We Can Still Dream
It might seem like a cruel irony that a racist, fascist administration be instituted on the same day we celebrate the life and work of one of our nation’s greatest redeemers, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It might feel like, out of respect for this proud history of liberation that the inauguration should be moved to another day. But, I think it’s exactly as it should be. We are today confronted with the depth and breadth of who we were, who we are, and have before us two distinct visions for who we could be.
When Hitler’s administration set out to design laws excluding Jews from German society, out-casting them, stripping them of the rights of citizens, and later laying out the justification for mass deportation and ultimately genocide, they used the American Jim Crow laws as their blueprint. In fact, there were ways the American laws were even harsher than those of the Third Reich. Here’s an example- Until 1967, white and Black people in the US weren’t allowed to marry. To determine race, we adopted the “Not One Drop” rule, stating that if you had any Black ancestry at all, you were legally Black and could not marry a white person. Germany, on the other hand, had a “3 of 4 grandparent” rule, allowing someone to avoid being classified as Jewish if two of their grandparents were not. The Nazi Party was, it turns out, more inclusive in some ways than the American South.
When Rev. King started his public fight for American liberation, he was facing a profoundly entrenched country of racial politics and violence that started the moment Europeans landed on this continent and persisted over centuries, even in the face of other sweeping and radical social, political and economic changes. His primary constituency was poor, Black, and often uneducated. Segregation ensured they had little access to university, to well-paying jobs, or to people with influence in the nation’s political or social systems. He was trying to organize people who were tired, who had little disposable income, even less time, and were often devoid of hope.
It is to those people who fought and won, those who followed a leader whose love for this nation, his people, and his opponents was unwavering, that we look for our inspiration at the precise moment we truly need it. As this reactionary political party takes their seat on the American throne, filling American halls of power with lawlessness, racism, sexism, and arrogance, we can cower and hide, or we can do as those before us have done and fight with all the love in our hearts.
The MAGA movement betrays it’s own racist fantasies when it claims the slogan Make America Great Again, clearly waxing nostalgic for those days when white power was dominant and ensconced in a calcified patriarchy. Longing for our Leave It To Beaver past when everyone knew their place and a quiet Christian conservatism was a mist that rested over all the land, the people moving into the circles of American social and political power this weekend are hoping to unravel so much of our progress. Rather than buying into the liberal vision of equality and a move toward social and economic equity, they are solidifying an underclass designed to support and serve the wealthy or disappear entirely.
I don’t know about you, but it can make me feel sick. Completely ill, like if I pay too much attention to what’s happening to our beloved nation, I might vomit. One response is to hide. Listen to James Patterson audiobooks. Read Vogue. Eat chocolate. Climb into bed and wait for it to end.
Another response is to be furious. Justifiably angry. To rage at the machine. To take to social media and rant for anyone who’ll listen. To hate that face, that voice, to hate everyone who loves what’s happening, who’s supporting it, who voted for it, or even to hate anyone who didn’t vote against it. We can spew our self-righteous rage for the next 4 years, at the end of which we’ll be right, but alone, and no better for any of it.
We can also play mediator. Consider all sides. Find the middle ground. Learn to make room. Be moderate, temperate, even-handed. Adult? Except that serves to normalize things to which we should not become adjusted, things we should find abhorrent. And letting go of our moral center for the sake of peace doesn’t preserve either our nation or our souls.
In 1966, Rev. King was the Ware Lecturer at our own General Assembly where he told us:
…There are some things in our nation and in our world to which I'm proud to be maladjusted. And I call upon you to be maladjusted and all people of good will to be maladjusted to these things until the good society is realized. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, and leave millions of people perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of prosperity.”
Hide, rage, adjust.
Or, we can choose the path of Love.
Love is our Fourth Way. Love is the call of the ancestors, the call from the generations who started this fight, who sustained this fight, who are charging us to continue this fight, firmly on their shoulders, standing steady on the Path of Love.
Having fallen deeply in love and having stayed in love for more than 30 years, I can tell you without doubt that real love isn’t blind. Love sees everything. It sees the quirks and imperfections. It’s not that lovers can’t see, but that they see beauty in it all, they see the flaws and love them. They see the weak spots and love them into strength.
