I Have a Vision
You want me to play by rules that you never consulted with me in creating them. I have a vision of love for all every day. Where we receive what we need to love boldly. Where I can love a black man, a Jewish man, an Asian woman or any other hue or amalgam as I see fit. Where you can join me for Buddhist or Pagan ritual prayer if you're Catholic, Muslim or Lutheran alike. Where we give hugs of love to those traumatized with hate. Where we spend our personal and governmental money to build more walls of love. Where we tear down walls of hatred both literally and figuratively in our minds and actions.
Mine is a giant ball of positivity wax. For every body is heir to Earth. Where peace ought not be merely a code word for hippie, an overused media mantra to gain political votes, nor simply a hashtag. To gain your place you must never be guilty of hateful deeds. Do not fall for the traps of bitterness and painful acts and instead strive to spread more love. This is a time to align with the only force I've ever known that grows goodness, heals wounds, melts fears, solves problems, and strengthens character - LOVE!
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ~Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
From behind me came a rousing thunderstorm of love. Everywhere my eyes could see was filled with signs, outfits, costumes, and trinkets sharing a love of self, all others, community, vitality of strength through kindness, inclusivity, and a whole lotta love. A vast sea of women, men, transgender, and a good few dogs. I randomly ran across friends who showered me with love. The hit of happiness cured any of my hidden woes. The masses of hundreds of thousands in close proximity to one another saturated my soul. This was a place of my vision living truly. Here I an anyone else could love every which way they choose. Freely, fully, and beautifully.
As I divined in another year of the famed Women's March movement, I found myself awakened to new heights. To be born is to be created equal if you ask me. While my country declared such rights, though remains far from honoring them, this is a universal right in my vision. My ultra crunchy, flower child, peacenikking maverick personality has been heartily piqued this week. Though the news tried to spread their typical version of a California wildfire, indeed causing a few marches to be canceled, I discovered an outpouring of such diverse love it makes rainbows seem ordinary. In the face of a perceived place for fights, I witnessed tons of high-fiving, hand-holding, hugging, and kissing.
Therefore, I am happy to join with you today in what goes down in history as the commemoration of one of the greatest demonstrations of freedom in the history of nations. [applause please]
Roughly 15,750 score years ago, Homo sapiens, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, were setting the course for a series of equality triumphs and blunder-bashing to come. Unto many soils, where one day males and females, as well as females versus males, could rise, excite, then stir over and again to combat prejudice from too many angles. Through debates, politics, standing tall in the face of adversity, helping a fellow people in need, they carried on with actions to combat hate. Each with momentous decrees became great beacon lights of hope to millions of beliefs, bullied or harassed, ethnicities, genders, races, religions, sexual orientations, social groups, and transgenders. Where many days humans of different colors would stand together to defend long-held beliefs in freedoms for all. These came as joyous daybreaks to end long battles of captivity to only being loved within confines of their peers.
I am stimulated to share with you today - MLK Day - a benevolent non-violent civil rights hero of mine's entire speech. I doubted if I'd ever heard or read this with my undivided attention. Surprising even myself, the scope and language of Dr. King's broadcast feels like a manifesto for all of humanity. While our American nation mandated these rights for us, it does not make priority enough to uphold such edict. My lifetime transit from twentieth to the twenty-first century shows we must continue the good word of people like Martin Luther, for our world of free love remains but a vision of my dreams and not our reality.
I have a vision where my American country lives by its word and that word becomes living leadership for the world at large. Be one of the outspoken. Do it for someone you've always wanted to love and maybe could not as completely as you envisioned. Do it for an ancestor enslaved by the means of even lesser times of freedom. Know you are not alone. Find those who share your vision and give you room to leap when escalating your choice of love. Make loving not a sometimes act or just your Sunday sermon. Love daily. All day long. LOVE MORE. LOVE WELL. LOVE A LOT!
Do yourselves, your neighbors you know or don't know, the strangers you pass on the streets or in the grocery store without second glances, the homeless, the countless number of lives struggling for citizenship, safety, rights, and all basic freedoms the favor to take a few minutes to read below in its admirable entirety.
