Unitarian Universalist Meeting of South Berkshire

 

 

January 16, 2005

 

 

“I Have a Dream”

 

 

Rev. Kathy Duhon

 

            “I have a dream,” Martin Luther King, Jr. said in 1963.  Did any of you see the PBS documentary, made last year, called “Citizen King:  1963 – 1968”?  Although it did not say so directly, I believe it implied that 1963 marked the beginning of when King first  consciously worked from the perspective of a dream.  He’d been an activist for 8 years, but in that Spring, the group he led, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, decided to go to Birmingham.  The previous actions that King and this group had engaged in had all been responses to crises, but this time he wanted to create a nonviolent campaign in Birmingham as a breakthrough test for integration throughout the whole South. 

Birmingham was a tough city in terms of racism, with 60 unsolved murders at the time.  “Nobody wanted to go to Birmingham”, as Andrew Young said.  He worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. in those day, and he described the fear of going into Birmingham in 1963, especially the fear of violence being turned upon Martin.  Young described King’s reaction, “‘Now you all think they’re gonna’ get me, but all y’all gonna’ be out there jumpin’ in front of the camera.’  And he said, ‘The bullet might be aimed for me, but one of y’all gonna’ get it,’ he said, ‘but don’t worry.  I will preach the best funeral you ever had,’ and then he’d start preachin’ your funeral.  ‘Andy Young was a fine young man, but he thought that he had to have all of the ladies liking him.’ And he’d crack on you, but he pressed right on.’”

Their campaign was not going as well as they had hoped – blacks from Birmingham were not turning out in great numbers to support them.  It was the beginning of Easter weekend, and many of them were ministers who needed to return to their churches.  They huddled in a motel room suite, trying to figure out the next step, when Martin went alone into a bedroom and prayed.  When he came out, he was in blue jeans.  That meant he believed he was going to jail, not to lead his flock through the Easter joy.

This was the first time he chose the path of suffering, which is unfortunately a regular aspect of following a dream.  When his wife Coretta spoke of her husband’s Good Friday arrest, in an interview 5 years later, not long after his assassination, she said that at the time she was still confined to the house after the birth of their fourth child, and she was depressed, but she also found it to be one of the most meaningful times.  For Easter can be about “creative suffering”, she said.  “If we think in terms of my husband’s life and his death in those terms, then we will not be as sad.  We will be hopeful because in his death there is hope for redemption.”

            This weekend we honor Martin Luther King, Jr., and his dreams, both fulfilled and unfulfilled.  The best way to honor him is to seek, articulate and follow our own dreams.  This is not easy, not simple; it’s risky, potentially filled with suffering, and we can easily become discouraged – as King himself did.  Yet he kept forging ahead with dream after dream – bus and lunch counter integration, labor rights, voting rights, world peace; and he did it with boycotts, sit-ins, marches, speeches, nonviolent actions; all over the country, all over the world.

            Martin Luther King’s dreams were personal – for his little children, for himself, for people he knew – you can hear it in the famous “I have a dream” speech – “I have a dream that my four children 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.”  In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, in which he answers the white clergymen who had criticized his actions and counseled waiting, he wrote poignantly that it is hard to wait “when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people.” 

His dreams were deeply personal, and they were universal – love and justice and peace for everyone, everywhere, a connected reality, for he noticed “a network of mutuality”.  He started with what he knew locally – segregated busses and lunch counters – and he went on to bigger issues, including civil rights, voting rights, peace in Vietnam, and work against poverty.  Some of his dreams came true, and he witnessed the signing of both the major anti-racism rights acts by President Johnson.  But by 1968 he was preaching about how to handle unfulfilled dreams, the topic of the talk he gave the night before he died.

Dreams, visions, are the articulated morality that translates hope into future good, and Martin Luther King, Jr. was a prophet for the dream of justice and peace in the 20^th century.  Prophetic dreams and visions are crucial for society.  “Where there is no vision, the people perish” is an often quoted proverb from the Hebrew Scriptures.  We cling to this because it is so real – the ability to envision the future is vital to people.

            In another famous Biblical passage – this one from the Book of Joel – it says, “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.”  Joel writes about a good and glorious future that is called the “Day of the Lord”, and what we hear in these words a longing for dreams, for visions – from everyone – for the spirit to prophesy a good future.

            We all have dreams.  As I put away my holiday greeting cards, I was struck by how many people expressed an ardent longing for peace, a vision of a world in which 2005 would greatly differ from 2004 in its prophetic dreams.

