Thoughts of Martin’s Dream
Blood in the streets and schools suggest the check America wrote at its inception continues to bounce. Hope is shaken and corrupted. Our future is on trial as a people and a nation.
Yet I still dream, Martin, like you taught me. My child eyes saw you in the black and white screen speaking Hueman sense to power, and shaping a peoples’ violent powerlessness into the way forward. You spoke peace to America who eats her young and destroys what it cannot digest. You spoke brotherhood visions with Jesus clarity to a nation whose rulers sow division in the name of control.
You gave us weapons to cut the head of the snake.
You spoke to little-black-boy-me back in the day.
My child –soul was inspired when you galvanized the faithful beyond terrorist fear to bleed for justice; to give every measure of themselves for love that matters to common people. I felt you and all of them to the bone. Your black and white images remain tattooed inside my head: prophetic hands pointing the way of justice to flailing, stumbling in the dark nation; joined hands singing voices ahead marching feet; cool hands executing a behind the back trick shot at the pool hall with the Bros.
My mother loved you, she said, because you were “down to earth.” I was only 7 at the time.
50 years after … right now … I choose to dream again. It ain’t easy as hateful propagandists attempt daily genocide upon the unfinished movement and American possibilities. Especially because now the screens are HD and everywhere. The control seems total. The manipulation of the dissatisfied is pathological. Purchased ignorance is the nation’s slow death by asphyxiation.
My dreams are not big like yours; they are clarified by yours.
I dream of a people coming to common sense. Nothing unifies the diversity of people as progressively as joy and suffering. Common sense tells me if we focused on promoting common joy and providing support for common suffering, we could be more effective solving common problems than maintaining our national culture of complaint and grievance.
I dream of us realizing it’s better to be practically effective than ideologically right. We all want our children to be safe, healthy, educated and employed…don’t we? So why given the unimaginable (to us) wealth in our country are we not focused on safety, healthcare, education and guaranteed employment?
We all drink and bathe in water, breath air, eat food: why are we not focused on clean water, toxin-free air, and nutrition as human rights?
We are all children of God and dependents of Earth. Why are we not focused on saving our planet and creating life sustaining opportunities for the global all-of-us instead of the greedy few.
I dream of us studying war no more. The more our nation exports violence the more it haunts our streets and schools. I grudgingly accept given the weight of human history that war is a human condition. But must we study it so? Celebrate it?
Glorify war as if it were anything more than a failure of humanity?
In my dreams we all come to agreement that a flag absent human rights and compassion is just a token of totalitarianism …Black folk and “minorities” are not the only ones the 9.9% connive to keep in their place.
I dream of the flag being a living totem and not an abstract cue to surrender ones’ soul. Of wise and righteous Huemans knitting a quilt to fly at the top of the American pole. The union of meek quilters inheriting the nation and saving it from antebellum gilded extinction. Quilting memorials to martyers; to our overcoming witness; to fierce hope.
It would fly next to the red white and blue. As L’Accuse , witness, assertion of inalienable rights and Hueman possibilities.
A sure sign of dying is when we cease trying to be better.
I dream all professed “Christians” revisit as if for the first time true faith foundations…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Gal 5:22-23)
Racist idolatry, gender abuse, mob rage and the spirit of victimization are not fruit of the God of love.
There has never been a more crucial moment for all of us to take a look in the mirror, and see who we are and what we can become.
I am a Hueman Being. My journey, and that of my people, is my witness to the world.
The older I get the more simple I become. Thank you Bro. Martin.
We must overcome.