The lesson from the past that we can learn if we are willing, is the lesson of radical, powerful, profoundly awake, and fiercely committed Love. The Love required, the Love that breaks down concrete walls to let justice flow like a river, is not soft or gentle or yielding or in any way in denial about what’s real.
Rev. King told us over and over again that Love is the only path to authentic, societal transformation. He said:
“Now, I’m not talking about a sentimental, shallow kind of love. (Go ahead) I’m not talking about eros, which is a sort of aesthetic, romantic love. I’m not even talking about philia, which is a sort of intimate affection between personal friends. But I'm talking about agape. (Yes sir) I'm talking about the love of God in the hearts of men. (Yes) I’m talking about a type of love which will cause you to love the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed that the person does. (Go ahead) We've got to love. (Oh yes)”
We’ve got to Love.
And I can’t think of a more difficult charge. I can’t imagine, in the face of the hate, in the face of the ignorance, in the face of the intentional dismantling of the domestic and international liberal order we’ve fought and died for, that I can enter this next stage with Love in my heart.
But Love is the only legitimate path. Love is the only path of our faith. Love is the only path of our history. Love is the only path that leads to a joyful future.
And if I think this is hard, I need to get my history straight because Americans have been fighting for this vision that all people are created equal, and should have equal access to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, since our inception. Slavery. Christian Nationalism. Irish Need Not Apply. Red Lining. Anti-Semitism. No Right to Vote. No Voice in Court. Rape. Imprisonment. Homelessness. Child Labor. Police Violence. It’s been centuries of oppression and centuries of Love Fighting Back.
And now it’s our turn.
Yes, we can hide. We can rage. We can adjust.
But not if we want to win. Not if we are committed to inclusion. To equity. To justice.
We can get by. We can be self-righteous. We can be gentle and yielding.
Or we can play our part. Resisting. Speaking Truth. Loving in spite of them and in spite of ourselves.
The Path of Love is calling us to speak Truth. To call out bigotry. To call out racism. To defend ourselves and our nation against the autocracy this new administration is trying to install. To protect the marginalized. To take seriously the power of our pocketbooks in claiming our dissatisfaction. To avoid throwing up our hands at the enormity of it all and instead to be careful, intentional, mindful of all the places we have power.
To join and reengage communities of good will, without purity tests, but in the spirit of communion, of shared resistance, of joyful friendship and companionship on what would otherwise be a lonely road. To befriend people and institutions that are also centered in Love, also willing to defend all we can be, in partnership. This is the path of Love that leads us to our Becoming.
Let’s give the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King the last word as our wise guide on this journey:
“Go out with that faith today-that the universe is on our side in the struggle. (Sure is, Yes) Stand up for justice. (Yes) Sometimes it gets hard, but it is always difficult to get out of Egypt, for the Red Sea always stands before you with discouraging dimensions. (Yes) And even after you've crossed the Red Sea, you have to move through a wilderness with prodigious hilltops of evil (Yes) and gigantic mountains of opposition. (Yes) But I say to you this afternoon: Keep moving. (Go on ahead) Let nothing slow you up. (Go on ahead) Move on with dignity and honor and respectability. (Yes) I realize that it will cause restless nights sometimes. It might cause losing a job; it will cause suffering and sacrifice. (That's right) It might even cause physical death for some. But if physical death is the price that some must pay (Yes sir) to free their children from a permanent life of psychological death (Yes, sir), then nothing can be more Christian. (Yes sir) Keep going today. (Yes sir) Keep moving amid every obstacle. (Yes sir) Keep moving amid every mountain of opposition. (Yes, sir, Yeah) If you will do that with dignity (Say it), when the history books are written in the future, the historians will have to look back and say, "There lived a great people. (Yes sir, Yes) … a people which stood up with dignity and honor and saved Western civilization in her darkest hour (Yes); a people that gave new integrity and a new dimension of love to our civilization." (Yeah, Look out) When that happens, "the morning stars will sing together, (Yes, sir) and the [people] will shout for joy."
