Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on
New Website on MLK + 50:
As 50th Anniversary Approaches
Of His Most Prophetic Hope & Warning,
How Do We Draw on Dr. King
To Meet our Deep Crisis of Today?
On April 4, 1967, Dr. King spoke deep and troubling truths about America in his most prophetic sermon, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence." Exactly one year later, he was murdered.
In that moment, Dr. King spoke of "the fierce urgency of Now."
Today, as we face the greatest crisis of American democracy since the Civil War, the urgency is even fiercer. Can we draw on Dr. King's wisdom and his activism to address this crisis?
The Shalom Center, working with others, has just opened a new free-standing Website: <Http://MLK50.org>. (If clicking on this link does not get you to <MLK50.org>, please copy and paste the link into your browser.) The new Website already includes materials unfolding the implications of the "Beyond Vietnam" sermon itself; inspiring songs and manifestos; plans for actions to shape our future with loving creativity that can go beyond policies that bully, damage, and demean. Please share this message with yur friends and co-workers.
We welcome you to begin now to explore and add your own ideas and plans on <Http://MLK50.org> (If clicking on this link does not get you to <MLK50.org>, please copy and paste the link into your browser.)
There is also still some space and time for you to take part this coming week in a multireligious gathering at Stony Point Center, an hour north of New York City, to learn how to draw on Dr. King's life to renew our own commitment o heal and transform America.
Therefore our profound crisis.
In his "Beyond Vietnam" sermon, Dr. King pointed to "racism, militarism, and materialism" as the "deadly triplets" afflicting American society. He called for a "revolution in values" throughout America. He pointed to "the fierce urgency of Now."
Fifty years later, the urgency of Now is even fiercer. How do we draw on Dr. King's wisdom, his understanding of American society, his insistence on nonviolent challenge to oppression -- to help us bring nearer a "revolution of values" in our own generation?
Many of us have by long-distance connections and occasional visits worked, mourned, and danced with each other in the invisible network that The Shalom Center has been able to weave.
Now I hope that many of us will be able to gather face to face at Stony Point where Rabbia Harris, Reverend Grimes, Imam Talib, and I will help us all deepen our experience. And I hope we will help each other take on responsibility to organize, not only to remember -- to work in our own communities to make real a Year of Truth and Transformation, to bring closer the revolution in values that Dr. King worked for.
Please register by clicking here:
(If clicking on this link does not get you to the Stony Point Center, please copy and paste the link into your browser.)
And I hope that we will be able, face to face, to share with each other the blessings of shalom, salaam, peace, Earth!
=== Arthur
