieval castles. One, in history, entails learning enough about the nature of a castle to design one himself and to develop a budget from a list of what you would need for your castle and to defend it from enemy attack. The other project is to design two medieval characters to be used in an animation for an IT game. The biggest problem is that Sam tends to be sloppy and lazy in his work and convincing him that he should use the computer and transform his sloppiness on the computer. He is always pleased with the result, but it's always an matter of firmly insisting he do it!

But the third assignment is the 'jewel in the crown' for me! The assignment is to research 5-6 ofShakespeare's plays. Imagine being 12 years old and not knowing anything about Shakespeare -- other than having heard of Romeo and Juliet!!!! How does one begin -- besides joyfully, that is? The best part is that Sam is loving it! I confess to have chosen the six -- two tragedies, two comedies, and two histories. (Of course, he only wanted to do five!!!). I am not making him read the plays -- He has found synopsis and I shall pick out a couple of famous passages for him. The first one he read was Richard III -- which I chose because it is topical and I thought it a good opportunity to read about the play that has made it so topical. He was completely absorbed. Now he reading the synopsis of Hamlet! I'll let you know what he thinks -- but he has been quietly reading for a while now and seems to be giving out very thoughtful signals ... Coming up are Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, and Henry V. And then write his own version of what each play was about -- he probably won't like that bit ... but you never know!