            Visionary, prophetic dreams have 3 components, as seen through Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life.  First, there is having the right heart, as we heard in the “Unfulfilled Dreams” talk.  He especially spoke of this during the last few months of his life, when he knew he was in danger, and when he knew that people needed to find a way to deal with their many discouragements, as they made some progress in terms of justice, but still had so far to go.  Most important, King said, is to believe in the dream of a better future with a full heart of love that is willing to try. 

Martin Luther King spoke a great deal about love – it was all about love, really.  He said, “Agape is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.”  In fact, he went on to say, “Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you.”  He believed that you could love people enough that it would change their hearts and minds.  In our Grace Note, he said, “I want you to be first in love.”  That is having the right heart.

            Second, you have to announce your dream.       When Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his great “I have a dream” speech in 1963, he not only articulated the dream of desegregation for the future, of an end to racism for all of our children, but he also gave us a vehicle, a means for going forward.  We have dreams of a better future for ourselves, our children and the whole world, but we often keep them in our own heads, or only share them with those closest to us.  And yet, we can hear Martin’s thunderous voice, announcing out loud his dreams, both personal and global.  And because they are announced, they have a chance of being fulfilled.

When you announce your dreams, you probably you won’t have to do it before over 250,000 people in Washington, D.C., as King did in August, 1963, when he spoke from the heart his “I Have a Dream” speech.  He had been delivering a different speech, actually, about bankrupt policies and the default of the U.S. toward blacks, a kind of a bounced check, and he had a different ending worked out, but he knew the people and he felt the moment, and he spoke his conclusion without notes.  “I have a dream” he said, of equality and respect and freedom, and it is part of the American dream, part of God’s dream. 

You also probably won’t have to announce your dream before the whole world, as King did when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, when he said, “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”  You know, I have that dream, too, don’t you?  But I don’t say it out loud.  I need to, we need to, announce our dreams.  They only begin to come true when they are articulated and shared with others – that is when they begin to be real.

In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. announced his clear dream for peace.  He said, “I’m gonna’ continue with all of my might, with all of my energy, and with all of my actions to oppose that abominable, evil, unjust war in Vietnam.”  Who, today, will announce the truth about the war in Iraq?

            The third part of the dream process is taking action that risks one’s well-being.  I’m afraid that part can’t be gotten around.  Maybe we don’t announce our dreams because we are really scared of this next step – who wants to go to jail?  To be humiliated and threatened?  To be tired, and cold, or hot, downright uncomfortable?  To be killed?  Actually, very few of even the prophets are assassinated, so we shouldn’t let that risk stop us from putting our dreams into action.

We still have a huge gaping divide to cross in order to take the step of action that risks suffering.  And yet, it is the only way, as far as I can tell.  Sometimes the risk of suffering does not result in actual suffering, or sometimes, it just means minor discomforts – losing sleep, or prestige, or living more simply in order to devote resources toward our dreams.  Still, we have a hard time doing anything that isn’t “conformed to the world”, as Paul advised in Romans, and King followed, with his further suggestion that sometimes everyone should be maladjusted to our social system. 

              Creative suffering can bring the hope of redemption, as Coretta Scott King said. Supposedly, the Birmingham situation turned around, not because of King’s suffering when he went to jail, but because of the next step – the children’s march, when dogs and fire hoses were turned on black children, and the whole world watched in horror, including those who were segregationists – it went too far.  The children risked suffering, and the adults risked letting them suffer.  It was a hard decision.  King was against it at first, but the youth were adamant.  One man, who was a teenager in the action, said that King had told them about the serious things that were likely to happen to them, but still took all the fear out of it for them.  Risking suffering without fear – that’s the right course.

            Supposedly, it was not King’s marches in Selma that turned around the country to accept the Voting Rights Act, but the deaths of white Northerners who had gone down to help with the marches, including Unitarian Universalist minister James Reeb.  They were willing to risk suffering for the dream of justice.  We don’t know which risk will make a difference, which creative suffering will help bring redemption. 

            We all have dreams – we all are called sometimes to try to fulfill those dreams.  Perhaps having a right heart, a heart full of love, is the hardest part.  Or is it the announcement, the admitting out loud, in a way that calls upon others to notice the truth; is that the really difficult part?  By the time you get the right heart and announce the dream, the risk of suffering just seems natural, and not really that hard at all.  The future is counting on us to dream dreams and see visions, and bring that truth and hope forward into reality.  And so may we dream.  Amen.