It’s Martin Luther King Day, a National Day of Service, in the 53rd year since his death. I’ve experienced mixed feelings on this holiday.
Inexpressible joy and hope
When I lived in Denver, MLK Day was a vibrant day with a huge “Marade,” a celebratory march, community activities, and volunteering. There was a real interest in gathering together across racial, cultural, and economic lines and getting to know each other, walk together, and recommit to the ideals that Dr. King represented.
During those years in the 1990s, in that environment, at that time in my life, with my little girls at my side, I felt the joy of feeling tremendous progress, that the “dream” was birthing as a reality; that the fires of change still burned brightly, that progress was being made.
Today, not so much.
Instead of children not being judged by the color of their skin, young black and brown children are judged intently and negatively. Labeled. Denied. Left behind.
Instead of Black families living, growing, loving as model one and two-parent families, families are intentionally separated by policies, practices, prisons, and programs ostensibly designed to assist but became bureaucratic morasses that perpetuate poverty rather than facilitate wealth.
Instead of the nation melting together into a pot of cultures and peoples who together become something better than any were separate; some cry out that they are supreme, and demand acknowledgment that others are beneath them.
Instead of welcoming the teeming masses, we build walls, chant to close the southern border (but not the northern, which has quietly closed to us), fail to respond to brutality, turned our back on refugees, and shut our ears to the cry of widows and orphans.
Instead of demonstrating to the world the heart of God as a “Christian” nation, we shock the world with the spewing of hate, bigotry, misogyny, and ignorance from pulpits to the hallowed halls of leadership and courts of justice.
Instead of honoring the tradition of a peaceful transition of power, self-anointed “patriots” wave the spurious flag of insurrection, tread in the halls of Congress, desecrating it with urine and feces, guns, and obscenities, somehow thinking that in so doing they are making American great.
Instead of showing our primacy in health care and love for our neighbor, we have cited our rights in refusing to don a mask, wash hands, or physically distance and now 399,000 of our own have died, and we have accorded them no national honor, not even a moment of silence, let alone a day of mourning.
So on MLK Day 2021, I think of my three black grandsons, quickly passing the age where they are mere children to the age where they are suspects… and I wonder, surely this is not the Dream realized. Sadly, the Dream has been deferred.
However, I declare with my last breath and last drop of blood, the Dream will not be denied! What about you? How do you see the Dream? Please comment below, I’d love to hear from you.