In his iconic speech at the Lincoln Memorial for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, King urged America to "make real the promises of democracy." King synthesized portions of his earlier speeches to capture both the necessity for change and the potential for hope in American society.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. [applause]
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves [Audience:] (Yeah) who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. (Hmm)
But one hundred years later (All right), the Negro still is not free. (My Lord, Yeah) One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. (Hmm) One hundred years later (All right), the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later (My Lord) [applause], the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. (Yes, yes) And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence (Yeah), they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men (My Lord), would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. (My Lord) Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds. [enthusiastic applause] (My Lord, Lead on, Speech, speech)
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. (My Lord) [laughter] (No, no) We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. (Sure enough) And so we’ve come to cash this check (Yes), a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom (Yes) and the security of justice. (Yes Lord) [enthusiastic applause]
We have also come to this hallowed spot (My Lord) to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. (Mhm) This is no time (My Lord) to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. [applause] (Yes, Speak on it!) Now is the time (Yes it is) to make real the promises of democracy. (My Lord) Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time [applause] to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time (Yes) [applause] (Now) to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent (Yes) will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. (My Lord) 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. (Yes) And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. [enthusiastic applause] There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: in the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. (My Lord, No, no, no, no) [applause] We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. (My Lord) Again and again (No, no), we must rise to the majestic heights (Yes) of meeting physical force with soul force. (My Lord) The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people (Hmm), for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny [sustained applause], and they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” (Never) We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. (Yes) We can never be satisfied [applause] as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. [applause] We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. (Yes) We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating for whites only. [applause] (Yes, Hallelujah) We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. (Yeah, That’s right, Let’s go) [applause] No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters (Yes) and righteousness like a mighty stream. [applause] (Let’s go, Tell it)
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. (My Lord) Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. (My Lord, That’s right) Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution (Yeah, Yes) and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith (Hmm) that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi (Yeah), go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities (Yes), knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. (Yes) Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. (My Lord)
I say to you today, my friends [applause], so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow (Uh-huh), I still have a dream. (Yes) It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. (Yes)
I have a dream (Mhm) that one day (Yes) this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed (Hah): “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” (Yeah, Uh-huh, Hear hear) [applause]
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia (Yes, Talk), the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream (Yes) [applause] that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice (Yeah), sweltering with the heat of oppression (Mhm), will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream (Yeah) [applause] that my four little children (Well) will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. (My Lord) I have a dream today. [enthusiastic applause]
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists (Yes, Yeah), with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” (Yes), one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. [applause] (God help him, Preach)
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted (Yes), every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain (Yes), and the crooked places will be made straight (Yes), and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed [cheering], and all flesh shall see it together. (Yes Lord)
This is our hope. (Yes, Yes) This is the faith that I go back to the South with. (Yes) With this faith (My Lord) we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. (Yes, All right) With this faith (Yes) we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation (Yes) into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. (Talk about it) With this faith (Yes, My Lord) we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together (Yes), to stand up for freedom together (Yeah), knowing that we will be free one day. [sustained applause]
This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children (Yes, Yeah) will be able to sing with new meaning: “My country, ‘tis of thee (Yeah, Yes), sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. (Oh yes) Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride (Yeah), from every mountainside, let freedom ring!” (Yeah)
And if America is to be a great nation (Yes), this must become true. So let freedom ring (Yes, Amen) from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. (Uh-huh) Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. (Yes, all right) Let freedom ring (Yes) from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. (Well) Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. (Yes) But not only that: (No) Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. [cheering] (Yeah, Oh yes, Lord) Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. (Yes) Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. (Yes) From every mountainside (Yeah) [sustained applause], let freedom ring.
And when this happens [applause] (Let it ring, Let it ring), and when we allow freedom ring (Let it ring), when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city (Yes Lord), we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children (Yeah), black men (Yeah) and white men (Yeah), Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics (Yes), will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! (Yes) Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” [enthusiastic applause]
Source: MLKEC-INP, Martin Luther King, Jr. Estate Collection, In Private Hands © Copyright Information
Amen to all that!
May one day the only billions being pitched to Congress for spending on a border be a wall of love that extends universally. ❤️
